Sink or Swim

Tangent: Keep the Spirit Alive

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:05:37 -0700

Journalist Michael Pollan reminds us to keep fighting the good fight in Why Bother?, an inspiring (albeit biased) treatment of environmental idealism, the crazy things we do for it, and why, in the face of insurmountable indifference, it's still up to us to keep it up.

Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [N.B.!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle — of character, even.

Acting on your idealism is a precarious task—go too far, and you'll burn out (or worse yet, lose anyone hoping to follow your model); not far enough, and you'll compromise your integrity right off the bat. But in the end, that's just it—a compromise. Folks like No Impact Man would have you believe that living sustainably is a purely positive experience disguised as sacrifice, but there's no denying that a great many of our climate-mauling habits are pillars of our cultural heritage and psychological welfare: comfort foods that come from halfway around the world (or from brutally-abused cattle, bred and raised right here in the US), driving nowhere in particular for an hour or more, flying home to see the family every once in awhile, flying off to get away from the family every once in awhile (not to mention traveling to world to broaden our horizons), or long showers for staving off a cold winter morning, just to name a few (fun fact! Mexican restaurants use beans refried in lard, which means they're not even VEGETARIAN--but rice-guacamole-cheese-lettuce-fries burritos are delicious).

On the other hand, I do think we can improve the quality of our lives in committing ourselves to preserving our planet. The problem is that when reducing your carbon footprint is the only upside, it's exhausting to hold on to that commitment. Riding a bicycle is a big part of my idealism, but unlike all the other things I do to reduce my carbon footprint, I would just go apeshit without it. It cools my nerves, helps me sleep at night, and makes my meals taste better (does that sound a little like love? a little more like 420?). The pecuniary and health benefits are just icing on the cake; riding enriches my life in a way that short, cold showers and secondhand clothes never could.

I'm giving up a little ground here and there.

I'm bracing myself for the day it all comes crashing down.

I'm riding all the time.

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Perspective: For the Love of God, Keep Everything in It

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:25:02 -0800

This post comes transplanted from my personal blog, originally written 11 December 2006.

I wish I had documented this process with a digital camera when it had happened. Unfortunately, I did not; these images stolen from the Internet will have to suffice. Please note that the links and images provided do not always match the product I purchased. They were as close an approximation as I could find.

When I was a freshman in college, I bought a carbon fiber bicycle fork from someone I found through craigslist.

Kestrel EMS Pro

I paid $40 for it, a fraction of the MSRP, with the intention of transplanting it onto a vintage bicycle I had yet to acquire. Upon acquiring that bicycle, however, I discovered that the steerer tube had been cut too short, and it would not avail in its intended function. I tried to resell it on craigslist (and perhaps even turn a profit), in vain.

And so it sat in storage for a very long time (two years), before a friend and former coworker donated his road bike (which was too small for him anyway) to a friend of mine. It was completely built and already had a fork on it, but I was excited anyway to discover that the bike's headtube was short enough to accommodate my own fork's steerer tube.

I could finally put this fork to good use! Of course, it would mean that the fork already on the bike would end up sitting in storage instead, but since I didn't pay $40 for that fork, I didn't care.

Incidentally, the fork is one of a group of components that all fit together to compose the front end of the bike. I was working with a new fork and an old bike, and mechanical standards had changed over time. I would need a new headset, spacers, and a stem to get it all to fit together.

Headset.

Spacers.

Stem.

Between Jake and me, we were sure we'd have some spare parts lying around that we could use. Two weeks of rummaging and no dice. Oh well; some costs can't be avoided, and at the very least, it's a one-time purchase.

Off to the bike shop (which Jake now manages). We removed the old headset and fork and pressed the new headset into the frame, which is easy with the right tools and miserable without them. Furthermore, it is an enormous pain in the ass to undo.

Headset Installation.

Here, we slapped on the new spacers and stem, adjusted bearing tension, reattached the old handlebars, and discovered that the wheel would not fit into the fork. It was a 27" wheel (630mm in diameter) on a fork made for 700c wheels (622mm in diameter). The fork, designed for racing, was made with such tight tolerances that four extra millimeters consumed all of the clearance there and squeezed the tire tight against the "ceiling".

No stopping now. As the saying goes, we were "Stepp'd in so far that, should [we] wade no more / Returning were as tedious as go o'er." I picked up a lovely 700c front wheel that morning (yes, the bike now has mismatched wheels), Shimano 105 hub matched to a Mavic MA3 rim. ~$100 retail. This wheel also needed a rim tape, a tube, and a tire.

Wheel.

Rim tape.

Tube.

Tire.

And at this point, we also discovered that the nut that holds the front brake onto the fork could not reach the bolt. The store did not have one of these nuts in stock, and so I had to buy one from another store, sans Bro Discount.

Long brake bolt.

SUMMARY OF PURCHASES:
$40 Fork
$50 Headset
$5 Spacers
$10 Stem
$50 Wheel
$10 Tire
$2 Rim strip & tube
$8 Brake bolt
$10 Headset installation

$185 TOTAL, $145 without fork

Many thanks to Jacob Lopacinski, without whom this project would never have left the ground. He hooked it up with the unmatched Bro Discount. Without it, the wheel, stem, tire, rim strip, tube, and headset installation would have cost ~$200, bringing the total cost of the project over $300.

At long last, the bike was good to go, but at considerable cost. I came out of it with an extra (old) fork, headset, stem, and wheel. I plan to give the wheel to a friend whose old wheel was stolen. I'll probably end up donating the old parts to the Bicycle Kitchen of Los Angeles.

How did this get out of hand so fast? Was it worth it to spend that kind of money to see that fork in action? At best, I'm happy that it's on a bike, but good God, would it really matter if it weren't? What's done is done, and while I'd never do it again, I'm glad the fork is out of my garage.

Lessons (hopefully) learned: know when to cut your losses; don't develop emotional attachments to useless bike parts.

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R.I.P. Sheldon Brown, 1944 - 2008

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:45:18 -0800

Sheldon Brown was a passionate mentor to countless cyclists, and will be sorely missed.

Sheldon Brown, prominent cyclist and bicycle mechanic, suffered a fatal heart attack yesterday, just six months after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. His website, http://sheldonbrown.com/, and his tireless commitment to knowledge, service, and the do-it-yourself spirit made him one of the most important individuals in the national cycling community. Mr. Brown, our rides will never be the same without you.

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Tips: Length Does Matter

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:41:12 -0800

Getting a good fit on a bicycle is a big deal. Traditionally, we concern ourselves with all manner of dimensions: saddle height, saddle tilt, fore-aft position, stem length and rise, and handlebar width are just the tip of the iceberg, and if you want to size yourself up, Wrench Science offers a good starting point--just make sure you take all those significant figures with a grain of salt.

Crank length, however, seldom comes up in these discussions, and certainly applies to far broader swaths of riders than more obscure considerations like "Q Factor" or the angle of shoe-pedal contact. Kirby Palm has something to say on the matter, and it seems like a worthy enough final word.

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Scratch that.

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 19:20:09 -0700

I made a post 5 days ago that was messy and unorganized; I was tired and restless and refused to let an hour of drivel-writing go to waste, so I posted it anyway. If you read it, I'm sorry for wasting your time.

I've since retracted it. Its content will appear instead as a series of easier-to-read, illustrated, comprehensiver mini-posts for your viewing pleasure. But not tonight.

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Zen:

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:22:58 -0700

Green grass means sprinklers and/or dew, so watch out where you park your bike.

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Perspective: The Mass

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 05:02:51 -0700

Critical Mass is simply a monthly bike ride, a gentle saunter through the streets, usually around traffic hour. At the same time, it's an organic mass movement; it brings up to thousands of cyclists together in various cities throughout the United States, generally without any central organization whatsoever. Because of the sheer immensity of its ridership, its significance and objectives to each individual rider are vastly different. In every case, however, its purview is largely sociocultural, and every well-informed participant can agree, at the very least, that we ride to show an increasingly hegemonic car culture that bicycles fare just fine on the streets, too.

Critical Mass San Diego

Most ride for fun, to connect with the cycling culture and community, to meet people, to celebrate a collective experience, to witness the urban landscape in a way that's only available twelve days out of the year. Many people ride to take a militant stand against unsafe and inconsiderate motorists. Either way, as much of a nuisance as we make ourselves (because, for unity's sake, we do "cork" intersections to keep the mass flowing through lights that have turned red), we are come and gone through each intersection in a matter of minutes, on and off the streets in a matter of hours. I believe that Critical Mass has extraordinary potential to bring the inadequacies of traffic law to the surface of the public consciousness, and that it should use that potential to make corking legal (not only is it safer, but some cyclists feel better breaking many laws when they feel the law at large does not protect them). My personal convictions aside, however, any seasoned rider knows that it can shed light on the injustices of our ethically crippled system of law enforcement.

At a Critical Mass ride in San Diego five weeks ago, the SDPD followed the Mass around with at least a dozen squad cars and a helicopter, and even arrested two cyclists for minor infractions that easily warranted no more than a ticket. At this point, whether or not these cyclists broke the letter of law is completely irrelevant; it's clear that the police department felt a responsibility to "contain" the ride and, unable to take legitimate punitive recourse against the crowd at large, employed fear tactics and made an egregious example of two cyclists who did just as much (and just as little) as anyone else. The question now is about why we're allowing the city to spend our tax dollars following around a friendly bike ride and turning a public annoyance into a carnival of power abuse, especially when the City of San Diego is effectively broke and we have so many other, more salient issues to deal with. For the record, the two arrested cyclists did nothing more than cross a double-yellow (or exit the bike lane, which happens to be legal) to pass other cyclists in the complete absence of cross-traffic.

I know that San Diego is an unusually conservative city for Southern California, but I felt that the local paper's treatment of the issue was tragically one-sided, and so I hand-wrote a letter to the editor, the text of which follows.

Police Brutality Caught on Camera

Dear Karin E. Winner,

I am a UCSD student and loyal reader of the Union-Tribune. I have come to rely on your paper for quality journalism on salient, local issues.

Imagine my disappointment, though, when I came across this piece on page B4 of today's issue. Critical Mass may not deserve more than 150 words in the local paper yet; it attracts only a few hundred participants per month, albeit entirely without central organization. It does, however, deserve as balanced a perspective as any other issue. Of the hundreds of cyclists in attendance, not a single one, it seems, had been asked to comment.

If we had, the article might have made some mention of how one of the officers--the one who conducted the first arrest--refused to give his badge number after being asked repeatedly, and how he openly lied to the group, telling us that arrested cyclist would only be ticketed, then sent on his way, all while this poor fellow sat helpless in the back of the squad car.

I know I can continue to rely on the Union-Tribune for its journalistic integrity, even in spite of this egregious lapse. I only hope that, as Critical Mass continues to grow in the following months, the Union-Tribune will give it the investigative attention it deserves (at least a much as "Texas Woman finds chupacabra; or was it a dog?" A2), and that as a valuable local media outlet, you will lend your voice to the disenfranchised, victimized layman rather than a few police officers whose adherence to protocol was questionable at best.

Yours Truly,
Ryan Lue

Okay, so a letter's not going to do much, but it's really the best I had for all my outlet-less frustration. And these arrests aren't the problem; they're the symptom of a broken political, cultural, and economic system that tolerates nonconformity only where it makes no real difference. It's time we mobilized--not just cyclists, but all citizens; not just about CM, but about everything that's wrong with our beloved country--because a superficial sense of social harmony isn't worth ceding our civil liberties to a police state, nor our political agency to a secretive and corrupt Administration. We've already seen this generation's Vietnam; we shouldn't have to wait around for another Kent State.

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Tips: Get It Right, Get It Tight (But Not Too Tight)

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:36:45 -0700

This post is intended for home mechanics. If you don't know what a horizontal dropout is, this post will be of no interest to you. If you're interested in learning, I may prepare a layman's explanation of the ins and outs of simpler drivertrains in the future. For now, Sheldon Brown's article, which requires some very active reading, will suffice.

We are lucky that most of us don't have to bother with chain tension: in all but a few cases, geared (i.e. multi-speed) and even some single-speed bikes use a derailleur, which doubles as a chain tensioner. For anyone making his or her first foray into building or maintaining bikes without derailleurs, however, wrestling with horizontal dropouts can be a considerable ordeal.

If you've got a bolt-on wheel (rather than a quick-release), Will Meister at 63xc offers a simple explanation of how to get the job done. With this method, bolt-on wheels allow you to fine tune the chain tension; quick-release wheels, while making the job immensely easier and eliminating the need for tools, do not offer that kind of precision.

Once the chain is decently tight, you may spin the cranks to discover that there are sometimes considerable variations in chain tension at different points of the rotation; Sheldon Brown has something to say about that. I have never really been able to get this method to work, but with only three years of experience under my belt, I'm not in a position to question the efficacy of Sheldon Brown's recommendations.

Worn Teeth from an Overtightened Chain

Chain tension is a matter of great importance: too loose, and you risk derailing the chain, which means certain disaster on coaster-brake single-speeds and brakeless fixed gears; too tight (and it's very possible to overtighten your chain), and even worse than losing your efficiency (you will), your cog will wear out extremely quickly. Even with seemingly mild sharkfinning (compare the worn, counterclockwise side of each tooth above against the less-worn, clockwise side), the chain will slide against the cog in a way that it's not designed to, emitting an unnerving, crunchy sound every time you pedal. Worse yet, you'll find that overtightening a chain is an easy way to bend your rear wheel's axle out of shape, at which point it will never spin quite as smoothly as it had before.

As irritating as it is to ride with a little bit of chain sag, it's much more irritating to discover that your $20 fixed cog (or, worse yet, your hard-to-find coaster brake cog) needs replacing after a couple months of easy commuting, or that you need a new rear axle (if you've got the tools to make the transplant) or wheel altogether.

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Explained: What the Hell's a Saddle Sore?

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 01:42:31 -0700

A Bona Fide Saddle Sore, Close Up

We catch wind of the story occasionally, and always in too-vague terms: don't hang around in your spandex too long post-ride; it's warm, dark, and moist down there, which means that the prokaryotes taking residence on your hoo-hoos are (asexually) getting busy.

...and then?

I spent far too long half-expecting little mushrooms to sprout out of my chamois, so I'll spell it out here in no uncertain terms (forgive the distasteful language, but lesser-known medical terms just tend to make matters worse): saddle sores are butt-crack pimples. Okay, so technically, they start out as folliculitis and become abscesses, but you will recognize them as pimples.

To the best of my knowledge, they develop when friction and/or mild chafing introduce surface bacteria to deep pores and abrasions, and you know the rest. Leaving them untreated and continuing to ride can eventually warrant prescription antibiotics.

Rivendell's Bernie Burton, M.D. explains how to prevent them, how they develop, and how to treat them once they do.

In short, don't ignore your crack when you shower (none of those swift and cursory hand-swipes; I mean scrub with all the meticulousness of a surgeon prepping for the OR--at least 15 seconds for antimicrobial efficacy), and moisturize if need be. Some may not like the idea of having whatever-it-is-that-makes-ass-smell-like-ass on their hands; to those among you, would you really rather carry it around with you all day? And please (and I hope this goes without saying for the plainclothes crowd), wash your shorts before you ride in them again.

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Tips: Fixed Gear on a Budget

nobody@vox.com(Quixote) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:42:15 -0700

Securing a Track Sprocket without a Lockring

Most mechanics will tell you that in order to safely convert your bike to a fixed gear, you must procure a rear wheel that can fit a reverse-threaded lockring so's your cog won't come spinning off when you push backwards on the pedals, but very frugal people and the Italians know better.

This handy-dandy technique, fully illustrated in four crystal-clear steps, shows you how to slap a fixed cog on a standard freewheel-compatible wheel; no special tools or chemicals required. My bike has been set up in this manner for over a year now without a hitch, carrying me through grades up to 20%.

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