Woot! Shiiiiiiny!

I got the call from Easy Racers that the frame was ready about 11am. By 1pm I was in Watsonville to get it. Easy Racers' owner Denton Coetzee proudly got the frame down from the rack. Sorry I didn't get a better picture of him.

I was amazed at how mirror-bright the finish was. Denton said that aluminum tubing can sometimes be porous and would not come up this shiny. However, he said, Easy Racers has always paid a premium for Alcoa tubing, avoiding porosity problems.

Two mechanics quickly installed the head-tube bearing cups. This is a simple job provided you have the proper press tool. I don't, so I was glad to have them do the 2-minute job. They also installed the bottom bracket.

Then I happily headed home and as soon as I got there, put the frame down on the lawn for a quick picture.

Be sure to click through and see this at larger size. The old frame had only a small decal on the head tube. Denton and crew had installed the current bronze badge!

First thing I did was put the frame on the stand and apply a coat of wax. This let me get close to admire details such as the welds.

After that, I installed the front and rear brakes. The shiny Tektro brakes do indeed look very appropriate on the shiny frame.

When I had installed the front brakes and front fender, and the rear brake, I put the new two-legged kickstand on and set the bike outside for another picture.

I think I may make this picture of the rear triangle my new face on facebook....

Tomorrow, the drive train.

Drumming fingers impatiently...

Buck @ easyracers writes, in response to my query,

We are currently polishing your frame. It should be completed within a day or two. We'll be in touch soon.

Found myself obsessing about the frame in the middle of the night. I don't have the requisite press tool to install the headset bearing cups; I have to take them along and get Easy Racers to press them in. So in the night I'm imagining that I'd gone down to fetch it and forgotten to take the headset bearing cups. Should I turn around and go back to fetch them? Or let it go and then take the frame and the cups up to Mike's Bikes and say, "please would you install these?" like a doofus.

OK, first thing today, after a morning run, I got the cups and the bottom bracket, put them in a baggie and put them in the car. Now I can't forget them.

I am pathetic.

New Shoes

Saturday morning, bopped on over to Mike's Bikes where they were having a 20%-off sale, yay!

On the sale table was this tiny tire pump.

I carried a frame pump about twice this size on the bike for years, and used it maybe once. I carried the frame pump on the left-side rear wheel stay, strapped on with velcro straps.

This little guy came with a plastic bracket that would bolt on under a water bottle bracket, but I think I will carry it in the frame bag. Or I might velcro it to one of the seat stays, or underneath the rack. We'll see.

Now, if the frame was here, I could put it all together!

Salsa Skewers shiny 'nuff

The pair of Salsa skewers arrived. Here they are compared to the old Shimano Ultegra ones.

The new ones are a bit heavier, but the end-nut is shiny metal, not chewed-up plastic.

To my relief, they fit just fine. Here's the front skewer installed on the front fork.

I can't try the rear skewer the same way because the rear fork is still at the factory being polished. Nothing more to do now, until that is done.

Pedals: Shiiiiny.

The new pedals arrived. These I ordered from Amazon.

They are a few grams lighter than the old ones shown below. That is hardly an important consideration when I intend to add about 8 kilograms of electric propulsion later.

However, they are shiiiiiny and that's what counts.

Looking at the new pedals made me realize that my cycling shoes have actually more miles than the 17,300 on this bike. They date to the bike-before-last, the Rock Lobster upright. I think I will need to get new shoes as well.

Wheels & Tires

The existing tires had only a few hundred miles on them, but I ordered replacements anyway. The new small front tire resisted going on the rim and to my chagrin, I pinched the tube and made it leak. Arghhhh! how clutzy.

I had a spare tube, but when I looked at it I saw it had a big patch on it. OK for a spare, but I'd rather have an unpatched tube for regular service.

Parenthetically: it has been years and thousands of miles since I had a flat. Bike tires have gotten steadily better the past decade. These new ones have a "Raceguard puncture protection belt" under the tread and I expect they will be at least as puncture-free as the previous ones.

So I went to three, count em, three local bike shops looking for new 20x1-1⁄8 tubes. Nnunh-unh, of course. So I had to order them also from BikeTiresDirect, excellent purveyors of recumbent tires and tubes, and wait for shipment but finally they came.

Meanwhile I polished the front wheel and the spokes of both wheels just for shiiiiny. The rear wheel has a gray anodized finish that doesn't polish, although cleaned up nicely.

The new front tubes (I ordered three, just to have a lifetime supply) came with cute li'l yellow valve stem caps. I put those on both wheels for a tiny little color accent.

Skewered by ignorance

I would like to replace the front and rear skewers. They have gray nylon(?)-covered nuts that are irremediably dirty and scarred. None of the local bike shops have the pretty Salsa skewers. OK, I'll order them online... But it turns out that skewers come in different lengths. Which length to order?

Clearly these are 130mm and 160mm long, right? But nobody seemed to have skewers in those lengths. Much more common are 100mm, 110mm, and 145mm. Some tandems have 160mm skewers, apparently, but nobody stocks them.

Well, it turns out I was ignorant about yet another subtlety of bicycle tech. Skewers are measured, not by the length of the skewer but by the O.L.D. or over-locknut-dimension. In other words, the width of the hub axle.

Pushing the skewers into the wheel and checking, the hub axles are exactly the lengths of the un-threaded parts of the skewers in the above picture. Or, 145mm and 110mm.

Doh!

OK, now I can order pretty skewers.

Parts start arriving

I've been ordering parts from a variety of retailers and they've been trickling in.

Chainrings

A box arrived from Peter White Cycles containing the new chainrings and rear cluster.

The chainrings are by Specialites T.A., a French company. They are of high quality, but sadly the company's prettiest products are not imported. I would have loved to order their red-anodized rings!

I've opted for a slightly easier set of gears. The old front rings were 52-42-26. This set is 48-38-24, roughly a 10% reduction in top speed, which is to say, in effort to maintain a given speed.

Rear Cluster

Here's the rear cluster, a standard Shimano 8-speed. It has cogs from 11 to 30, just as before.

The rear wheel will be completely rebuilt to install the electric motor. The motor replaces the hub; it's about 8-inches in diameter so the spokes become half the current length. However, I've verified that this cluster will fit on the new hub.

Brakes

After some debate with myself, I decided to replace the brakes. Even though they are perfectly functional (as I mentioned earlier), they just aren't shiiiny enough to match the polished frame. It took a while but I found that I could get compatible replacements made by Tektro. No standard online retailers carried the long-reach model that I needed, but I found them with an eBay retailer. Shiny they definitely are:

This model has a unique quick-release that is supposed to open wider than normal. That should solve a problem I've always had with this bike: that the rear brake, when the cable is properly adjusted, just won't open wide enough to let the tire out, without yanking to remove or shoving it hard to force it in.

Shiny!

While waiting for the frame to be polished, I've been cleaning and polishing every other bit of the bike. Diligent application of degreaser, wire brush, steel wool and Mother's polish makes any metal part almost as shiny as chrome. Here, for example, is one of the little aluminum tabs that support the bottom of the fairing.

Shiiiiny! was a slang neologism introduced in the late lamented Firefly series. I said it a lot while polishing things.

Visit to the mother-ship

Marian and I drove to Watsonville to the Easy Racers factory.

I was bringing the frame down to be stripped and polished.

There is quite a collection of used machines on display, either consignment sales or trade-ins.

A long line of new frames hangs on the wall illustrating the new color selections.

They were able to dig up a set of SRAM Grip-Shifts for an 8-speed, to replace the old ones. (Although since they are nearly identical to the old ones, probably the numbers will still read backward.) In addition I bought the two-legged kickstand I wanted; and the small frame bag; and a chain.

That's pretty much it for parts. I found some good (and good-looking) replacement brakes at ebay. The new fairing arrived from ZZipper. The chain rings and cluster should be on the way from Peter White Cycles, altho I haven't had confirmation of that yet. I need to make a trip to Chain Reaction Cycles to get replacement cables for the brakes, and cable housing for the rear derailleur run, and a cable tool.

Restoration: Brake Levers

Down below I wrote that I "definitely need to replace the brake levers" because "they are quite unsightly from wear and damage." So, walking to the store and thinking about the tedious difficulty of finding new, good-looking brake levers that (this is the hard part) are correctly compatible with caliper-style brakes (most modern levers are for V-brakes or disc brakes), it occurred to me: what if I stripped and polished the old levers?

Two hours of fussy work with paint remover, wire brush and Mother's Aluminum Polish produced an answer.

They look fahhh-bulous!

So that's one thing off the list.

Restoration Teardown: Derailleurs

The front derailleur, after cleaning, seems in fine shape. There's no reason to replace it.

The rear derailleur seems pretty good also, but it has another issue which is related to the shifters.

These Grip Shifts have been fine, but they are quite worn now and I want to replace them at least in part for looks. A second major reason is that the numbering on the rear shifter is backward. When I took delivery of the bike, Gardner explained that the XTR rear derailleur operated "backwards" to normal, pulling on the cable to move out rather than in (I think, maybe vice versa). As a result, selecting 8 on the Grip Shift gets you gear #1, 7 gets you #2, and so on. He was quite apologetic, although I never did quite understand why it had to be that way.

Anyway, that is a minor nuisance that I'd like to correct by replacing the shifters now. If I have to buy a new rear derailleur at the same time, fine. Whatever the Easy Racers staff tells me.

Since it may need to be replaced, I haven't cleaned the rear derailleur yet. It is very grungy, as rear derailleurs tend to be. Which is why I didn't take a picture of it.

Restoration Teardown: Brakes

I'm not sure what to do with the brakes. They work well and don't look too bad. Here's the front brake in place. Click to the large version to see typical road grime in place.

However, after I took it apart and cleaned it, I found some unfixable light corrosion on the return spring.

It isn't really significant nor even visible when the brake is installed. I'll ask the opinion of the guys at Easy Racers. If there's a genuinely better brake that will bolt on in place of these, I'll get a pair.

I definitely need to replace the brake levers. They are quite unsightly from wear and damage. They take the first hit any time the bike falls over, which it has quite few times.

I need to ask the factory guys what kind of replacement levers to get; there is a world of brake levers but it is hard to know what's compatible with the brakes.

It would be nice to convert to V-brakes; it would be even sweeter to convert to sexy-looking disc brakes. Alas, the 1997-era frame doesn't accommodate either option. I'd have to buy a new frame, in which case it wouldn't really be a restoration; it would be buying a whole new bike.

There is a small chance that, when the factory guys are stripping and polishing the frame, they'll discover cracks and and recommend replacing it. In that case, I suppose I'd just have to get a new frame, and then disc brakes front and rear would be order of the day. But honestly: I can lock either wheel on dry pavement using these brakes. Truthfully, the discs wouldn't add anything but sexy looks.

Restoration Teardown: Drive train

No surprise that there's plenty of wear to be seen in the drive train. Here is the significant wear on the chainring teeth,

and here's the matching wear on the 8-speed cassette.

I've ordered replacement chain rings and cassette. I'm staying with the 8-speed setup, although tempted to upgrade to 9-speed. Two reasons: I'm not sure if there will be room for a 9-speed cassette on the Bionx wheel's hub; and anyway I don't think the extra gear choice would be that important with the "electric stoker" behind me.

There is interesting wear on the crank arms:

That's the result of my right shoe polishing the arm for many revolutions. Here's similar wear on the pedal.

I don't plan to replace these parts. Now that I've cleaned and lubed them, they are perfectly functional. Well, maybe the pedals should be replaced, just for looks. The outer ends are heavily scarred, especially the right one, which (along with my right elbow and buttock) took the load when I wiped out on dry pavement last summer.

Restoration Teardown: the Frame

As I said, I don't have a picture of my white Gold Rush in service. Strange. But here is its frame, stripped.

This is the classic Gardner Martin frame design that he built in many variations for 25 years or more and his company still builds. This version, the Gold Rush Replica or GRR, is aluminum. As shown here, with the bottom bracket still installed, it weighs just 6.8 pounds! That light structure has supported my weight for 17K miles and shows no sign of cracking.

It does show wear, though. The paint's scratched and peeling all over; here's one of the worst areas.

The bottom bracket is still in it because although I have a tool that mates with its teeth, I couldn't loosen it, even using an 18-inch wrench handle. So I'll have to ask Easy Racers to remove it when I take the frame to them next week.

The Electric Stoker

On a tandem bike, the rider in the back—the one who doesn't do the steering or braking but just pedals—is known as the stoker. If you are in front on a tandem, you appreciate your stoker. His or her leg strength is added to your own and makes you feel powerful.

My plan is to add an electric stoker to my recumbent. Specifically, a Bionx motorized rear wheel.

Unlike some other bike motors, the Bionx senses the rider's input torque, and adds to it proportionally. The harder you pedal, the more it tries to help. If you stop pedalling, it stops assisting. You can adjust the assist level with the whizzy-looking computerized control panel.

The first step is to restore the old Gold Rush to a condition where I'll want to ride it! Fix up its tatty paint and scratched and dirty components. After it's rideable again I plan to have Velolectric install a Bionx system on it.

I hope the result will be a beautiful bike that I'll enjoy riding, and that with the aid of the electric stoker I can take and enjoy the longer rides that I couldn't even attempt with my typical fitness level.

We'll see. But first, bike restoration.

The Impossibility Of Maintaining Fitness

Back when I was commuting to work several days a week, I was keenly aware of how quickly my aerobic fitness could fall off. I kept a log of rides, and the times and average speeds. (Yes, I'm a nerd.) After a few months of making a round trip of about 20 miles, three to five times a week, I would have a certain level of speed, say 17.5 mph for a typical run. (You realize, to average 17.5 for a 10-mile ride to work, which I routinely did, I had to maintain 20+ on a lot of stretches.)

Then I'd take a vacation, or would get sick, or for some other reason would be off the bike for two weeks or more.

When I returned to the commute, my speed would be down by 10% or more, say 16.0 mph. And the apparent effort would be much higher; what had been a pleasant challenge would be a miserable slog. After as little as a two-week hiatus, and although I felt perfectly healthy for normal activities, my ability to cycle would be sharply reduced. I would need to ride for at least as long as I had been off, to regain the former level.

As my life presently is, in a very pleasant retirement, there is never an extended period of regular riding as there was in the days when I worked. We travel often, and for long periods. And I was riding less in any case, typically only three days a week. So no sooner would I manage to build up some kind of level of aerobic fitness than we'd go away and it would evaporate. Back to square one.

So as I said, when we returned from a long trip last fall, the thought of getting on the bike and finding out how weak my legs and lungs had surely become was just daunting. So I moved the recumbent out of its privileged spot in the house next to the front door, exiled it to the garage, and left it.

I started jogging, first on a treadmill at the gym during the rainy days, and then on the street, and gradually built up to two-plus miles. It's an OK way to get exercise...

But it's spring, and I can remember the fun and feeling of adventure that comes from a long ride through California countryside in spring and summer. But if I tried it, could I even climb a hill? And if I did go through the pain and effort of building up some minor sort of cycling ability again, I would just lose it again when we take a planned road trip in May, and a European trip in September.

Here's the bind I'm in: the kind of cycling I remember enjoying—that is, rides of 20-50 miles that inevitably have some hills in them—is simply impossible without a certain level of fitness. Not a huge level, I'm not talking about Lance Armstrong stuff here, but definitely more than the typical person of my (ahem) late middle age usually has, even if they are nominally healthy.

I could probably regain that fitness level with a few months' consistent effort; there are plenty of guys a decade older than me out there right now. But as my life presently is, I won't get consecutive months of consistent riding. And if I did regain fitness, I'd quickly lose it over the next vacation.

Oh, wurra wurra, what to do? Answer in the next post.

OK, screw philosophy. Let's talk bikes.

This is me on my first recumbent. That was circa 1947. I've been riding bikes for quite a while.

There was a decade or so after high school when I didn't ride. Then, in the late 60s, I started to get concerned about weight and exercise, and bought a bike. That was a brown Schwinn road bike with lever shifters. It had a little mechanical odometer that was driven by a peg on a front spoke, going tick, tick, tick as it counted distance. I was living in Daly City, and several times a week I would ride up the road toward the top of Mt. San Bruno (tick..... tick..... tick.....). At a certain point I would be completely exhausted, and would turn around and coast back home (tiktiktiktik!). However, each week I could ride a little higher on the hill before pooping out. I can still remember the triumph of the day when I got all the way to the top.

Another cycling hiatus followed through most of the 70s. But by the late 70s, once again concerned about my body, I bought another bike, a Raleigh, and later a second, better one, and began commuting to work by bike.

In 1988 I bought a beautiful Miyata with Ultegra components. I bought it because (I later wrote) "it felt light as a feather and as precise as a scalpel." It was really a criterium racer and completely inappropriate for my abilities, but after I had changed its gearing to match my leg strength I used it for commuting for five years.

In 1994 I commissioned a custom bike, a Rock Lobster by Paul Sadoff in Santa Cruz. I rode many thousands of miles on the Rock Lobster, commuting, weekend fun rides, and organized centuries. I wrecked it badly and Paul rebuilt it. A few years later I wrecked it again.

By that time I was interested in recumbents. Marian approved; she figured if I was closer to the ground I'd have less distance to fall. So I bought a Tour Easy. Here I am with the TE embarking on a solo tour through Marin County. I put over 6,600 miles on this bike in three years.

In 1998 I bought a new recumbent, an Easy Racers Gold Rush. It was almost the same as the Tour Easy, only made of aluminum instead of steel, and painted white instead of black.

I'm sorry to say that I seem to have no pictures of this bike, even though I've been riding it for more than a decade and for more than 17,300 miles. That sounds like a lot of miles, and it is, although it works out less than 1,500 miles per year. After that many miles and years, the bike was looking ratty. The white paint was chipped and scratched, there was ground-in dirt in all the working parts, the rubber bits were tattered, there were scars on the right brake and the fairing from where I wiped out taking a corner too fast. And you know? I wasn't feeling good about cycling, either.

So when we came back from a six-week trip last fall, I just sort of didn't start riding again. Why? Well... let's go to another post for that.