Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Picking Apart My Collection

   Regular readers may recall that I am a big fan of the show American Pickers, despite the fact that star Mike Wolfe has banned me from commenting on his Facebook page. I had good-naturedly pointed out the fact that he calls himself a “bicycle guy”, yet during one episode, he butchered the pronunciation of Campagnolo (his: cam-pag-NOH-loh, should be: cahm-pahn-YOH-loh) and Cinelli (his: sin-EL-ee, should be: chee-NAY-lee).
   If you have seen the show, you may have noticed that his sidekick Frank takes particular pleasure in proving Mike wrong. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s obvious he doesn’t like it, and take it from me, he also has no sense of humor about it!

   I’ve never let the incident detract from my enjoyment of the program, and one particular episode involving a Motobécane bicycle was the inspiration for me starting to build vintage bicycles. I have also often used Mike’s favorite phrase (in his case, enter pretty much ANYTHING in the blank) “I’m a ____ guy” to describe myself as a “Cannondale guy”. Despite my love of all cycling things Italian, deep down I’m all about the old railroad station logo and the crazy, oversized-diameter downtube!
   Since 1989, I have always had a Cannondale bicycle, although for a period of just over four years I only had a frame that was damaged in an accident. I eventually turned that into a handy wheel truing gauge, but otherwise a rideable Cannondale has always been among my collection.
   For many years I had a red Saeco-Cannondale team replica bike that I had intentionally over-geared for some of my regular rides that involved a ton of climbing. Red has always been my favorite color, but there was a period of time where it seemed I was only building and repairing red bicycles (check out photos of the Cipollini Cannondale , one of my favorite projects), and I was looking to change things up a bit.
   I really liked the carbon fiber bikes the company produced in the green and blue colors of the Italian Liquigas team they had sponsored from 2007 to 2013, but I couldn’t justify having another expensive modern carbon bike in addition to the Pinarello FP2 I already had. Cannondale has always been an innovator in the production of aluminum bicycles, I decided to try one of their modern aluminum CAAD10 models. I happened to meet someone who had purchased one that was too big for him but the right size for me...and in Liquigas colors!


   At first I couldn’t pinpoint the issue, but I just wasn’t enjoying the ride quality of the bike. It was comfortable, in fact it came equipped with perhaps the most comfortable saddle on which I’ve ever ridden. During the handful of long rides I took on the CAAD10, I didn’t receive the slightest bit of “butt fatigue” on its Prologo Kappa Evo saddle.
   The bike itself felt like it was transferring a lot of road vibration through the frame, and the bike just felt sluggish, which seemed strange, considering the reputation of Cannondale frames for stiffness and power transfer through the pedals. The wheelset was really an average Shimano product, and relatively heavy, so I tried swapping out with a pair of top-quality Mavic Cosmic Elite wheels.
   It was definitely an improvement, but it still didn't have the jump that I was getting out of every single one of the bikes I owned at the time, including the 1988 Cannondale “Black Lightning” bicycle that I keep at the shore. Really, there is no reason to own a bicycle that you don’t enjoy riding, and I considered my options.
   During my original Cannondale search, I had been admiring the look of the 2012 SuperSix 5 in Liquigas colors, and at the time of my CAAD10 dissatisfaction, an affordable SuperSix became available. I told Sue that I had no intention of keeping all of these bicycles, but I really wanted to try this particular bicycle and attempt to put my bad Cannondale attitude to rest.


   This SuperSix model was originally equipped with Shimano 105, but the previous owner had upgraded to a mix of Ultegra and Dura-Ace. When the bicycle arrived I wanted to install a compact crankset, and in a previous blog entry I made reference to a small issue I ran into when switching out the replacement.
   I ended up loving the bicycle and decided to keep it! Sure, it is a racing bike (just look at the small amount of clearance between the frame and rear wheel!), but it is also surprisingly comfortable, not transferring a tremendous amount of road noise through the frame as most carbon bikes do.
   The bike has plenty of jump, as it is even lighter than the FP2, and the Cycle Logix carbon clincher wheels that were installed on the SuperSix are of a better quality than the relatively inexpensive Chinese carbon wheels that I had on the Pinarello. I decided to spend a few bucks on eBay for some decals to replace the boring black-on-black Cycle Logix graphics. The wheels are now badged as Mavic Cosmic Carbon Elites, which would have been appropriate equipment for the Liquigas team.
   Sure, I would like to have access to every bicycle that is unique and interesting, but I am determined not to be a collector, as I don’t have the funds to waste or the space to store it all. Having some family members with hoarding issues has exposed me to the dangers of accumulation and has reinforced the importance of streamlining one’s belongings.
   Although I really enjoyed the bike, I decided to sell the Pinarello. Fortunately it was purchased by a local guy, so I will probably get to see it again out on neighborhood roads, and hopefully for the occasional tune-up!


Thursday, August 11, 2016

Multi-county Mixed Bag

   On Sunday Sue and I headed off on a 53 mile ride that was a bit different, combining a large amount of both road and trail riding through four different counties of New York and New Jersey. Starting in Ft. Lee (Bergen County), NJ, we crossed over the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan (New York County), then made our way through the Bronx and finally Westchester.
   Much of the planned route was inspired by well-known blogger and author Eben Weiss, alias Bike Snob NYC, who had written a March guest article for The Brooks Blog (sponsored by the famous leather bicycle saddle manufacturer). Eben highlighted portions of one of his regular rides, and using his description and photos, I was able to piece together the course he had taken and linked it up with our planned starting point at the G.W.B.
   Our trip started off with the unfortunate discovery that our favorite free parking spot at Ft. Lee Historic Park now had numbered spaces and pay kiosks. At first I thought, “What a stupid thing to do, if you are trying to encourage people not to drive into the city.” Then it occurred to me that New Jersey wouldn’t care about cars in NYC, and is just trying to make money.


   I’ve been across the bridge maybe a dozen times, and it never fails to deliver exhilaration with its expansive views of the New York skyline, the Hudson River and the rocky Palisade to the west. The great feeling is dampened somewhat as you make your way down the steep, spiraling access ramp on the east end, and the thought crosses your mind of having to face the return trip up this nasty climb with the fatigue of the day’s ride in your legs.
   We’ve never been intimidated by the traffic of city riding, with or without bike lanes, as the pedestrians always seem to be the big problem, since they rarely pay attention to crossing signals or traffic lights. Add in the distraction of cell phones and other electronic devices people are using when strolling across intersections, and it seems amazing that cars are the first thing mentioned when I hear complaints from bicycle commuters!
   Down to the Hudson River Greenway we went, and despite some rather obscure markings along the path, we found our way up a short and very steep approach and some steps to the Henry Hudson Bridge over Spuyten Duyvil (Spouting Devil in Dutch) Creek. As we descended near the intersection of the Henry Hudson Parkway East and Independence Avenue, two young women asked if I knew how to get to Van Cortlandlt Park.
   “We happen to be riding right through the park,” I replied. “Why don’t you just ride with us, instead of me trying to explain directions?” So for about the next two miles we had some slow company, but since weaving our way through the crooked streets in this section of the city and down through Manhattan College was rather complicated, I was glad to have plenty of time to check the cue sheet I had attached to my stem to make sure we were always headed in the correct direction.
   The ride through the park on the Old Putnam Trail was a bit of low point for Sue and I on this trip. Abandoned in 1958, this right-of-way was part of the Putnam division of the New York Central Railroad, and I don’t think a whole lot went into the planning of its conversion to public usage. The natural dirt trail surface was uneven, poorly maintained, and in some bad drainage areas large railroad ballast-sized rock had been dumped – definitely not a bicycle-friendly surface!
   The trail was also barely wide enough for bicycles to be ridden in each direction, and railroad ties were still set in the ground on the right-hand side (traveling north), making the situation extremely hazardous for anyone swerving to avoid a collision. Crowds of families with little care about the courtesy of sharing of the pathway didn’t help matters much, either. When are people going to learn to pull completely off of the trail when they stop to take a drink or make that all-important (extreme sarcasm implied) check of their phones?
   A little over a mile later, we were treated to the Westchester County line and the start the wonderful, wide-paved South County Trailway, and although we still faced plenty of “people pylons”, at least there was adequate room to weave around them. Sue complained about feeling sluggish, and I pointed out that the trail was gradually climbing nearly 300 feet along its 15 miles up around the Pocantico Hills. There was a small disconnected section of the Trailway at the village of Elmsford where some on-street riding is required, and we took that opportunity to fill our bottles at a local shop.


   Although it eventually connects to the 22-mile North County Trailway, we exited the South County portion to take Sleepy Hollow Road through the Rockefeller State Park Preserve. There was some beautiful scenery as we wound through forests and horse farms. Just outside downtown Sleepy Hollow, we swung off near the high school to reach the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail, which I will refer to in the future as the OCA.
   The aquaduct once carried water from the Croton River down to Manhattan reservoirs, but I’ll leave you to read up on its history, as this blog entry will be long enough on its own. The OCA is actually a State Historic Park, but much of its route crosses private land, so we found ourselves feeling a bit uncomfortable as we followed this winding single-track through backyards, across front lawns and between gardens of the Tarrytown area.

If you click on the photo to enlarge, you can better make out the OCA path.

   We saw many remnants of the aqueduct’s infrastructure, such as weir chambers and shaft/gatehouses. The most prominent features were the numerous stone ventilator columns that we passed along the way.

Weir Chamber
Ventilator

   The northern part of the OCA was generally well-marked with neat green wooden posts with carved lettering painted in white. The quality of the road crossings, however, ranged from passible to God-awful, as most had poor sightlines for cyclists or the intersecting traffic. The surface in these areas had uneven curbs, broken asphalt, eroded holes or some combination of all three. We came away feeling that this trail was a wonderful resource with so much potential, and it just felt like it was being left to waste away.


   The strange thing was that the best riding was in the sections that had no maintenance, where hard packed dirt provided a smooth, fast surface. One particularly enjoyable area was within the grounds of the Lyndhurst Mansion, which was once the residence of railroad magnate Jay Gould.
   Wider areas that had one time been resurfaced with sand or crushed gravel, were worn away from heavy use, leaving large rocks and tree roots exposed. The constant light change while cycling from sun into shade and back, plus the patterns of the light through the leaves made spotting these hazards difficult. I recall a couple moments of cursing (I won’t say who), and I once had the bars jolted from my fingers – luckily I didn’t hit anything else while maintaining my no-hands balance.
   We eventually worked our way back to Yonkers and made a turn east, where we faced a wicked little hill up Ashburton Avenue. A good-natured fellow in a pickup truck yelled to us, “You should be in Rio!” (Olympics site that year). We half-heartedly shouted back our thanks, then veered right and down into a miserable segment of the OCA that was littered with refuse of all imaginable varieties. Shortly after doing a little climb out of this hole, back up to Yonkers Avenue, Sue said to me, “I think I just got hepatitis on that part of the trail!”
   We rejoined the OCA off Midland Road, right alongside Tibbetts Brook Park, but in hindsight, we probably should have just stayed on pavement. I’ll admit that my “enjoyable ride time” was just about up – after all, I have ridden the 80 miles to the shore in shorter time than this trip was taking. The trail markings became confusing, and the convoluted route that the OCA took, made necessary by highway development, added unnecessary distance to the total we had to ride.
   There was also a point where we could have diverted to a paved route towards the Van Cortlandt Golf Clubhouse instead of following the OCA, but at the time I wasn’t sure where that was going to put us, in relation to the planned return route to reach the G.W.B. We wanted to take a more gradual climb up to the bridge, not retrace our outbound course and take on some of the steep hills involved that way.
   The OCA unceremoniously dumped us at an awkward intersection that really had to be crossed on foot, and we made our way down Dickinson and Goulden Avenues alongside the Jerome Park Reservoir. From there it was an interesting ride down University Avenue through “The Heights” to reach the Washington Bridge over the Harlem River.


   I still had enough in my legs to have a little race with a dude on a power assist bike up the last incline on 181ST Street to Fort Washington Avenue and the connection to the G.W.B. The surprised rider laughed as I pulled up along his back wheel, and I didn’t bother telling him that I had about 50 miles in my legs already.
   Sue was definitely not amused by any of the remaining hills but was quite happy to find that the Ft. Lee parking area was not patrolled regularly on Sundays. We were behind schedule by a couple hours and, with our current run of luck, had been pretty sure we were going to find a ticket on our windshield. Maybe the cycling gods were taking pity on us!



Thursday, August 4, 2016

What the Party Actually Started

   I initially thought that maybe I shouldn’t be writing this week and should instead devote all my cycling energy to working in my shop. My hometown of Royersford hosted a block party on Tuesday’s National Night out, and I took the opportunity to display the bikes I currently have for sale and let people in the neighborhood know about the services I provide. I won’t say that the results have backfired on me, but my intent had been to sell and have bikes move OUT of my shop, but instead I’ve ended up with people bringing their bikes IN for work!
   Now, I wasn’t expecting miracles, since most folks around here don’t walk around with their checkbooks in hand or with big wads of cash in their pockets. I didn’t realistically anticipate several of my bikes being wheeled away during the festivities, but I did hope some inquisitive people would be drawn to the "flash" of the Cipollini bike (photo below), which I placed strategically out front. Maybe they would wander through my display, see something among my collection that they liked and make an offer?


   Not to sound mean or anything, but it wouldn’t take long for a visitor to observe that Royersford isn’t exactly the most fit neighborhood in America. There were a whole lot of people lumbering by who looked like they would clearly benefit from more (some?) time in the saddle. Many food vendors were lining the streets, and the fact that I had no edible items on offer didn’t help me to draw attention.
   The great thing that happened was that a few of my neighbors stopped by to chat, and other people are sometimes drawn to a crowd. Besides the curious, or those interested only in the trivia contest I had set up and whatever prize they might win, I met several parents who wanted advice on buying bicycles for their growing kids. I also met a woman whose husband has a similar repair business set up for his community. She even mentioned that sometimes he has too much work to handle and that she would pass on my name to him!


   Sue told me later how unhappy I had seemed during the first hour when things were progressing so slowly. I had put in so much time setting up all the bikes (seven sale bikes outside and three of my own), printing out signs, arranging tables, etc. with not much to show for it. However, my mood brightened as many people took business cards, and a few have already scheduled tune-ups on their bikes. I also made a couple contacts for sales, but we’ll see how that pans out.

   We were a bit disappointed that our Finger Lakes vacation had to come to an end, as it was so peaceful out by Cayuga, away from family stresses and a neighborhood of constantly yelping dogs. The weather also turned a bit poor, becoming rainy and very humid. Not being able to ride turned out to be a bit of a blessing because I twisted my knee on a challenging hike we took around Lucifer Falls in Robert Treman State Park, and ended up with a sore ankle compensating for the injury (very minor hurts – all cleared up now).
   I did get in a fantastic ride in the late afternoon on day #1, after we had unpacked. I would have thought about four hours of driving would have made me a bit sluggish, but I felt great. One problem with staying in a lakeside cabin around here is that there is NO WAY you are going to ride out from where you are staying, as the climb up from these glacial lakes is long and impossibly steep. Sure, I’m used to hills, but hitting them cold, as the first part of your ride, is not the best way to start off – probably just asking for a muscle pull!
   Anyway, I drove out from our cabin in Lansing (just north of Ithaca) to a plateau-ish area in order to ride a scenic thirty mile loop, part of which follows the route that the now-abandoned Lehigh Valley Railroad followed between Cayuga and Owasco Lakes. There has always been this 3:00-5:00 pm groove within which my body performs optimally, and this afternoon was no exception, as I was just flying! It helped that air was cool and dry, especially compared to the conditions we had been facing back in the Philadelphia area. We laughed to hear on the radio about the temperatures DNC-goers were facing.
   A couple days later Sue joined me on part of a sixty mile ride that I was taking along the eastern shore of Cayuga and across to Auburn and back. This route promised to be fairly hilly, and she wasn’t that interested in the distance or terrain. The significant headwind we faced going north didn’t add to her enthusiasm, so she cut our togetherness short to complete a flatter twenty-miler of her own. I hammered on by myself, inspired by the thought of when I would eventually turn around for the return leg of the trip and have the wind behind me the whole way back!


  Again, the scenery was wonderful, as I passed several vineyards/wineries with overlooks of Cayuga, then descended into the village of Aurora past charming lakeside homes and boathouses. I also managed to spot a couple of former Lehigh Valley Railroad Stations and snapped some photos.

Aurora

Union Springs
   I did not enjoy the constant, overwhelming scent of manure when I turned east into some major farmland, but I didn’t mind the company of a handful of cyclo-tourists riding towards Auburn. I don’t think they appreciated my pace and gave me not-so-subtle encouragement to head off on my own.
   Not being completely familiar with the route, I knew that there was about 500 feet of climbing on the way back but had no idea how the elevation would be dispersed along the way. Turns out that I shouldn’t have been concerned as the grade was very gradual, and as predicted, the tailwind was a fantastic ally. Other than dealing with the usual shoulder/neck stiffness, I was feeling really good throughout the ride.
   I will say that coasting back down to the cabin, a 450-foot drop in less than 1½ miles, was a bit unnerving, especially when there was a sharp left-hand turn to negotiate near the bottom. I tried to keep my speed under reasonable control, and as I neared the turn, I slid way back in the saddle and squeezed the levers firmly, careful not to lock up the brakes. I kept an eye out for cinder piles – a constant presence at intersections around these steep lake roads – picked a good line and leaned safely into the turn.

   When I later did a comparison between this ride and some of my regular home routes I found that, although the Finger Lakes provided a much greater elevation change overall, I ended up doing less climbing than on some loops I frequent around the Schuylkill Valley, due the constant up-and-down profile of our area roads. The true challenging nature of my home terrain really stood out when it occurred to me that some of the climbing totals I had considered were happening on loops that were only about half of the distance of the Finger Lakes route!