#fixed-gear conversion

I posted a shot of Rapscallion a few weeks ago with the winter shoes on. Knobby tyres, matte black paint, new bars, front rack with/without front seat for Matteo. Here are a few more shots taken shortly before I was derailed by injury for a spell. Something that Lung and I have always loved is the nonemoreblack look on bikery, and judging by the prevalence of such kits in the factory-fixie market these days, we aren’t alone. I was especially chuffed to get the knobbies back on as this was, along with the black matte finish, the way the build started, when it was a Mixte. So I think it’s frankly gorgeous. And tight. The one outstanding tweak needing doing is the addition of a half link so I can get the rear wheel out a bit more in the drops and get more tyre clearance. The half-lnk arrived by mail last week. It’ll be some time before I can get down and install it, let alone ride it. But as is the case with most of my post-baby projects, it’s nice to have the resources queued up waiting for action. The Gamoh rack from Japan is quite heavy. If I were to do it again today I’d use a CETMA like Lung does. But I think it’s still an attractive design and I like having the side rails to lash to._________________”Meanwhile, back at ol’ timey penal colony T0L-U 333…”

I present: my NEW new custom headbadge for Wrongbike, a fixed-gear conversion of an old Vista road bike. The design was originally executed by our man Lung from my sketch, which was an axonometric diagram of the relief layers for the badge, done in Sharpie. I sent his AI files to Terry, a custom badge maker I found a few years back, and he did the first version up in brass. It was too large for Wrongbike's skinny 1.25" head tube (my fault) and I didn't like the raw brass against the Nuclear Trigger Orange/Yellow custom color of the frame. I was going to paint it, but I had envisioned a simple metal-finish badge on this build, so since I had to resize it anyway, I had him do the second one in tin. It came out GORGEOUS, capitalized for emphasis. Terry always sends a three-angle view of the completed badge prior to accepting payment. Just to get you anxious to get yer mits on it. I'll post more photos when I get it on the bike. I'm thinking of using epoxy. I just need to check what will react well with the paint and how much to sand off and so on. If you need custom badges, give me a shout and I'll hook you up. Terry can do knockouts too, which I will employ on my next one, and can paint them too._________________

It was Wrongbike week... granted, only two days, and I rode the grocery getter home tonight, loaded up with salmon, burittos and tomato lime soup... but still. Wrongbike is built from an old Vista frame from a complete bike I ebayed several years ago. It's one of my oldest builds and one of my favorites (but I can't play favorites with my children OR my bikes.) This is the custom headbadge: my design, Lung executed the fully realized badge layout in Illustrator, and Terry Jones built the badge. Not an easy one, with three layers of topography on it. That's not the right term, but anyway. This is the second version of the badge, the first having been too large and also brass (to relate to the bell) but didn't work with the paint. I love this shot, for the random focus on the Ultegra logo in the spinning wheel. Proper! Not a bad bike self-portrait, I thought. Other rider slash pictakers seem to nail these shots all the time, but I don't. Wrongbike is built with Major Taylor bars wrapped in elkhide, and is compact, quiet and spinny. Really a joy to ride..._________________

This morning, I was riding to work on my grocery getter fixie, with a bunch of stuff in the basket, a backpack on, and listening to some sweet tunes. A guy came up on me, hugged my wheel for a bit, then blew past me, no call out and then pressed on, all hunkered down against the morning headwind, in a full riding kit and tri bars. It made me laugh, thinking about this recent articlefrom drunbkcyclist. Sure, that one was more about 'mocking the aggressive riders and yet also being frustrated that age was taking its toll on fitness level, but eff you anyway, poser'... but it still applied. In this case, it wasn't that the guy was all in the zone and sprinting and all this. It was that he drafted me for awhile then shot around me and raced ahead. It was kind of funny. I'm the first to admit I like to push myself on the bike when I'm in the mood. And I like to chase down riders for sport, success or failure not being a critical part of the calculus. But these days, I'm more often in cargo shorts and a collared shirt, on a fixed gear, possibly with a child, a melon, or both, on the bike. And funny thing, I'm having precisely the same amount of fun. So nice kit, guy. Hope you won that race with yourself, and that drafting me up the little hill there made all the difference. PS in the photo above, the rider is using poor form as the helmet is working against them. I see that quite often on bike path warriors wearing effing aero helmets._________________

When I got the CM, or rather, when I was planning for it, I made the decision to use a roof rack system this time instead of my tried and true rear hitch rack method as per the previous cars. Truth be told, I'll always prefer the rear hitch in actual application: easy to access, low profile, less drag, and very adaptable via multiple rack types. However, I more and more often found myself in situations where I was stranding a bike. My lovely wife would pick me up and not have the rear rack on the MINI, and so I'd be stuck doing the bike shuffle until I got into the office with the rack on. Similarly, I was stuck on a long ride one time and my lovely wife couldn't come get me because the rear rack was too heavy for her to install on the car. So, the one advantage to the roof rack system is the fact that it's always on the car (assuming you don't, you know, take it off) There were a lot of little machinations along the way getting to my final setup. I looked at different roof rails, different bike trays, etc and finally decided on the OEM rails and trays shown. The trays are a design similar to Thule and Yakima's versions that have a downtube clamp, with front and rear wheel straps. They are odd that they sweep UP at the front. The rails are really very similar than the Thule aeros, with some slight depth differences. I set them up, but I never had the opportunity to actually use the system until yesterday. We had been yacking offline, Lung and I, about a really cool stool designed to unfold and hang from the vehicle's wheels, but I never bought it, keeping costs down. But I wondered about access issues and had contingencies. Sure, lifting a light road bike or fixie up to the roof of a car isn't a big deal but add in the project bikes with heavy crap on them, the 29ers with their awkward geometries, and my shoulder SLAP tear injury, and you could have a problem. Anyway, what I discovered was that the rear sweep of the door jamb is severe, since they pushed the seats over the rear axle, and the door has to glide over the top of the wheel well. This means you can stand in the footwell and then have a foot at the door sweep to the left, and easily have the balance/support necessary to carefully lift the bike up, and back down same, without needing a stool. Granted any regular MINI wouldn't need a stool either, but the CM is 8" taller, around the same height as a larger sedan or small crossover. The bike being carried this round was my grocery getter/baby hauler fixie, Ye Black Death, which has a lot of front end weight thanks to the Gomoh rack. NO PROBLEM. The downtube clamp has a very large max diameter, more than some of the other brands, which was partly why I was sold on the OEM. 29er, fat MASH aero section, whatever, it can handle it. Good system! Still doing experiments on wind drag/noise/mileage with the racks and fairing and so on, but that's ongoing._________________