Seattle Critical Mass

Posted on September 29, 2007 -- Edit Post
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Critical Mass, Events, Maps | Leave a Comment

Wow. Today was a day for bike riding I guess. I got up this morning and biked up to Green Lake to pick my car up from the mechanics. This wasn’t a small ride as far as I’m concerned (in my noob out of shapeness). It was 8 miles and up that big damn hill that is Stone Way. I picked my car up, and drove to work where Bryan told me Critical Mass was happening. Whats Critical Mass you may ask?

http://www.seattlecriticalmass.org/

The last Friday of every month, in 100 cities around the country, Critical Mass happens. Bicyclists in cities all around America (some 100 cities) meet at a designated spot – in Seattle its Westlake center – and go on a huge ride through the city. Basically its to get a good ride in, foster community among cyclists, and raise awareness.

(Gah! So I left work, bolted for home, picked my bike back up and biked BACK into downtown in time for the ride.)

Today there were probably 250 people that showed up. It was awesome. There were some really killer bikes and some very cool people there. As the procession wordlessly got started, everyone poured into the road and we got truckin. Riders stopped at cross streets and lights to pull roadguard duty, blocking cars from bolting through and hurting cyclists, and to ensure the group stayed together and didn’t get split up by lights and stop signs and “cheating” vehicles. You get some angry motorists, thats for sure. In the face of 250 cyclists with U-Locks in their backpockets and a bare minimum of tolerance for douchey drivers – well its them against the mob and its enough to hold traffic in most cases.

At one point with a roar of its huge V8 this Mustang bolted into the middle of First Ave while we were biking – like right in the middle of it. Damn dangerous. I guess he thought he was going to intimidate all these cyclists into getting out of his way. Instantly theres 15 cyclist who park their bikes in front of the guy in the middle of the street. Guy gets pissed, gets out of his car yells something, cyclists yell back, dude takes a look around and gets back in his car and we leave him long behind. There were several instances like that. In each instance drivers are boxed in by cyclists and cyclists relieve one another as needed. I’ve never experienced anything like it. How excellent.

The pace isn’t breakneck by any stretch but its decent around 10-12mph. Tonights ride was 17-18 miles – WAY longer than I’d ever done before. And I did 8 miles this morning covering much of this route already.

This was our route:

Oh, one of the good things about Critical Mass, because cyclists are providing road guards as we go making stop signs and lights irrelevant, theres little or no stop and go, which helps immensely.

Turns out theres a lot of cycling events in Seattle. I think I’m going to create a page/calendar with bicycling events on it – see if I can’t get a calendar put together on this thing.

I’m tuckered out. 26 miles today. Damn. I’ve had it.


I biked to work today

Posted on September 26, 2007 -- Edit Post
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Rides | Leave a Comment

Its dumb but I love my bike right now.


Sunday Ride

Posted on September 25, 2007 -- Edit Post
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Maps, Rides | 1 Comment

Mapmyride.com is presently my favorite site for mapping my rides. Its got a good route mapper, does some limited calorie burning estimates (though that part of it is rather hit and miss), and provides a training log you can cross reference with either saved or a new ride. Pretty handy.

And hey, lookit that, you can embed the route in your blog. The Maps page has some of my favorite rides there. Below was my Sunday ride. I dropped my car off at the mechanic, and biked home after stopping for some coffee in Fremont.


wrapped and rockin…

Posted on September 22, 2007 -- Edit Post
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Mechanical | Leave a Comment


ITS DONE!!!

Posted on September 21, 2007 -- Edit Post
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Mechanical | Leave a Comment

Big big thanks to Vincent and Chunter.


Whats the difference between these two brackets?

Posted on September 14, 2007 -- Edit Post
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Mechanical | Leave a Comment

MeanieTodd at webcyclery.com has been super helpful getting it straightened out. Thanks guys!


bullhorn – ordered

Posted on September 11, 2007 -- Edit Post
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Mechanical | Leave a Comment

I decided to bite the bullet and do the conversion. Ordered parts yesterday.

I already have the Profile Air Wing bullhorn handlebars – $40

Ordered those overpriced thumbie brackets for $49/pair (after coupon) from webcyclery.com and a set of 8 speed Shimano bar end shifters for $60 from Harris Cyclery aka Sheldon Browns bike shop.

Ordered the Cane Creek 200TT time trial brake levers for $54/pair from trisports.com and instead of doing the conversion from v-brakes to cantis, elected to purchase a pair of the the below travel agents from Universal Cycles

At $32/pair the travel agents aren’t badly priced and it’ll allow me to keep my direct-pull V-brakes. I’ve been assured that V-brakes+travel agents are better than straight cantis. Guess I’ll take that at face value – my sources are far more experienced than I in this. And besides, it doesn’t look too bad once I saw it mounted up…


For some reason the above picture looked better and less hackish than the below pic located on Sheldon Browns site, though now I see it side by side I guess its the same except the one below is an in-line.

its also come to light that the above picture is someone put a travel agent on their cantilever brakes to turn them into a direct pull brake. This seems to support Vincents argument.

So anyhow, parts should get here this week and next. Until then I’m strapping my flats and bar ends back on and going for a ride.


bullhorn – hacked

Posted on September 10, 2007 -- Edit Post
Filed Under Bike Kwak, How-To, Mechanical | 9 Comments

Well, I hacked it together as a proof of concept for the price of a pipe cutter and a set of used drops for $5.45 from Recycled Cycles…


Read more

bullhorn howto

Posted on September 6, 2007 -- Edit Post
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Mechanical | 3 Comments

Edit: it’s now a year later (July 19, 2008) and the entire topic of bullhorns on a geared bike has been successfully addressed.  If that’s what you’re after, look at the following post which actually has a bunch of pictures and details.  http://sweetbike.org/?p=180 -Scott

Cool post on how to make your own bullhorns. The geometry of the Redline 925 he’s talking about is almost identical to my Trek 7.3. But his Redline is a fixie and mine is a 24 speed hybrid.
Compliments of the Commute by Bike Blog
http://tinyurl.com/2nbdaj

er, I might be the only guy I know trying to put bullhorns on a geared bike.

read on… Read more