News and Notes 7/17/2008

Wheelsets

I sold my American Classic Carbon 58 wheels this week. I will not be replacing them with another carbon wheelset. I figure at most I would need these wheels twice a year. I don't think I need them for anything less than an olympic distance triathlon. I figure that I will do at most one of those and then a sprint or two and then the 70.3 Ironman California next year. Wheels are freaking spendy for the kind that I would like to race on. So instead of owning something that even at a wholesale price would cost me at least $1,300, I will pay $140 for a week's use covering the time I race the 70.3 distance triathlon next year. I probably won't bother for an olympic.

Anyway the place is called Race Day Wheels. I have heard about them and the one person I know who used them had a good experience. I have a certain limit on amount of bike assets that I have at any giving time because, frankly, we are poor and I am spoiled enough already with 4 bikes. These wheels were just sucking up too many of the asset allotment for the amount of use I was getting out of them.

Instead the carbon wheels I am going to buy a set of Neuvation R28 SL5 to have on hand as a training/cross racing wheel. They weigh under 1500 grams and the deal I can get on them is even better than the prices they advertise on the web. A fellow at the shop has a set of the older R28 SL3 wheels and to his dismay when he got a set of Mavic R-Sys wheels a couple of months ago he couldn't tell the difference between the way they rode and the cheap neuvations. The R-Sys wheels were about 199 grams lighter and did look cooler, but he still decided to sell the R-Sys wheels already. The price we can get these things Neuvations is just silly. So for road/cyclocross wheelsets I will have the following: Mavic Ksyrium ES tubular wheels, DT 240s/DT rr1.1 wheels, Velocity hubs/Velocity aerohead wheels, and the Neuvations. All these wheelsets are sub 1500 grams but seem pretty durable to so far. I also have a Cane Creek Stados wheelset that will probably sit and collect dust for the time being. It weighs a ton (not really, about 1800 grams), but I should probably make it the rainy day commuter wheelset.


Commute/Creaky Crank

I am also proud that I commuted to work, both there and back via my bike everyday so far this week. And I did so despite my wife telling me I could have the car everyday. And I did it all on the Curtlo with the larger gearing. I have found that there is some creaking going on. I believe the Token bottom bracket is the culprit. I am using the older square taper technology on the Curtlo, by the way. I have a carbon Campy Record crankset on it with the crappy Token bb. I should have just bought the more spendy Campy one, but I was trying to save a little money at the time. The thing is only 300 miles old. Maybe 500 tops. It hasn't seen hardly any bad weather either. It only pops with larger efforts when I am climbing. I am going to check the chainring bolts first before I get too wound up. I did check the torque settings on the bb cups and the crankbolts and they are now all good. Still creaky though--just not as bad. The non-drive was about 1/3 lower than it should have been.

Curmudgeon Cycles

Curmudgeon is one of the leading candidates for the name of Neil's frames that he plans to build. He gave me a drawing today for my frame. Woohoo! There are still a few kinks to work out but things are ironed out enough that I can buy some lugs. I am thinking that the headtube lugs and seat tube lug may come from Richard Sachs. The bottom bracket lug will probably come from Pacenti, though I reserve the right to change my mind any number of times.

Here is a link to a pic of the lugs I am thinking of using. I will probably do a little customization to it regardless of which lugs I get.

Am I stoked to play around with the lugs and have a small part of creating something I will race on? You betcha! Stay tuned for occasional updates on the build process. I don't expect the frame to be done until early next year, maybe December at the earliest.

Future Plans and Dreams

I was told that I might hear back this week regarding a job with a firm downtown. Nope. Hopefully I will get an answer, an affirmative answer early next week. If so we are having a party, a big one. Actually, come to think of it, the size of the party will depend upon the amount of pay ;)

Tomorrow I am going to get a bunch of riding in. At least that is the plan. I am going early with DTP to Forest Park to do some climbing. Then I am riding to work. and then Riding home. All together that should be somewhere between 3.5 and 4 hours of riding. That will do nicely. I gotta work off the Thai food that I overstuffed myself with tonight.

In other news I have a new frame on the horizon. Yes, another one, somewhere around number 34 or 35 in the past 15 years (seriously). But this one will be especially special. You may ask how can this one be much more special than some of the fabulous bikes that I have owned. Is it going to be made out of some unobtanium material? Nope. Is it going to be the lightest thing I have owned? Nope. Not the heaviest either. Yes, it should be very easy on the eyes though if things work out. But the specialness is going to come from the fact that I am going to have a small hand in building it.

Neil is a retired Boeing engineer and he also likes to slum it with us in the shop for fun. He went to UBI some years ago and has lots of experience building and fabricating things much more difficult than bike frames. Yet, building bike frames is what he is going to start doing. His plan is to build about one a month. The first few are for members of his family. I am number 6 on the list. That puts me around the beginning of 2009. I believe that pretty much everything so far that he is going to build will be made steel and lugged. That is where I come in. He is going to do a drawing for me and then we will know the angles that the lugs need to be. At which point I am going to order some stainless lugs. I will be doing some customization of the lugs to personalize them a bit. That is the risky part. If they don't turn out I can order more, no big deal. But dang, I am really looking forward to this. I believe that within a couple of weeks I should be able to start playing with the lugs. We have a Dremel tool at the shop and I hope to be able to freehand some alterations to the lugs. I have done some stuff like this before long ago with a Dremel tool and hopefully it will turn out well. If not, there are back up lugs that I can get easily. Excited, yes I am very excited. I spend much of my spare time looking for lugs and figuring out what tubes I cam going to use. These are great problems to have. This is going to be fun.