Took the Miyata out for a Seattle loop: Golden Gardens, Ballard, across the locks, and into Free Range Bicycles. Picked up a pair of Rene Herse Snoqualmie Pass Endurance — the 700×44s I’d been hunting from my favorite LBS (Hi Shawna!).
Endurance casing instead of Extralight. Still a light folding tire, a bit more protection for tubes on these older clincher rims. Feels right for this bike. This will be the first bike in a while that I run with tubes. They only measured out to 39.5mm initially. This is only 3mm more than the Barlow Pass “38’s” I have on my Homer. It will be interesting to see if these stretch.
At this point I don’t mind them being a bit shorter as the top tube is touching the taint when I swing a leg over…
It’s been a long quiet stretch here. Last steady writing was years ago, and a lot of life filled the gap, graduations, jobs, weddings. I’ve got more time now, and I want to write here again as a creative outlet — short notes on bikes, trails, and the miles around Seattle and Whidbey Island in the Pacific NW. Some words next to the photos, when there’s something worth getting off my chest.
A New Build
I rebuilt my father’s old Miyata Triplecross. It was his RV travel bike that he kept on the rack when he travelled back and forth in retirement. Lots of dust from the trips from AZ, and some good beausage. The base is a Taiwanese-built triple-butted steel lugged frame that’s a real gem. Rides like a champ.
I went through a few upgrades/changes: new Compass drop bars, brake/shifter cables, flat pedals, and some new old stock Longboard SKS fenders for the coming deluge. Shifters are some Silvers from the Rivendell stash, on Shimano bar-end pods. I had the pods, but no related shifters, so had to order a few parts and figure out how to set up a friction setup that worked. I also had to find a brake cable stop for the front. I had an older part I had modified that attaches to the fork crown and works great.
Bar tape is my signature harlequin green/orange with 2 coats of amber shellac. I had to remind myself how to do this via my old video: harlequin wrap video if you want to geek out on the pattern. I kept the 7-speed Biopace drivetrain and Exage deraileurs. It is barely used, so still shifts quietly/quickly in friction mode – almost perfect for this. As for the Biopace, I feel it on the downstoke mostly when climbing hills, so it is a win.
I replaced the saddle with a really old Selle Anatomica from a trade. I added this, after the shakedown bare-bar 20-miler around Seattle (Golden Gardens, the canal) reminded me I needed something kinder to the taint. Major bruising from the terrible Brooks Cambium C15 I had laying around. Felt like a brick after 10 miles. Nope…
On the geometry, the bottom bracket sits higher than I’m used to, it being a hybrid/cyclocross style, but I set it close to my Homer Hilsen, and it feels pretty good. I basically set the rear of saddle to bar center, and then the center of crank to seat height, and bar height to seat height relation (about 1-2cm higher bar).
It’s pretty well set up – I do need to add new tires and will probably order up some soon. Now I need to ride this thing…
I recently explored a newly opened forest area on Whidbey Island that happens to be close to my house. After an easy 2 mile ride there on the mountain bike, I had high hopes that the trails would be single-track and awesome. They were, and it was!
My company, Comcast Technology Solutions, made the local Seattle bike blog news! Good stuff – it’s heartening to encourage folks to get out on a bike even after Seattle’s record breaking rain this year (45 inches since October). I’m proud to work for a company that encourages folks to ride, and not worry too much about coming in wet, late, messy. We have happy folks who ride!
Cycle Seattle 