Of phantom cupcakes and roller derby.

I'm sure the 2nd annual Cupcake Ride would have been great if it had held together AT ALL. Also, it was amazingly hot, which bodes ill for strenuous riding (for me, anyway).

The crowd assembled at Westlake Square was nice enough, but also impatient. Scott was leaving later than intended and while I was getting an update on his whereabouts the group took off. "See ya!" was the extent of the parting.

As Scott didn't know the address of the Cupcake Royale in West Seattle, I waited for him. When he turned up, we took off and began the adventure in mild heat-stroke. At the Eastern foot of the low bridge to W Seattle, we ran into Teresa who told the following tale:

From the get-go, the group started falling apart. A group of riders in front decided that they'd rather go fast and bolted ahead. Not everybody was able to keep up and people started ditching (which sucks) right away. A girl who was trying to keep up with the fast kids had a mechanical and was dropped from the fast pack. Teresa stopped to help her and the remainder of the ride dropped both of them. The girl with the mechanical went home. Teresa pressed onward to the Western foot of the low bridge to tell Malora that she, herself, was going home. Malora told her that she was going to wait for Scott and myself.

After hearing her tale, I figured we would finally catch up the ride. Scott had gone ahead while I was talking to Teresa, so when I arrived at the Western foot of the bridge I was surprised to see no one there. I figured that - given the heat - they would surely take the long, gradual way up to Cupcake Royale (which was incorrect), so I made for Avalon to then head out to Alki Point. On the way there Scott rang me and said that he was waiting in a parking lot just around the corner of Avalon. When I arrived, we were both bright red and miserable. I said, "I can feel my heart beating in my armpits!" To which Scott replied, "Oh good, then it's not just me." We doused ourselves in water and rested in the shade of a nearby tree while discussing whether to try and catch the ride.

When we decided to head for food in Georgetown, we ran into Kevin. He too had been dropped, but was waiting for the ride to pass by the low bridge again (as they must, unless they take the VERY long way around through White Center and South Park). After a bit of phone tag with Malora, it was decided to bail. Kevin headed to Madison Beach, Scott and I to Georgetown and then Magnusson Park.

When it became apparent that there wasn't nearly enough time to both places, we opted instead to eat at Uwajimaya. The air conditioning was too comfy for us, we tarried longer than anticipated. Quite apart from that, I had a major energy drop-off on the way and was quite pale, according to Scott.

Thank goodness for the #73 bus!

From the U District it was quite an easy ride to Magnusson Park and although we arrived late, there was still plenty of roller-derby to witness (and I would like to witness more in the future!).

Ugh. It was a long, hot day, but the evening was cool and pleasant. Scott, Aden and myself all rode to the Eastlake Zoo and from there I went home.

I had more kvetching to do in this post, but nobody wants to read all that indignant shit.

WTF?

Do you see that? The handlebars are mounted below the headset. BELOW the headset. WTF?

A history of awesome part failures.

I've had a variety of issues with bike gear. I bought my Redline 9-2-5 as a complete build (the only way you can get it unless you know somebody at Redline, probably) and it wasn't long before I started destroying the OEM parts.

First to go were the stock tires. I don't even remember what kind they were, only that I had numerous "mystery flats" and got thoroughly sick of them. After some research I learned that many people had issues with the stock tires and so I replaced them with Schwalbe Marathon Slicks (700x30) which solved the problem (plus they had reflective side-walls).

Second to go was the rear wheel. The stock wheels were Alex rims with low-flange Redline hubs. Shortly after I switched from single-speed to fixed gear I began breaking spokes in the rear wheel. After some consultation with Aaron (of Aaron's Bicycle Repair in West Seattle: http://www.rideyourbike.com/ ) we decided that a Velocity Dyad rim (made for tandem bikes) and a Phil Wood high-flange track hub would be the strongest combination (also with Phil Wood spokes: heaviest gauge in back, double-butted in front). So out went the Alex/RL wheel and I got a spanky PINK Phil track hub!


Next went the quite uncomfortable saddle (which I replaced with a black Brooks B17) and the front wheel (made to match the rear wheel). I would like to add that in the few years that I've had the Velocity/Phil wheels, I've had them trued THREE times (rear wheel twice, front wheel once) and broken ONE spoke-nipple. Not bad, eh?


When the Cane Creek headset went to bits I began thinking that I should have just invested in a frame set and fork and built the bike up from scratch. I also decided not to view part failures as unpleasant surprises and instead just wait for them so I could turn them into upgrading opportunities. I replaced the Cane Creek with Chris King.

Around this time the moustache bars were beginning to hurt my hands and wrists. So I switched to Nitto "noodle" bars and raised the whole cockpit a bit.

I was gradually trashing the FSA crank set and so decided to upgrade. I initially wanted to go Dura Ace or Sugino, but ended up getting the newest thing in cranks and chain-ring: Paul. I won't say that I was coerced, but I was definitely "encouraged" to get the Paul set-up because it was "cool" and Paul's stuff was reputed to be heavy business. So I got a 1/8th inch cog and PINK KMC 1/8th inch chain (which I wore out in record time [3 or 4 months] and then replaced with a SRAM PC-1 1/8th inch chain). I also upgraded to a Phil Wood bottom bracket (high-end quality stuff) with a Campagnolo taper for the Paul cranks.


This arrangement worked quite well for quite a while...


However, eventually the Paul cranks began giving me problems. The four-bolt interface with the chain-ring came loose and when the folks at Aaron's tried to re-tighten it the threads stripped right off the bolts. Paul honored the warranty and sent a new crank-arm which he attached with automotive-grade thread-lock which solved the loosening problem.

Again, this worked well for a while. Imagine my surprise when I actually broke the crank-arm itself! It was fortunate that I wasn't moving very quickly and was also seated when it went. At first I thought I had unclipped from my Frogs, so I was feeling around with my foot for the pedal and having no luck at all. Then I looked and found that there was NO PEDAL. Thanks to whomever it was behind me who picked it up and brought it to me.


The wear pattern on the broken ends indicated that it had been gradually cracking for a while, but there were no visible indications and it didn't squeak or anything either. Paul again honored the warranty and sent another new crank-arm, but I was finished with Paul's cranks.

I did more research and was leaning toward Dura Ace cranks when it was pointed out to me that I'd have to buy a proprietary Dura Ace bottom bracket to use them. As I already had a Campy-tapered BB, I went on Aaron's recommendation and got a Campagnolo Record track crank-set, which, I was repeatedly assured, was the strongest thing available*.

I should point out that not only were Aaron and the other ABR mechanics totally baffled about the Paul crank failure, but the Paul people were equally confounded. When I visited their booth at NAHBS 2008 in Portland I mentioned that I had broken a Paul crank-arm and they said, "oh, that was YOU!" They later told me that of all the crank-sets they'd sold, there were only three reports of broken crank-arms (but they had all broken in the same place). As a result, they made design changes to (one hopes) avoid repeats of this failure in the future. So some good may come of it.



Also, somewhere in there I switched from the Nitto noodles to Ritchey Bio-Max ergo-bars and PINK fizik bar-tape. The drop position on the Nitto bars was a bit too far away for comfort; the Bio-Max ergo hump put the position closer and solved that problem. Now I understand that Nitto makes an ergo-bar with a shallow drop...something to think about for future upgrades (and building my IRO)!

This brings us to my most recent part-failure.

I was heading up to Aaron's to help Gypsie with her music-management system (read: extracting music and organizing it), I was waiting in the turn lane between the stadiums in SoDo so I could go South on 1st Ave (and then to Spokane and then to West Seattle et cetera). The turn arrow turned green and I stood on the left pedal to "sprint" into motion and get through the intersection when something gave way and I fell onto the handle-bars and then onto the pavement (and into the straight lane). It's very fortunate that 1) I wasn't moving very quickly, 2) the traffic was light that day and there were no cars going straight through the intersection to run over me, 3) this didn't happen when I was sailing downhill on Pine heading into downtown. I quickly jumped up, grabbed my bike and the silver part from the street and hustled to the sidewalk. After calming down a bit I inspected the crank-arm to see where I had broken it, but the arm was fine. It took me a moment to fully realize that I had snapped the spindle from the Phil BB and that the end of it was still securely bolted into the arm! I limped across the street to the bus-stop by Pyramid and took the #22 up to Aaron's. Along the way, I noticed that my right arm was bleeding and that my neck and shoulder were in a goodly amount of pain. What was it that I was saying earlier about not viewing part failures as unpleasant surprises? Anyway, the breakage pattern would seem to indicate that it failed suddenly and not gradually as the Paul cranks had.


Again, everybody at ABR was impressed(?) that I had managed to break something which almost never breaks. Phil is honoring the warranty and is sending a new BB. I briefly wondered if Phil makes a BB with a titanium spindle, but I'm not sure that it would necessarily be stronger (just lighter, which isn't really a consideration for me as I weigh ~270 lbs right now [which sucks]). I'm also under the impression that titanium parts flex a lot, but I've yet to do much research into these issues. If you have any information about this stuff, do pass it along, won't you?

So how's that for an epic post? Lots to read, some pretty pictures...it might be my best post yet! Hooray and ouch.

* There are MTB/BMX crank-sets and BBs which are virtually indestructible, but they come in a limited range of chain-ring sizes (topping-out at around 42 teeth, which is fine for MTB/BMX, but not great for fixed-gear or road riding), so we didn't consider them for this bike.