(Joining me as I give the play-by-play of this very enjoyable weekend is the legendary Marv Albert, give him a hand won’t you folks?)

Friday night I traded my 5.5 mile commute home for a 12.5 mile ride north from Downtown to Takoma Park, then northeast to Silver Springs, then southeast down the Sligo Creek Trail to the Northwest Branch Trail, and finally to the PG Pool where I joined the family for dinner and had a quick swim.

Marv: The weekend’s off to a hot start thanks to that dandy homeward ride! Yes!

Saturday morning Rebbie and I enjoyed coffee together on the front porch before the kids got up, and then she whisked Huck away to the farmers’ market. Ruby and I got a rare opportunity to hang out together, so we had some breakfast at the ever-delightful Cafe Suriea before heading down to Turkey Thicket for a playgroup with kids from her new school. After that, we rode Sylvie to the market to join up with the other half of the family and then all rode home together.

Marv:A splendid morning with the daughter and an early afternoon unparalleled in its pleasantness combine for a stunning one-two punch! Saturday is on fire out of the gate!

While we were out and about, my automated Internet minions did battle with competing bidders on eBay’s field of honor, and prevailed. The auction details say that it’s a ‘93 Trek 970, but the fact that it’s a ‘ZX’ leads me to believe it’s a ‘95 or ‘96. Here, take a look.

That there’s a made-in-America, TIG-welded steel frame, constructed from True Temper OX III tubing, sporting a melange of Shimano Deore LX and XT components. See any signs of cable rub on that headtube? See anything that even looks like a scratch on that chainstay? Yeah, me neither. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong when it arrives, but near as I can tell the thing’s been garaged since it was purchased. I’ll be surprised if there’s significant wear on the brake pads. Did I mention that I won it for less than $120? That’s sans shipping, but even with shipping it came to less than $200.

Marv: With some impressive hustle and a critical score, Saturday is leading this weekend to a blow out! Yes!

Rebbie hauled the kids off to the pool and left me alone for a few hours to build wheels for Nigel, the in-progress Xtracycle. The wheels are black XT 6-bolt disc hubs, laced to Velocity Cliffhangers with black DT Swiss 2.0mm Champion spokes. They’re beautiful, take a gander.

Laced and lovely, yes indeed.

I built them up to the point where they’re lightly, evenly tensioned and declared that a good place to stop so I could rejoin the family, get a quick swim and have some dinner.

Marv: Saturday with the hot hand! Grabs an item off the to-do list, converts the task into an enjoyable celebration of wheelbuilding! Then the swim! The dinner! The Trifectaaaaaaa! YES!

Sunday morning I took off to Seneca Creek State Park to throw some plastic into the woods. I got into disc golf around 2005 when we moved to Southern California, hung out with these miscreants and ne’er-do-wells up at Lake Casitas, and played some amazing Mid-Atlantic courses after we moved here. I haven’t had any time for it this year, so getting away for a few hours on a perfect, sunny afternoon to play 36 holes on a championship course was a real treat. Afterwards, back to the pool for more grillin’ and a swim.

Marv: Sunday comes out swinging and delivers a monster performance! This weekend is bringing the whole repertoire! It can’t be stopped! It can only be contained! YES!

Yes. Contained by Monday morning, but what a helluva weekend, ya know? Although if I had to put mine up against this guy’s…

So, how was your weekend? Whudja do whereja go whooja see?

Everything I know about mountain bike racing would fit in the unused neurons of a common garden slug, but there are some folks I enjoy reading that know lots about it.

FatCyclist is posting his race report (a bit at a time) of the epic Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race in Colorado, which he did on a freakin’ single-speed. Much like the Great Divide Race article I posted on earlier, it’s inspiring and it’s making me hungry for trails.

Linked from there was this short video documentary of 7-time Tour De France winner Lance Armstrong and 5-time Leadville 100 winner Dave Wiens pushing each other way out in front of everyone else. Great photography, commentary, and soundtrack, plus Lance Armstrong admitting at the end that he told Dave Wiens to go on without him when he ran out of gas. Ever think you’d hear Mr. Armstrong saying, “I can’t do it.” and mean it? Crazy-ass superhumans, they are, both of ‘em.

My friend Carl and I used to ride from up to Ojai from the beach in Ventura, and then up into Matilija Canyon along the creek. He still rides that GT Avalanche, I haven’t seen my beautiful old Trek 970 in probably 14 years. But I can remember vividly, like it was last week, climbing those trails, flying down the fire roads, rear end drifting precisely around the turns, hopping from one tractor rut to the other at high speed, coming around a turn into a meadow and resting on a boulder next to the burblin’ brook.

Good times, maybe something I’ll get to enjoy again, but clearly nothin’ like the mayhem they were stirring up in Leadville. Check out Fatty’s race report and then watch a couple freakish superhumans go at it in the Colorado Mountains.

This is pretty cool.

I love the pedal-powered farm equipment. Story in the WaPo here, website here.

(h/t TheWashCycle)

I’ll soon have more to post about biking in New York with the kids, pastries from Balthazar, toddlers gone wild at Tompkins Square park, picnicking with friends at 9th and C, and other delights. There are many pics that need pulling off the phone, but I thought I’d post one that had me thrilled.

Check out what they done gone and built in Chelsea, going south on 9th Avenue:

That’s a real honest-to-god bike lane. Note, going from right to left: three lanes of traffic, one lane that’s parking or a left turn lane (depending on which way the cross street goes), a physical barrier, and a full bike lane. You can’t see it very well in this shot, but the traffic light at the corner, to the left of the bike lane, is a stop light exclusively for regulating the bike lane (the red, yellow, and green lights are actually in the shape of a bicycle). The light just to the right of it regulates the left turn lane, allowing cars to safely cross the bike lane.

Riding down this section of 9th, with my daughter in her kid-seat, I felt like the city recognized us as legitimate traffic and took our safety seriously. I felt like I was on a road built with bikes at the core of the design, rather than one where the design half-heartedly acknowledges that bikes are vehicles and then throws us into a raging current of cabs, busses, and SUVs. It felt really, really good.

That is infrastructure you can believe in, my friends.

[UPDATE]: fixed the lane order, here’s a document that lays out what I’m trying to describe, around page 19 or so. There’s more benefits than I’d considered, like a shorter crossing distance for pedestrians and a barrier to turning the wrong way on a one-way street. Neat.

It should also be noted that food messengers don’t seem to understand that the awesome new bike lane only goes one way, and that the northbound bike lane is over on 8th Ave. Or, they get it and don’t care. I’d typically blow off that kind of anarchy because, ya know, it’s New York and they gotta make a living right? But this is a real, permanent, well-designed bike road we’re talkin’ about, it’s undeniably a one-way thing, and going the wrong way on it makes it unsafe the same way that driving a car the wrong way up a one-way street does. So fuck that, ticket the living shit out of ‘em. Growing up ain’t always easy, ya know?

[UPDATE AGAIN]: This really was just supposed to be a short post, but I ran into this StreetFilms short about efforts to create more separated bike lanes in New York, it seems appropriate to throw it on the stack. I wonder if Mayor Fenty’s seen any of this. It’s quite a vision of what a city can be.

A young lady here in D.C. was killed riding her bicycle in the Dupont Circle area last week. Evidently she was going straight through an intersection and was run over by a garbage truck turning right. It’s the kind of story that makes my stomach knot and my heart break for her, for the family, and for the driver as well. The life of everyone involved has been redefined in that instant, and not in a good way.

The blog pundits have weighed in. Matthew Yglesias isn’t looking to accommodate, he thinks we ought to take more street back from the cars and use it for bus lanes, bike lanes, and light rail. Megan McArdle stokes flames by asking whether drivers or cyclists suck worse, and comes to the easy conclusion that it’s the drivers, and further that it’s D.C. drivers in particular. I disagree with Ms. McArdle on a variety of issues, but we’re solidly in concurrence on this one.

Ezra Klein draws attention to a study finding countries with more cyclists are safer. Sounds about right to me, the more familiar people are with mixed traffic, the less freaked out they should be sharing the road. Additionally, as more and more people turn to bicycles for relief from rising fuel costs, we’ll have a larger, more affluent, and therefore more powerful constituency. Sucks that you need numbers and money to get anyone in power to take notice, but that’s life. Mayor Fenty is already a strong supporter of alternative transportation, I’m hoping that between the growing ranks of cyclists and smart, progressive administrations we should see some real improvements in infrastructure.

And then come the comments (some of them mine) where each side shouts J’accuse!, and describes how they saw this bike/car run this red light/stop sign etc, etc. It’s predictable, like a fight in a small town bar that keeps happening between the same drunks over habitual insults and injuries. I frequently throw a punch or two, because shit, someone is wrong on the internet. But every so often, a stranger will walk through the door and throw down with something really special that just leaves jaws on the floor.

This country is not set up for bikers like Europe is, with its smaller city streets and huge population of bikers. Biking to work in most American cities is just taking an unnecessary risk. Go bike on a bike path for fun, but get the hell out of traffic.

Yeah that’s nothin’ I haven’t heard before. Blow it out your…

Biking to work is an affectation, and selfish in many ways. Look at the consequences to the family of that poor girl who was killed.

Wha-wha-Whatdidyoujustsay?!?

It IS selfish to unneccessarily risk your life if you have a family. Of course you can find cities in Europe that are not good for biking — such as Paris and Prague. Those that are, and have by COMMON practice and agreement, a large urban bike population, like Amsterdam, are the ones I was speaking of.

Paris, huh?

On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city’s image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.

Hey, those Frenchie bike rental stations look just like… ah nevermind. It should be noted that we do have common agreements, called laws, that lay out how we share the road. But g’head, continue.

Here, biking to work is eccentric, and therefore often done by people trying to strike a pose. There are some people who refuse to go along with the herd on most things, insisting that every single thing they do be marked by the stamp of their individuality. In my experience, that’s the person who bikes to work in a large U.S. city.

I was angry about this yesterday, but now I can’t stop giggling. Put aside the laughable Eisenhower-era attack on “eccentricity”, or the false equivalencies of cycling with eccentricity, or eccentricity with vanity. Put aside the fact that anyone who’s paying attention knows that your “stamp of individuality” in modern America comes from the products and media you consume. I mean really, c’mon, whattaya new here?

What I’m really curious about is this person’s experience. I know plenty of folks that ride to work, and I read a bunch who care to write about it. Many do it because they love bicycling, some do it because they hate driving, some do it to reduce their impact on the environment, and some believe it’s great for their health. Self sufficiency comes up pretty frequently, as does the need to respond to our country’s addiction to oil. Some even see it as an alternative to war, ambitious! At least one person believes that it saved his life. There are as many reasons for biking to work as there are people doing it, and most of us have more than one.

But I have never, ever heard anyone say, “I bike to work because it’s an expression of my individuality.” I’ve heard people say that about their hair, their clothes, their tattoos, their jewelry, their kitchens, their barbeques, and their lawns. People say it about their cars and motorcycles every day. After all, what’s a Hummer but an attempt to show the world your hairy swingin’ grapefruit-filled ballsack? But I’ve never heard anything remotely like, “I’m going to ride my bike to work and show the world who I am!” (Well, okay, there’s these guys, but to be fair, lookin’ hip is their business, and business is good.)

Which leads me to conclude that this commenter’s “experience” isn’t worth a shot of warm spit.

…in a city like DC, there is ample public transport. Taking a bike is not a practical choice, but some other kind of choice.

Au contraire, mon frer. If we leave the Brookland station of the Red Line, you on the train, and I on my bike, and we both head for Capitol South, I will have been waiting for you for about 20 minutes when you emerge from the station, and that’s if I’ve waited at every red light on the way. I will also be eating a breakfast sandwich, paid for with the $4 I’ve saved from not taking the train both ways. I will also have an extra one to three hours of my day that you do not have, due to your slower mode of transit, and the hour that you now need to spend at the gym to make up for your suffocating cubicle-based job. A gym which, I must remind you, requires lighting, air conditioning, and power so that you can watch television while spinning your hamster wheel.

Tell me again about practicality?

And so long as we’re talking public transportation, let’s return to your original point about selfishness. If you’re driving your automobile (I’ll even assume that it’s not a Ford Excursion for sake of argument) to work in this city, contributing to congestion, pollution, lack of parking, and a general decline in the quality of life for everyone else when there’s ample public transport available, then who’s being selfish?

If you drive a car and are honest about your observations, you know that the lives of bikers are entirely dependent on your driving accuracy and attention in a way that other drivers’ lives are not — you are behind tons of steel, and they are exposed. It’s just that simple — a huge risk, with utterly predictable tragic consequences for some bikers and their poor families. It’s just not a risk worth defending.

Living life in a steel box, decoupled from people and terrain, spending precious moments of a finite life hating everything is not worth defending. Vainly attempting to meet our transportation needs by escalating car-centric solutions is not worth defending. Destroying the livability of a city by accommodating the selfish desires of suburban car commuters, at the expense of our quality of life, is not worth defending. Continuing this way of life that’s wrecking the environment, changing the climate, miring us in middle-east geopolitical conflicts and transferring trillions of dollars of our wealth into the coffers of foreign dictators while our economy continues to degrade is not worth defending.

Riding bikes certainly involves some risk, but the stakes are high and the upside is huge. I think the risk is well worth defending.

When Rebbie and I began to put together our plans for total bicycle domination, one element of that plan was service self-sufficiency. Over the past year, I’ve accumulated tools, built a solid workstand, spent a lot of time at the Park Tools website becoming familiar with procedures I haven’t done yet (and then doing them), and generally becoming a more proficient mechanic. Whatever we’ve spent on tools has easily paid for itself in tune-ups and repairs, and honestly I just really enjoy workin’ on bikes.

Until very recently, though, I hadn’t built or trued a wheel. It’s always something I’ve wanted to learn, but felt was beyond my skills. A couple months ago, I decided the time had come to enter the world of wheel building. I was doing some research and getting ready to drop some cash on tools, when a post on a forum steered me across the internet towards Roger Musson’s book, aptly titled Wheelbuilding. Roger is a professional wheelbuilder, and owns a shop called Wheelpro in the UK. Reviews and feedback seemed positive and enthusiastic, so I purchased it (as a PDF, which is both immediately gratifying and environmentally beneficial) and dove into Mr. Musson’s book.

It paid off immediately. The book has plans for the stand he uses (here’s a fine example that someone else built), instructions for how to make a nipple driver from a cheap flat-head screwdriver, and his “plans” for a wheel dishing gauge (made from cardboard, duct tape, and a pencil). The one thing I haven’t gotten to yet are the truing gauges. His are made from wood and small pieces of plastic. Mine thus far are made from my daughter’s Legos, they work splendidly. The total cost of all these tools ended up being less than $40 in cash, and maybe an extra weekend in time to construct them, but time’s worth investing and I believe that tools one builds are more valuable than tools one buys.

A few weeks ago, a friend of ours, who had been complaining that her old heavy mountain bike made it impossible to keep up with her husband on rides, brought her bike over to get tuned. I swapped out her wheels and knobbies for an extra pair I had laying around, lighter and sporting road slicks and told her to hold on to them and see if they improved things. Her wheels were lower end than mine, single-walled rims with Shimano Alivio hubs and galvanized steel spokes, but I figured they’d be perfect for practice. I disassembled them completely, cleaned everything up, Naval-Jellied the corrosion off the spokes, and repacked her hubs. Then life got busy and it had to be set aside.

Yesterday I got a chance to return to it. I’d trued a couple wheels by then to get a feel for how the tools were working, and to get some hands-on experience before taking on a total rebuild. With my wife and the kids downstairs watching the Princess Bride, I set about re-lacing the back wheel, tensioning the spokes, and bringing it back to a state of lateral and radial truth.

True Enough, My Friends!

The lacing and initial tensioning took a little over an hour and a half, and would’ve taken less time if I’d noticed that I’d alternated the pulling spokes in the wrong order. The truing took much longer, and I had to loosen all the spokes and start over a couple times. But even as a first-timer I could still pull it off, so long as I was willing to put the time into starting again. Screwing up and starting over with something like carpentry, by comparison, often involves sacrificing time and material to gain experience, with even surviving pieces carrying the irreparable mistakes. Being able to undo mistakes is sweet.

I found building the wheel intense in that it required fine focus, but also relaxing by virtue of its methodical, iterative nature. Bringing the wheel to the correct spoke tension, and seeing it become straighter and rounder, little by little, reminded me somewhat of seeing a black and white print come up in a tray of softly rocking developer.

And in the end, it came out beautifully. The wheel is strong, round and straight. I’m looking forward to taking on the front wheel, which should be easier since it has no dish. And then with that first pair built, I can turn my attention to building the wheels for our next longtail. DT Swiss straight gauge black spokes laced to XT disc hubs and Velocity Cliffhanger rims. Yummy. I don’t expect that I’ll be particularly fast or efficient, but I bet the time I spend building them will be enjoyable.

I agree with those who believe that life shouldn’t be about attaining goals or certificates or badges. Indeed, I’ve stated more than once that I don’t need no stinking badges. But at the same time, it is nice to hit a milestone from time to time, and this one’s a good one to reach. I’m sure over time, with patience and practice and repetition, I’ll gain skill and wisdom. I’ll look back and laugh at the fumbles, errors and ineptness of my early efforts. But this will always be the first wheel I built myself, and that makes it special.

Several weeks ago, while hunting down another item on eBay, I ran into an old lugged steel Trek 950 frame. It was just the right size at 19 inches, and was going cheap with several days left to go. I threw a couple bucks down on it and forgot about it until I got an email telling me I’d triumphed over my weak, cowardly opponents for only $41. As a bonus, it also came with a set of LX cranks, a RaceFace bottom bracket and an XT front derailleur. I’d been thinking about increasing the family’s cargo carrying capacity to two Xtracycles, and this seemed like a fine platform to make that happen.

It showed up needing more than just a little love. I haven’t figured out all the numbers stamped into the bottom bracket shell, but the serial number falls into the 1992 range. There’s also another set of numbers, that reads “930 20 B1 (something something)”. I’m assuming that means that I’m actually working on a 20 inch 1992 Trek 930. Additionally, the paint job was mostly what you’d expect from a couple cans of Krylon…

…except for that black flame job, edged in Sharpie! Bet ya didn’t expect that! It just looks fast layin’ on the carpet there, doesn’t it?

The fact remained that it’s a sweet, solid lugged steel frame with great geometry for what I had in mind, with a few dings here and there but mostly in good shape. So I got out the wetsand paper, and figured that bringing it back to bare metal, painting it proper, and getting that frame correct would be a spiritual journey worth taking. I’d pour my love and sweat and some choice swear words into it, sanding and soaking, until it gleamed naked and strong. And I did for about three days, starting with some really noxious chemical stripping agent and then taking the rest down to the steel.

The first day’s sanding, a roughly 5 hour session, saw the top tube and down tube emerge quickly. The head tube and lugs took more time and effort, but came out looking lovely. Unfortunately, the painted head tube badge (painted! dude! 5 minutes to mask it off! C’mon!) didn’t survive the sanding. But seeing the brazing at the joints come out from behind the paint residue was a joyful experience.

The next morning, I woke up with the outside edge of my right thumb (which had been my sanding block for getting into the nooks and crannies and lug edges) raw, bruised, and beaten. External pressure from the frame pushing up, combined with internal pressure from my thumbnail’s edge pushing down, left it sore and swollen. Given the injury, it seemed obvious to me that the thing to do was to keep sanding. I got most of the front triangle on that run, focused on nailing the bottom bracket, and did pretty well.

But the cable stops, grouped in threes at the front and back of the top tube, mocked me all the while. “Keep sanding those parts you can reach, but you will never, never see the bare metal of our insides,” they taunted as I worked my way around the bottom bracket shell and bottle cage bosses. Every time I cleared paint away from the edge of a lug, I’d feel my sense of well-being swell slightly as the brazing revealed itself. Then I’d glance at the cable stops and lose that good feeling.

I could not for the life of me solve that riddle, given the effort it took to sand the parts that were easily reachable. So I asked for some advice from someone I consider a knowledgeable source, aware that I could end up on the business end of a blistering, wolverine-like flurry of teeth and claws, but desperate for the answer. He kindly suggested that an escalation in chemical warfare might help, and that wire brushes (especially drill mounted) might help.

But more importantly, he gave me a stronger suggestion to abandon my efforts and take it to a powder coating shop to let them blast and paint it. “Let someone else do it?” I thought indignantly “This is my project! How could I justify the time, the love, the effort I’ve already invested? How can I think of dishonoring my aching, damaged thumb by giving up?” (My thumb at this point had nearly grown it’s own mouth so it could handle the screaming closer to the source.)

Like a magic bean, however, the planted suggestion grew stronger as I slept. Not only would bead blasting be faster, reaching every nook and cranny of the frame, it would get the surface rust too. I let go of the excitement I had been cultivating from the thought of learning how to paint well. The reality is that I don’t have a booth, or a gun, and if I did I’d still need to fail horribly on several projects to achieve any kind of competency with those of tools. More than likely, faced with that challenge, I’d revert to rattle-cans from AutoZonePartsBoys and get results only marginally better than I’d started with.

And even if, by some miracle, I’d built a booth and picked up a decent sprayer and learned how to shoot Imron and candy and do airbrush flames with an uncanny, supernatural skill right from the get go, the fact is that powder coating is simply better for the environment. A strong component of my love of bikes is their light environmental impact. Using rattle-cans is flat-out damaging to the environment, and shooting urethane wet is several degrees more so.

I woke up and knew instantly where this project was headed, and I felt some shame in surrendering so easily. For about 15 seconds, until my thumb made light contact with the bathroom faucet. In that illuminating instant, I realized that I’d just made a good solid judgment without being unduly emotionally influenced by sunk costs, and that seeing the light involved a pretty minimal waste of time and only light, temporary physical damage. That right there is reason to celebrate in my world!

(And thanks muchly, Mr. Thill, for the excellent advice. I have always depended on the kindness of Internet strangers.)

So last night, Rebbie and I played around with some graphics, spent too much time looking at the wrong colors, and hotly contested their merits and faults. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that aesthetics are subjective, there’s a way things should be done and for some reason you’re always wrong. It’s probably your upbringing or perhaps a genetic flaw, but it’s amazing how you always pick the wrong color. You should see a doctor about that, so that we can all stop laughing about it. God I can’t believe you picked that color, you knob.

What we should’ve done right off, perhaps if we’d been less tired and had been thinking more clearly, was explored our connection to the rich heritage of British racing cars. Which is to say, we don’t have any, but the fucking green works! Check it out, situated for proofing on top of the awesome Creme Fat Franks we picked out for this project.

I look at those tires and can almost taste a vanilla milkshake. And in case you were wondering, yes, they do bring all the boys to the yard, and, that’s right, they’re better than yaws.

So I dropped off the frame, Free Radical, and V-Racks with Chris the Powder Coater in Hyattsville this morning, hung out for an hour chatting and getting the full tour of his shop. He’s going to do the whole shebang in a lovely Forest Green for less than $200, should be done in about a week.

What’s better than that? Nothing, that’s what.

Via the foyn folks at Car Free Days, check this out:

I’d say that’s worth more than a thousand words, eh?

Also, they’re drawing attention to a July 4th Cargo Bike Ride meeting at Pioneer Square at First and Yesler at high noon, partner. If it weren’t 2700 miles away and two days from now, I’d totally be there.