ATAC Adjustment

Do you really like old-school Time ATAC alium (HP) pedals? If you answered yes, chances are you've had the same pair on eight different bikes dating back to 1996 and by now, though you wouldn't throw them out for the world, they're starting to get a little loosey goosey. Yes, ATAC stands for Auto Tension Adjustment Concept, but as Chevy has shown us with the Volt more than once, even a good concept needs a little help in tough times.

The basic idea here is that over time the spring holding your foot in gets bent or the body of the pedal gets indented, leaving play in the retention mechanism and letting you out a little too easy.
To fix it, we simply need to retension the spring and everything will work well again. (WARNING: this technique will add about 3g to each pedal. If you care, there's a pair of eggbeaters out there for you somewhere. You may stop reading now.)

Start by cutting a little piece of aluminum sheeting, which can be obtained at a hardware store in a variety of different thicknesses (try .5mm or thereabouts) into a rectangle. Then bend over the end like so:

note that the vertical face in the photo is actually curved a little. This is to keep the metal from buckling as you press it in. If you have a precision pair of pliers that can fold a small ridge on each of the vertical edges in the picture, that helps too.

Next, take your strip and slide it between the body and the spring (you'll see where the spring hits the body - slide it in there) on the side of the pedal that's loose:
Press or tap it in until the end sticks out the other side:

Bend the exposed end over the spring ends that you just squeezed past. This will hold your shim in place. If you want, you can also cut or break off the bent end on the other side, but it does no harm as long as it's below the level of the platform.

If your pedals are still loose after the first shim, simply repeat the steps above with a second one.

Happy riding.

Merry Christmas to Me

Since you are all commiserating with my immortal enemy--pie--today and not skulking around on the interweb, I will take this opportunity to postpone the tech article I was going to write and discuss my excessive and self-indulgent bike upgrades. With some luck, I can loose my dirty secrets over the holiday week without too many people reading before I post again to cover my tracks.

The ostensible justification for this little indulgence is the demise of my moderately long-lived Cane Creek S-5 headset. It has been feeling awful for a while (I think the compression cap is bent), but now that I can really feel it when I'm riding, it's time for an upgrade. Ostensibly, the S-5 was a 101g headset, and if I was to stick to the rule that upgrades/replacement parts aren't allowed to make the bike heavier unless they add significant new functionality, my choices were limited. Fortunately I have a really big man crush on this German guy named Uli Fahl who came to the rescue with a 79g number named BOBO:

It costs on the order if a CK, but there's roughly 30g less of it, and it doesn't come with the "Look at that guy with the King headset!" stigma. I buy nice stuff because I value high-quality parts, not because I care what other people think of my bike build. A headset cup is a functional component, not a 360 degree billboard, and saving weight by laser etching away all of the anodization with an oversized signature can't be cost-effective--it's certainly not attractive.

I have to admit, however, that I did get the BOBO partially because I have a thing for Tune. There are some aspects of it that would make me fairly uncomfortable if I didn't already trust Uli's Engineering skills. The main two are the aluminum crown race and the plastic compression ring. IMO each of these is under-designed by one material of magnitude (race should be steel and ring should be aluminum), but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt for now. Part of the magic of making really light stuff is getting light materials to perform well in situations where you'd never expect them to.

One thing I DO like about this headset is that it comes with a titanium compression bolt instead of the silly aluminum one that one often gets with light headsets and breaks in a week. For those of you crazy enough to ride bikes with composite headtubes, it also comes with a nifty little expansion fitting that replaces annoying starfangled nuts. The impressively thin carbon top cap is elegant as well. Will it last? Dunno. If it can be broken, I'm the guy to break it. Long term testing results to follow... The carnage spreadsheet has been updated as well.

Free Desktop Background (mine)

Have you ever wondered how the tiny little influences of your daily surroundings shape you over the course of years? You change a teeny little bit every day until all of a sudden you look in the mirror to find yourself hairless and wearing a 2-piece, skin-tight, stretchy suit. Recoiling from the clown you've just seen wearing your face you then proceed to trip over three bicycles, a couple empty tubs of Cytomax, and your Cycle-Ops Fluid 2...

How do you think you got there--not just how you ended up on the floor draped across a few thousand bucks worth of human-powered conveyance and acessories, but how did you became who you are today? What were the nudges? How do we set ourselves up to be nudged in the direction we desire?

Courtesy of a long-awaited monitor upgrade, I was retouching my perennial desktop background this afternoon and realized that not only had I been staring at the same photo since I took it in 2004, but that the camera perspective is remarkably symbolic of how I view my life right now, and I have to wonder which came first, the photo or the perspective it describes so well.


If you care to find out how staring off the peak of Camel's Hump in Vermont will affect your future, click on the photo and take the 1680x1050 desktop for yourself.

More simpletech coming up tomorrow, and in a couple days more detail on something that will be nudging me away from cycling and halfway across the globe for a month or so.

Between rain and duty

As cyclists, frank discussions of our creatures, self-reflection on diets, digestion, sores and pains, brings us to humor the reality of our composition and the failures of the body. Driving legs with fury, beating them with lashing commands when they would rather die, we come to see ourselves as a dual being, the voice and the motion, mind and hand. Though what I share in these lines is not a reflection of lessons learned on the bike, they are lessons from the road. I share with you these words because having entered into this agreement, this blog, I decided to relay my experiences. Sometimes we share stories of our saddle sores.

Just a few weeks ago my father was nearly bedridden after having lost nearly 20 lbs and a horrifying change of meds. His physical therapy is focused on improving his balance and flexibility, and voice lessons are getting him beyond a hoarse whisper. In a sense he is in the base training period, relearning the basics so that he can go on to more exciting journeys. My father and I had this evening discussed the deepest question of all - why is there anything? We have yet to tackle the questions of what is life and what we should do if his heart should cease to beat.

We ask children not what they want to do when they grow up but rather what they want to be. Perhaps we want to be old and happy, with a swarm of grandchildren milling about our feet, or be he who conquers a terrible descent and an epic climb with a grin. There are many things I would rather be doing than grinding through agonizing minutes in the cold cab of my father's truck as he looks for the strength to pull the seat belt across his lap, or overhearing his repeated and exasperated cursing "fucking son of bitch" to his zipper because it won't respond the way it used to. I wish I didn't have to sit with him, he in his wheelchair, and tell him that his clutter and way of life is a burden to everyone around him, that it is unrealistic for him to use a Dremel tool or soldering iron, that what he was is not what he is. Yet, in these moments I detest there is space for peace. These are times to find our compassion for a fellow traveler, to reform ourselves and the boundaries we thought were fixed, and to share in sincerity ourselves. Prior to this visit I was inclined to let be and help only when asked, probably because I myself don't want help unless I absolutley need it. There comes a time though, when even if someone doesn't ask for help you know it is the right thing to do. The cold nights will at times paralyze his walking in violent tremors, and I can now reach out and take him by the arm and give him guidance.

The Zen of these moments is not in stopping the rattling. We control what we can, which in the end may not even be our own hand, but perhaps only our dream of what we want to be.

Between rain and duty, there has not been time to ride.

Severe Weather Warning! Ride.

Ok ,so I realize I'm a little nuts when it comes to bike riding, but what most people consider insane is totally reasonable if you simply choose the correct reference frame:

See, once you're out on your mountain bike in a blizzard and pointed in the direction of the woods, it's perfectly normal to go for a trail ride. You're certainly not going to turn around into traffic on unrideably slick slushiness, and if you stay still you're gonna get cold. The obvious decision is to forge ahead, throwing all caution to the wind, of course.

When I heard severe weather warning for this afternoon my first impulse was actually to try to beat the storm, but one thing led to another until my choices were sit-on-butt or go ride by myself in a blizzard at dusk. The choice was clear. Not long after I had resolved to go kick some snow tooshie, my mom called me to make sure I was inside. (she does this every time there is any sort of bad weather) I told her truthfully that I was, but made the convenient omission of what the future held as I proceeded to "rock" my awesome neoprene booties and winter gloves (Dad, let's keep this on the DL, k?). It was time to go see what all this "severe weather" fuss was about.

To be honest, the most harrowing part of the ride was the road on the way to/from the woods. Fat tires float something wicked in slush, and with no pavement contact the level of grip was akin to riding on warm Crisco (do people even know what that is anymore?). Fortunately for me there was a lot of unplowed snow in the shoulder that was perfectly passable to ride on, and I'm a pretty good snowboarder.

Once in the woods all was good. I managed a whole loop while only tossing myself once, and it was a totally avoidable toss. I did whack my knee pretty hard, but it was walking into my bike, not riding it. Not surprisingly, my Maxxis CrossMarks' performance was beyond awful, as they're practically a hardpack tire, but it's all that will fit in my frame with 29" rims. If the snow isn't too deep tomorrow maybe I'll break out little wheels and the baby killers:

(How to) STOP THAT INFERNAL RATTLING! (Bottle Cage)

If cycling is supposed to be zen, then a noisy bike is punk rock, or maybe a punk rocker. Not only can both bikes and punk rockers be obnoxiously loud, but the growing popularity of carbon fiber bicycle components combined with the increasing creativity of body piercers is causing them to rapidly converge in terms of metal content, and since most punk rockers keep to a strict diet of tattoos and cigarettes, their weights often converge as well. (how else does one get into those pants?)

Rock or rocker, a rattly bike is sure to clatter along out of tune, all around the beat and beg you to put it out of it's misery before too many people get to hear it. For most creaks and rattles a little grease and a wrench will go a long way toward making your rides more pleasant, but every once in a while there's a noise you just can't manage to pin down, and no matter how hard you go at your bike with the wrench it just won't give up. My favorite is the water bottle cage braze-on. Not only does a loose braze-on make the bottle cage rattle omni-directionally through your entire frame, but the rattle also changes rhythm and pitch every time you have a drink, making it as elusive as it is grating. Even if you do manage to realize what's making the racket and take an allen wrench to it, all the tightening in the world can't help you. In every way, the rattly bottle cage is the ultimate zen-killer, and this is Bodhidharma:


Long story short, most bottle cage braze-ons on modern bicycles are not braze-ons at all, but Riv-Nuts, which are a sort of blind faced rivet. In order to tighten the rivet, you have to push on the face while pulling up on the threads at the back without spinning the entire thing in the hole. The gadget above -- made out of a long bottle cage screw, a nut and a washer or two -- is designed to do exactly that.

To use it, thread the nut all the way onto the BC screw, then thread the BC screw as far as you can into the riv-nut. While holding the BC screw in place with an allen wrench, use an open-end wrench to tighten the nut down onto the riv-nut. You want to tighten the nut firmly, but don't wail on it too hard or you will strip it out. IMPORTANT: To remove your tool, hold the allen wrench still and back off the nut until you can turn the BC screw with your fingers. If you try to remove the screw with the nut still tight you might re-loosen the riv-nut.

Ride happy and rattle free.

42.011?

I left Boston on Tuesday for California. I was greeted by my sister at the airport in Sacramento, and we drove up the hill to Grass Valley, a town of about 20,000 between the valley and Lake Tahoe, nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. While not nearly so bitter cold as Boston (except for Monday night when Keith and I were practicing wheelies in his backyard, wearing only shorts and a jersey at 10pm), Grass Valley is now covered in a good blanket of snow, which should make for exciting trail riding and of course, sledding. More on that in the coming days. The crappy picture from my cell phone does not do the place justice, but the points of this pic are (1) that there are hills here and (2) that the place is covered in seemingly endless pine forests.

I came back on a one-way ticket, an early return for the holidays prompted by the ill health of my father. About 10 years ago he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative neural condition primarily affecting the brain's ability to produce dopamine, a regulator of many brain functions including coordination and speech and in the latter stages, memory and cognitive ability. It is interesting that the absence of dopamine gives rise to tremors, often most strongly seen in violent shaking of the hands, which can make eating quite difficult. The brain has a tendency to fall into a steady rhythmic firing of the neurons, which is subdued by the presence of dopamine. Existing treatments often involve the use of L-dopa or dopamine precursors to replace the missing dopamine, however, the long term use of this technique is limited because the brain reduces its dopamine production in the presence of external dopamine.

I'm not sure where things stand at the moment, I'll be visiting my father shortly. He's now in an assisted living center, having recently had a bad spell due to change of medications and general difficulty managing mundane things. It's been hard over the years to watch his degeneration. I want to at times just tell him to stand up straight and do some exercise, to fight the disease. Unfortunately, things are not so simple--in the end we are creatures intimately bound to a body with physical limitations which even the strongest will cannot overcome. The very act of moving can often be difficult or painful, sleeping can be miserable as his body gets stuck in an awkward and twisted position. As if life weren't difficult enough, then one can't even escape in a decent night of sleep.

It hit me hard when I first learned of his current state, it's not easy to see one's parents weaken. It will be good to spend time with him, he's a smart fellow with a proclivity for philosophic discussions, perhaps we can finally tease out the meaning of life, which incidentally, my father claims is not is not 42, at least not exaclty. He claims to have found an asymptotic expansion in the universal quantum bicoherent-information density parameter that when integrated over the two-dimensional entropy partition function of everything/0 and renormalized using the Weinberg formalism comes out at something like 42.011. I'll have to check his math later. Having seen my father go through such troubles (not the mathematical kind), it makes me thankful to have the ability to move freely and gracefully. I think when I do hit the trails again I'll be more aware of the simple grandeur of every pedal stroke and log hopped.

I wish you all high health and happy trails.