stolen from Andy’s smugmug acct…
Posted on March 30, 2009
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Of Children and Kings…
Posted on March 21, 2009
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Bikes, Misc | 1 Comment
Chris Nygaard recently had two children. Both took about 9 months in the hopper. Both have been the result of profound respect and affection. Both of them we adore, admire, and are vaguely frightened of.
Both are utterly metal.
Incidentally, both will also bear the weight of nations, possibly be the conqueror of mankind, and eventually also carry up to 6 water bottles.
The first I am referring to of course is his Salsa Fargo. Jesus christ. Let me post a few pictures about it first.
FLICKR- Highly recommended because he has all kinds of notes and stuff in here.
This is where it all started:
Before he even assembled it he sent it off to have S&S couplers installed
Then had the thing powder coated
And let me be clear here. When I say he powder coated it – he powder coated EVERYTHING. Including the steerer tube and head spacer. The result of which was a striking bit of detail that – after many incredulous looks at one another upon hearing his crazy plan, actually looks sexy as hell. And all he had to do was, using a high precision lathe and trained machinist, bore out his Chris King headset to make allowance for the extra .002 inch the powder coating added to the diameter of the steerer tube! What can I say – the man had a vision, and though I can’t say I’d have done it – boy does it look nice. I think it paid off.
Phil Wood hub in the rear, Schmidt dynamo hub up front, disc brakes…
(specially bent fender joists to accommodate the disc brakes…)
The result of which is this enormous beautiful mutant bike. It’s genuinely hard to gauge size here, but the thing is huge. I’m 5′10′ and standing beside it his handlebars almost hit me in the throat. Those are 700×50 Schwalbes. With his knobbies Chris said he can stand beside it and his knuckles rest on top of the tire – and he’s a bit over 6 feet tall. And it’s not done! He has a front porteur rack he’s building for it by hand, the Tubus Logo rack isn’t mounted, and he’s got some sort of mega hella burn your retinas out channeling the depths of the sun headlights to attach to it still (to be powered by that front dynamo hub). Also not pictured are the full fenders, flask mount, or the bottle opener he has attached. There’s more but hell, I can’t keep up.
From his flickr page though -
Frame: Salsa Fargo 20″
Fork: Salsa Fargo
Headset: King NoThreadSet 1.125″
Headset Spacers: Thin Walled 6061 Aluminum 1.125″ x 88mm
Shift Levers: SRAM X-9
Brakes and Levers: Hayes El Camino
Front Derailuer: Shimano XT Topswing
Rear Derailuer: SRAM X-9 Long cage
Cranks: Truvativ Stylo OCT 3.3 175mm
Chain Rings: SRAM 44/32/22
Bottom Bracket: Truvativ GXP Giga X Pipe Team
Cassette: SRAM PG-990 11-32t
Chain: SRAM PC-991 CrossStep 9-speed
Pedals: Shimano Deore PD-M540
Front Hub: Schmidt Dynamo SON 28 Disc 36 hole
Rear Hub: Phil Wood Mountain Disc – SLR 36 hole
Rims: Velocity Blunt 29′er Disc
Spokes: Phil Wood Butted
Nipples: DT Standard Aluminium 2.0mm x 12mm
Rim Strip: Velocity Veloplugs
Tyres: Schwalbe Marathon Supreme 700×50mm
Tubes: Schwalbe Extra Light 140G 40-622/60-622
Quick Release: PitLock front and rear
Stem: Thomson X4 Mountain 1.125″ x 10° x 120mm
Handlebars: Truvativ Stylo World Chamption Flat bar 31.8mm x 5°
Grips: Salsa Pepperjacks Mountain
Seatpost: Thomson Elite 27.2mm x 410mm
Saddle: Brooks Team Professional Titanium
Seatpost Clamp: Salsa Lip Lock
Headlight: Schmidt Edelux
Taillight: B&M 4D Lite Plus
Fenders: SKS Chromoplastic 65mm
Bottle Opener: Ahrens Bicycles Wisecracker 27.2mm
Rear Rack: Tubus Logo
Bell: Mirrycle Incredibell
Do you see that? HE HAS SPECS FOR HIS FUCKING BELL.
I love this man.
The second child I speak of is no less miraculous, frightening, or beautiful. Ender of men, breaker of hearts, warrior poet child king, future bicycle jerk and burner of palates – At 4:18, on March 20th, she, Tomyris Una Huff Nygaard, was born weighting 7 pounds and 6.5 ounces, and 21 inches.
Uhhh… Tomyris?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomyris
Killed Cyrus the Great after defeating him twice in battle, cut off he head, dunked it in a bucket of blood, asked if that was enough blood for him (1), and drank wine out of his skull for the rest of her life.
1: Cyrus gave a pompous speech about how a river of blood would not slake his thirst for Tomyris’ land in the lead up to the second battle.
Ooooohhhhh! THAT Tomyris!?!?!
Metal I tell you. Metal.
Congrats to Chris and Jenn, and welcome to this wonderful and terrible world Tomyris.
Onward
Sheldon Brown…
Posted on March 18, 2009
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Mechanical | Leave a Comment
You are the man. Still. We miss you.
1999 LeMond Buenos Aires
Posted on March 17, 2009
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Bikes, Mechanical | 9 Comments
I have problems. I really do.
Weight: 20lbs. It’s all stock. 1999 LeMond Buenos Aires. Reynolds 853 Steel. Complete Shimano 105 grouppo (Why do they call it a grouppo? I dunno). The link says this came stock with a carbon fork but if it is I can’t see it under the paint – and I’d bet it was original. All I can say for certain is it does feel good. The front crank is a triple – 52/42/30 and so are the STI shifters.
Wheels could use a rebuild but are not bad. Back axle needs some work – not the end of the world. Frame’s scratched in a few places – but it’s not awful. The STI shifters work fine but have taken a beating. No dents – frame is straight. Cockpit needs some adjustment to fit me better, but overall this is a beautiful bike and I’m very happy with it. I see much potential.
Found it on Craigslist for a very reasonable price.
Because really, that’s what I needed. Another bike. Dammit.
Chris King…
Posted on March 4, 2009
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Mechanical, Misc | 6 Comments
Things have been good. Not a lot to report since the FHR. A couple rides with .83, some miscellaneous riding with the chainwhip boys and Smashed Up Sunday. Speaking of – rumor has it theres a new ride called Squarepeg that Nova ran into on Sunday. Might have to check it out. Weather keeps trying to get nice but winter doesn’t seem to want to give up this year, so it’s all a bit hectic. Today started out dreary, was beautiful in the day, and in the afternoon started dumping cold rain again. Rough. Last week it snowed 3 inches again. I bolted my knobby tires back on and I’m not taking them off till May. Screw it.
Speaking of – the Bicycle Eater underwent some maintenance tonight finally. The long and short of it is I’ve got about a thousand miles on it and the headset went to hell, which is saying something about that headset – what a POS. I haven’t really ridden it that hard or that long. and frankly a headset should last a LONG time. Bah. Not only was it hard to turn left or right, but it was hard to ride in a straight line because the bars would pull left and right as the headset would stick and unstick. I dropped the fork to inspect it and the bottom bearing assembly just came apart in my hands in this mess. I guess that was why. Was really uncomfortable to ride. After much himming and hawing and talking to folks I talked myself into buying a very unassuming silver Chris King headset. Fuggit – it has a 10 year warranty and is presumably bombproof. That POS Richie didn’t even last 1000 miles. I might send it back to them and see what they say.
Now it’s installed…? I mean, it’s a headset. What do I say? It feels good – smooth, tight, errorless – is that a word? And more importantly it fixed the problem 100%. Good job Chris King. Honestly it doesn’t feel any better or worse than my Cane Creek 110 I have on the Pacer – but on the other hand I guess that’s Cane Creeks equivalent, so theoretically it wouldn’t. Nygaard did the headset installation – faced and reamed the headtube with the Park tool first, de burred the inner bevel and then installed it, easy as you please.
And actually I lied, it feels fucking awesome to get it back on the road again. Having the Bicycle Eater be out of commission I’ve learned makes me irrationally agitated. Everything else – meh. But this bike must run at all times no matter what. Evidently.
I’m planning on doing some minor bike camping come mid-late March me thinks – back out to Bainbridge Island – there’s a camp ground at the north end that should work just fine. Need to get my camp legs underneath me again, work out my camp cook setup, that sort of thing – don’t want a lot of miles. Just want to do a couple small trips early in the season and work the kinks out. There’s much to get reacquainted with.
Lastly, though it’s not specifically bike related – I’ve been evaluating an Eee Pc 1000HE netbook from Asus.
It’s reeeally tiny. 10 inches, weighs 3lbs, has a battery life of 9+ hours (yeah not kidding on that either, holy crap), 2Gb memory, 160Gb hard drive, bluetooth, b/g/n wireless, GigE Ethernet, 3x USB 2.0 ports, a VGA video out, 1080×600 resolution, integrated 1.3Mp web camera and microphone to use skype with, hyperthreaded 1.66Ghz Atom CPU, integrated 4-in-1 SD card reader, and best of all, runs Windows XP, OSX, or (my personal favorite) Ubuntu Linux. In fact, I’m writing this post on it and I have to say, I like it. Oh, and I like the price too. $374 from AMAZON – can’t beat that!. For a traveling/biking/blogging/photography/repository bush-laptop you know what – this thing might just be the shit. Besides the form factor and the enormous battery life, it’s got enough storage to hold a lot of photos, and does full video skype (VOIP). It’s pretty badass. Click the photo to take you to Engaget for more pics, and a couple links to good reviews for full details. My thoughts so far? I’m very very impressed with it.
Okay, it’s time for bed kiddies.
Onward
PS – almost forgot. Installed mud flaps on both the Bicycle Eater and the Pacer. Thanks to Andy for the leather front one on my LHT – was a birthday present. Boy do they help.
2009 North American Hand Built bike show…
Posted on March 2, 2009
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