Bicycling

Where Were You Mike?

Two weeks ago I was on a road bike ride when I flatted. Go read Thanks Mike and come back, I’ll wait.

Today is Sunday and I didn’t take my usual Sunday morning ride out to the end of Lakeshore Drive and back. The Oregon Interscholastic Cycling League was holding a big race near the mid-ride point, so I thought it best to avoid the area. I also started the ride a little later than usual, so I opted for the mountain bike and just rode the local alleys, a bit of a couple bike paths and some neighborhood roads.

While headed home the front tire started to buzz more than expected of a knobby tire on pavement should. As I continued on, the buzzing increased in volume – whirrrrrrrrrrrrr. I had a puncture. I made it a block and a half before the tire was so flat that if I turned the handlebars it would probably squirm right off the rim.

I have a seat bag that has a spare tube and a flat kit just for this occasion. so in theory I should be able to fix my problem. But I didn’t even try. At this point I was just 6 blocks from home so I didn’t need a Mike rescue this time, I just walked the last 4/10 of a mile home.

And to answer my parenthetical question of two weeks ago, it is not always the rear wheel.

Thanks Mike

Today is Sunday and I took my usual Sunday morning ride out to the end of Lakeshore Drive and back. This gives me a nice little 15 mile ride, but today I only made it about 4-1/2 miles. At first it sounded like I sucked a tumbleweed into my back wheel, but when I looked back, there was nothing visible, but audible was a different story – hisssssss. I had a puncture.

I did a quick U-turn thinking maybe I could ride a ways back towards home, but that wasn’t happening. As soon as I got going in that direction the air had all escaped. I walked a few steps to get out from in front of someone’s driveway and settled in to see about patching my new hole in a tube.

I’ve been carrying around a modified water bottle with flat repair stuff inside just for this occasion. It used to be on the tandem so the spare tube in there wouldn’t fit the road bike, but there was a quick patch kit, 3 tire irons and a CO2 inflater with a couple cartridges so in theory I should be able to fix my problem.

I had just removed the rear wheel (why is it always the rear wheel?) when a fellow in a Honda CRV stopped next to me and zipped down the window, “Need some help?” I replied, “Not sure, but I might.” I told him I thought that I had the stuff to fix the issue, but hadn’t really checked yet. He pulled over, walked back and asked if it would be easier if he just gave me a lift home. It took me roughly 38 milliseconds to run through the hassle of doing the work on the side of the road in my head and the possibility of failure before I said, “If it isn’t too much trouble, I’ll take that ride.”

Turns out, he is also a cyclist and knew first hand the hassle of trying to fix a flat on the side of the road and the indignity of walking several miles home pushing, not riding, your bike. And one time when he had a flat someone stopped and offered him a ride home, so this was his way of paying that fellow back and leveling the cosmic score.

Later in the morning, for a test I attempted to fix the flat with the stuff inside that water bottle. I could, but in 10 minutes in my garage, who knows how it would have gone out there in the wild.

Thanks Mike.

Broken Spokes

Toward the end of June I took the road bike out for a ride for the first time in a while. I was going down a small hill not far from home slow with hands on the brakes because of the stop sign ahead and because of the cracks in the road. Halfway down I heard the distinctive “PING” of a spoke breaking and I could see the front wheel wobble in a singular spot. I opened the front brake so the rim wouldn’t scrape against them and turned for home.

I dropped the wheel off at the the local bike store to get it fixed and they said it would be done later that day or at worse tomorrow for a total cost of $37 ($36 for labor and $1 for the spoke. True to their word, early the next day I received a text to let me know the wheel was ready. I brought it home and stuck on the bike, but things were busy, so I didn’t take the bike out for a spin.

A couple days later I had time for a ride, so I got all dressed and ready to go, but when I went to roll the bike out of the garage the back tire was being tugged at by the brakes. I lifted the back wheel off the ground and spun it. The rim was contacting the brake pad in one spot. Sure enough, there was another broken spoke! I only heard one “PING”, did the two spokes, on different wheels, break in sync?

I took the second wheel down to the bike store. This time the repair was going to take week because they were backlogged. I bought this bike, used, in 2016 and from my research it was actually brand new in the year 2000 based on the color, so probably these rims are 22 years old. Wondering if this broken spoke problem will continue because of their age, I asked how much it would cost to have the wheels rebuilt using all new spokes. So, the total would be: 32 spokes per wheel, 2 wheels $64 plus the labor of $90 per wheel equals $244. This makes it, based on the fairly inexpensive group set of the bike, a better to just buy a new set of wheels.

The back wheel was ready yesterday afternoon, so this morning I got to go for a ride. I didn’t break any new spokes so maybe that whole conversation about new spokes or wheels is moot.

47.4 miles on 5 drives in the last week or so.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 47

Moore Park Monday and OC&E Trail Tuesday


No Snow Plow Needed

Today to celebrate the first day of summer we rode our mountain bikes 9 miles1 on a section of the OC&E Woods Line State Trail, a 109-mile rail to trail State Park. We have walked or rod bike ridden the first paved 10 miles of the trail before, but this is the first time for riding on the first bit of the unpaved 100 miles section going east out of town.

Yesterday we did our usual walk along the trails of our favorite Klamath Falls park for Moore Park Monday.

7.3 miles to Moore Park for Moore Park Monday.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 34

 

GCN

While we don’t cycle as much as we used to, we still like to watch the professionals do it. Every July since in the early 90’s we have watched the Tour de France on whatever network has shown it. Probably for the last decade or so we have subscribed to NBC Sports Gold, the most recent home of the Tour de France 3-week grand tour.

Along with the Tour de France NBC Sports Gold showed several other races as well, from a couple of spring classic one day events, to a couple of week long races like the Tour Down Under in Australia and Paris-Nice in France. We have also been able to watch the Vuelta a España, one of the three other 3-week grand tours.

The only 3-week grand tours we have never seen is the Giro d’Italia, well, that changes this year. Turns out that Global Cycling Network, something that started in 2013 as a YouTube channel, now carries the Italian grand tour. We have signed up for the month of May for GCN+ for a mere $9 just so we can see this grand tour. They also carry tons of other races from Europe, so maybe we just might sign up for a whole ($45) so we can get all sorts of commercial free cycling content.

18.5 mile trip to the Running Y for a 3 mile walk.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 18

 

Mini and Bicycle Racks

We have the 2-bike version of the Saris Bones rack that is perfect for the Miata and carrying our road bikes (or in a pinch the tandem), but now we also have a Mini and mountain bikes. Because of the plastic roof small lip spoiler on the Mini there is no place to hook what would be the top straps of the Bones without risking breaking that plastic piece. After doing a bunch of online searching around the Mini Forums and not really finding anyone with a good work around, they just put the straps on ignoring the pressure on the lip, I was about to give up when I had an idea – a pool noodle.

I went to my favorite store, Amazon, and found the largest diameter noodle with the highest density and bought an Oodles Monster Jumbo Pool Noodle. When I got it, I cut it to the length of the width of the back window to try it out. I got the rack arms adjusted to get them parallel to the ground and braced the bottom legs on the bumper. I then lengthened the straps so I could get them hooked in the right spots. The top straps hooked in on top and the noodle was just right in keeping any pressure off the lip spoiler, the side straps hooked on the body of the door, not the glass, but the bottom straps would not reach the bottom of the hatch door. I think it might have worked without them, but I would probably get some longer ones for some enhanced security.

Seeing as I have never tried the mountain bikes with the Bones rack, now was the time. I went and got my MTB to put on spot closest to the car because it is the tallest. Because of the frame geometry the bike rested in a nose down attitude, unlike the level look of the road bikes. The frame tubes are rectangular, not round, they didn’t rest in the cradle nicely, but with the three loops tightened it was held in tightly. I then grabbed Donna’s size small framed bike (mine is a large) and it would not go over the rack arms, there just wasn’t a large enough opening in the frame. Now what?

My first thought was returning to a roof rack, we used to have one that was universal and removable, so I researched the genuine Mini rack first. This has the benefit of being designed for the car. The roof rack base system is a couple hundred dollars, the rack itself is about $150 and you need two of them, so this would cost roughly $500 to out fit the car. I think this is the best way to accomplish this and I an order would already be placed except for the negatives. Firstly, this would be mounted on the car at all times generating wind noise, slightly decreasing gas mileage and getting all covered in bugs. Some of this could be eliminated by removing the bike rack section, leaving the base, but this increases time and trouble when you do want to transport the bikes. Secondly, there is the issue of having to lift the bikes up onto the roof, I am tall enough, but my MTB weighs 35 pounds, and that is a lot of unwieldy to hoist up that far making the chance for a mistake of scratching the car or dropping the bike a consideration.

Option #2 was a trailer hitch mounted rack. This option comes in around $400 if I do the work of installing the $200 trailer hitch. You have to remove the rear bumper which according to folks on the Mini Forums only takes an hour to 1-1/2 which translates into around 4 to 5 hours in real life. The pluses are that you only need to lift the bikes a foot off the ground, it is easy to put on and take off and you have zero chance of shearing everything off the roof when you drive into your garage forgetting about the bikes. The big negative is that the trailer hitch receiver comes out of middle of the bumper and you lose your back up light/rear fog lamp assembly. No one on the forums mentioned anything about whether the car throws a code because of this, I would think with the electrics being on a CANBUS system there might be some issue.

The third possibility is a variation on the roof rack, a pair of Talon suction cup mounts from SeaSucker. This option costs about $500. This is the 21st century version of that original universal and removable rack as it is easy on and off, but the hoisting the bikes up issue still remains, although slightly easier because you get to remove the front wheel. But the removed front wheels now have to be stored inside the car, that is unless you want to spend another $250 for a pair of suctioned wheel mounts again for the roof. Other downsides are the trust issue of just suction cups alone holding your bikes on the roof, the extra care required to keep the car paint clean and unscratched, plus the ease of installation translates into ease of theft…

The fourth, and most radical, option is to just sell the Mini and buy a Jeep so we can get one of those bike racks that fit on the spare tire, but then again that probably wouldn’t fit Donna’s small framed MTB. Though a trailer hitch rack on the Jeep would be perfect. Now I just need to go start a GoFundMe site for that Wrangler…

Morning Bike Ride

That turned into a walk. The goal was getting some fresh bagels from downtown. I am almost positive this is only like the second time we have ridden the tandem since we have been in Oregon. We took it on our usual early morning route that we use on the mountain bikes, up the hill, down the hill, transit the Link River Trail, ride along Lake Ewuana and pass through downtown on the way back up the hill to home. The nearly 3 mile long Link River Trail is all gravel, but this should not be an issue for the tandem because we rode that Lock to Lock Ride in Augusta last may and the gravel portion of that was a lot nastier than this stuff.

After picking up the bagels and less than a 1/4 mile later the road suddenly turned rough. Turns out it wasn’t the road, but the lack of air in the rear tire. I hoisted the back of the bike, spun the back tire and Donna found a sand spur embedded in the middle of the tread. I don’t where we picked it up along the route, but I was pretty sure it was the culprit. Even though we carry everything needed to fix a flat, including a nice spare tube, seeing as it was the back tire and we were less than a mile from home we just walked it.

Later in the morning I went to fix the flat, I used the tools and supplies we were already carrying on the bike, but as it turned out we would have still had to walk home. The back wheel came off easy enough, the tire levers popped the tire free easy-peasy and the replacement tube went in fine, but because the rim has a slight aero profile the presta stem didn’t stick through far enough to get the CO2 cartridge inflator on well enough to fill the tire. There was a little Zefal Mini Pump in the trunk bag, but unfortunately that wouldn’t have helped either, somewhere along the line during the cross-country move it got swapped out for the schrader valve model.

I inventoried all our tire repair kits, spare tubes and inflators and created a list of needed items so that there would be enough for each style of bike to have whatever was needed, flat tire-wise, to prevent walking home in the future. Then off to Amazon to buy two CO2 inflators, a couple of patch kits and 4 inner tubes.

As an interesting side note, between us we have 5 bicycles, 2 mountain, 2 road and a tandem, and each and every one rides on a different size tire! My MTB has 29 x 2.0, hers has 27.5 X 2.0, while the tandem rides on 26 x 1.75. Her road bike has 27 X 1-1/8 tires and mine sports 700c X 25.