aw dammit

Had to take a trip to the bike shop yesterday after the road bike tipped over while I was getting the single speed back on the bike rack.  Dammit.  Turns out a spoke popped off and the screwhead was rattling around the rim.  It was enough to knock the wheel out of true so I took the single speed back down to ride while I get the wheel fixed.  Can't wait to see how much this costs tonite.

As an extra headache, I punctured the tube getting the screw out of the rim, and now know that the spares I had saved don't have long enough valves to fit on the road wheels.  Woo hoo, more crap to buy. 

I will admit this got me way more upset than it should have, and I'm blaming that on not drinking enough lately and having an abnormally high amount of stress at work and soon, school as well.  But I sure did wish I had some gears last night riding through a nasty path headwind. 

Current beer-scale: 9.1

Yes it's great, no I'll never use it.

This thing might change my life.

"Might" b/c there's rain in the forecast and I can't see a time in the next ten days where I'll have an extra 20 minutes to put the bike on for a little wash and lube. 

But at $52.99 with shipping it was totally worth it.

Current beer-scale: 8.1

oh snap

Nothing like breaking a tire lever while changing a flat on your commute to get your day started right.

Thankfully I never leave home these days without a spare tube (and multiple levers).  I ended up using the extra effort as an excuse to wheel suck on an obnoxious roadie that didn't know how to merge onto the path without nearly causing a pile up.  I got towed practically the entire second half of the ride down.

Now to get dirty again checking the old tube to see if it's patch-able.

At least it's Thursday, and I've got whiskey at home.

 Current beer-scale: 6.4

ya-fucking-hoo

Finally picked up the rebuilt trek this weekend and took it for a spin this morning. 

Looking good!

It was a decent ride but the gears were slipping a bit which took some of the fun out of it.  So did worrying about riding a Madone for a normal commute but I think I'll get over that eventually considering I saw a delivery guy riding the same thing yesterday.

Not a bad looking bike though, even with most of the old components still usable.  The chain, bottom bracket, brakes, and seat cap are all new, everything else was on the old bike.  Ultimately I took the bike in for a tuneup, and two months & $440 later I have a new ride. 

One more reason to look forward to riding home tonite. 

Current beer-scale: 5.8

worst-case scenario

It dawned on my last night I still have a spare frame attracting dust in the garage.  It's the old frankenbike road frame, which if worst comes to worst would be a suitable placeholder for the pilot's components if I can't get the frame replaced.

Actually, it might make for a pretty formidable ride.  Ugly as sin, slightly heavy, but sturdy and able to take a beating.  Plus, I could mess around with spray paint more.

Current beer-scale: 9.1 & looking for a lunch-time whiskey.

quit being a baby.

Never a good sign when your bike mechanic uses phrases like "terrible looking" and "end of the world" when he's taking a look at your ride. At least he said I seemed to be taking things well.

Let's hope Trek is able to live up the their lifetime frame warranty. And I'll try not to whine too much about how much a whooping cough vaccine ends up hurting (turns out, it's a lot).

Current beer-scale: 7.5

dammit

After getting through my huge to-do list last weekend, I found myself not enjoying having time to sit around yesterday. So I made some DIY pedal straps for the raleigh and tried them out this morning. Oops.

The right pedal ended up coming loosing, striping the crank arm. I walked the last 2 miles in and now my $5 project will end up costing me $120+ to replace the cranks. Fan-fucking-tastic. Just how I wanted to start a day that I have to stay late for.

Current beer-scale: 8.9

Eh, we'll see how it goes

Today's Bears game is making me want to vomit but at least I got the fenders on for tomorrow.
Yeah, it's zip-tie heavy and not perfectly installed by any stretch but it should do the job.
Turns out I was missing the screws to mount the front fender where there were actual eyelets, and no eyelets for the back so they just got tied on too. As long as the wheels spin I don't care. Good test ride today so we'll see just how f-ed up the riding position actually is tomorrow.
Now if only the Bears' offense could see about getting some of their fucking jobs done.

Current beer-scale: 9.1

Be careful what you wish for I guess

So it's another maintenance weekend, thanks to a quick delivery from amazon.

That's a huge fucking box.And that's a lot of paper.
The dog wasn't even that interested.
And yet, the fenders were still jammed in there enough to be bent out of true.
Whatever, they were cheap and now I have a huge box to wrap a tiny christmas gift in. Good times.

Current beer-scale: 8.9 on a get-me-the-fuck-out-of-here-Friday.

STOP!

Whew! When I got home last night I clipped my ankle with the back axle as I was stepping off the bike. Very graceful. It hit hard enough to knock the wheel loose thanks to the quick release not being very tight (evidently I've been slacking as a responsible bike commuter). It wasn't a huge deal since I was already home but it did make me take a close look at the rear brake pads, which were in pretty terrible shape.

Evidently I've really been slacking as a responsible bike commuter.

Yikes. Hard to believe I was able to stop at all for who knows how long. Thankfully I took a mental health day today and have spare pads all over the place, including the winter bike that keeps getting torn more and more down. So the Trek can stop again, but I'm to the point where I'm tempted to just buy another cheap yet complete bike-shaped-object over re-building frankenbike. Again, maybe not the most responsible approach but definitely the most affordable.

Current beer-scale: 8.9 and I'm home for a weekday, break out the rye!

fleeting success

Longer lasting failure.

Got to my bike after a long afternoon, had a flat. My luck has been pretty good for a while so I was due, but it still sucked.

I was pissed for a second, then realized I had everything I needed to take care of it. Spare tube, levers, pump, adapter. Like a boss. I was late, but I could still ride home.

All the tools and materials necessary to do a job.

I set everything out and got to work. Ten minutes later, the spare was in and the tire was ready to go back on the bike. I felt great.

For about a block. The spare I had was a patch job and the tire was bubbling by the time I had turned the corner onto Pearson. Wonderful.

So it was time to walk home again, this time with a stop at running away to pick up some tubes. The one remaining rubino I still had on over a new tube and hopefully I can ride tomorrow.

I had been looking for a new pair of tires to put on but hadn't wanted to spend the money right now. As always though, the bike seemed to have other ideas. I'd say next time I'll just buy the damn tires but I won't. It's not like this has happened enough times for me to learn anything yet.

Current beer-scale: 5.9

Back to it

Holy crap that was rough. Maybe it was just getting back after the extra day off, maybe it was the fresh snow, maybe it was the tensioned chain, but that was a tough commute this morning.

More likely it was a combo of all three, but man was that extra day off sweet. After a nap the chain tensioner went on frankenbike easy. It screwed into the derailleur hanger behind the drop out and there's a spring running the inside length of the tensioner arm that keeps it taunt against the chain. It was that simple; screw it in and fit the pulley arm to the chain line. I was slightly dubious but maybe things will work well enough to squeeze some extra life out of the bike.

I was still dubious riding in this morning; between the taunt chain and crappy snow I felt wiped out before I even got to Lincoln. I was panting like a dog almost the entire way in. At least the snow is stopping by now. Conditions were not in my favor this AM.


The dog enjoyed it though; after yesterday she kept giving me looks like she was wondering what we were going to do today. Unfortunately it was back to the routine for everyone, not just me.

Current beer-scale: 3.2

Home for a day

I hit the point at work last month were I can finally take vacation, so I'm spending an extra day home this weekend. Good timing too, since there's a Supernatural marathon on, I have some bike maintenance to do, and we're going out with the realtor tonite.

Going out tonite meant getting the dog good and tired. Like any good day off that meant heading to the beach in the morning. It was completely hellish, or at least it was for me. Windy, wet, cloudy, still icy but loud as the waves tried to wash it away. She had a blast and is now sleeping like a log on the couch.

Thankfully I ordered the bike part for the maintenance I want to do early enough that it got here before today since there's no mail service. But I wanted to add a cheap chain tensioner so hopefully frankenbike makes it through the rest of the crappy weather. A new chain and better gear ratio would go a long way towards long way towards a longer-term solution but would also cost more than $20 and require a lot more work. A tensioner means screwing something on and putting the chain on. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

As one last shot, here's the dog during dinner last night. Yes that is a drool bubble she's blowing. Nice.

Current beer-scale: 4.2 and lazy

There should always be time for lube.

Unfortunately, I'm sometimes a little more lax than I should be about maintenance. Especially during the winter, which is stupid b/c that's when you need it the most. Otherwise:

Yeah, that's not a good shade of rust orange for your chain to be. But I ran out of teflon spray a few weeks ago and it's been too snowy and cold to bother with an extra trip to get new supplies. What the hell, the bike is already junk but it's riding alright. It hasn't felt like it was going to fall apart out from under me in a long time.

But a new Running Away shop opened on Clybourn after the blizzard, and the wife convinced me to stop in there the other night while we were out picking up dinner. They're not bike-centric but they at least had some lube so I could do some basic work last night. Hence:

That's a slightly healthier color for a chain. Slightly. I'd still like to think I could keep an eye out for a cheap ride in better shape at the winter cycle swap at the end of the month, but looking for a house and looking for a bike seem to be at odds. At least I can still buy whiskey when I want to.

Current beer-scale: 8.9

Hit the ground rolling

Finally sat down to do some basic maintenance during extra days off for New Years. It's not that I don't have time to do it during a normal week, I'm just super lazy. I've been storing the bike in the basement so we have a little more room upstairs--frankenbike is out of sight/out of mind except when I'm commuting. But I took the time to clean off a few weeks' worth of gunk yesterday and boy did it show this morning. Clean streets, no snow or muck, and I absolutely flew into the office on as smooth a ride as I've had in weeks. Hopefully things can stay like that for a few more days depending on how accurate local forecasts are.

Current beer-scale: 6.1, surprisingly high considering I couldn't bring myself to have a drink last night, even after the Bears lost.

REI scored a lot of points with me this weekend. Initially I was hesitant to use my bike-to-work tune up b/c I had ready some fairly negative reviews about the bike work there. But with a mental health day Thursday I had four days off this weekend so what the hell. There wasn't going to be a better time.

Waiting a while had its benefits too. I tried two or three times to drop in, but the shop was always busy. But waiting until October, I dropped it off Thursday and picked it up this morning. The bike rides like new. It turns out I couldn't figure out what kind of bottom bracket I had on the bike b/c the damn thing was installed backwards! The wheels were out of true as well, but after 18 months of riding that kind of makes sense. But REI actually called when the bike was ready and explained the work they did, which was cool.

So don't buy bikes from suburb bike shops, and don't believe everything you read about the mechanics at REI not knowing what they're doing. Too bad it's going to rain all week.

Current beer-scale: 7.1

Saturday fun, part II

So with everything ready to go, the question remained: how exactly to hang this bastard somewhere paint wasn't going to get all over something important? I had a few ideas in mind; with the fork still on, I could have locked the stem to the fence and used the fork to prop the frame out from the fence, but that might get into the neighbor's yard. I could have tried newspapering the garage and working there, but the heat was making the trashcans in there smell unbearable. The backyard was the best option, and since I was already wrapping parts in grocery bags and masking tape, why not go all the way and just white-trash it up. Out came the dry-cleaner hangers and gaphers tape. One hanger in the fork's wheel-wells, another around a tree branch and plier-ed into shape. A little more tape, and voila: one bike hanger. Far enough away from the house and deck that I could spray with impunity. Itching to begin, I gave the primer a quick shake and away we went. Now was when I actually started to get nervous about the project. Cleaning Frankenbike, sanding, even hanging, all those things were important but if they hit a snag it was early enough in the project that I could probably think up a way around it to keep the bike ride-able. The paint going on was the point of no return.

Fortunately there was no need to worry. The sanding seemed to do it's job, and the primer held to the bike really well. The entire can ended up on the bike, but by the time it did the bike was pretty much unrecognizable.

First coat on!

I did get a little over-zealous at points, leading to some drippage, but all in all the bike looked really good at this point (I actually liked it better white than I did with the silver on at the end of the day). BTW, the dog loved this project to the point I was a little concerned for her. I couldn't go outside without her each time, and she'd tear ass around the yard, blissfully uncaring about the heat or the sun. She practically collapsed at the end of the day she was so tired. It was great, as long as she's recuperated today.

Primer was on a little heavy at spots.

A little sanding over the drip spots, and it was time to try the silver. All in all, the painting took a little over 2 & 1/2 hours. I waited around 20 minutes between each coat, sometimes longer if I was playing with the dog. 3 primer coats, 2 silver coats, 2 clear coats. A lot of painting.

One of the silver coats; the second I think.

By the end of the day things looked pretty good. I was glad everything seemed to work out, even though I did like the bike better just plain white vs the silver. But now that I know it works, nothing's stopping me from sanding back down and re-applying some white gloss. Things are a little rougher-feeling than I thought they would be with so much clear coat on, we'll see if it requires more clear coat for the paint to stay on the bike and not on my pants. It was probably a little too humid for this yesterday, but some things you just can't control. I can always hope for better weather if I try this again. The real test is an actual ride, out in the elements with clothes rubbing and salt spraying. Hopefully it's a good long time before I get to try that for real.

Paint definitely didn't make the welds look any less awful, but all in all not a bad touch-up.

For now Frankenbike is waiting for reassembly, possibly even a re-christening once everything's back on. We'll see. Suburb days always go longer than expected, so by the time we got back there was only time to get ready for work today and that was about it. Re-assembly is probably tonite, with a pic or two to come. For now, I'm happy basking in yet another hare-brained idea panning out relatively well.

Current beer-scale: 3.0

Saturday fun, part I

Yesterday was the day. Finally, after an absolutely horrific move and spending a week trying to get the place set up, I had a day to sand down Frankenbike and see if I could rattle-can it back to some semblance of inconspicuous winter usability. Off came the stickers, and with a lot of goo gone and a little time it was relatively clean. I didn't realize just how much crap I had on that bike until it was time to take it off. It looked better already at that point; I was sad to part with my surfside sticker though.
With everything cosmetic off, it was time to get down to the frame, or as close as I could get without bothering to get some crank pullers. I ended up leaving the fork on too with the old stem just so I wouldn't lose any parts when it was time to put everything back together. There was a new rattling noise coming from the rear wheel, and when I took a closer look I saw this:
Crap! Not a major problem, but one more thing to take care of before this bike is ready to go again. Teaching myself how to re-spoke a wheel wasn't really on my to do list for the end of summer, but I'll figure something out.

While researching how to best try this project, I read that aluminum, especially the kind used for cheap walmart piece of crap bikes, has a clear coating that makes it resistant to painting. The good news is, that b/c it's on a cheap piece of crap, it's not especially durable coating and sands off really easily. A few quick brushes with a 150 grain block and you're down to the duller-looking aluminum that holds paint fairly well.
And yes, if I was lazy enough to stop short of getting down to only the frame, I was also cheap enough to just wrap everything in grocery bags and masking tape and hope that was good enough. The seat post came out as well once I figured out how to hang the damn thing somewhere I wouldn't get spray paint all over the in-laws deck or house. More on that in the next post.

First, a quick tangent here on the city vs. the 'burbs. It's impossible to purchase any kind of spray paint in the city, or at least in the four shops in lincoln park and lakeview where I looked. Of course this is a graffiti deterrent and not something I'm going to get all worked up about. There really isn't anywhere too conducive to spray painting a project in my building anyway, so one way or another this project was heading to the burbs. It does make me wonder just how people do end up getting spray paint in the city though, especially when there seems to be more and more of it in my neighborhood. I was also wondering if anyone was desperate enough to buy my left-overs. If I hung out in an alley with a trench-coat filled with half-full spray paint cans, would it be better or worse than someone selling drugs? Would my paint be too lame for someone to graffiti with? Would someone be that selective? Just the things I wonder when I have to go the suburbs to buy something, and then still have to flash id. Anyway, here's what I ended up with:
A primer, silver metallic finish, and clear coat to top things off. I also researched the best paints to use, and though there wasn't consensus these seemed to be solid bets. Also, the most important tool of all, my beer. It was 90 degrees yesterday, of course I was drinking. It mixed with the paint fumes nicely.
Still to come: shots of the first primer coat, the metallic finish, and final thoughts on the project so far. Good times!

Now, will it stop?

Fun times today, with a new brake lever coming in the mail and setting it up on Frankenbike.

I've had the flop & chop done for months, and wasn't planning on setting them up until after a pass with some rattle cans (managing to actually buy spray paint was an entirely separate adventure, but more on that in a few weeks). Fitting everyting together was practically installing it anyway though, so why not strip the old bars and use them to wrap the bullhorns. What the hell, it beats packing for a while.

Again I'm not the most mechanically savy, but this is pretty simple stuff. Work through the new cable, put the cover on, line up the lever, adjust the brake, you're all set. I was done before I even thought to take the normal maintenance shot, let along a before and after. But I have those anyway.

Before: the old set up after a long BTD

After: looking spry and ready for a test ride.

Not crazy with how short the cable got before the brake was actually completely closing and opening, but it seems to be working fine. Now, the question above: will it stop?

We'll see. I'll likely test it this weekend, before a ride downtown to meet the wife after work for our three-year anniversary dinner. Something I definitely have to make it to alive, so hopefully everything is all set.

Current beer-scale: 5.9

Yah, Friday maintenance!

Woo hoo, time for more maintenance. Always fun.

Over the winter, my in-laws had some extra slime they didn't need while they were on trainers all season. I happily took it home, not realizing presta valves aren't the easiest tires to slime. There are plenty of DIY resources out there if you want to figure out how to slime a presta-valve tube. I eventually tried cutting the end of the cap off so you could remove everything, and hoping I could screw it back on after putting the slime in. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I came up with a new way today though.

After putting new tubes on the new bike I played around with the tube I flatted on Wednesday morning. I tried feeling for a puncture but couldn't figure anything out, so I went to take the presta adapter off and throw the tube out. When I took the adapter off though, the rest of the valve top came with it, leaving the wider tube with a wide open top.

This top, it occured to me, would probably be considerably easier to get slime into. Then all I'd have to do is screw the valve piece back on and hopefully I'd have a recycled tube. It kind of worked. Let's just say the open top wasn't quite the perfect fit for either the slime nozzle or the regular plastic tube that you put over the tube valve. But it worked eventually, and slime was bubbling out of the holes in the tube (dammit, how the fuck does something like that happen? these tubes suck).
With a patch kit over that area, fingers crossed this turns into an emergency tube I can keep around for the next time I need a crap tube on the crap bike. And let's hope that since it's finally spring, that isn't for a nice long time.

Current beer-scale: 3.1