A woman, a bike and a chicken, whole and roasted.

The Acorn Handlebar Bag

You know, if you have been following this blog, that I’m a big fan of the rack-mounted handlebar bag. But they won’t work with carbon frames (or really any bike with a “modern” racing front fork – no eyelet for the rack). As it happens, my stable contains a modern lightweight bike which I bought because I wanted a bike that would minimize the effort it takes to ride it so I could go farther, longer, more comfortably (okay, titanium or steel might be more comfortable, but the carbon certainly is better on my back than my old aluminum when it comes to the long rides).

Okay, you know it as well as I do. I bought a fashionable carbon fiber racing bike because I am a fan of competitive cycling and so in my perverse male ego I harbor delusions of riding like the professionals do. All I need is the exact same bike Sparticus rides and when some scout from an elite ProTeam gets a load of me ambling along Rock Creek Park on a Saturday morning, he will have no alternative but to recruit me on the spot into their senior division. Of course all having such a bike has accomplished is to drive a stake into the heart of any fantasy I ever had that I could be a racer. But still, I like the bike and I like to ride pretty long distances in places far from home.

And when I'm on such an "epic" ride, out in the glorious country, miles from the clutter and chaos of extraneous things like stores that are open on Sundays, I often find the need to eat and drink more than I can carry in my pockets. I occasionally want to swap out clothing as the day heats up, or to have warmer, drier clothes available when unexpected weather hits. When in unfamiliar locales I might even find it convenient to carry a map (I can see the Garmin owners' eyes rolling). So there you go - I like long rides, but I'm not exactly a touring rider. I like a light, racing style bike, because I've been brainwashed by the ads and reviews in cycling magazines to lust after the latest and greatest technology. But such bikes aren't conducive to portaging the several belongings I sometimes prefer to carry when venturing into the hinterland. Much as I look longingly over my shoulder, that damn team car just never seems to pull up alongside to take my unwanted rain jacket, to provide directions or to pass a prosciutto and Asiago panini out the window. Sowhattayagonnado?

Well, as of last week I am the proud owner of a new bar-mounted bag from the master craftspersons at Acorn Bags. This one is in black and was bought for the Madone, while the rack-mounted Rando in saddle tan has, since last autumn, perched on the front rack of my '86 Fuji Allegro. And I have to say that I love this thing. It's big enough to carry my phone, rain jacket, all the food I'm likely to need for a long day on the bike. And I can even remove a jersey or some tights when it warms up and don't have to cram my jersey pockets with all this stuff. And unlike the Rando, this one is rock solid. The wooden stabilizer bar keeps its shape and the stiffer-than-ripstop fabric keeps it from wobbling around. I just love the rider-facing rear pockets with their shiny turn-buckles, though the cables from my Ultegra make them less convenient than those on the Fuji with its center-pull brakes. I just can't say enough about how great these Acorn products are - and they're made in the United States. Bonus!

Of course this bag is an abomination to contemporary weight weenies, who spend fortunes to shave every gram from their UCI certified trophy bikes. But in my heart of hearts I know I’m an old fart who thinks cycling should be fun and practical, so screw ‘em. I have a big ol’ canvas bag with leather “appointments” on the front of my carbon fibré superbike. So what? Am I a walking talking (not to mention rolling!) ball of hypocritical contradiction? You bet. But I can carry a whole roasted chicken with me when I ride my bike. And chicken grease doesn’t drip down my butt while I ride. Can you say that? 

Related reading:

http://lovelybike.blogspot.com/2010/09/allure-of-handlebar-bag.html 

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/fell/PBP1975.html

Intercooperability

2002 Shimano Ultegra Brifters

I love my Shimano brifters. I have two sets, 105ST-R600 3/9 on my old aluminum Trek2000 and Ultegra6700 2/10 on my newer Madone. And when The Managing Partner went to buy a road bike, I strongly advised going with Ultegra (6600 era). I love having the ability to shift without removing my hands from the hoods. So I was really pissed when recently The Managing Partner’s shifters starting acting up. Hard to push up to the top chain ring. It happened on a century and the on-site mechanic did a little fiddling before declaring there was nothing he could do. 

A couple days later the bike was taken into the shop where the tech did some more fiddling which seems to have made at least a modest improvement. But he pointed out that Shimano shifters are basically designed to be disposable, unlike Campagnolo and SRAM; they basically can’t be overhauled or repaired. I was shocked to find when asked what it would cost to replace the errant shifter, that newer versions of Ultegra aren’t backward compatible either. The only option is to replace the Ultegra shifters with Tiagra or Sora. Tiagra! Either that or we have to replace the entire drive train. 

1986 Suntour Friction Shifters

Newer Ultegra shifters just aren’t backward compatible. Holy crap! Not repairable. Not interoperable. Not backward compatible. I understand Bic pens being disposable, but shifters are something akin to a durable good. I would think they ought to last a little longer than ten years before you are forced to just throw them away and replace them. Unfortunately, I suspect that modern manufacturers think of the entire bicycle in much the same way. 

As Grant Says… 

Grant Petersen is of the opinion that carbon forks are unsafe and that even a carbon frame becomes unsafe after ten years of exposure to light. And he’s not alone. Hmmm… My ’86 Fuji still has all the original low-end drive train parts, including the friction shifters, which still work just fine. And even today there are replacement parts being made by several companies (implying intercompatibility). Why have we come to accept bikes that cost more than cars but don’t last as long as a pair of sneakers? Grant would say it’s because we revere racers and buy the products they use rather than choosing sensible, practical, durable stuff that balances performance and value.

What’s weird is that I thought of Ultegra as the practical middle ground in shifters, providing all the benefits of modern design and technology without the likely touchiness of the elite level racing products. I guess I was wrong.