So, I finally got my lazy ass out on a bike. JW knows (or can deduce) how shamefully long it’s been, but I’m hoping he’ll keep that to himself.
With my lack of conditioning and whatnot, I originally planned a leisurely ride with gears, but the cyclometer on the Fuji was dead and everyone knows that battery changing is an after-dark or rainy day activity, so I was ridin’ fixed on the Svelte Felt.
What is it about riding, particularly on the fixed gear that makes it so hard to “take it easy”? Every incline becomes the finish at Alpe d’Huez, every signpost an intermediate sprint (for time bonuses and valuable prizes, natch!)
Of course, I was slower than usual, but all things considered, I felt surprizingly good and my spin has remained remarkably smooth (26.2MPH @ 42×16 on 25mm tires, that’s just shy of 130RPM, bike-math geeks, not too shabby (for me)).
Later I was looking over some old ride logs, seeing entries like rides home from work at 14° with 25mph winds and wet, slushy roads. Man, I gotta stop with the “it’s too wet/cold/windy BS”, harden the fuck up, stop making excuses, and ride!
This may or may not be the last of my posts about Sheldon Brown, the man was a huge influence on me.
This was written by Peter Cole and posted to the Usenet group rec.bicycles.tech (yes, I know I’m a geek, and yes I got his Peter’s permission first).
I attended Sheldon Brown’s memorial celebration last Sunday. It was held in the afternoon in the church across the street from Harris Cyclery. There was a memorial ride before the event, but I was unable to participate.
There seemed to be 200+ people in attendance, the large church was almost full. While there were many from the local cycling world, I’d say we were slightly outnumbered by the community theater and singing folks. The event lasted about an hour and a half, mostly consisting of remembrances delivered by family and friends, some singing, both by performers and the assembly, and some Morris dancing. The Reverend Deborah Pope-Lance gave the welcome and closing as well as some shared remembrances.
Sheldon’s wife Harriet gave the first remembrance. She spoke quietly and warmly about how she met Sheldon at a club ride, where they first noticed each other’s unusual bikes. She recalled their many family cycling trips on Sheldon’s homemade tandems, including one favorite memory when they were interrupted in their tour of Cape Cod by an approaching hurricane and they worked together as a family, helping to get the youth hostel ready for it.
Sheldon’s daughter Tova spoke next. She struggled with her composure, holding back the tears as she described the warmth and affection she had enjoyed from her dad. She smiled as she described parenting Sheldon style, where the children’s rooms had both ABC’s and periodic tables on the walls. Her memories of bedtime stories were not Mother Goose, but things like Galileo vs. the church and how an airplane wing works.
Sheldon’s older brother and sister told us some growing up stories. Arlene laid claim to being Sheldon’s original cycling instructor, remembering how she would sit 3-year old Sheldon on the cross bar of older brother Richard’s bike, letting him steer sometimes while they rode off for day-long adventures hiking near their home by the Tappen Zee bridge in upstate NY. Richard recalled Sheldon’s enthusiastic conversion to communism at age 13, which he claimed to have cooled off by introducing him to Orwell’s “Animal Farm”.
Long time friend and local cycling author/advocate John Allen described his collaborations with Sheldon, including some videos they were producing together, regretting that they had only completed the first of a planned series. He joked about his frustration, during his 30-year friendship, over the way Sheldon could always go him one better every time he thought he had a cycling brainstorm. He gave a graphic demonstration of this by performing a tire folding method he thought he had perfected, then showed Sheldon’s inevitable improvement on it.
The Reverend Pope-Lance had us all laughing when she read a list of some of Sheldon’s favorite quotes — many of which are familiar to readers here. Any misgivings I might have had about the irony of Sheldon’s memorial being held in a church were swept away when she handled the inevitable anti-theistic ones with a graceful chuckle. She then read several tributes posted from cyclists around the world who had been touched by Sheldon. From the hundreds received, we heard voices from every continent, all appreciating his generosity mentoring his Internet friends.
At the end of the gathering, members of the MIT Chantey Chorus sang the “Mary Ellen Carter”, with the congregation joining for the chorus:
Rise again, rise again,
Though your heart it be broken or life about to end.
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
Many of us choked back tears watching Harriet, Tova and George holding each other for comfort as they led the singing of the deeply moving piece.
After the memorial, we made our way to the parish hall. There, on a small stage, several of Sheldon’s favorite bikes were on display. A few laptops had been set up on tables running slides shows of photos familiar from his web site. I mingled there awhile, in the eclectic throng, bikers in jerseys, tights and clompy shoes, Morris dancers in red shirts and (real) bell-bottomed pants; friends, family, bikers, singers, dancers and all, a true slice of Sheldon’s remarkable life.
When I left, I went to retrieve my bike from the 30 or so behind the church. Mine was the only MTB, I rode it over in part because it was the only “whole” bike Sheldon ever sold me. Of course by now it’s a mongrel mix of odd parts, and that, more than the bike, is a tribute to his impact on me. There were many similar mongrels out back, including an obviously home-made recumbent with a sign on the back: “If you don’t like an 80 year old on a bike, think about me driving a car”. That said, there were also a number of elegant vintage bikes, and fixers of course, and more Brooks saddles than I have ever seen in one place.
I pedaled home slowly in the bright cold afternoon, past Harris Cyclery, past Sheldon’s street, past the town field where the fireworks are held, past the old hardware store we both loved, to my home, to my garage full of bikes, thinking about him all the way. Life’s short, and you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.
Peter “I miss you, big guy” Cole
From the London Times
If Sheldon Brown had been only an excellent bicycle mechanic, the esteem in which he was held, while great, could not have extended much beyond his native Massachusetts. But because of the selfless use to which he put the internet, regret at his death has been felt across the world.
His knowledge of bicycles, from a lifetime of riding them, taking them apart, fixing and modifying them, was encyclopaedic. For more than 20 years he earned a living from that knowledge with the spanners, screwdrivers and tyre levers of a succession of bicycle workshops around Boston, and he could probably have gone on doing so happily until retirement. Then, at 49, he found at his disposal an invention more powerful than anything in a mechanic’s toolbox. He quickly saw that the internet could make his expertise available not just to the customers of one bike shop, but to anyone who wanted it, anywhere. It turned out that a lot of people did. The website he built, sheldonbrown.com, has attracted millions.
Sheldon Christopher Brown was born in Boston in 1944. After his father’s death in an air crash when Brown was 9, the family settled in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and it was in the Marblehead town dump that his career in the bicycle business originated. During high school he built bikes out of parts scavenged from the dump and sold them. Like many in the 1960s he heeded Timothy Leary’s call to turn on, tune in and drop out, not staying long at college or in a series of jobs selling shoes and hi-fi, and driving taxis.
By 1972 bike repair was his career, and he set up the Boston Bicycle Repair Collective, a fellow founder member being Stan Kaplan, inventor of the Kryptonite bike lock. After, as he described it, being “purged by Maoists” from the collective, for a time Brown turned his dexterity to camera repair. But he went back to working on bicycles, and by the early 1980s, in a move towards his ultimate future, he was not just repairing bikes but writing about them.
His audience in specialist cyclists’ magazines, however, was necessarily limited. Then came the internet.
In 1990 Brown had joined Harris Cyclery, a shop a few minutes’ bike ride from his home in Newtonville, a Boston suburb, as a mechanic. As the internet developed, he became a contributor to cycling newsgroups, and in 1995 Aaron Harris, his employer, let him set up a website in association with the shop. Initially it was intended to sell specialist parts, but soon Brown took it far beyond that. “Aaron let me spread my wings,” Brown said in 2001.
The website certainly flew. Last year sheldonbrown.com had more than half a million visitors a month. They came for everything to do with bikes, from advice for timid beginners on how to mount a bike to instructions for the daring on how to build their own tandem. The site has a glossary of almost 1,000 terms from “A and B chainrings” to “Zzipper”.
If you couldn’t find what you needed on the website, you e-mailed and asked, and “captbike” usually replied the same day. Answering 200 e-mails most days, he was courteous and informative, but hadn’t time to be wordy. One correspondent, told that replacing his 20-tooth back gear with a 22-tooth would make climbing hills easier, asked how much. Back shot a classic captbike reply: “10%.”
Brown did not charge for access to the site or for his e-mail advice, but the site was a vindication of the internet freeware credo that putting up free content will bring its own reward. It brings in about half Harris’s business.
But sheldonbrown.com was, and is, about more than commerce. Nor is it just a compendium of technical information. It includes a blog that started before the term existed, recording the personality, the philosophy, the likes and dislikes, and above all the family life, of the man who built it. In 1979 Brown married Harriet Fell, who teaches at Northeastern University, Boston. A daughter was born in 1981, and a son in 1983. The blog records his devotion to them, his pride in their accomplishments, and such family adventures as touring in France on two tandems when the children were 6 and 8.
Given his lifelong delight in cycling, it was particularly cruel that in the past two years multiple sclerosis gradually robbed him of the ability to ride a two-wheeler. His response was characteristic — he got a recumbent tricycle and kept pedalling, still riding it to work until shortly before he died. And he wryly put a page titled “The Bright Side of MS” (easy parking with a disabled sticker, jumping airport security queues) on his website.
The response to his death has been a fitting combination of bicycles and the internet. From Melbourne to Missouri, cyclists have held or are planning memorial rides — co-ordinated, naturally, on the web. The London ride is on April 6.
Sheldon Brown, cyclist, was born on July 14, 1944. He died of a heart attack on February 3, 2008, aged 63
I was out riding the Felt today, and on my way home as I was approaching the overpass over the 35 bypass, a tractor-trailer was turning left onto Bellbrook Avenue ahead of me. I stood up, sprinted and tucked into his slipstream. I was very pleased with myself riding along in that pocket of dead air until I made a sad realization:
Once we start down the hill there’s absolutely no way I can spin fast enough to stay with him. Damn.
I don’t recall ever wishing so sincerely that I was riding my geared bike during the nearly 3 years that I’ve been exclusively on fixed gear bikes.
As I sat up and watched the truck pull away down the other side of the hill I decided that I have to get the geared bike out on the road.
I mentioned in a comment earlier that the new bike has a fair amount of toe-overlap. If you aren’t familiar with the cyclist’s dilemma of toe-overlap, and for some unfathomable reason would like to be, click here.
Anyway, on with the story. The other day I was heading out for a ride. Just as the light I was approaching turned red, the SUV behind me decided to squeeze by. Not wishing to be squeezed, I eased over and asserted my claim to next spot in the queue at the light. Putting my left foot down, I lifted the back wheel and positioned my right crank at about 10 O’clock-ish, ready to rock and roll as soon as the light changed. So far so good.
Then the light turned green and I was inexplicably stuck… frozen… immobilized. Before the realization dawned that I had managed to turn the wheel far enough to jam my toe against it, I had really, firmly planted my toe. My first instinct was just to unclip my foot and get myself loose, but so thoroughly stuck was I that this wasn’t possible. Long story short, Mr. SUV man had to wait through an extra cycle of the light while I, feeling like an ass, wished for a hole to crawl into. Thankfully there was no horn-honking, no angry words were exchanged, and I didn’t topple over like a complete spaz, though I did do one heck of a convincing spaz impersonation, in 5 O’clock traffic.
Ain’t life grand?
On previous rides on the new bike, I’d decided that my saddle needed to come down just a bit, and that its nose needed to come up a degree or two (I prefer it to be either level, front to back, or to have an almost imperceptible nose-down tilt). Anyway, before heading out today I finally adjusted the angle and dropped the seat about 1/16″. After riding along for a bit, I decided it was now too low, so I raised it about 1/8″. Continuing on my ride this felt a tiny bit too high. Apparently, it had been exactly where it needed to be before I starting fussing with it (other than the angle, which now feels just right).
Another thing struck me as odd. I was climbing easier (remember, this is a fixed-gear I’m talking about), but felt like I was spinning out at a lower speed. “It’s almost like I swapped the gear.” I thought to myself.
Upon arriving home, I checked and sure enough, I had, in fact, been riding with the wheel swapped to the side with the 17T cog, rather than the 16T. “Oh, yeah… I did that yesterday, when it was raining”, I suddenly remembered.
Duh!
I was relieved to verify that my spin hadn’t actually slowed down, I’m still maxing out at my pitiful 140 RPM, at least until I can polish off the rough edges I developed over the winter.
I couldn’t have asked for nicer weather to take the new bike out for a spin. It made it into the mid-sixties today! I was actually a bit too warm with my lightest tights and a long-sleeved jersey.
Click photo to enlarge
The new bike rides like a dream. I don’t know if it’s the carbon fork or what, but it actually gives a much smoother ride than the
Pista (using the same wheels and tires). I really could not be any happier with it.
I love my new bike!
The new bike (frame) came yesterday, so today it was off to the bike shop to buy a stem, have the cranks installed, and have rivnuts put in to mount a bottle cage.
Roger got it all buttoned up today, so I picked it up, brought it home, and put on the wheels, chain, saddle and seat post (why is it that it’s a saddle, but it’s mounted to a seat post, anyway?) fiddled with the bar/brake lever position, etc. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get out for the inaugural ride, but holy frijoles, I can’t get over how light this bike is! It’s the lightest bike I own, by several pounds. I’m guessing it’s right at (or just under) 16 pounds, but it feels even lighter than that.
I’m planning to ride tomorrow, and I’ll probably take a picture or two (of the new steed), too; so stay tuned, Bat-fans.
As some of you (my imaginary fan-club) may recall, I’ve been going on and on for some time now about buying a new fixed-gear bike, and was crestfallen recently when I discovered that I wasn’t going to be able to order my Bianchi Pista Concept frameset from I-pro.
Well, happy days are here again. Earlier I was perusing eBay and I found a Felt TK2 frameset, my size, with a very reasonable “Buy It Now” price, so that’s exactly what I did. The Felt was one of the bikes I was seriously considering before setting my heart on the Pista Concept. One factor in that decision was the Felt’s MSRP being about $200 more than the Bianchi’s. That reasonable “Buy it Now” price I mentioned earlier? Over a hundred dollars less than a Pista Concept!
More to follow.
So, today was the day. I gleefully gathered my various components and headed to the bike shop to have Roger order and build up my long-awaited Bianchi Pista Concept frameset. I’ve been eagerly anticipating this day for nearly a year; “Ordering a New Bike Day” is second only to “New Bike Day“. My warm happy glow was quickly quenched, though. For what ever reason, Bianchi has decided to unceremoniously drop I-Pro as a dealer.
I looked through some brochures for his other track-offerings, but my heart wasn’t in it. I really wanted that Pista Concept.
I’m really conflicted; I suppose I could buy the frameset elsewhere and have Roger assemble it, at least that way he’d get paid for the labor, and I’d know it was done right, but damnit; I really wanted to buy my new bike at the shop where I’m greeted by name when I walk in the door, not at some anonymous place 30 miles away.
Oh well, I suppose there’s always the next bike.
So, the last time I was at the bike shop I asked Roger about the 2007 Pista Concept, specifically, how soon can I get one. He rings them up and they say that they should be shipping framesets in late January, early February. This sounds good; just in time for my income tax refund.
Then we had our annual ‘employee appreciation’ brunch for work and I got my bonus, which will actually cover the cost of the frame! Time to hit eBay and look for some components!
I already have the brake, brake levers, wheels, seatpost, saddle, and another Madonna del Ghisallo medallion (this has become like a rabbit’s foot to me, both of my other bikes have one). So, I go cruising eBay for a crankset and pedals. Without even breaking a sweat, I score myself reasonably good deals on a Miche crankset and bottom bracket (see pics here and here) and a set of Speedplay X-2 pedals (see pic here).
Now all I need is a stem and some handlebars. Oh… and the frame, of course.
I can hardly wait for new bike day!
As you may remember (click here for a refresher), I was planning (and saving) to buy a Bianchi Pista Concept frameset. I had basically made my mind up to wait until next Spring and then get an ‘07. Then Providence intervened, the exhaust fell off of my car, and the repair bill wiped out my new bike savings, thus making the decision for me.
I just got a look at Bianchi’s 2007 lineup on their website, and boy, did I like what I saw! I’ve never been a huge fan of Bianchi’s trademark Celeste color, but the most recent pearlescent incarnation did grow on me, after a time, and I decided that the Pista Concept in Celeste was a pretty sweet-looking ride. That being said, I’m so glad I waited for this:
‘Athena White’ with Celeste decals!
Plus, it appears from the picture that they’re going to stop putting the model year on the top-tube. That was the biggest gripe I had (and a major factor in my decision to wait, rather than get a 2006 model late in the year); I really hope the picture is representative of the actual production decals.
Looks like I already know where my Income Tax refund is going!
