F**king cyclists

Driving my car, I pulled up to a stoplight the other day. Two vehicles in front of me, another behind, at least two on the other side of the intersection, all of us waiting for the red light. A cyclist pulls up to the front on the other side of the intersection, slows down just long enough to look both ways, then crosses under the red light. Right in front of at least five drivers.
As he is passing me, I say out the window, "Sir, that's a red light and you have to stop and wait for it."
He couldn't believe that someone would chastise him for exercising his right to do whatever the hell he wants, so he pulls around my back, circles the car and comes up to my window, just out of my reach. He says, "Is it any of your business how I ride my bike?"
I say, "Yes, it IS my business how you ride your bike. I own a bicycle shop, I contribute to bicycle advocacy organizations who lobby for YOUR RIGHTS, and I ride around this city all the time. And I'm telling you with great certainty that YOU MUST STOP AND WAIT FOR THAT RED LIGHT."
He just stood there, dumbfounded. Surprised, that it really IS my business how he rides his bike.
Now the light is green, and he's stuck there in the wrong lane and people are honking. So I turn away from him and drive off.
Amateur. Selfish clown. Does he have any idea how much damage he does with a stupid stunt like that? Does he realize that he makes us all look bad? What does he think all those drivers are thinking when he blows off the red light?


I'm riding to work one morning, and I pull up to a red light westbound at Chenango and Broadway. It's one of those intersections that aren't timed-if you're a pedestrian you punch the button and if you're in a car the sensor in the concrete picks it up and you're in the system. If you're on a bicycle you are screwed-the light doesn't even know you're there-you either have to go over and hit the button (leave your bike parked in the street, because you can't have a vehicle on the sidewalk) or you wait for a car to pull up and trigger the light, or you wait forever. Or you blow off the light. Tough choice.
On this particular morning, a car was opposite me waiting for the light, so I knew that it would turn green soon. I'm in my lane, there's no doubt which direction I'm going, and there's another car pulling into line behind me. We're all waiting patiently for the light, when another cyclist pulls up beside me. On a fixed-gear, with cards in the spokes, stupid-narrow handlebar, dirty little bikey cap, faux-broken-in messenger bag, cutoff plaid pants, tattoos, piercings, chains, the whole poser deal. He touches down, he's looking both ways and inching forward like he's going to just go on through, so I say, "How are you doing this morning?"
This puts him off his guard and, surprised, he looks over at me with a "you talking to me?" look.
"Where you headed?" I ask.
"Downtown" was his curt reply. And he's inching forward again, looking both ways.
"How long you been riding a fixxie?" I ask. He gives me another one of those "why the f**k are you wasting my time?" looks.
I smile.
"Seven months," he says. A real pro. And he starts inching forward again, in a terrific hurry to get to the coffee shop I guess.
I know what's going on here, and so does he, so I'm ready now to stop messing around. "You need to wait for that red light," I say, "we don't want to make a bad show for these drivers."
Which he did.
The End.

Ride More

WHAT ARE YOU STANDING THERE FOR?
GET YOUR HANDS OUT OF YOUR POCKETS.
DID YOU RIDE HERE?
HELLOOO?
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?
GET BACK TO WORK.
WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?
KEEP AT IT.
STOP WHINING.
FOCUS.
PUSH.
PEDAL.

O The Horror

I acquired a cool old German trombone a few weeks ago, actually a VERY old (100 years?) trombone that had evidently been sitting in someone's attic or barn for a few decades. I'd been looking for a good example of an instrument like this, at a reasonable price, and finally found one. Big bell, wide bore, no modern features like tuning slide or spit valve or leadpipe, just a long sliding tube with solid nickel ferrules and some snakey decoration. They are reputed to have a unique sound, appropriate for Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, and other romantic-era orchestral works. If not to actually perform on, an instrument like this at least gives a valuable insight into a certain repertoire.

It arrived in a giant box full of packing peanuts, completely assembled in the state it was recovered. I couldn't help myself, as soon as I had it removed from the packing I wiped off the mouthpiece and blew a note. Kinda stuffy. Try a different note. Still awfully stuffy. I pushed out the slide (awful), blew through it, checked both inner tubes, looked fine. Then I looked into the bell. Something was stuck in it, looked like a rag or some leaves. I ran a brake cable backwards through the bell section and this popped out:



ARRGGH! PTOOEY! BLECH! PFFT! PFFT! Wiping my mouth on my shirt, spitting, horking, ack where's my toothbrush?! YUCK! PTOOEY!

There are actually two mice in that blob. Count the legs and tails. Evidently the horn was stored bell-up, and some hungry little guy went snooping around where he shouldn't be, fell in, and couldn't get out. So his friend comes over to see what happened, and he falls in too. And here they are, decades later, dead, rotten, and mummified, exhumed from their brassy tomb. What a way to go.

Shimmy Shake Rattle and Roll

There has been a lot of talk lately about front wheel shimmy. Again. Online discussions, Calfee's owners' forum and his own theories regarding fork alignment, a recent accident among my clientele, shop discussions, personal experiences and hearsay. A woman died recently after losing control at high speed-witnesses said that her front wheel was shaking violently. Everybody's weighing in, regarding forks, headsets, wheels, tires, air pressure, frames, hand position, wind, etc. It's the same discussion we had last year, and the year before that. One summer it seems we've settled on HEADSETS as the culprit. Next year, TIRES. This year, it seems we're going toward FRAMES or FORKS.

But it's serious business, as any one who has experienced it will attest. What causes it? What enables it?

I submit that front wheel shimmy can be best explained (and perhaps solved) by acoustics. At a particular speed, your front wheel is rotating at a certain RPM. That number is a Frequency, which corresponds to a particular pitch, or musical note. When that frequency matches the resonant frequency of a component (fork, frame, handlebars), that component will resonate sympathetically.  If the component is not damped (by your arms, for example), the resonance will propagate.

A fork on a bicycle is like a tuning fork. It has a fundamental frequency and a series of overtones that are related mathematically to the length of its legs. If you have a fork separated from its frame, hold it by the steerer and give the fork ends a strum with your hand, then hold the end up to your ear. Hear that low pitch? Feel it in your hand? That's the fundamental. Now, (carefully) whack the fork on the edge of your workbench. Hear the higher pitches, the klang? Those are the overtones, which might be out of tune with each other (which is why it's a klang and not a beautiful note-it's a bicycle fork, not a musical instrument). The fundamental pitch is easiest to initiate, and WHEN, not IF, the frequency of your front wheel revolutions matches the frequency of that fundamental, your bike is going to start shaking.  The pitch will resonate, and will grow (propagate) if not damped somehow.  It might be slight or unnoticeable, it might be dramatic, but it will happen. If you have a stiff fork, the frequency will be higher and your shimmy will occur at a higher speed. If you have a flexible fork, or a longer fork (ie: cyclocross), the fundamental frequency will be lower and your shimmy will occur at a lower speed. If you go slower or faster, the shimmy will disappear, or the wheel RPM will induce an overtone frequency and will be felt as vibration, or perhaps a rattle of some sort.

Your wheels are not perfectly balanced. Lift up the front of your bike by the handlebars, and you will notice that the front wheel will turn and settle to a particular spot. The heaviest point of the rim/tire/tube combination settles to the bottom, and will be located at the rim joint (most commonly), or possibly the valve, or where the heaviest part of your tube is, or where your tire liner overlaps itself, or where your sealant has pooled. Remove the wheel from the bike, hold it in front of you by the skewer, and give it a spin with your fingers. Even if you have an ultra-light, high-zoot wheel, it will want to move up and down in space.  It might wobble or cavitate if the heavy spot is on the side (say, a tire boot or computer magnet), or if the wheel is out of dish.  That's the heavy spot you're feeling, and it's also the frequency of rotation. In mechanics, it is known as RPM, but in music it is known as pitch. It's actually making a sound, something like 1 or 2 Hertz, but that's way lower than the threshold of human hearing. Which is why we call it 110 RPM rather than C-sharp.

Automotive mechanics has parallels. If your front wheels are out of balance, at higher speeds your steering wheel will shake. If you have a fouled or broken sparkplug or wire, one cylinder will misfire and the motor will jiggle on its mounts. Bad CV-joint? Big noise, big trouble. It will shake itself to pieces and put you into the ditch. The next time you're under your car, look at the driveshaft-you will probably see little squares of steel welded on here and there, which balance it. When I replaced the u-joints on my old Z, the manual stated that you must mark the position of the knuckles in relation to the shaft, and replace them in exactly the same way. They were balanced.

When you turn your cel phone to "silent," or "buzz," you engage a little out-of-balance motor rather than your ring tone. When you get a call, the motor spins and it shakes so badly that you can feel it in your pocket, and you know that a call is coming in.

There are other resonant frequencies on a bicycle. The distance from the fork end to the handlebar ends, for example. Or the entire distance from the front axle through the frame to the rear axle.  On my old noodle Tommaso, I don't think I get a fork shimmy but I do get a wobble from the frame.  It happens around 15-17mph, so its frequency would have a longer acoustic length, perhaps the distance from my seatpost to the front end somewhere, or it might be the length of the entire fork.  When I sit up I can feel it immediately, and it will damp out if I put my hands on the ends of the handlebars, but it will not damp as quickly if I grab the handlebars near the stem.  Could it be the length of the fork plus handlebars?  The front wheel seems quiet, at higher speeds as well, but the frame is whipping back and forth.  It's quite dramatic and a little wild, actually. I showed a riding buddy once, and he thought I was going down. (I didn't-it looks worse than it actually is). If I go a bit faster, or slower, it doesn't happen.  If I input an interfering frequency by pedaling, it becomes intermittent.  It will wobble, then still, then wobble, then still (this might be a parallel to the beats you can hear when a perfect interval is not tuned well).  If I damp it between my legs, it stops. I recently took pains to balance the front wheel on that bike: we'll see if it helps.

Stealth Bike...NOT!

Vote for one:

Theftproof bike
What are you looking at?
Please-don't-remind-me-of-1989 bike
Gawd-I-can't-believe-I-had-one-of-those bike
I can't feel my legs
I love that bike
Ugliest bike
Awesome bike!
What's in the pink pack?

ps: note the perfectly matched pedals.

His New Fetish

Driving my son to school one morning I saw in my rearview mirror a car approaching fast. A rice-burner, with ground effects, carbon-fiber hood with nostrils, stupid stuff dangling from the rear-view mirror, etc. Like I said, approaching fast. Wanted to get up behind me before the light turned green, I suppose.
When he arrived, I saw the driver was talking on his cel phone. I looked again, and saw he wasn't talking, but rather, smooching, on his cel phone. Looking yet again, out of the corner of my eye, it seemed that he was actually smooching THE cel phone. Not talking, smooching. Rubbing it on his cheek. Fondling his cel phone. Touching it. Kissing it, licking it. Yes, licking it. Making some kind of love TO his CEL PHONE. Nobody on the other end, I swear, I was watching him in my rearview mirror, and there was no talking going on.
I was shocked.
What the hell kind of...?
A member of L. Ron Hoover's First Church of Appliantology? (See Frank Zappa, "Joe's Garage")
My mouth gaped. I unconsciously turned my face full-on toward my mirror and stared, and he evidently noticed the gesture. Down went the phone, up went the act like nothing happened. Cool, suave, studly dude. Race car driver.
Disconnected freak.
The light turned green, I took my time getting through the intersection, just to see what he'd do. Which was: turn left fast and get his embarrassed butt out of there.

Neat Stuff

"I was just riding along and..."
This is a plasti....er, Carbon Fiber handlebar that broke for no apparent reason. No known trauma, no twenty thousand miles, no rough-and-tumble cyclocrossing, and luckily nobody got hurt. Don't think that we are against carbon fiber-plenty of steel and aluminum and titanium parts have broken too, as you can see throughout this blog-just be reminded that you have to watch out for yourself. Inspect your tires often. Don't tolerate worn or ill-adjusted brakes. Investigate creaks and clicks. Be sensitive to sudden changes in your bike's handling qualities or "feel." Get a yearly, professional tuneup.


1986 ZINN
I had a dream about using brass, or bronze, for lugs, and a week later this guy shows up. I've never seen such a thing-this seatstay cap is polished brass. Cool.