Sub Compact

The front derailleur on my current road bike has been a problem since I got it. If you want the whole story, you can read it here: https://mondoblahblah.blogspot.com/2018/04/all-together-now.html

The microSHIFT derailleur supplied with the Cycles Toussaint Velo Routier v2 DIY build kit was just never quite right. It worked, but in order to shift to the large chainring I had to "overshift" so that the outer plate rubbed the inside of the crank arm and then trim the derailleur back once the chain made the move to the big ring. 

The crank arm didn't completely come to a stop when it made contact with the derailleur cage, but to avoid as much "rubbing" as I could, I tried to shift up only after the drive-side pedal passed the 12 o'clock position and have all trimming complete before it reached the 9 o'clock spot. Obviously harder when pedaling at a high cadence.

I got used to the motion, so it wasn't a huge problem. Since I spend about 95% of my time on the big 46 tooth ring, it wasn't much more than a minor annoyance. But the derailleur never actually worked the way it's supposed to, and it spent far more time rubbing on the crank arm than should ever be the case. We do it all the time, but we should never have to conform our behavior to compensate for the inadequacy of our equipment. We deserve to have stuff that works!

microSHIFT 9/10-speed front derailleur

These "winter months" tend to be when I attend to the routine maintenance of my bikes in preparation for the much more active spring riding season. This year I needed to re-wrap the handlebars and while I was doing that I thought I'd try a different cable routing for my bar-end shifters, running the cables under the bar wrap rather than having the big swoopy loops of cable housing jutting out over the front wheel where is kind of interferes with my rack-mounted handlebar bag. AND while I was at THAT, I might just as well see if I could do something about the annoying front derailleur.

After removing the microShift unit, I immediately noticed two things about it:  

1. The model number does not match that listed on the Cycles Toussaint site (FD-R62 vs. FD-R74E)
2. It is marked "9/10 Flat Handlebar"

microSHIFT FD-R62 9/10-speed front derailleur

I honestly have no idea if either of these things matter at all. They are both old, retired parts numbers and I'm not sufficiently interested to know if there was a mistake in my order. At this point I could probably just live with it forever, gripe from time to time and just get on with my life. But I have an Ultegra derailleur gathering dust so...  

I had recently run into the old Microsoft Ultegra 10-speed front derailleur in my parts bin. It's a remnant of my midlife crisis super bike, and it's just been sitting in the bin since I stupidly drove into a parking garage with it bolted to my roof rack. 

Now I am not sophisticated about chain lines, spindle length, etc. I used to believe that Shimano components won't work with anything other than other Shimano components, and even then only from the same groupset from the same generation. But I have recently come to believe that friction shifting can cure nearly all technical problems with bikes (thanks Russ!). So I figured I'd swap the Ultegra for the microSHIFT and see if it works any better. In the worst case I'd just have to swap them back, so what's to lose?

Shimano Ultegra 10-speed front derailleur

You probably won't be surprised to learn that of course the Shimano derailleur works better. At least it is easier to adjust so that the chain moves to the big ring without the derailleur rubbing on the crank arm. And it shifts down just as reliably. Altogether it just provides a much more confidence inspiring shifting experience. It does seem to take more "trimming" when I'm cross chaining. I think the Ultegra cage, which is specifically 10-speed only, not 9/10-speed, is narrower than the microSHIFT's, which would account for the difference. Saint Sheldon confirms. 

I suspect I'll spend more time trimming at the outside edges of the shifting range, and I'll see if that drives me crazy. For the moment, it's just nice to be able to pull up to the big ring in a single motion without having to think about where the crank arm is in its rotation 

So the moral of the story is that you should never leave an expensive Shimano component lying around in a box when you have an equivalent budget part you aren't happy with. Slap it on, see if it works. What have you got to lose?

Tasty buds

Just another day being happy to live in one of the world's great cities. Every American should make the trip, visit the museum's on the Mall (The Managing Partner and I recently visited the Museum of Natural History - go already, it's amazing and profound), see the monuments, appreciate the incredible gift our forefathers bequeathed to us, and then go back home dedicated to preserving and protecting our precious heritage. 

Washington Monument through Cherry blossoms

Coming Soon - Crust Cantibolt build

OneDrive informs me that one year ago today I took delivery of a new bicycle frame, a Crust Lightning Bolt Cantilever. I had bought it completely as an impulse purchase, based, as I'm sure is common on the insanely positive review in Bicycle Quarterly combined with the slick "Galaxy" colorway. 

OneDrive photos of the newly arrived Crust CantiBolt

Because I hadn't really intended to buy the bike, I wasn't really prepared to actually put it together. I just didn't want to miss out on getting one of these extraordinary frames in my size. So until the last few weeks the frame has just been sitting in its box waiting to be turned into a frame. 

Since that time I have collected a bunch of the necessary parts to complete the build. Lingering covid-19 supply chain problems have caused delays and increased expense, though last week I had the frame prepped and headset installed by the fine team at Just Riding Along Bicycle Shop in Laytonsville, Maryland. Really great shop, and they speak "steel".  

In the coming weeks I'll be writing up a detailed description of the build process and spec. For the moment, here's how it's looking:

Crust CantiBolt with headset, bottom bracket and seat post installed 

The stem is not what will ultimately be installed (it'll be way shorter), the seat post is not set to the correct height (it too will be way shorter), but I wanted to put enough of the pieces together to make it start looking like a bike. 

Nothing else to report just yet, but for those of you interested in such things, there will be more to come soon. 

Cruzing with friction

Among my ever-growing fleet of bicycles, there is a a very much neglected bike from the early nineties that was long ago relegated to the garage in favor of more road focused models. I recently had occasion to drag it out of obscurity and reconsider it. 

The bike in question is a 1993 Specialized Crossroads Cruz, a steel "hybrid". It was the first "adult" bike I ever bought and though it has given me a great deal of pleasure over the years, it had fallen into disfavor be cause in many ways it was a really poor choice. There's nothing inherently wrong with the style of bike, and it was pretty well made, despite being way down at the bottom price point. But bike's frame is way too small for me, the 700c x 35 wheels are way too big for the frame, and consequently there's a horrific amount of toe overlap, not to mention about two feet of exposed seat post! Though it has super low gearing (48-38-28 triple with a 30 tooth low gear in the back), the thing is heavy as sin. 

1993 Specialized Crossroads Cruz

But as frequent readers of this blog will know, my two greatest passions are cycling and deer hunting. Suddenly last year it occurred to me to combine the two, to reduce the miles of walking to and from my stand and possibly extend my range somewhat. There's no way I would use one of my precious road bikes for a hunting bike. It has to be able to sit out in the forest chained to a tree in all kinds of weather. It has to carry a rifle or a crossbow for Krod's sake. And I was not about to buy a new mountain bike for the purpose - the whole thing was an unproven concept. So I dug the Crossroads out of the garage, blew some dust off of it, and gave it a once-over. 

Turns out, despite having languished for over two decades, the bike was in pretty serviceable shape, working, more or less as designed. The one thing that wasn't, and frankly hadn't been for a while was the thumb shifters. The grease meant to lubricate the moving parts had obviously congealed into a thick goo, and though it was possible to shift "up", increasing tension on the cables, down shifts were not happening predictably because the index system's ratchets were all gummed up. I tried blasting them with WD40 (the only application in which I would ever let WD40 touch one of my bikes), but after several applications and some serious soaking, they still weren't shifting right. 

OEM: Shimano 100 GS thumb shifters

Fortunately, the gearing is so forgiving, and most of the riding I did during the season was limited to relatively flat forest roads, so I went ahead and used the bike as-is and it worked out fine. I had a very successful deer season and came back resolved to give the bike the TLC it deserves for schlepping me back and forth through the forest with all me gear. 

The first order of business was new brake pads, immediately followed by a replacement of the shifters. Ardent readers may recall that when I ordered my Cycles Toussaint Velo Routier v2 back in 2018, they inadvertently shipped it with a set of MicroShift thumb shifters instead of the preferred bar-end shifters. When notified of the error, they graciously sent me a replacement, but never asked for the accidentally shipped thumbies back. So out of the parts bin they came, and onto the Crossroads they went, along with all new cabling et voilà! the ol' girl shifts like a youngster.

Microshift thumb shifters

And not only is the shifting as good as or better than ever, the friction shifters weigh less than half what their predecessors weighed. Not that the "saved" grams matter much on a 35 pound bike, but hey, take what you can get. 

Microshift friction "thumbies"

Of course now that I've got the shifting and braking all sorted out and working well, I have started to notice what seems like some pretty pronounced looseness in the headset. And the chain, which I don't think has ever been replaced, seems pretty well shot. Which means I also need to get a new cassette... Oy, it never ends! 

Do not touch

Spotted on an electrical panel box on the patio of Good Hops Brewing in Carolina Beach, North Carolina.

Danger sign on an electrical panel

Down time

This is the quiet time. The rest period between the end of Virginia's Fall Turkey season and beginning of Spring Gobbler season. My 2022 whitetail season was spectacular, with two bucks taken, a ten-point with my new CVA Optima muzzleloader, and an even larger eight-point with my trusty Browning X-Bolt Medallion (chambered in .270 Winchester). Other members of my hunt club were similarly successful, with our 75 year-old founding member harvesting a mature eight-point during muzzleloader, and my 25 year-old nephew taking a spike with black powder and a beautiful eight-point on opening day of high power, just ten minutes before I took mine. Altogether the standout year in the entire twenty-five year history of the club.    

There are opportunities for small game this time of year, but I haven't taken up the pursuit of squirrels, etc., and my attention usually turns to preparing for the ever-earlier Spring cycling season, seed starting and garden preparation during Q1. Still, hunters never completely stop day dreaming about the hunt.

Daydreaming during the early fall archery hunting season

This winter I have been expanding my hunting/conservation education. So far this year I have read the following books:

American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, Steven Rinella

Inherit the Hunt, Jim Posewitz

Rifle in Hand, Jim Posewitz

That Wild Country, Mark Kenyon

Next on the nightstand is Coyote America by Dan Flores and The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine by Steven Rinella. I also picked up a spiral-bound copy of The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game: Vol. 2, Small Game & Fowl, also by Steven Rinella.

All titles are recommended for interested readers, though if I had to pick just one (to start with), I'd pick That Wild Country. It's more about conservation of public lands than hunting, a topic of incredible importance, now and always. In fact I immediately made a contribution to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and so should you. Or to the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society or any other organization that works to protect and preserve our public lands. Do it. Do it now.

So as winter turns to Spring, I tinker with bikes, plan(t) my garden, read some books and dream of the adventures to come. Venison is on the menu often. Here's the recipe I plan to use for the roast below. 

Dry aging venison shoulder roast

In this quiet time of reflection, I could not be more grateful for the extraordinary right to share the bounty of our cherished public land, to actively participate in the natural world, and in general to be an American.    

Unstuck

9.1.2022

Thirty-four years, give or take. Full-time. Part-time brings it closer to forty. Eight thirty to five thirty with an hour for lunch, or something like it. Two weeks off a year and a week sick. An additional week a year granted in the last four years of the “career”. It was a living, as they say.

I already can’t remember what it was all about. I traded time for money. Did what they wanted. Even at the time I don’t think I really understood why anyone would pay all that money for it. I guess money has its own needs.

So now I renegotiate my relationship with time. Remove the company watch. Melt the clock’s face and throw a wrench in the great machine. Maybe I can discover a new pace, a new rhythm, a cadence for my hours and days not dictated by money but by curiosity and passion. Synch my heartbeat with the sun and the moon. Guide my actions by the ebb and flow of the tides and seasons. Maybe I will come unstuck like Billy Pilgrim in Schlachthof Fünf. Would that be bad? Is timelessness a simulacrum of madness?     

If I live as long as my mother, I have another thirteen years. If I make it to the government’s estimated lifespan for a man of my generation, I have about eighteen years to go. If I end up living as long as the oldest known member of my family, I can look forward to a whopping thirty-five years of retirement! There are a number of epidemiological factors that incline me to think it more likely that my time will tend toward the earlier termination date.

Time, as they say, will tell.  

Crustier and Crusteür

The new Lightning Bolt has arrived!

Some of you will know that I recently purchased a new Crust Lightning Bolt Canti frame. The main reason I bought it was the glowing review in Bicycle Quarterly. They basically said the bike nearly equaled the performance of the bespoke, custom bikes they ride, at a fraction of the cost. Having spent the past few years happily riding a Cycles Toussaint Vélo Routier, a budget variant on the same theme, i.e., a low trail, 650b rando bike, I was intrigued. I went on about my hopes for the bike in the previous post, and will provide details about the eventual build and impressions of the bike in future posts, but today I thought I'd assemble a list of links to other people's conversations around both Crust, the company, and the Lightning Bolt. Most of these resources refer to models prior to the 2022 version, but I think they're still relevant, or at least interesting to me. So, without further ado...

Path Less Pedaled
https://youtu.be/nEDra8YR8-s?t=261
"It's basically Bicycle Quarterly. Shake Bicycle Quarterly, this fell out of the pages." Matt  https://youtu.be/q5eJzXVzKFg
https://youtu.be/vYneDSM9JTY

The Radavist
https://theradavist.com/2019/09/ultra-romances-crust-lightning-bolt-is-lighter-than-a-soft-whisper/
https://theradavist.com/2020/03/nams-crust-bikes-cantibolt-lightning-bolt-thrower/
https://theradavist.com/2021/05/readers-rides-tins-crust-bikes-canti-lightning-bolt-in-central-florida/

Blue Lug Crust Videos (Japanese - turn on CC for enjoyably awkward subtitles)
https://youtu.be/LHuGZOdRArs
https://youtu.be/upoTnEgiFaY
https://youtu.be/-Wcca6XwTX0 

How Centaur/Mermaids say, "I love you"

Crustaceous sky fire

There's an entire hemisphere of my brain that can't believe I bought a Crust Cantilever Lightning Bolt. It's the side that drew me to graphic design with an emphasis on the written word. The hemisphere that makes me a font-weeny that pours over The Elements of Typographic Style, and have opinions about the differences between Helvetica and Arial. Christ, I obsess over typefaces even when writing utterly unimportant documents. Note for the Amazon guy to leave a package on the porch? Definitely Garamond. So how on earth did I end up with a bike whose model name is rendered in some kind of faux graffiti-esque face?

Crust Lightning Bolt Canti

And don't even get me started on the brand's pink Rocky Horror Picture Show typeface, book-ended by literal lightning bolt clip art and South Beach pastel colored banding. Dear Kröd.

Crust brand name in pink "grunge" typeface

Is it supposed to be some kind of skate punk thing? Homage to BMX? Don't get me wrong. I've been known to defend even the much despised Comic Sans typeface. Horrid in most places, but perfectly appropriate in a comic strip. Likewise the Lightning Bolt's type/iconography. It would sort of make sense on a skateboard or some of the brand's other models - the bikes that look like you'd naturally see them popping above the coping of an empty swimming pool. The Scapegoat maybe? Dude. Brah. Radical.

But on this bike? The Lightning Bolt's frame is a modeled on Jan Heine's classic French Réne Herse Randonneuse. Not exactly the heritage you'd expect from this typographic styling. All I can imagine is that the Crust guys came up with the name Lightning Bolt because they expected this lightweight to be fast, and the rest just followed from that. What a shame. But look, a bike designer gets to choose whatever graphics they want on their bike. I get it. If this is an expression of Crust's sensibility, why should they care what I think? Buy the bike or don't, pops. 

So given all that, what was I thinking? How could I bring myself to plunk down so much cash for a bike that irritates me every time I look at it? Well, it's precisely because it seems to be such a GREAT copy of that 1952 Réne Herse that I could not resist. Matt is obviously seriously into bikes. You'd have to be to think it's a good idea to get into such a crazy industry. And as a dedicated non-competitive, Path Less Pedaled, "Supple Life" type disciple of Bicycle Quarterly, he built a super-light, thin-walled, low trail, 650b Rando bike. But he did it his way. And his way, if the packing tape on the box in which the Lightning Bolt was shipped is any indication, is a bit zany. Tropic punk? Psychedelic metal? Nerdcore?

Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers w/ Crust logo on forehead

Crust's packing tape expresses their sense of humor

So, who am I to judge? You want the bike or not? Okay, yes. I want it. By the time it became available, I wanted it a lot. Maybe the result of perceived scarcity following the long wait associated with the pandemic supply chain issues of the past two years. Maybe the pre-sale note saying, "things are looking a bit dicey for Crust". Maybe just N+1 syndrome. Maybe the return to a horizontal top tube, combined with the sparkly black "Galaxy" paint job that got me. Probably all of the above. But in the end, it is the prospect of the bike itself that forced my hand. 

Cycles Toussaint Vélo Routier, Version 2

You may recall that in Spring of 2018 I bought a Cycles Toussaint Vélo Routier. Like the Lightning Bolt, it is a Taiwanese, low-trail, 605b bike. It is, by its makers' own admission, an "entry level" bike, though I think that is so only in the sense that the components that came in the DIY build kit were entry level. The frame and fork have a couple of unique and glorious design elements that set the bike above and beyond every other production bike in it's category, the most striking of which is that it was spec'd for direct-mount, long reach, center-pull brakes. Unheard of. Even the tubing chosen for the Vélo Routier was as light as made sense for a production bike, using "oversize" (1 1/8") 4130 Cro-moly steel in .8/.5/.8. Honestly this a bike that could only have been built by a fanatic who didn't need the money. 

But Taiwanese builders are used to building mass production bikes to safety standards that assure they won't get sued, so that "light" steel, roughly equivalent to Reynolds 531, is still stiffer than the .7.4.7 Jan recommends for bikes that "plane". You want that kind of steel in a production frame, you gotta sign a waiver. Legend is, Matt Whitehead is just crazy enough to sign such a waiver, and spec a fork that is much more slender than the one on the VR. Word is the Lightning Bolt is basically the same spec as Jan Heine's Mule. Whatever the case, the Lightning Bolt frame and fork weigh about 180 grams less, over half of which (93 grams) is in the fork. 

The other, perhaps more significant difference between the Vélo Routier and the Lightning Bolt is in the geometry. Though Bike Insights shows a calculated trail for the VR at a ridiculously low 18.8mm, Cycles Toussaint themselves claim 30mm. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. But even the 30mm is very low by conventional standards. The Lightning Bolt comes in at 40.2mm (for the 42mm tires I plan to ride). The Lightning Bolt's wheelbase is a bit shorter, as is its chainstay. The bottom bracket is also a bit higher on the Crust. In theory, all of these very minor differences should yield a bike that is quite similar to my old one, but with possibly a little less "twitchy" feeling due to the higher trail. But other elements can have an effect too, like handlebar width, crank and stem length. I haven't gotten the build worked out yet - the frame was a bit of an impulse buy, so I haven't thought through the components yet. Any way you cut it, I expect the differences to be subtle. Time will tell.

Crust sticker included in the box in which the bike shipped!

Lastly, there are a couple of elements floating around in my brain. First, there is still no brake attachment on the chainstay bridge. Not a deal-breaker by any means, and it probably saves weight - but they are elegant for any center-pull brake set-up, and the original prototype had them, so I can't help but be a bit disappointed. BUT, and I shouldn't be so excited about this, the Lightning Bolt has vertical rear dropouts. Now this is just about the most persnickety little thing, but the Vélo Routier has horizontal dropouts. Not a huge deal, but it caused me a lot of trouble early on, requiring me to purchase internal cam quick-release skewers, and it makes changing a rear tire difficult when the bike has fenders.Again, not the worst thing in the world, but I'm genuinely happy to see the more typical dropouts on the Crust.

Okay, enough for now. I'll post more as I start to think about the build. It's my intention to use a few parts from the ol' Parts Bin, mixed with some new "dream bike" parts that I'll have to save up for. Stay tuned.

...like you’re the star of the Brevet, leading everyone into a marshmallow and ice cream victory meal.

Oops, I did it again...

2022 Crust Cantilever Lightning Bolt

I couldn't help myself. After Jan Heine's glowing 2020 review of the pre-production model in Bicycle Quarterly (BQ70), I really wanted one. Then there was the über cool Ultra Romance coverage, e.g., The Radavist and CXMagazine. I was sold. Sure, I was put off by the skate punk typography and profane mermaid/centaur head badge (but hey, to Crust's credit, it's a real head badge!). I could live with the silly text if I could get a Heine-worthy frame/fork for less than the latest Campagnolo Chorus Groupset. And even kind of liked the green "crackle" paint. But then the production model came out. 

It was brown. It had a sloped top tube. There was no seat stay cable hanger. Blech! It had gone from aesthetically marginal to downright ugly. Was I willing to buy an ugly bike in the hope its ride quality was so ethereal it made me forget how it looks? Ugh. I dithered until Crust sold out of the "canti-bolt" and the decision made itself.  

No big deal. I really like my Cycles Toussaint, don't need another steed and don't really know what I'm missing anyway. So I let it go without too much regret, went about my life, watched the entire fucking world descend into chaos and death, and hoped Crust would come out with another bike I like. 

And they did. In February I got an "Only Fans" email saying they had some sample frames with a prototype "fancy" fork crown for sale, and hinting that a new model Cantilever Lightning Bolt ('22) would probably arrive in March. And the photos of the bike? Black paint and horizontal top tube!

I jumped for the "special" fancy, but there were only an extremely limited set of "samples" and they were gone by the time I clicked the link. Then on On March 3, 2022 came another email saying the following:

Well...we're doing it, we are breaking our rule of no pre-orders, no holds. We are usually hard and fast on this rule, because we are so small and keeping track of all the pre-orders can become fairly difficult on top of the day-to-day wildness of running a small business. Alas, things are looking a bit dicey for Crust, and we are fairly certain the Lightning Bolt's are due within the month (March), so we are opening them up for sale out of necessity. We will hold back on just a handful of each size, but we are pre-selling 99% of what's to come.

Again I jumped. I did a quick look at Bike Insights in the hope that I could verify the size, and sweeeeeeet!, they had the updated numbers! With 42mm tires, the stand-over height of the XS is within a millimeter of my current bike. So I pulled the trigger instantly. The order was placed on the 3rd, and the bike was delivered March 22. So let the adventure begin anew. To the parts bin!

Lightning Bolt Mermaid/Centaur Head Badge