Hello Granny!

I saw that Tuesday was going to be sunny so I got off work a bit early and got home in time for a short ride.  Said ride included a modest hill of about a 1/2 mile but in the shape I currently find myself even the most modest incline calls for the granny gear and thank goodness the Cresta has them!   I would have taken a picture of the hill but I no confidence in my ability to start again on a hill once I have stopped.  Avalon ave which is about a mile at up to 6% is my early fitness milestone and lets just say I am not ready for it yet.

As you can see the sky is blue and the sun is out but at 42 degrees its still c-c-cold for this Seattle boy, especially in the shadows.  I am going to need to dig out some more of my old cold weather cycling gear if I am to keep this up.

I promise not to post about any more rides until I do something Epic like a 10 mile ride ;-).  I should have some wrenching news on the Novara soon but I really want 2019 to be a year I do some decent riding hence signing up for a ride in April to force myself to; A) get on the bike and B) get serious about dropping some weight.  No booze or bread (baked goods) in about 10 days and I am seeing the effect on the scale so hopefully that can continue.

Ride in February. Smile (or is his face just frozen?). Repeat.

Novara Randonee -observations after a short test ride

Usually my acquisitions go straight into dry dock and get rebuilt before I ride them, but for some reason I had an itch to ride the Randonee.  I figured that for the equivalent of a ride around the block I could get it road worthy.

First I dealt with some, but not all of the vestiges of an old wired Cateye bike computer.  I took off the stem mount,

and the wiring but left the rear wheel and crank sensors for another time.

I also noticed when loading the bike yesterday that one of the fender stays was disconnected and thus the tire was rubbing on the bracket.

 Fortunately I had a film canister (gee remember film?)  full of this kind of fender nut from an old broken fender I had salvaged parts from many moons ago.

With those issues resolved I put some air in the tires, made sure the brakes worked, sprayed a bit of WD-40 on the chain and adjusted the stem and seat post.  I didn't want to waste chain lube on a chain that will get replaced.

I figured that cockpit wouldn't be great since the saddle was toast, the bars are narrow and the stem was standard unlike the tall Nitto Technomic stems I am used to.  I wasn't wrong but it was fine for a short ride, what surprised me was how cramped it felt and when I got home I measured the top tube against the Cresta GT and sure enough the top tube is a full inch shorter!  I find this odd because both the seat tube and stand over height is pretty much identical between the bikes.

I thought the ride feel of the bike was fine if unspectacular and I saw when comparing the tubing that the Randonee is Tange 5 as compared to the Nishiki's Tange 2.

A minor but irritating issue is the slightly out of level rear rack that I will correct when I rebuilt this bike.

There is also some rust around the top of the seat tube that I will need to deal with and the frame will probably need a dose of frame saver while I am at it.  I am a bit concerned the hardware store nut and bolt serving as a seat post binder could be hiding damaged "binder ears" like I had on the Raleigh junk bike but as long as its not too bad a standard binder bolt is readily available on Amazon.

I have already acquired wider bars for the Trek 420 (on sale at VO) and have a Nitto Technomic stem on the way from Ebay and I have my eye on a deeply discounted VO saddle for the Trek as well, in addition to some Panaracer Paselas they may get used on the Novara as a test bed because I couldn't ride the current cockpit further than about 2 miles without discomfort or at least a lot of swearing.  If that makes it more workable then it will be a good leave at work bike for the early spring as I try to get some miles in before Tour De Lopez, otherwise it will get cleaned up and moved on with its stock parts plus new consumables when the weather gets nice.

Ride. Smile.Repeat.

Novara Randonee -Mid to late 80s

I knew it was a mistake to look at FB market place after avoiding temptation for nearly three months (bad dog!). I should give some context about the Novara Randonee touring bike, I have had in the back of my mind for some time that I might want to work on one "some day" for a few reasons:

• Novara was the store brand of REI which is headquartered in Seattle so it has a local tie-in even through the bike was probably built in Taiwan.
• A friend had a Randonee that I would see regularly and I always thought it was kind of a cool bike.
• Its a lugged steel touring bike which I have a soft spot for.
• This particular bike has center mounted down tube shifters which I have wanted to work on for about 6 years but have yet to do so. 
• I had come close on a couple Novara lugged steel bikes in the past but they had always fallen through.
• I signed up for this years Tour de Lopez and it occurred to me that if I stowed a bike at work then I could maximize the daylight hours as I try to get miles in during March and April.

So to sum up -many reasons to give into the bike acquisition disease I constantly fight.  It wasn't my greatest deal but it was OK, they had initially listed it at $125 and then dropped to $85, I offered $60 and we settled at $70.  I feel good about that because in addition to the full bike I also got:

a rear rack

A frame pump and fenders not having to buy those extras will save a few bob and add to the value of the bike.

It appears to have a full SunTour drive train, and triple crank which I like, with half step gearing, which I don't but I will live with.

The plan at this point is do a tear down, address a few issues I have seen; non-standard seat bolt binder and missing fender hardware, and find whatever I haven't seen, update the consumables on a budget and stash the bike at work for sunny afternoon rides.  I did remember to check for stuck seat post and stems so that won't be an issue.

Come summer I will probably sell it on to a good home, of course you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.    I can't take credit for any of the photos as they all came off the FB marketplace ad.  I will do a more thorough review when I tear the bike down and use the components to narrow down a year.

As always

Ride. Smile. Repeat.

Presidents day Ride and Projects for 2019

Partly sunny was as good as it was going to get this weekend so I chose Presidents day as the day for my first ride of 2019.  Before I could ride, however, I had a few tweaks to make.

To mount the Nitto Front rack I'd had to disconnect the straddle cable for the front brake, and with the rack mounted the yoke wouldn't clear the rack tang with the original straddle cable so I subbed in a new one - you can see the comparison above.

With the new cable the yoke clears the tang no problem.

And I had plenty of straddle cable to spare, to be fair the original length wasn't off by too much but I needed more cm's to make it work.

I had to spend some time fiddling with cable length to get the brakes to work at a level acceptable to a short test ride but I finally got them dialed in.

My old Rivendell bag has a loop on the front for a light so I was able to free up some real estate on the handlebar.

After  I was done fiddling with the front brake and putting air in the tires it was finally time to ride!  I didn't go far,  a bit more than two miles, but the bike felt good.  No issues from having more weight up front and the brakes were fine.  I will need to get in some decent miles as I bit the bullet and signed up for the Tour De Lopez at the end of April.  I would love to increase my distance from 2017 which was about 20km riding from the dock and doing a short loop and riding  back.

A thumbnail of Projects for 2019:

Schwinn Le Tour. Much like the Motobecane Mirage from last year that I did a ton of work on in 2017 and then stalled out on the hubs, the 87 LeTour has had a lot done to it but I have stalled out on working on the hubs.  Since this project is so close to done I will do the hubs and then run cables and chain, hopefully in time for spring.  If I do it any earlier that about April its going to languish on CL.

Bianchi Ibex.  I rode the 1990 Ibex for the 2018 clunker challenge and there is allot to like about this bike; lugged steel, interesting color, lots of braze-ons etc,  but I could never get to fit just right, it was fine for the 100km challenge but its not speaking to me as a keeper, which sucks because I would love a lugged steel mountain bike in my quiver.  I have decided that I am only going to keep bikes I really love as a way to keep the quiver to a minimum.  I don't need a full balcony again LOL.  The plan is some general clean up, mount the matching front wheel I acquired and put on some bargain new tires and call it good.

Specialized Allez.  I have wanted an Allez for a while and I've also wondered if  a 56 cm would fit me, so when this bike came up for $80 early in the summer I jumped at it.  I rode it allot over the summer and messed around with the cockpit since I had parts for the Nishiki Cresta GT.  Again I could never get it to feel quite right so I am going to give it a tear down and rebuild and then sell it on.  It already has new tires, I have bar tape and cables and housing so it should be pretty sharp when I am done.  I might even make a little $$.  Ideally I will get it done during mid summer so it can attract a crowd on CL.

Trek 420.  Currently languishing on the balcony as my trainer bike, my plan for this bike is to build it up without breaking the bank and see how a 22.5" frame works for me as compared to the 23" I normally ride.  I need to get the wheels to match, I bought a set of wide bars on sale and I will need a Nitto Technomic to go with them.  A set of consumables: tires, tubes, chain, cables. wrap and housing ought to complete the rebuild.  I would hope to complete this one by early fall so I can actually ride it.

Now I just need to focus my energies on what I have in front of me and not acquire any more projects for a while.

Ride in 2019. Smile.Repeat.

No one expects the Polar Vortex!

In my post last week I innocently used the phrase "Polar Vortex" not realizing I was doing  the winter the equivalent of summoning Beetlejuice (look it up kids).  And bam! this week we have had not one but two snow storms with more in the forecast.

It's Seattle folks, where the appearance of a single flake can start an end of the world panic and empty store shelves quicker than Congress voting themselves a raise.  The 8 plus inches of snow we have means the city is effectively shut down and we are all going to die.  Meanwhile in North Dakota they call this Tuesday.

Looks like the start of the 2019 cycling season will have to wait a bit...

Racking up the new Year

The new year has started with me fighting cold(s), yes two in January, and not doing much bike related.  I have yet to throw a leg over a top tube and I can't even blame the polar vortex.

As a Christmas gift to myself I ordered a Nitto M18 Front rack which had been recommended on bike forums as a good one for a vintage ten speed.  As you can see its arrival was a bit inauspicious, not sure why the seller thought a bag was going to hold up but no damage was done except to the packaging.

Another thing I learned on bike forums is that the stock struts that attached to the fork blade bosses would be too short, so I had ordered some longer ones separately as well.  It is nice to have a community of folks who has been there and done that otherwise I would not have known this would be an issue or that there was a remedy for it.

Curiously my rack did not come with a bolt to attach the rack tange to the fork crown, after one failed attempt with a too short bolt I got a longer one at true value and got the rack attached.

As you can see the stock struts are just a hair short of the bolt boss on the fork leg. while I could have made due with the p-clamp I wanted to make use to the existing boss.

Obviously the 350 mm stays are too long and maybe I could have done the next size down (250mm) but I'd rather have to trim them than end up paying extra for another set that was too short.

My Rivendell bag fits fine and for the first time ever its mounted on a rack with a proper "tombstone" for the leather decaleur strap on the bag.

There is work to be done yet, I need to: trim the excess stays, level the rack, tighten up all the attach points and rework the front brake as I had to disconnect it to mount the rack. As it is the cantilever yoke will interfere with the rack tang, a longer yoke ought to fix that issue.

Last month I was pleased to receive my 2018 Coffeeneur patch, I look forward to earning another this year.

Speaking of goals for 2019 I may sign up for the Tour de Lopez again and put the new rack through its paces at the end of April.  I have plenty of projects for the coming year and hope to do some riding too, especially if I am going to do a charity ride in April.  Happy 2019...a little late.

Ride, Mount a rack. Smile. Repeat.