Remember BLOG#11's "main pic?" This was not a reasonable place to park.
Disorder in the Court: A high speed chase ensued with speeds reaching as much as10 mph (most of the front of the vehicle was scraping on the ground).
LIFE SHITE: My goal in life is to be a Christian film with positive moral values.... And while I know in my heart that will happen soon until then I am (still) painting the house...that I swore would be done this week but that is not going to happen...but life and weather permit things. Thou shalt not swore? Oh and my rock and role lifestyle.
So yeah...still working on this house.
"Scuse me while I kiss this guy." Leave it to being twenty feet up on a ladder, reaching over your head and encountering occasional 40 mph gusts to contemplate your mortality.
As I mentioned before, in a way there is an ebb and flow to my put togetherness. I probably could have had this house done last week but lately I've been, um, ebbing a bit, living the rock and roll lifestyle (jeez man pull up a couch, I'm just here for the bike stuff....just send the bill to Default Biker, 223 14th...).
Oh and that Cohiba I found laying on the ground...it was real for sure.
WEATHER REPORT: Fall is on fast forward.
THE RIDE: You know my cheesy main pic? That's me at the QP.
For the first time this year, or ever, the "THNR" happened at Quarry Park, "QP" for short. There are large deposits of granite rock in the area and the almost 700 acre Quarry Park, once an active granite mine was eventually decommissioned, bought by the county and made into a public park. And while the park offers pot smoking teens who love to swim and doodoo dropping dog walkers, snooty XC skiers a place of play and refuge it also offers riders an absolutely gorgeous, millions of years in the making, technical playground.
Perfect for cycling nut jobs like me, it's the kind of cycling torture and challenge I will commit too. No need for hundreds of miles of flint rock. Just give me a foot of path with a thirty foot drop on the side and I'm good.
Technical riding is probably my favorite type of riding. I idolize trials riders with their unobtanium skills. I am no where near their skill level but I'm no slouch (although when I ride the QP for the first time in a while I have the neck pain to prove it). My teen and subsequent years were consumed with practicing BMX "Freestyle" riding (which would later gain the hipper moniker "Flatland"). Although separated by the pond these styles are like distant cousins in that while they are quite different they have at least one thing in common. The main thing is that they require a lot of upper body strength and very little distance, if any speed. In the cycling world there are only a few disciplines that actually work the upper body. The other is BMX racing.
For first timers the QP is a challenge the likes of which they've never thought possible.
To my delight I got to play ringmaster.
Sounds of metal scraping and getting beat against rock, tires fighting for traction their sidewalls going well beyond their intended purposes trying their hardest not to let rims bottom out. And that's just what the bikes went through. Grunts and groans, explicatives and profanities and the sweet wounds of misery followed me as we made our way through the unmarked, less than three mile loop I'm familiar with. No person or bike left unscathed. One rider fell into some kind of pit. Another bit it hard and hit a tree. Even deceptively small features made minced meat out of a good portion of the group. And when I say everyone got checked that includes me as well as I ended up almost getting close lined with a branch in my mouth. Tango anyone?! To my surprise they wanted to do it again but it was getting dark and I know better than to put my spine through too much of the park until I acclimate.
Good times.
Fall down, go boom...or die.
It's a gangstas paradise.
Supreme Combos: Parlaying a trip to the QP with a trip to HD.
NUTS AND BOLTS: Star Trek
What little time I have had has mostly gone to the 720. But rightly so, it's such a jem!
"I'll feel pretty Oh sO prettEEEE!" With mismatched wheels I bought at a garage sale a day or two prior for $5 and some old ass, non tubeless, 40c Clement Xplos!
Riding into the modern age: A 42c Specialized Pathfinder will fit but not reside in them there rear stays. The reason being that I won't go to obscene measures to get the front to mount.
What's your vector Victor? The plan for the 720 is to give it some "tasteful updates." And similar to the Schwinn it's duty will be relegated to "Multi Tracking." Not far off from the role it was intended for. Basically I am going to take this Trek into the modern era with a 10 speed drivetrain and big tires.
Drivetrain: As much as I love the vintage crankset I am going from six to ten cogs in the back so, in my opinion a 2x will work much better. It won't be nearly as cool but it will have at least some vintage cred as I will be using the mtb crankset from my "Gutter Trash SS" Raleigh Technium Supercourse!
"Gutter."
The oval one circled. It started life with three but we only need two so I will remove it's outer ring. That will leave us with a 28t low and something like 40ish high.
Party in the back.
A few weeks back, being the junky, online hawk that I be I bought these Shimano 10 speed bar end shifters just because they were a good deal. Not just a good deal but an insanely good deal! "The'yre so pretty, oh soooo pretty!"
I'm not crazy about bar end shifters but I've never actually had them on a bike. The 720 did come with them so it only seems right to use these shifters! Hang on....what now? Don't get too excited (me) there is a problem(s)....
Remember these bad boys? Yep it was on the test. You Flail! Extra credit if you go back and read my other blogs.
The problem is that a 10 speed shifter unless used in friction mode (which gets harder as the number of speeds increases) requires a 10 speed cassette. In all my crap I don't have a tenner. An online inquiry shows some options but nothing like the more ubiquitous 9 or 11 speed options. It seems like 10 speed clusters are a bit lower in numbers than their plus or minus counter parts. It's as if we made jumped from 9 to 11 with a few 10's thrown in for good measure. (14's the magic number right? Everything's covered but I personally am more than happy with 11).
On to the next problem.
We tend to think about girth as a frontal aspect....but for our purposes we are looking rear ward. The 720 with it's 126mm rear spacing was not designed to handle 135mm. Therefore we need to make accommodations for a bigger baby. There is a technique called "Cold Setting" where the rear triangle is spread open using some kind of home made spreader tool. This can really only be done on steal bikes. Old school bikes like the 720 have 126mm rear spacing. From there, and to this day for QR bikes, spacing went to 135mm to make room for more gears. I am not going to do this just yet as I can fiddle a 135 wheel in there by using a little "finesse."
Ok so we can fit a 135mm wide hub in there...now what?
Well we need a freehub that will fit a 10 speed cassette and not surprisingly the free hub on my $5, mismatched wheelset does not have the room for a tenner. We can however change it But this means getting a new freehub, which costs money and time. Oh and we will probably need a longer axle.
Ugh.
Cockpit.
I kind of like this retro movement. Like me it has great potential to be cheap as well as make use of parts collecting dust. The comfort angle makes sense. Thinner equals flexy, flexy equals comfy. Think twisty, bendy seat posts and stems. Contrary to what many believe comfort comes primarily from seat posts and tires. Not frame material. I would rather omit comfort for convenience so on the way is a 22.2 to 28.5 quill stem to 1 1/8" adapter.
Other than that will be clean up and probably painting the for to some how match.
Thanks for reading!
The strange contents of the found suitcase from last weeks post...with the exception of the wheel hub car part some of it makes sense?!
Supreme Combos: Parlaying a trip to the QP with a trip to HD.
Comments
Post a Comment