Upgrade

Old dog, new brakes

I was wrapping up this morning's dog walk and feeling like I wanted to do something with a bicycle. And by something, I mean I wanted to go for a ride. Unfortunately, the cool morning air was warming up pretty quickly and after already having dealt with blazing hot bike commutes (the riding I have to do) for several months, I just wasn't ready to face a blazing hot mountain bike ride (the riding I like to do). I decided instead to tackle some deferred bike maintenance. The plan was to patch the 6 or 7 punctured inner tubes I've set aside over the past month, but I was out of rubber cement and pretty low on my supply of bulk patches. Dang.

I then remembered that I'd just finished getting the parts needed to do some drivetrain and brake system upgrades on my wife's Rocky Mountain Element. I threw the bike up on the workstand, and spent a few hours installing a new rear derailleur, nearly-new shift pods, and a set of mechanical disk brakes, with new cables and housing for everything. The bike came with rim brakes but the wheels were built on 6-bolt hubs, so she didn't need new hoops. All that's left to do is for her to get the bar ends, brake levers, and shift pods positioned back the way she likes, tighten them down, and then we can hit the trail.

Addendum: After finding the morning hours inconveniently warm, I bagged my list of errands and went out for an early-evening mountain bike ride. And sure, it was actually warmer than it had been in the morning, but the skies had filled with clouds throughout the day. The overcast kept the sun from beating beating down on me, and that alone was enough to make the ride pretty tolerable.

Selfie showing I went for a ride sans dark shades

Now, where was I?

It's been quite a while since my last blog, though given that I have but one follower, perhaps I'm the only one who knows that. I lose interest in blogs with stale content and yet both of mine go largely unattended. But I do have an excuse of sorts. I've been doing tons of stuff - tons, I tell you - but I doubt it's all that interesting to anyone. Some of it isn't even all that interesting to me. Bike commuting, walking the dogs, lifting weights, sweating through the Mexican Monsoon, and so on.

But maybe this qualifies as newsworthy.

I got in two really nice night rides this week, notable for not only their survivable, if not comfortable post-storm temperatures, but also in that I went back to a 26"-wheeled bike. I'm a 29er devotee, but my bike light's mount only fits 25.4 mm clamp diameter handlebars. My 29ers all have 31.8s, but my singlespeed Chameleon has the light-ready 1" standard.

I had forgotten what a fun ride that thing is. What I liked most was that I could accelerate the bike anywhere, and from any speed, with just a few strong pedals strokes. The smaller wheels didn't need to be wound up like gyroscopes before they would go faster (like 29" wheels do) . What I liked the least was the notchy feeling of climbing the rocky parts of the trail as compared to the bigger wheels which, like everyone always says, roll over everything.

The bike's suspension was also working better. Part of the reason I hadn't ridden the bike in so long was that the suspension fork - a Magura Odur -while totally rad, was too harsh. I'd installed the firm spring years ago but then I lost about 40 or 50 pounds. Even with all of the preload spacers removed, I was getting very little travel and for the life of me, I could not (and still can't) find the stock, medium spring I replaced. I contacted Magura, scoured eBay, and determined that a replacement medium spring was just not going to materialize.

I then found the solution.

You won't find this great tip on any mountain bike suspension set-up forum, and Push Industries cannot do this for you. The path to getting full travel is to pack about 25 pounds back on. I also used this trick on the frustratingly harsh (even at way below recommended psi) Reba forks on two of my other bikes, and it worked like a charm there, too.

And just so we're all clear on this, I'm not back to being a big lard ass. I'm way past Peak Beer, so it's not from drinking, and while some of the weight gain is admittedly flab-like, I'd like to believe most of it is restoring the appreciable muscle (and corresponding strength) I lost as I fought off a raging, year-long valley fever infection.

I hope all of that was interesting and blog-worthy enough.

A nice night for a ride