2014 Redux

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Stonehog in Cycling, Northwest, Randonneuring

Tags

100k, 200k, 650b, a. homer hilsen, acorn bags, ahh, bar tape, bicycle, bicycle commute, brevet, commute, compact double, compass, cyclemeter, Cycles Toussaint, cycling, cypres, diamond wrap, dynamo, dynamo lighting, Edelux, fenders, Gran Bois

An auspicious year for this family of horses, 2014 was pretty nice. There were a few epiphanies, and a lot of riding. I’m sitting around resting a nagging medial knee issue that has kept me off the bike for the past week or so. I’ve been wanting to get out and do one last permanent to finish off the 2014 season, but better judgement is telling me to wait until the knee feels normal. I know from past experience that the best way to heal is to go easy for a while.

While I didn’t do much more mileage this year, it was still a full year of riding with 3,111 miles (just over 5000 kms) so far. Last year I did just over 3000 miles, as well. I did most of my brevets early, with the organized rides over at the end of March. That month was also my first 500-mile month. I rode my first solo permanent in April, and did some Moab mountain biking over spring break. July brought the Entmoot, and as usual, a lower amount of riding as I seem to slow down in the summer months.

I picked it back up in September, and peaked in November with a late season 200k permanent around Whidbey Island. I am loving this island’s smooth hilly roads, and have a few more brevets and just general rides planned for the future. My average speed has not budged in the past 3 years, so I may work on my fitness in the new year and see if I can’t bump that up with some interval training. I am still hedging on the longer rides (over 300k) – I’m just not sure if I would enjoy them. The Entmoot ride was an eye opener this year, and I feel like unorganized rambles have a special attraction with exploration and time for photos and camping with friends being great short vacations. The planning and anxiety around an organized brevet sometimes feels like work.

As for the mechanical side, I am slowly gaining more perspective and opinions on what works for me. I really like the Cycles Toussaint experiment with low trail and plump 650b tires. Tubeless has worked out well, too. I appreciate the extra cush on the rides, and less worry about flatting. I still enjoy the Hilsen’s ride with the 32mm Compass tires, too – they are almost as compliant with significantly less air volume.

I’ve come to feel that the 42cm Noodles are the right cockpit for me over the long distance. I continue to enjoy the Selle Anatomica saddles, and Sidi shoes. I am not bothered by having 7 or 8 speed cassettes, and index and friction both work, but on the longer rides, I appreciate the simplicity of indexing. I have bar-end shifters on the Toussaint, and downtube shifters on the Hilsen, and both are set up indexed at this point.

I really enjoy the centerpull brakes on both bikes, but the post-mounted Dia-Compes on the Toussaint have amazing modulation and easy setup. I appreciate the simplicity of the older brake style. I think a great project would be to have centerpull braze-ons added to the Hilsen, perhaps with a low-trail fork, S&S couplers, and Compass Mafac copies added. Hmmm – perhaps when it’s ready for a re-paint, I can convert her over to 650b as well? Probably a silly experiment better addressed by a custom.

If I were to have a custom built at this point, it would be a titanium or ultra-light steel tubed, low trail 650b all-purpose bike. I really feel like this is a do-all, go anywhere bike. The Rivs would remain my country and camping bikes, and the Toussaint would be backup brevet and city porteur bike. It would be great to have a lugged Weigle, MAP, or Pereira. Maybe a Bantam? Still dreaming of good rides ahead…

Taillight Wiring

07 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by Stonehog in Cycling

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

a. homer hilsen, bicycle, bike, Cycles Toussaint, cycling, dynamo, dynamo lighting, dynamo taillight, fenders, hilsen, light wiring, rivendell, taillight, wiring

Since I haven’t sprung for a custom bike with wiring guides or internal cable routing, I’ve had to improvise on my taillight wiring schemes. The first few times I just strung the wire along the down tube, chain stay, and up the fender stay to the light. I fastened it with zip-ties. This was fairly clean from the drive side view, but resulted in some zip-tie mess on the non-drive side. The last few times I’ve wired up rear lights, I’ve managed to put them under the fenders, eliminating the mess from the down tube. The key has been aluminum tape and careful fender drilling. Someday, I may get up the courage to drill into the fork or frame, but for now, I’ll play it safe.

https://flic.kr/p/mRi2Y6

You can see the white bike in the background has a similar setup, but instead of routing the wire up the fork leg with zip-ties, I glued shrink tubing on the inside of the fork leg, and the inside of the front rack. This is used to guide the wire without the use of tape. Note – on the white bike, the electrical tape I’m using to fasten the wire to the down tube is starting to peel off a bit after a few hundred very wet miles. It may be replaced soon. That is one area that the zip-ties win – I haven’t had one come loose yet. I’ve even taken to loosely tying the wire to the derailleur cable. Only an issue when you change cables, and the small zip-ties are pretty unobtrusive.

Hilsen Lighting v 2.0

18 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Stonehog in Cycling

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Tags

a. homer hilsen, Biologic, dynamo, dynamo lighting, Edelux, randonneur, Reecharge

Hilsen Lighting v 2.0, a set on Flickr.

In my quest for light and power perfection, I added a charging setup, as well as a new mount for my headlight on my rando bike. The plan is to power it all via dynamo hub…

Via Flickr:
I added the BioLogic Reecharge adapter, and set up the light to mount under the rack so as not to interfere with the platform. This was about the only place I could fit a mount on the Mark’s Rack keeping the light under the rack bed.

GPS vs. iPhone

28 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by Stonehog in Cycling

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

ahh, case, charger, cyclemeter, dynamo, garmin, gps, hilsen, iphone, motionx gps, randoneurring, rivendell, runkeeper

When I decided to try out the insane sport of randoneurring, I quickly found that my iPhone running my tracking app, RunKeeper, was not going to work. The battery only lasted 4 hours in GPS mode, and these rides started at about 4-5 hours. I ran out and picked up a Garmin, as these things still take AA batteries and go for 25 hours before expiring. After riding it on one brevet in March, and fiddling/cursing the old mode of convoluted GPS UI/OS the Garmins use, I launched it off the handlebar mount on a large bump on the commute home one night. I didn’t notice it was gone until I came to the next stop light, and after circling back to the likely area, it was never found. After weighing the logic of dumping another $200 into a device I found cumbersome, I decided against it. The iPhone has GPS and will always have a more competitive app arena that will ensure the best GPS experience. Already, apps like CycleMeter, MotionX GPS, and RunKeeper have better UIs and more specific usability features. Now I just had to find a way to use my dynamo hub to power both the lights and the iPhone.

There are a few options out there. Peter White sells some chargers, Wahoo makes a case with built in battery, but I settled on the BioLogic ReeCharge system that is made up of a case/battery combo, a handlebar mount, and a dynamo charging system. The setup was very straightforward, and I used my older iPhone 4 with it for the first few weeks (in case it launched, as well)

iPhone case mounted on A. Homer Hilsen

I had no issues with the case coming loose on both road and trail over the past month or two of use. I have put a couple hundred miles on the bikes with the case mount, and gone over some knarly bumps, but the case has held fast. This is by no means an exhaustive test regime, but it has certainly done better than the Garmin I had. Wiring on both bikes was simply a matter of merging the light and ReeCharge wires at the clips that attach to the hub. This took about 15 minutes at most. The other end just plugs into the handlebar mount. I honestly had a tougher time figuring out what to do with all the extra wire. I took a couple different tacks on the two bikes. On the Hilsen, I wrapped the extra around the handlebar mount, as I was trying to minimize the wiring down on the frame:

Wrapped around handlebar mount

On the Hunqapillar, I coiled the cable around the shifter cabling. I did this one first, and didn’t like the result, as it is more visible overall:

Coiled

The dynamo unit is strapped to the back of one of the fork legs, and simply held in place by zip ties. Here are some pics of my wiring on the Hilsen. I followed the basic process that Lovely Bicycle had posted a while back to keep the wiring as invisible as possible, while still being an easy job that doesn’t require any frame drilling or fiddling.