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After spending the afternoon with my daughters selling lemonade on the Burke Gilman trail, I was given permission to go and do a quick brick workout. My plan was 1 hour of cycling, followed by 30 minutes of running. I figured I’d get about 18 miles and 4 miles.
In a fit of “what the heck”, I decided to ride my fixed gear bike, in FIXED mode. Maybe it was the weekend in San Francisco… although I really only saw about 6 fixies in the mother of all fixie towns… I guess it was just walking around SF all geeked out on the idea that I might see a bad ass fixie skidding down one of those gnarly hills. Never did, so I never got my fixie fix… so I had to do my best to give myself my own fixie fix.
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July 1st, 2007
We want to be free! We want to be free to do what we want to do! We want to be free to ride. And we want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man.
- Heavenly Blues,
from the eulogy of the Loser,
from the classic Biker movie “The Wild Angels.”
Well, I’ve been busy busy busy the last week… but today I was stopped by Johnny Law for supposedly riding my bike inappropriately.
What!? Here’s my story… and I’m sticking to it!
So, seeing how it’s National Bike Month, I figure I should do as much bike commuting as possible. And since I wanted to go to the store and pick up a Mother’s Day Gift for my wife, I decided I’d ride my bike to the store. I also thought it would be clever to ride in street clothes as opposed to being decked out in my swanky biker race kit…. and I decided to ride my single speed bike… for fun… these all seemed like harmless decisions.
Now, maybe, just maybe, I had a little bit of an edge to me this morning. I was just wearing a ratty old t-shirt, and my Prana Knickers (aka clam-diggers, don’t call them capri pants!)… and I had my Camelbak “Hydrate or Die” backpack on… and I was also wearing my old-skool punk rock chain biker wallet…
I guess, the coppers, figured that I was some punk… my wife says I look like a bum when I wear my old clothes that don’t fit me because they are too big for me. I guess the fuzz just assumed that I was up to no good riding my “messenger style bike”… they must have watched “Quicksilver” too many times… I am a dead ringer for Kevin Bacon.
So there I am pedaling up a 5% grade hill, on a not very busy, mid-paced psuedo arterial but residential road… 3 lanes of one-way traffic… as I’m about half way down this block I see that the right lane is a turn only… so I pull over into the middle lane, which is the right most lane that is not a turn only-lane. Next thing I know I get the siren and lights behind me… WTF? What’s going on? I pull over… the cop pulls up beside me and says…
“You’re on a bike you shouldn’t be in the middle of the road!”
“What? I’m not allowed on the road? What?” - me, seriously, I’m dumbfounded.
“You need to be in the furthest right lane… the slow lane!” - now I notice there are actually two cops and they are kinda looking at each other like they’re trying to figure out what I actually did wrong so they can sound official.
“This lane is a turn only lane… I need to go straight. You want me to go straight from the turn only lane?”
“No, you can switch lanes when you get to the intersection.”
(This doesn’t sound safe to me at all… in fact, I’m thinking that if the cop saw me roll up to the intersection in the right turn only lane and then switch to the center lane at the intersection he would have given me a hard time about it… but I follow his directions and pull up to the intersection in the right most lane… now he’s sitting next to me in the center lane.)
“Excuse, me, but what do you want me to do again? I need to go straight, you want me to go straight from this lane?!”
“Yeah… just go straight from there… switch lanes in the intersection.”
What?! Is he serious? Where did this guy go to traffic school? That’s the craziest move in the book… I’m sure he’d bust me if he saw me do that. Ok… I comply…
Next thing I know, the light turns green, and the fuzz pulls off real fast like… I don’t think they wanted me asking any more questions like “What’s your badge number?”
Of course, down the road about 1 mile I get nearly run off the road by a couple locals who yell out the window at me “What are you crazy! Riding a bike in the road?!”
What?! Wow… I’m not riding my bike in that part of town again.
May 8th, 2007
Last month when we took our trip to Victoria BC we stopped by the BC Museum of Natural History. They have an exhibit there that is a replica of 19th Century Western Canada/British Columbia. As we strolled through the mock streets looking in shop windows and touring “houses”, “livery stables”, “restaurants”, “theaters” and the like, we happened upon this cool old bike.
Needless to say I had to snap a bunch of photos…
The drive train… becoming the fixie nut that I am I had to take a bunch of pictures of the drive train. The teeth on this looked really big with wide gaps. I didn’t count them, but I estimate there are around 44 teeth but the size of the chain ring is more like the size of a 52T or higher by today’s standards.
The handle bars were awesome! These are definitley the inspiration behind the name “handle bar mustache”… look at how these sweep slowly down to the sides. Cool! Can you imagine riding around town with these?
And finally the seat… When I first saw the label I was like “Cool! A Wright Brothers Bicycle”… Duh, no, this is made by the Wright Bicycle Co. of England. Still… it’s a cool bike.
April 3rd, 2007
After finishing the Chilly Hilly bike ride on my Redline 925 (fixie) I decided that my 42/14 gearing just wasn’t a big enough gear. I was getting tired of having to pedal at 150rpms to go down hill at 26mph, and frankly I just didn’t feel like I was getting enough of a strength workout with the standard gear ratio. So I embarked on another one of my it’ll only cost $5 if I use recycled parts projects… remember the handlebars?
So, here’s what it took to swap out my 42T chain ring with a bigger gear…
First of all, I strolled past my local used bike parts store “Recycled Cycles”. This is where I bought my Redline 925, and the crew there is pretty helpful, usually knowledgeable, very “crunchy” (as my highbrow friends say), and mostly hardcore fixie riders. When I told them I wanted to upgrade my 42T to something bigger they were more excited than I was. The pointed me to the box of $5 chain rings and said “go for it”.
The first challenge was to find the right size. They have their parts relatively well organized, but you’re still dealing with a random box of parts. And unfortunately most of the chain rings weren’t labeled with the number of teeth, so I was going to have to count them to find the right one. I was able to narrow down the suspects by sorting them into sizes visually, then I found a couple rings labeled 52T so I could put back anything that big or bigger. Eventually I found the 48T 110mm BCD chain ring I was looking for.
In case you were wondering, when you go out to buy a new chain ring there are a few things you need to know. The number of teeth you’re looking for, and the spacing of the crank bolts. This bolt spacing is usually listed as a millimeter distance (as in my case a 110mm BCD). Sometimes this is labeled as: “110″, “110mm”, “110 BCD”, or “110mm BCD”.
Great… I found what I wanted… only $5, so head home, and put in on the bike. Right?
Yeah right!
This is what I discover when I replace my chain ring with the new bigger chain ring. Now I distinctly remember asking the guys at the shop “is there anything else I need to be aware of? Any other parts I’m going to need?” This might have been a good time for them to mention (what I guess they assumed was obvious, and in retrospect it should have been) that a bigger chain ring is going to require more chain. 
Ahh… I knew it couldn’t be that simple!
Alright, so my bike is up on blocks till I can get some more parts. The next day I stop at a different store while riding my road bike for a little afternoon 40miler. This shop “Ti Cycles” is also very helpful, not as crunchy, the owners are a little older I think and have a different, still cool, but not as edgy vide to them. I stopped there because it was on the trail that I was riding on (location, location, location) and my feet were cold and I needed to pick up some new booties. So while I was there I decided to buy the parts to lengthen my chain.
The owner was very helpful, and actually gave me an extra length of chain to add to my chain. Since I didn’t have my bike with me, we had to guess what size chain my bike had. Note: if you ever want to go buy parts for your bike, bring your bike along, so you can make sure you’re getting the right parts. He explained all the details of what I needed to do. I also needed to buy a chain tool (but he convinced me not to buy the one he had for sale, and suggested I get a cheaper one at another store). So, now the project is up to: extra chain links $0 (free), removable chain links $5 each x2… chain tool… TBD.
After completing 40 miles in the rain and hail, I finished my ride by rolling into a third shop close to the trail. They had a “value priced” chain tool available for $15. So now my total is up to $30 for the whole package…. let’s see if I can get it working.
Here is the step by step process of lengthening your chain…
1) Using your chain tool, push one of the link-pins almost completely out of the link. Be careful not to push it all the way out of the link. If you keep it in the link you will be able to reuse this pin when you add additional links to your chain.
2) Be careful not to push the pin all the way through. If you accidentally remove the pin all the way, you will probably need to get a “replacement pin” or a “removable link”.
3) Assuming you didn’t push the pin too far through, you should end up with a “broken” chain, with one pin still partially in place. And it will look like this:
4) Insert a section of your extra length of chain like this:
5) Now you want to reset that pin. At first I tried to use my chain tool… essentially using it in reverse. It seemed like a good idea, but it didn’t work, actually I think the pin was so stuck that it bent my tool. Cheap tool, is probably the problem. So then I pulled out my pliers and went to town. I’m not sure if this is the right thing to do, but it seemed to work. Pushing and Squeezing I finally got the pin reset. There were several large pops and crunches as the pin went back into place. This had me nervous, but when it was done things seemed pretty sturdy and nice and flexible in the link, so, I guess it worked. I did use the chain tool to push the pin in the last couple millimeters.
6) Now I still have a “broken” chain, but it’s much longer… in fact, plenty long enough for my bigger chain ring. So I remount the chain and check out how many links I can remove to make everything fit.
7) Because I’m adding a “master link” or a “removable link” I actually remove 3 links off the extra chain, making sure to leave the smaller/inside links on either end of the chain so that my master link will fit. Here’s my master link installed.
8 ) Ta da! Here’s the finished product.
So after all of this I was rolling again now with 48/15 fixed or 48/16 freewheel. So this means my 6.0 meter “development” with the 42T chain ring is now a 6.9 meter “development” with the 48T chain ring. When I’m riding freewheel, it’s a 6.4 meter development.
One final note: Since I completed the upgrade, I rode approximately 100 mile, and then this afternoon I discovered one of the bolts that holds the chainring to the cranks was missing. Bad news! No problem though I just rolled down to Recycled Cycles and they fixed it up. The moral of the story is MAKE SURE YOU TIGHTEN ALL THE BOLTS! Thank goodness it didn’t come off while I was leaning hard into a hill climb.
April 2nd, 2007
