BikeSnobNYC's Blog, page 21

New Outside Column!

With the weekend lying tantalizingly before us like a freshly-unwrapped sandwich, I leave you with my latest column for Outside, which is about what a gigantic weenie I am:


While I didn't come up with the title and am a little uncomfortable with the word "great," ultimately I must acknowledge it's fitting given as this column is basically an act of supplication on my part.  Hey, over time we all find ourselves doing and saying stuff we never thought we would, to wit:

"My flip-flop just unplugged my Di2 derailleur" is a thing I never thought I'd type. But here we are.— Bike Snob NYC (@bikesnobnyc) August 2, 2018

There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for the circumstances that resulted in that tweet, but it's far more intriguing if you don't know what those circumstances were, so let's leave it at that.

Now I leave you go sink your teeth into the sandwich that is the weekend.  May all your rides be enjoyable, and may your lap be free from giant errant globs of egg salad.

Yours and so forth,


--Tan Tenovo

You Can't Spell "Science" Without a Gratuitous Silent "C." Think About It.

When it comes to reviewing bicycles, you'll hear a lot of "laterally stiff" this, and "vertically compliant" that, but not a lot of HARD SCIENCE--which is why I, in the name of the very hardest of sciences, went for another ride today.

Sadly, I don't have any photos from that ride as my phone died, so here is a picture of my cat:


So what made this ride scientific?  Well, I undertook almost exactly the same route as I did on Tuesday, when I used the Drysdale:

Only this time I used the Renovo:

I said my phone was dead, remember?
Okay, fine, here's a picture of the Renovo taken on a different occasion in my lavish photo studio:

Anyway, this is where the SCIENCE comes in.  See, in comparing the two rides via a certain social networking app for Freds and Fredericas we can see that astride the Drysdale I set a PERSONAL RECORD on this formidable 141ft snow-capped mountain:

Whereas today, at the helm of my wooden Fred chariot and upon the very same lofty summit, I made it up in...the exact same time:

Therefore, given all this scientific data, we can objectively and decisively conclude the following:
Riding bikes all day while everyone else is working is awesome.
Who knew?

So Many Bikes, So Little Time (Unless I Give Up My Daily Nap, Which I Refuse To Do)

As I mentioned yesterday, I've got a lot to test--and it ain't just limited to awesome stuff people send me, either.  I've also got to test out New York City's infrastructure, which is where I've been today:

Let's do this. pic.twitter.com/d6l6AZSbWW— Bike Snob NYC (@bikesnobnyc) August 1, 2018

See, we just got Jump bikes in the Bronx, and as the curator of the Bike Forecast it was recumbent upon me to try them out.  (If you're wondering how they are, you can head over there tomorrow to read all about it, but the short version is that they're great when they're working, which they mostly were not.)

So in summary, in order to dig my way out of the Testing Hole in which I now reside, I must:


Install hitch rack onto The Car The Bank Owns Until I Finish Paying Them BackPut Jones onto hitch rack and go somewhere so I can test both all simultaneous-likeInstall new chain on Renovo so I can resume testing (final verdict pending until completion of 2018 road racing season)Conduct additional Drysdale testing, weather permitting (need to see how it handles "gravel" bike duties)Oh, and at my Designated Juvenile Tester's request I've installed cyclocross tires on the Islabikes Luath 24:

(Cyclocross tires not shown because I forgot to take a pitcher.)
I then must subject him to intensive dismount/remount drills pending requisition of an appropriately loud megaphone.
Whew!
And for the commenter who mentioned my taking on an intern to help me with these duties, I've already done that in the past, and while I no doubt set my former intern on the path to success his tenure did not increase the efficiency of my operation in any way.
So you can tell the HR department to shove it.

Leather 'N Wool

Sorry for my absence, I was out doing important research:


That is of course the Drysdale from Classic Cycle, which I've been remiss in riding, and so I corrected that by heading out today in high Retro-Fred style right down to the shoes:

Rest assured I'll be providing a thorough accounting in due course.
Also, just as I was in the middle of lashing my feet to the pedals, the FedEx guy emerged from his truck and presented me with this:

Consequently I had to untie myself from the bike and run it upstairs before heading out.
Wow!  So many bikes and sundries to evaluate!  How can I do it all?  I'm only...one man!
Oh well, guess I'll have to just keep fucking off and riding every day for the rest of the summer.

When Your Words Come Back To Haunt You

***My fellow New Yorkers: Sign the Complete the Concourse petition.  Thank you***

In my most recent Outside column I wrote about old bike stuff that still works good:


One of those stuffs was inner tubes, about which I had this to say:


Well, wouldn't you know it, shortly after sharing this column last Friday I headed out on the Jones SWB Complete for a ride:

It was one of those rides that was so enjoyable I kept congratulating myself as I rode for managing to steal away, and while I'd only planned on a fairly short outing I kept making additional withdrawals from the mileage bank since this bike just makes you want to ramble:

Eventually I decided to head up to my favorite lunch spot:

That being the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture:

Where I like to splurge every so often on something sustainably curated such as this:

Moreover, I decided I'd get to Stone Barns via some singletrack I don't know all that well and that I probably shouldn't even be writing about for the sake of discretion, but what does it matter really since who even reads this blog anymore anyway?
In any event, there I was roughly 20 miles into my ride, now riding the aforementioned singletrack with visions of artisanal quiche dancing in my head and still patting myself on the back with every pedal stroke for what an awesome ride I was having.  Then, just as the trail started getting unfamiliar, I felt my rear tire go soft.  Flat tire.  Goddamn it.
Hey, no big deal.  Naturally I always carry a tube and a patch kit.  So I hopped off the bike and got to work.
This is where my words in Outside came back to taunt me.
The Jones is tubeless-ready, but of course it comes with tubes installed.  The Marin is also tubeless-ready, and it also comes with tubes installed.  But while I've never had any difficulty replacing a tube on the Marin (which I guess is why I never bothered to go tubeless in the first place), the Jones was another story.  The wheel/tire combo is snug.  Really snug.  Of course you want this when you're setting up tubeless, but when you're using tubes in the woods what it means is a protracted struggle that involves sweating profusely as mosquitos swarm all around your person and you push your wimpy thumbs to the breaking point.
Then, when I finally got the tube in, it turned out my diminutive hand pump was not powerful enough to push the tire bead completely out of the channel in the center of the rim.  (The fact that I was using an undersized tube didn't help.)  That meant that even at maximum pressure there was a gap between the tire bead and the rim that looked like this:

See?

So of course I did what any reasonable person would do:
Ride it anyway and hope he tire would seat itself eventually.
It did not.
By now time was becoming a factor (I had to be home to parent), so not only did I give up on my Stone Barns repast but I also abandoned the trail and simply bushwhacked to the nearest roadway where I emerged sweaty, dirty, and irritated.  No sooner had I remounted when another of my Outside columns came to life and a driver attempted to stop me for directions.  Before he could even finish I replied with my usual "I don't know I don't live around here," at which point the driver began to argue and insist I must know where he wanted to go, and the fact that I didn't put the Jones through his windshield should qualify me for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The upshot of all of this was that I spent the entire trip home bucking and undulating on my wobbly unseated rear tire like a novice equestrian who's never learned how to post.  This was bad enough on the flats, but on the downhills it was severe enough to nearly throw me.  So by the time I got home I was...cranky.  
Needless to say I set the Jones up tubeless the first chance I got over the weekend, and ironically the very snugness that made my trailside repair attempt so frustrating meant that I was able to get the tire seated with an ordinary floor pump.  (I should probably get one of those tubeless-compatible floor pumps, but I haven't yet.)  So all is right with the world.

Indeed, by way of redemption I headed out for a truncated version of Friday's ride on the now-tubeless Jones this very morning and had a positively delightful time:


So, in conclusion, if you order yourself a Jones SWB Complete (which you should), save yourself some time and do the tubeless setup as soon as you take it out of the box.  You'll be glad you did.  Once you get the tube out of there everything should also seal up easily thanks to the snug fit.  All you'll need is a couple of tubeless valve stems and the sealant of your choice.  (I make my own out of pancake batter.)  Then just roll up one of the tubes and carry it with you for emergencies.  (Maybe if I'd used a full-sized tube I'd have been able to get the tire seated out on the trail.)
You're welcome.

New Outside Column About Old Parts

As I gird myself for a solid round of Jones testing today, I leave you with my latest column for Outside:


The inspiration for this particular treatise came when I passed my eleventy millionth rider with a subtly-hued and tastefully-patterned jersey, canvas handlebar bag, 32mm skinwall tires, and disc brakes.  Of course I like all these things, but being a dedicated contrarian, now that it's how you're supposed to do bikes it just doesn't have the same appeal.  Does this mean I suffer from the "indie syndrome" whereby I'm into something until it attains a certain degree of popularity at which point I announce contemptuously that I'm "over it"?  You're goddamn right it does!  Come on, the fact that I'm one of those assholes is the whole reason I started this blog in the first place!
So look for me in a vintage Primal jersey riding a bike with 23mm tires in a painstakingly contrived attempt to be different.

With that, I now grant you permission to leave work early and scamper off into the horizon on the bicycle of your choosing, and I will do the same.  See you next week, suckers.
Until then, I remain,
Yours and so forth,

--Tan Tenovo

Big Pulley Wheel Keep On Turning

With the New York City area languishing in a state of hot sogginess I have been sticking to the road as of late, braving the precipitation and concomitant grit astride my Milwaukee:


Note diminutive filth prophylactic instead of full-coverage fenders, as in summer I prefer to keep my wheels unadorned to facilitate offroad detours:


Note also the photo is blurry as my camera lens got all schmutzy from the rain in which I got caught.

As things sort of maybe start to dry out I look forward to resuming Jones testing, but lamentably I've totally fallen off the back with regard to following the Tour de France.  This is too bad, because it looks like it's really getting good:

Froome was very angry: “Fuck you!” @BorjaCuadrado @ProCyclingStats @DiarioMarca_ @diarioas @CiclismoInter @teledeporte @esport3 @pedrodelgadoweb @Eurosport @antoalix pic.twitter.com/2JEFpjCneM— Albert Secall (@albertsecall) July 25, 2018

I know how upset I am when people fail to recognize me as the World's Greatest Bike Blogger and lavish me with praise and discounts, so I can only imagine the indignity of winning the Tour de France five times and then getting tackled like some Fondo-riding plebe.

Of course every Tour has its little bit of signature tech, and this year even I've noticed that it's these fidget spinner derailleur pulleys:


Like most hop-ups of this nature I never really stopped to contemplate the reasoning behind them, but here it is:

“The biggest advantage is friction reduction, or increasing the efficiency of the drivetrain,” says Smith. “There’s a couple of ways the OSPW reduces friction. In other words, it’s part of a system. The biggest factor is the larger pulley wheels. The less amount a chain has to articulate as it engages and disengages the pulley wheels, the less friction is produced. The next thing is on the larger pulley wheels, the bearings spin slower so you don’t have as much drag there.”

Sounds reasonable enough...but then you get to the price:

If it sounds like we’re only focusing on CeramicSpeed, there’s a good reason for that. Few other companies are offering oversized pulley wheels and its OSPW are, by and large, the pulleys of choice in the pro peloton.

Even with CeramicSpeed’s system, you can run into some problems. First and foremost, the upgrade doesn’t come cheap. But the $500 price aside, it’s possible your shifting performance can suffer due to the lighter derailleur tension.

Amazing.

I'll wait until next year when they release the $750 ovalized version.

And no Tour de France would be complete without an article from a mainstream newspaper about the science behind it:


The big revelation?  Being completely surrounded by people blocks most of the wind:

According to a new study published in the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, riders in the belly of a peloton are exposed to 95% less drag than they would experience riding alone. Which explains the sensation all riders describe of being sucked along by the bunch while barely having to pedal.

You don't fucking say.


Here's another science fact: by sitting in the peloton and using an oversized derailleur pulley you can actually exceed the speed of linear time and arrive two to three seconds before the riders who are physically ahead of you.

Anyway, you can have confidence in the wind resistance study, because they used "three billion calculation points:"
The study took Blocken’s team a year and a half, in part because of the computing power required. The 121-rider simulation involved a staggering three billion calculation points, Blocken said, in order to reflect every dynamic right down to the 1-millimeter pocket of air that surrounds each rider. The results were confirmed by four separate wind-tunnel tests, including one that featured quarter-scale models of 121 cyclists in race positions.

Calculation points are to studies as engagement points are to rear hubs.

Or something.

There's only one problem:

“We have a problem now,” Blocken said when he finished the study, “because no one is going to believe us.”

You're wrong on that.  I'm a career wheelsucker who buries himself in the pack like a tick on the back of the knee.  You're not telling me anything I don't know.

Finally, further to my last post, not too long ago I made a snippy tweet about a helmet giveaway:

Gotta condition the next generation of victim-blamers.https://t.co/q2AzVzuDze pic.twitter.com/fE4y5Pf07C— Bike Snob NYC (@bikesnobnyc) July 18, 2018

And then today I was sickened to read this:

"The day before the fatal crash, Somerset police spotted the boy bike riding with his father and gave him a gift certificate to a local ice cream shop because he was wearing a helmet. 'I guess it's kind of ironic in a very sad way,'"https://t.co/DIrZaKqDed— Peter Flax (@Pflax1) July 26, 2018

Fuck.

This is exactly why all these helmet articles and giveaways and all the assorted propaganda are so infuriating: every ounce of energy and attention we waste on it helps make sure we'll never focus on the real problem, which is that our streets are so unconscionably dangerous that riding a bicycle (and on a bike path in this case) is a death sentence for a child.

And this???

“I guess it's kind of ironic in a very sad way,” said Somerset Police Chief George McNeil. “(It’s) just a tragic accident.”

Ironic?  It's fucking tragic.

And it happened on your watch--in a place you knew was dangerous:

It isn't the first time a bicyclist is hit by a car at that section of Poppasquash Road.

There have been five incidents of bicyclists being hit by cars during the past 17 years; however, none of the bicyclists were seriously injured.

Ironic my ass.

Much Ado About Helmets

It's summer, so you know what that means: time to freak out about helmets!


I like the original photo they used better, which featured a kid wearing a helmet in the highly popular and highly ineffective sunbonnet style:


Though in their defense it's almost impossible to find a picture of a kid wearing a helmet properly.  Why?  Because they're kids!  Kids are small humans who are only just learning how to tie their shoes, use the toilet, and consume food without getting it all over themselves.  The idea then that they should be able to wear helmets properly is patently absurd.
Oh, sure, I know: it's your job as the parent to make sure the helmet fits properly.  Yeah, right.  Anybody who's ever dressed a child knows this is a load of shit.  You're lucky if you can get them out the door with their pants on the right way, let alone with a perfectly-fitted helmet on their heads.  Might as well try getting them to balance a tray loaded with canapés while you're at it.
But it's not enough to get them to wear helmets; you've also got to wear yours to set an example:
And it isn’t just about making your children wear helmets; when parents wear helmets, they are not only protecting themselves, but research has shown that when parents model the safe behavior, it’s more likely that children will be putting those helmets on themselves. Make sure the child is riding a bike the right size, and make sure the helmet fits correctly.
Bullshit.  I set a good example by riding a bicycle in the first place--in flip-flops with my remaining hairs fluttering unfettered in the breeze--and pointing out all the other stupid shit everyone else is doing.  The lessons continue off the bike, and my son and I are currently engaged in picking this moronic commercial apart:

Who is GMC going for here exactly?  "You know, I really love riding this lightweight racing bicycle, but I'd really rather be carrying it around in a bloated, fuel-guzzling, poorly-handling truck."

But hey, at least the kid's wearing a helmet:


What's really vexing about this article though is that it's all about how you and your kids should wear helmets at all times, yet it provides absolutely no compelling evidence for this.  In fact the closest it comes to citing any sort of figures is this extraordinarily convoluted paragraph:


Good luck making any sense out of that.  Then when you click through to the source you find this:
So basically you're more likely to sustain a TBI or wind up in the hospital if you get hit by a car than if you don't regardless of what you've got on your head.
No shit, assholes.
And if you don't think this helmet fixation is toxic just dip into the comments on the article, which include brilliant insights like this:
My kids always ask me why the various cyclists we encounter daily aren't wearing helmets. Does it matter that I wear mine, when so many other people they see don't? How far does parental influence cover? Non-parents need to think about this, too, because they're setting an example as well, just by existing in society and being seen. The adult cyclists who wear helmets tend to be the older ones, either parents or just wiser who know better. It's the young ones who still think they're invincible that blow through red lights and don't wear helmets. We need to target them, somehow.
Yes, that's right, even if you don't have kids you should wear your helmet just so some self-righteous parents don't have to explain to their precious foam-hatted darling why you're not.
Please.  
Here's a parenting tip: When your kids ask you why someone's not wearing a helmet, or smoking, or walking around with an obscene word tattooed on their skin, it's never too early to teach them the importance of minding your own fucking business.

This Just In: I Typed Words and Outside Put Them On Their Website!

What better way to start out the week than with an Outside column by ME?



Well, there are probably many better ways, but tough shit.
One thing we're not starting the week off with here in New York is good weather.  In fact it's supposed to rain pretty much forever:

I'm sorry to report this is entirely my fault.  See, recently I got this sweet new bike and I was looking forward to riding it all this week on a variety of different unpaved survaces:

So of course the Great Lobster On High has seen fit to punish me by unleashing an eternal rain and forcing me to stick to the roads, and the rest of you are collateral damage.
I'm also sorry to report that after enthusiastically watching the first week of the Tour de France I've now slid irretrievably off the back and have no idea what's happening--sort of like how I enthusiastically returned to racing this year, slid irretrievably off the back, and have no idea what's happening.
Funny how that works...

Later For Now!

Good morning!

Alas, if you're looking for me here you're not going to find me until Monday, because I live to disappoint you.  In my absence, updates will mysteriously appear on the Bike Forecast, and if something with my byline on it should materialize on the Outside website I'll do my best to let you know.  (In the meantime feel free to peruse my formidable body of work.)

In the meantime, I managed to knock out another ride on the Jones SWB Plus complete earlier this morning:


Notice I've officially transferred the Jones handlebar purse onto it so you know I mean business.

This bike and I have a lot more riding to do, and I have a lot more words to write (sorry), but for now I'll say that after 100-ish miles my impression is that you should purchase one immediately.  In fact, I like this bike so much that if you buy one and you don't like it I'll refund your money.*  If I could I'd take a full week off from on-line bloviating and parenting and my sundry responsibilities as an adult human being and just ride the hell out of this thing. 

What I'm saying is it's a fun bike.

And that's all from me for now!  See you next week, ride safe, and ride safely!


--Tan Tenovo




*[Disclaimer: this is a lie.  Under no circumstances will I give you any money at any time for any reason whatsoever.  If you don't like the bike there's probably something wrong with you anyway.  Caveat emptor, sucker.]