A. Homer Hilsen 7-year Review

04 Monday Jan 2016

Tags

a. homer hilsen, ahh, bike, commute, cycling, harlequin wrap, nitto, porteur, randonneur, rivendell, Seattle

My first real thoughtful bike purchase was the Rivendell A. Homer Hilsen. Color – metallic copper – one of the web frame specials in 2009 shortly after I moved back to Seattle from a brief 18-month foray to my childhood home of Minnesota. I had been commuting on a ’96 Kona AA that I was pretty much done with. The aluminum frame never felt right – too stiff. I was ready for a real road bike after spending much of the prior 20 years on a mountain bike.

2nd Build – still a favorite

I did a lot of research, but after I found the Rivendell site, started reading Sheldon Brown and Grant Petersen’s opinions, and did some test rides on a local friend’s vast collection of Riv bikes, I was smitten. I recall going to the Seattle Bike Show in 2008 and walking around forlorn, seeing nothing attractive. At all.

At that point, I knew a couple things about myself:

Steel felt right. I grew up riding this material. My Raleigh Reliant, and Stumpjumper Pro (’91) were my benchmark rides.
I wasn’t planning to pick up racing. I am a recreational and practical cyclist.
Damn those lugged frames were pretty! They really hit a “homer” in terms of where my aesthetic sensibilities were concerned.
I wanted to build this bike myself from the frame up.

I started watching the Riv site and decided the copper Hilsen was the one. It was a 59cm frame, and although I would probably fit up to a 61cm, this was as big as I wanted to commit to.

After a few months of collecting the parts and tools needed to put this together, I took it for the first ride and was amazed at the effortless speed compared to my mountain bikes. At about the same time, I had also stumbled on the RBW owners bunch online community, which helped me navigate a first bike build, as well as sharing lots of good technical advice.

Here was a large community of like-minded folks generally oohing and aahing all the builds folks were doing. This tight-knit community is one known for being a polite and caring group, and I’m happy to count many of the folks there as friends.

Favorite Bike in Current Config

The Hilsen took me on my first 100k brevet, and then my 200k. Then my 300k. It helped me learn that I like the Selle Anatomica Titanico saddle best on anything over 100 miles. It showed me that clipless pedals were not necessary anymore.

I briefly became caught up in the low-trail Jan Heine camp, and picked up another rando bike (the Toussaint), but after all these years, the one bike I still enjoy the most is the A. Homer Hilsen. It is still as lovely as ever, and gaining beausage every year. It still gets more comments on my daily commute, rain or shine. After riding other bikes for several months, and then coming back to this one, it still feels “just right”. The ride is smooth, predictable, natural. I never feel like it has quirks, defects, or limitations that I’ve noticed on lesser bikes.

It has done brevets, snowy singletrack(!), loaded commutes, and just riding trips. Handled ’em all with aplomb. ’nuff said…

Posted by Brian Hanson | Filed under Cycling, Northwest, Randonneuring

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Front Derailleur Destructor

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Tags

a. homer hilsen, campagnolo, centaur CT, CX-70, derailleur, rivendell, Shimano

Blast from the past post…

I’ve had two derailleurs on my Hilsen self destruct. The first on a 300k keeping me in the big ring for the 2nd half of the ride. The second on a commute home. Different manufacturers, same bike and crank/chainrings. Strangely, they both broke in August – exactly one year apart. The other strange thing here, I have the exact same crankset on my Vélo Routier, and have never had an issue. It uses an older derailleur – Suntour XC Pro, however.

I’ve gotten advice from “ignore it – probably just unlucky” to “need a stronger derailleur”. Something is going on here. I have always been careful to align the derailleur within 2-4mm of the outer chainring. Perhaps this bike just needs a 1×10? I’ve never had another bike destroy even one front derailleur, so I was suspicious of the following:

Chainring 16 tooth spacing (44t – 28t) too great a jump
Chainring thickness (chain seemed to stick to big chainring)
Derailleur construction

On to the specifics:

The first one let go on a 300k brevet on August 4th, 2013. It was a Shimano CX-70. Luckily it happened after my big climb for the trip up to Artist’s Point on Mt. Baker.

Popped on the outside

As you can see, the outer cage popped out at the top with a fairly clean break. To be fair, I had several instances of chainsuck over the prior year that spread the derailleur apart. To fix, I would just push the cage back into the normal shape after I re-railed the chain. I assume it finally fatigued to the point of failure after the last chainsuck.

I then mounted a Campagnolo Centaur CT that had worked well on other bikes. This lasted for approximately 1 year, but then self destructed in much the same way on August 12, 2014, breaking on the upper inside plate.

Popped on the inside

At this point, it was clear that the shifting pressure was too much for these modern derailleurs. I decided to swap the big ring from a 44t to a smaller 42t so the gap was not as great. With an inner ring of 28t, I dropped the spread from 16t to 14t with the hope that it would not be as much distance to push, however, the problem always happened when dropping the chain from the large ring to the small. I had an extra CX-70 that I put on this bike. It came from the Hunqapillar, which had never mis-shifted or chain-sucked while it was mounted.

A year and a half later, and all is well. No sign of problems with the new CX-70, and no further instances of chain-suck. I have a feeling it was the large chainring causing the problems. C’est la vie. One of the more frustrating things about biking (and food/diet) is the sparse amount of useful information out there. Anyone else had front derailleurs go boom on a road bike?

Ah, the simple days of not having to worry about shifts. Tech will get us there again, soon. Can’t wait for the variable ratio belt drive bike that you can control with your embedded chip.

Posted by Brian Hanson | Filed under Cycling, Randonneuring

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Oregon Outback 2015 – Day 1

07 Sunday Jun 2015

Tags

bike touring, gravel grinding, Gravel Touring, hammock, Hammock camping, Hunqapillar, OC&E rail trail, Oregon Outback, rivendell, Surly Troll, touring, western backroads

I have a lot of photos from a recent adventure, so I’m going to break up this post into riding days. At the end, I’ll try to sum up several things that worked really well, and what it took to get ready for an offroad tour. Onward!

I haven’t been as excited for a trip in years. The Oregon Outback travels through a lot of area I’ve never seen. For good reason – there aren’t many roads that bisect it. I had an inkling of the terrain, but what it would really require or be like was still unknown.

With lingering doubts about knee pain, soft shoes with flat pedals, and lightweight tubeless tires, I set out for adventure. These sort of epic trips generally come with solid learning experiences. The first one happened when we arrived at the train station in Seattle with nicely packed bike boxes, carrying our bike baggage.

Boxed and ready

After we checked the bikes, we noticed there were four or five bikes that were being wheeled around the lobby with everything put together and be-bagged. Wow. I wanted to go back and un-check our boxes. That would have saved us an hour up front packing the bikes. Not to mention the re-build at the end of the journey…

The train ride out of Seattle was nice, going mostly alongside the Puget Sound and the Columbia River before moving more inland at Portland.

Bridge view

The Coast Starlight!

When we reached Klamath Falls, OR, we waited as 100+ ready-to-go bikes were handed down to their owners to be immediately ridden away. After carefully putting on the front rack, bags, and straightening the bars and stem in the dark railroad yard at 10pm, we rode over to the Olympic Inn for a short rest before the 7am start.

Pack’n

Surly Style

In the morning we double-checked our packing job, and then ate a good breakfast that included oatmeal, biscuits and gravy, and eggs. At a bit after 7am, we were off. The forecast was for rain and scattered thunderstorms.

Rain ahead

The OC&E is a great trail. Nice and flat, but with a fair amount of cow deposits and cattle gates, the going was flat, messy, and interrupted. At this point in the ride, we were still seeing a fair amount of riders, but as the day wore on, we quickly spread out and found ourselves with lots of quiet time to think.

One of the many – open/close

At one of the 40+ cattle gates, I noticed my rear tire was losing air. I stopped and pumped it up. The hole was obvious, losing some of the sealant (Stan’s), but it didn’t seem too bad, so I spun the tire, put the hole at the bottom, and pumped it up again. We rode on a few more gates, and it started holding air. After bringing it back up to 40psi, I never had to gas it again. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ bout!

One of the food highlights of the first day during a rare warm sun break was a brief stop in Beatty, about a mile off the trail. We had coconut helado ice bars. I was looking for them at every stop for the rest of the trip.

Coconut Helado, I love thee!

The OC&E steadily turned more remote, and less groomed. The trail was great, but more grass was on the trail as we got further north/east. After a good climb up an old railway switchback, we stopped for the view and some water. It was misting at this point.

Misty low pass

We were entering ranch country. No towns were bigger than a few houses, and perhaps a post office. It was never-ending ranch lands with few roads or access. This is the real west!

Relic

Lost tracks

We lasted about 7 hrs of moving time for about 72 miles. We both felt pretty good and set up camp in between showers right where we were hopping off the trail. There was a river nearby, so we knew we had water for the next part of the journey.

Up off the wet ground – Hammocks for the win!

John said it poured on us at 2am, but I heard nothing. I never knew sleeping in the woods could be so comfortable. To be continued…

Ride With GPS Route Info – Day 1

Posted by Brian Hanson | Filed under Cycling

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Bike Camping

17 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Brian Hanson in Cycling, Northwest, Randonneuring

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bike Camping, bikepacking, camp lists, Hunqapillar, Oregon Outback, rivendell, whisky

Big trips have a way of creeping up on me. I’m heading down to Klamath Falls, OR on Thursday for a week in the Oregon outback, and I felt the need to re-do my bike today (and buy a new lawn mower). Is this trip nesting?

After modifications

I am borrowing a pair of panniers from a co-worker for the trip, but I still feel like I’ll be strapping a lot of extra stuff to the bike when I finally set out. I have a bike box thanks to my touring partner, but I haven’t even started to pack up yet. At this point, I’m going through my various camping lists from past trips, and trying to figure out what I may and may not need.

Camp List:

Hammock
Fly
Tarp (in case I have to bivy)
Headlamp
Knife
Cook Kit (Trangia stove and various pots)
Fuel
Matches/Lighter
Bug Spray
Sun Screen
Toilet Paper
Wipes
Soap
Towel
Water Filter (doubles as 4L water storage)

Bike Tools:

Tool kit (fixit sticks with 3,4,5,6,8mm, phillips, flat, assorted torx)
3-way socket wrench with 8, 9, 10mm
2 tubes
1 spare tire
Patch kit
Levers, duct tape, zip ties
Rubber gloves
Master link
Brake/Derailleur cables
Loose nuts and bolts (5, 6mm)
Fibre spoke
Bike pump

Clothes:

Short-sleeve wool shirt (2)
Long-sleeve wool shirt (1)
Camp Pants – nylon (1)
Wool undies (2)
Wool socks (3)
Sandals
Evolv Cruzers (shoes)
Rain jacket
Hat
Hankerchiefs (2)

Miscellaneous weight:

Phone running RideWithGPS app
2 spare rechargeable LiIon battery packs
Possible solar charger (if I can borrow it)
2 water bottles
1 whisky flask

As for food, we made a list based on each day and where we think we will be. There are a few small towns where we hope to re-supply and perhaps even dine out, but will be carrying some minimal food in case we get lost. I’m bringing a bunch of Perpetuem, since it seems to agree with me on the rando rides. Light weight calories are a good backup.

Only a few days left to gather everything and make sure it fits in my bags. I also have to pack the bike into the box and get everything taped up and secure. I’m really starting to look forward to this trip!

Pushing Mammoth

29 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Brian Hanson in Cycling

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

chriscross, Clement, Hetres, Hunqapillar, mso, Oregon Outback, rivendell, schwalbe, Stan's, thunder burt, Toussaint, tubeless, wtb

After a thousand miles using the Clement MSO tires, and an unfortunate rim shredding with forgotten brake pads, it was time to rebuild my wheels. I really like the Clements, so they will likely go back on after the Oregon Outback, but the bike is built for bigger tires, and I have a couple bikes that are lighter and more roadish. This is a mountain bike at heart.

I did a bit of research and decided to try out WTB ChrisCross rims. They seemed to be a good combination of strength and weight, and had the requisite black look I was wanting for this bike. They luckily happened to be the same ERD (604mm) as the outgoing Velocity Synergies, so I was able to try out the rim swap trick re-using the old, perfectly good spokes.

Rim swap – tape, loosen, and start switching rims!

As I’ve had good luck with tubeless Hetres on my Toussaint, and I definitely want to avoid flats with the bigger tires on the long trips, I built these up sans-tube. I only had the thin Stans tape that just covered the spoke holes. The tires I picked for these guys are the Schwalbe Thunder Burts. They are tubeless-ready tires, but fit the rims rather loosely. I knew I would need extra tape, but it took two additional layers. I used one round of Gorilla tape on one rim, but I had to trim it to fit in the well. I went over it with a round of vinyl tape that worked so well, I just used the vinyl twice round on the other wheel.

Finished Wheel

Once I had a few layers built up, the tires popped in with the air compressor, and I added Stans for a fully loaded tubeless wheel. I had to re-adjust the fenders back out 10mm to take into account the expanded diameter of the new wheel. Until I got the tires on, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to run with fenders over these giant tires. I’m still wary, as new knobbies tend to pick up lots of debris, but the first ride was uneventful.

Mammoth Mode

The new tires are definitely beefy. Reminds me of that big off-road mountain bike feel I fell in love with in ’91 when I re-discovered off-road riding. They appear to ride really smoothly on asphalt, and they soak up the bumps even better than the Hetres on my other bike. In the tubeless config, they likely weigh in the same neighborhood, too! Hetres: 412g + tube (150g) compared to Thunder Burts: 435g.

First ride with Burts

Now I just need a few more long dirt rides to sort this guy out. The bars feel pretty far out – this guy has a long top-tube, and drops accentuate the reach. Once I get it dialed in, the tape will go on and the mammoth will be ready for new adventure.