[trailrunner]

I bought a Lemond Zurich in July of 2001 when my first road bike, an entry-level Cannondale, was stolen. The Zurich that year was a popular bike, and I saw a lot of yellow-and-blue Zurichs out on the roads. I raced that bike and did some triathlons on it. The top photo was taken in November 2002 before or after a ride in southern MD (I still have that same car, too).

A couple years after I bought the Lemond, I bought a carbon bike. I still rode the Lemond, but the paint wasn’t in good condition, so I decided to get it painted. At this point, it was a commuter bike, so I only wanted a utilitarian finish — so black it was. I put a lot of miles commuting on that bike, and I would often ride it on Fridays. After a week of riding my heavy, fat-tired commuter bikes, it felt great to ride a road bike with only my messenger bag on my back. In the meantime, I overhauled my Chris King hubs and headsets, and they’re still going strong. The middle picture shows it in this configuration, complete with reflective tape.

The utilitarian paint job was also cheap, and it came to get it painted again. I found a guy in Richmond who builds and paints frames. I took it down to him in June, and he dropped it off today. I wasn’t particular about the color, and more or less let him talk me into whatever he wanted. The bottom picture shows the coppery-orange color. I’m going to build it back up, but I’m starting to think that now it’s a bit too nice to be a knock-around commuter, and may save it for nice days when I’m feeling a bit retro.

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[trailrunner]

I worked for a while developing sensors for autonomous vehicles, and sensors for alerting the operator of an impending dangerous situation, such as a pedestrian or deer crossing in front of the vehicle. It is a very hard problem, even if I would have been allowed to cheat by providing some sort of recognition tag for classes of objects (such as pedestrians or cyclists). Based on what I know, autonomous vehicles scare me, and they have a long way to go before they are mature.

[trailrunner]

@vern 162413 wrote:

I have no idea if this matters, but I wonder what happens to the air pressure in the tires in the ascent/descent to 35K feet?

Assuming no change in temperature, the absolute pressure in the tire doesn’t change, but the the gauge pressure (pressure relative to the ambient, or atmosphere) will change. On the ground, the ambient pressure is 14.7 psi, so even if you were to fly to vacuum of outer space where the ambient pressure is zero, the gauge pressure of the tire will increase 14.7 psi.

[trailrunner]

I bought a bike at an auction about 20 years ago. The auction was held at some junkyard in Brandywine MD. The stuff they were selling included office equipment and bikes that the police were trying to get rid of. About the only bike worth buying was a Panasonic, which I bought for $50. Turned out to be a nice bike, and I still have it and use it on the rollers. But most of the bikes were Walmart specials, and they were struggling to sell bundles of 10 bikes for $10.

[trailrunner]

Seems like when I-66 gets plowed, a lot of the snow and ice from the freeway will wind up on the trail, making it unrideable until spring, and a mess throughout the year.

[trailrunner]

@Brendan von Buckingham 161137 wrote:

Lots of cops don’t know the regs as they apply to cyclists and take a posture that they know the regs more than you. But sometimes you know them more than they do. Few years ago I got pulled over in Arlington for failure to stay to the right. I knew the cop was way off and wasn’t in the mood for a lecture and bunch of empty yes ma’ams. I asked for the ticket. I got the ticket.

One of my worst experiences on a bike came from a psycho Arlington cop who thought he knew the bike laws. He wasn’t kind enough to offer me a lecture or a ticket, but he did offer to pound the crap out of me. I wasn’t in the mood for that, so I did what he told me to do, even though he was wrong.

[trailrunner]

@cmj7gh 160221 wrote:

I like the idea of weighting checkpoints a lot, but that would mean someone would have to plan it and wouldn’t be able to participate (or would have an advantage)

what if we just said “anything outside of Arlington is worth double”?

Not necessarily. Just assign the points spontaneously when you reveal them on the map the morning of the event. You could eyeball the checkpoints that look further out and give them a higher value. Or take the fourth letter from each person’s book and use that as the Scrabble letter for each checkpoint. Or draw numbers 1-20 from a hat for each checkpoint when you post the map. It doesn’t have to be perfect or clever. Once the map and values for each checkpoint are revealed, people can stay and examine the map to optimize their route, or they can just ride and do it by the seat of their pants.

I liked the idea of keeping it within a relatively small area like Arlington.

[trailrunner]

When I used to do a lot of trail running, I was going to (but never did) organize something similar on a local network of trails. The only twist I had was that I was going to assign different point values to each location. I forget the details, but it was some sort of scrabble-based system. Each checkpoint was a letter, and some letters gave you more points based on their scrabble value. The idea was to put a layer of thought into it — should I go for two easy, but low-value letters that are close by, or go for the high-value X that’s further away? I was trying to avoid making it a race won by the fastest, yet keep it relatively simple. Not sure how well the idea would have worked in practice.

[trailrunner]

I’ve had mixed experience with wheels. I taught myself to build wheels a long time ago, and have built wheels for me and for some friends. Once I’m finished building a wheel, they stay pretty true and last a long time. However, I’m slow, and take my time. A good, experienced wheel builder could probably build a wheel in 1/5 the time it takes me.

One of my wheel sets was built by Colorado Cyclist. Even though I know how to build wheels, it was cheaper to select the parts and have them build it. That wheel set was built well and has lasted a long time.

I’ve bought almost every one of my bikes from local shops. One bike didn’t turn out so well. I didn’t want the wheels that came with the bike, so I had the shop build me a set. It was a pretty standard combination of components, and nothing exotic, but they botched it. The wheels wouldn’t stay true and the spokes wouldn’t hold tension. I wound up de-tensioning the wheels and completely re-tensioned them myself. Since then, they have been rock solid, and that was 2003 or 2004. (That particular shop, which has a good reputation, botched a lot of things on that sale, which is why, even though they are only one mile from my house, I won’t shop there again. But that’s another story.)

The only time I’ve had a wheel fail in under two years was when the freewheel on a Hugi hub broke.

[trailrunner]

Wheels should last longer than two years, unless you are completely abusing them. Your combined weight isn’t that much. I weigh that much by myself.

I’ve built a some wheels with Mavic CXP33 rims. I have two wheel sets with CXP33s and Chris King hubs, and have ridden over 10k road miles on each wheel set. They are still going strong.

[trailrunner]

There’s plenty of life left in those brake pads. The bike I’m riding to work tomorrow morning has far less material.

Since you asked about a parts washer – I have an ultrasonic cleaner and clean some of my parts in it, some of the time. Before I got my ultrasonic cleaner, I made a poor man’s sonic cleaner by placing my parts in an old powdered gatorade tub, filling it with cleaner or solvent, and put it on the washing machine during a wash cycle. Anyway, I use the parts washer when I’m doing a complete overhaul of something like a hub or rear DR. The chain on my commuter bike used to get filthy because my old commuting route seemed to have a lot of sand, so every now and then I’d run it through the cleaner. The ultrasonic cleaner does do a good job of getting it real clean. I might’ve put a cassette in the washer a couple of times, but a cassette is probably easier to clean while on the wheel by flossing it with an old rag.

[trailrunner]

@BobCochran 153219 wrote:

I don’t get how a Firefly or Moots product can cost over $8000. I figure that that amount must be 75% profit to the manufacturer. Just like cars prices: inflated because people are willing to pay what is being asked.

I don’t know much about Firefly, but I doubt that Moots has a 75 percent profit margin.

[trailrunner]

First of all, you didn’t specify if you wanted a road frame or a mountain bike frame, but from the sound of things, you want a mountain bike frame.

The 19 on your bike most likely refers to the size for a mountain-bike (or flat-bar) bike. In the old days, those bikes were measured in inches, whereas road bikes were measured in cm. The numbers nominally refer to the seat tube length, but there were several different ways to measure this, such as center-to-center and center-to-top. Nowadays, a lot of bike manufacturers do not use this method, and instead use S, M, L, XL, sometimes with intermediate sizes, such as ML. In your case, go to the Jamis website and look up the measurements of your frame, and try to replicate that. Usually the two most important measurements are top-tube length and seat-tube length. Another idiosyncrasy of measuring frame sizes is dealing with sloping top tubes, so keep that in mind if you run across virtual top-tube lengths. You should buy your frame to as close to the proper size you need, and fine-tune the size with things like stem length and rise. There’s only so much you can do with the fine-tuning, so getting the proper frame size is important. This is actually a whole topic by itself, but getting the proper fit is perhaps the most important thing factor in getting a new bike.

You didn’t say why you wanted to build up a bike. If it’s to save money, you will likely be disappointed unless you already have bins of parts in your basement that you can use to build a franken-bike. If you are buying all the parts separately, or even starting with a groupset, you will likely wind up paying 2-3x more than if you bought the bike complete and already assembled from your LBS. If you’re building the bike to get the experience and the satisfaction of riding something you built, then that’s a great reason. Depending on what kind of general tools you already have, you will still need to buy some specialized tools.

As far as rust goes, a little surface rust is OK. Use common sense. I probably wouldn’t pay for a used frame with rust unless it was something I just had to have. As far frame painting goes, that’s one thing that I don’t do. I’ve built and re-built bikes from scratch, but I will pay someone else do the painting for me. I just don’t like painting, and there are places that will do it all, including prep work, cheap enough (~$100, IIRC). I’ve had frames powder coated and painted, and I’ve used local places as well as places where I had to send my frame in. I usually opt for a utilitarian, single color, but there are places that specialize in completely replicating the original frame color scheme, complete with stickers. Those are usually for restoring classic or vintage frames, not for the run-of-the-mill commuter.

MFC recommended Nashbar, and that’s a good idea. They usually have some cheap, generic, not ultra-light frames for $100-150 or so. I’ve never bought one, but I know people who have, and they are attractive for building a basic bike.

You should also keep in mind basic compatabilities for things like bottom bracket type, headset size and type, seat post size, drop out spacing, disc brake mountings, and things like that. And when you start building it up, you have to ensure that your parts are compatible with the frame and with each other. It’s not rocket surgery, but it’s something that you need to keep in mind.

[trailrunner]

I bought a Minoura truing stand probably 20 years ago. Like you, I couldn’t see myself justifying the price for a Park stand, even though I normally don’t mind spending money on quality tools (I own most of the Chris King tools). I’ve built maybe 15 wheels with it, and trued many more wheels, and it has worked fine for me.

Here is a current version of my truing stand, with a nicer looking checking gauge than I have:

http://www.minoura.jp/english/tool-e/ft1-e.html

[trailrunner]

Tip: One of the best ways I’ve found for keeping my feet warm are Polartech or fleece socks. I bought a couple pair from REI a long time ago, and use them on the coldest days. They work great. Thick snowboarding socks also work well.

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