(Not) Squeaky Clean

   A quick Tour de France note - my current peloton favorite, Alejandro Valverde, was finally able to claim a stage win yesterday. During an incredibly difficult 17^th stage of the Tour through the Pyrenees Mountains, he was able to get into a long break and hold off the hard-charging teammates Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins, who will most likely claim this year’s yellow jersey. Valverde and his Movistar team have had terrible luck, with nearly every rider on their nine man team hitting the pavement at some time during the Tour, and many of them leaving with serious injury. When asked about the crashes and how it affected his chances to challenge for a podium spot, I thought Valverde (pictured below) was classy with his answer by not rehashing some of his previous complaints about the reckless cycling in the pack. He simply explained that the pounding his team took would make it hard to fight against the quality of opponents in the race and that at this point, he would just like to focus on the success of the day.

   I’d like to offer some advice about cleaning a bicycle, after hearing some disturbing stories from some customers, friends and family (you know who you are). I admit that I am more finicky than most and tend to wipe down most traces of dirt and sweat from my bike daily, or at least every few days, if I’m too exhausted from the ride I’ve just finished, but most cyclists recognize the eventual need to clean their ride, not only to make it look better, but also to make it operate more efficiently.

   I would first like to point out that, although modern bicycles have frames of carbon fiber and exotic materials, the machines are still primarily made up of moving metal parts, and introducing water to them is not the best idea. Even if you haven’t experienced a chain completely seized up with rust, there are many other important parts of a bicycle that will eventually become victim to oxidation, such as the headset and bottom bracket. The tiny metal ball bearings involved need to be clean and well lubricated in order to move freely and keep your bike operating smoothly.

   If you have a bicycle that was manufactured in the past 10-15 years, you may be fortunate to have sealed bearings that keep out moisture very well, but that doesn’t mean you should take a power washer to the bike! As a matter of fact, spraying a garden hose to your bicycle is really just a bit lazy, when taking the time to wipe it down with a damp cloth or two is really all you need.  What I like to do (I learned this technique in an old Paris-Roubaix cycling video) is first go over the bicycle with a wide soft bristle paint brush, dusting off the frame and wheels. A smaller tip brush is good for some of the harder to reach spots, particularly around the bottom bracket, where the chainring/crank assembly and derailleur are in the way.

   I then use a damp cloth, or perhaps one with a spray of degreaser (Simple Green is my favorite) for stubborn spots, like bug bodies or asphalt splash under the down tube. Some compulsive folks actually wax and buff their frames, but I’ve never done this, and I’ve had frames for twenty years which had a finish looking close to factory new! Maybe if you live in extreme environments, waxing your frame would be something to consider, but I’m not sure what the average cyclists would get out of this but a lot of aggravation.

   Perhaps most important part of your bicycle cleaning would be the chain and drive. Put a little degreaser on a rag and gently pinch the pulleys on the rear derailleur as you SLOWLY pedal the bike. The idea here is to remove accumulated gunk from the pulley without mangling your fingers or getting the loose end of the rag caught in the chain and pulleys or rear cogs. Similarly, wipe down the chainrings, moving the chain from ring to ring as you clean them. As an alternative, you could spray on some degreaser and scrub the pulleys and rings with an old toothbrush. I recommend holding a rag in your free hand, behind the pulleys and rings as you spray and scrub to prevent making a greasy mess everywhere.

   If you need to clean out the rear cassette, you may want to remove the wheel, again to prevent making a mess over any part of the bike you may have cleaned previously. Learning to remove the cassette from the wheel for cleaning is really not that difficult, but not absolutely necessary. Park Tool makes a great combination stiff brush with a serrated hook (pictured below left) for getting debris out from between the cogs, but any long bristled brush and a long, thin pick-type tool will work.

   Although I have one of those fancy clip-on chain cleaning tools (pictured above right), I have yet to try it - I’m not really sure why, but perhaps I just find the technique I’ve used in the past so simple. Again, holding a rag behind my working area to prevent splattering everywhere, I spray degreaser on a length across the top of the chain and scrub the surfaces to loosen the grime. Holding the crank with my opposite hand to create tension on the chain, I then pull backward with the chain wrapped inside the rag to wipe everything clean. Those of you who have neglected this chore for a while may have to let things soak a bit or go over the area more than once. You will have to rotate the pedals to expose different dirty sections of chain to complete the job. When finished, be sure to apply a light bicycle chain oil (a small drop on each link will do) to help protect the chain by keeping out moisture and to allow the links to move freely and operate quietly.

   As a final note, if you ride in the rain fairly frequently and don’t have a bicycle with a sealed bottom bracket, it is extremely important to either have your bike professionally maintained or learn to do so yourself. Water sprays up from your back tire and works down the seat tube into the bottom bracket. I found out the results when I took apart my brother’s bicycle during my mechanics class and found the bearings inside to be bone dry – NOT the smoothest of operating conditions for any bike, the bracket desperately needed to be repacked with grease. I was lucky to have caught it relatively early and didn’t have to replace a bunch of bearings with flat spots or worse, a couple of grooved bearing cups($$)!

Rack 'em up!

   Before I get into the main theme of this post I wanted to make a quick Tour de France comment. It’s good to see French cyclists picking up where they left off last season, winning three of the last four stages. Thomas Voeckler, who wore the yellow jersey through nine stages in 2011, and Pierre Rolland, who won last year’s Alpe D’Huez stage, have been somewhat expected winners, but young Thibaut Pinot was definitely a surprise. He won the 8^th stage with a well-timed attack and, perhaps inspired by the win, has been impressively hanging with the big contenders the past few days in the Alps. After several years with very little to cheer about, the French fans along the road have several national heroes, and a hopeful future, with riders like Rolland and Thibaut (pictured below) both in their early twenties.

   Sue and I learned several years ago that having a simple way of accessing our bikes certainly helps our attitude when contemplating getting out on the road. Some days just facing the pre-ride prep of getting dressed, applying sunscreen, stretching and collecting supplies can be a drag. Being able to just grab our bikes and sling them out the door helps to put us in the right frame of mind setting off to exercise.

   With our collection of bicycles for different types of riding, Sue and I were looking for a way to store them and eliminate trips down to the garage or basement. We have a side room that really isn’t in use very much of the year because it is mostly walls of windows and not very well insulated, making it usually very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. Sue had decorated it years ago, intending to use it as an escape room for herself, but jokingly admitted that it is only pleasant in there in April and September.

   We had occasionally stored a bike or two in there, but mostly just as a temporary arrangement. With some furniture located in the room, and an unfortunate accumulation of storage boxes, there really wasn’t room for more than two bikes leaning up against two opposite walls. We decided to remove unnecessary items from the space and come up with some sort storage method to put four bikes in the room.

   There was really no need for the vertical storage racks that are commonly advertised, since we don’t need to conserve the room space for other use. Sue noted the racks that are provided at triathlons, where the bicycles simply hang by the saddle from a crossbeam, and thought this would be a good solution. Buying a section of this type of rack, made of metal pipe, turned out to be more costly than we expected, and an alternative design of PVC pipe just looked kind of crappy. I came up with a similar rack made of wood that works well and, with some stain or paint, will look pretty good.

   We cut two eight-foot 2 x3 studs in half and assembled them in a “picnic bench method”, making two big letter Xs. This wasn’t really a technical operation - I pretty much eyeballed a configuration I thought would be stable and used some masking tape on the floor to make sure the two pieces were identical in dimension. We had predetermined from my saddle height that about 41 inches would be adequate hanging distance from the crossbeam to the floor, so this was the height I considered for the notch at the top of the X during assembly.

   I connected everything with wood glue and screws, because our unit is permanent, but I would think some pivoting arrangement for collapsing and removal could be easily worked out. I also added permanent cross braces to stabilize the X frames, but again some temporary type of hook/pivot method could be constructed for this instead. A 1-1/8” dowel was cut slightly shorter than the width of the room, set atop the Xs and secured with four curved metal straps of the type used to secure plastic electrical conduit.

   Pictured are our respective cyclocross and road bikes, with Sue’s on the left. The dowel does appear to sag a bit from the weight of the four machines, but the straps can always be loosened and the dowel rotated to compensate for any bad warping in the future. We considered a pipe for this part, but weighed its stability against possible damage caused to seatposts or paint from constantly bumping into the metal and thought wood would be a softer alternative.

A Belgium-ish Route

   I was cycling on one of my regular loops through Yellow Springs that reminds me of the area of Belgium and northern France the Tour has been visiting during the first few stages of this year’s race. The terrain of my ride was rolling hills, mostly on narrow roads, some of which were in rough condition. In fact, one half-mile section near Kimberton was stripped down in preparation of repaving, which gave me a taste of what it might be like to ride in Paris-Roubaix!

   The closed-in shaded roads around this area were especially nice in today’s heat, keeping me from baking in the convection oven-like conditions on the asphalt. However, I really enjoy the breaks of open farmland along this route, riding among the fields of corn and hay which look so similar to what I’ve seen during race coverage on TV. It's too bad that all of the houses of stone with slate roofs or the occasional massive modern estates that line the roads are so obviously American, otherwise I could really imagine I’m in a breakaway, trying to hold on for a Tour stage victory. Granted I’m riding about one fifth of the distance the teams covered today, at about three quarters of their average speed, but I’m ten to fifteen years older than they are, and I don’t have the benefit of drafting among 197 other cyclists either. (Yeah, dream on!)

   Speaking of the Tour de France, I’ve really been impressed by Peter Sagan (above), the Slovakian cyclist from the Liquigas-Cannondale team. He has had some successful spells the past couple seasons, but he looks like a man on a mission in this year’s Tour, with two incredible stage victories already in which he has crushed the competition. Brimming with confidence, he reminds me a lot of Sean Kelly in the 1980s, with the ability to hang with the top sprinters in the bunch, but also possessing the punchy ability to power up steep short climbs. Sagan narrowly missed winning a couple of the Spring Classics, but I see that being his specialty in the near future.

   On the business side here at CycleTech, I had quite a full shop here a couple weeks ago, including a restoration of a child’s bike and a rush job for a friend who was competing in an upcoming triathlon. I was also working on a troublesome mountain bike that had multiple problems, such as frayed brake cables, misaligned handlebars, wheels badly out of true and a bent rotor for the front disc brake. With the prompt delivery of some parts, I was just able to clear everything out before heading on a vacation to the shore.