Nice 40-mile ride

I had a plan for quite a ride today, starting at 7am. Recently I had my annual physical, and the doctor ordered some blood tests, for which I have to go to the clinic 5 miles away "npo," fasting. Also I wanted to deliver something to Campbell, 19 miles away. So the plan was to start at 7, give the blood, have breakfast, and ride on to Campbell.

Well, the temperature at 7am was 35f, which made me rethink. Come to find out Marian needed to have a blood sample taken also, so we drove together to the clinic, gave up our red cells, and drove home for breakfast. When a reasonable (55f) temperature arrived at 9am, I set out on the ride to Campbell.

I had charged up the BionX battery beforehand, and I am happy to say that a ride of 40 miles (well, alright, 39.6 miles) used up only 5 of the 8 bars in the battery-state indicator. That's using assist level 2 about half the time, and level 1 the other half. There's plenty of juice for the 20-mile round trip to the gym on Wednesday. I think. We'll see.

This was a ride along familiar roads: Foothill Expressway, Homestead, Stelling, Prospect, Campbell.The streets, even busy ones like Campbell Avenue, were very quiet. There were many colorful Maple and Pistache trees along the streets. The sky was brilliantly clear; it was one of those winter days when cold Pacific air blows in from the Gulf of Alaska and makes every detail of the Bay Area hills stand out in glittering detail. Here is a view from Cupertino, east toward the Mt. Hamilton Observatory which is over 30 miles (50k) away.

Here are the exact pixels from the middle of that picture.

If I had started riding toward those so-clear little domes, it would have taken four hours to reach them, or 90 minutes to drive it.

I had stopped to take pictures of the Mary Avenue Bike Bridge. This new bridge was built in 2009 to give easy foot and bike access over I-280. It's a very nice cable-stayed bridge. Today I noticed the sun eclipsed by the north pylon:

At the south end of the bridge is a charming bronze sculpture of california quails, overlooked by an ominous red-tailed hawk.

Longer Legs - maybe

It has been cold. Well, cold for California. Chilly, damp, gray mornings, or the last couple of days, clear frosty mornings. I don't like to ride in the cold. I have a pair of leggings that I bought 15 years ago. I wore them often when I was commuting by bike, but haven't had them on in two years at least. This week I've been jogging, either on the street or driving to the gym and jogging on the treadmill, which is terminally boring even with an iPod loaded with podcasts (Skeptic's Guide, Geologic, Security Now ... my jogging companions.)

But the bike—when I finally get back on it—should be better. Last week when the rain started, I did what I said I'd do the first rainy spell. I took the back wheel off the bike (no easy job) and took it up to the local bike shop service department along with the 11-32 freehub.

Wait. The back story is that when I was restoring the bike, I assumed that when I motorized it, it would still be using the same rear cluster, so I ordered the new front chain rings in about 10% smaller sizes than the old. But then it turned out that the BionX hub only supports a freewheel not a modern freehub, and further, that the freewheel BionX supplied was an 8-speed with a smallest gear of 14 teeth.

I described this back in June, noting that I had managed to obtain a freewheel with 11-32 gearing. But I hadn't installed it.

The reason I didn't install it is that I couldn't. I tried at one point to get the existing freewheel off, but they are notoriously difficult and I couldn't manage it. (The freewheel threads onto the hub, or in this case onto the motor casing, in such a direction that your pedaling torque tightens it.) Then I took the bike back to Joe Robinson for another reason and asked him to try to replace it. He returned it saying he had not been able to get the thing off either.

There matters rested for a couple of months, but the setup wasn't satisfactory; on a downhill I couldn't spin past 30mph, maybe 31. I used to be able to pedal past 40mph on a suitable slope.

So, OK, on this rainy day I removed the wheel and took it and the new freewheel up to the bike store and at the service counter I started saying, I want to replace this, the guy who sold it to me couldn't get it off. Before I'd finished that sentence, the mechanic, without a word, picked up the wheel and walked away to the back of the shop, where he slapped a tool into a vise, dropped the wheel on it, gave a mighty heave, and spun the freewheel off. He was back at the counter in less than a minute. He dabbed a little grease onto the threads, spun the new freewheel into place, and said, "OK?"

OK, indeed. I took it home and reinstalled the wheel, and the bike's been sitting in the garage since, waiting for better weather or more motivation.

New grip shifts

I had wanted to replace the old shifters during the restoration. I bought a left-right pair of eight-speed Grip Shifts from Easy Racers when I picked up the frame. I forget the reason just now, but due to some issue, I retained the old left-hand (front) shifter but installed the right-side one.

Not too long after I started riding the new setup, that right-hand shift knob started to slip. Under the pressure of my awesome right hand, its rubber grip began to slip. It would pull away from the mechanism and I'd push it back in place.

This became increasingly annoying so I decided to replace it yet again. I went to local bike stores and looked at the shifters being used on modern mountain bikes. Some wouldn't work for my bike, for example because the shifter was integrated with the brake lever, and I need to keep my separate brake levers. Others looked rather cheap. Actually the nicest-looking grip shift is the one made by Shimano as part of their Nexus system. Unfortunately, the Nexus is an internally-geared hub. If I were setting up a new, non-electric, recumbent, the Nexus hub and related parts would make a very nice installation. But the center of my rear wheel is taken up by the BionX motor, and it seemed very likely that the Nexus shifter would not be compatible with my external 8-speed derailleur.

What I settled on was the SRAM "centera" twist-grip. It has a longer grip that looks well-bonded to the mechanism. It also has a somewhat toy-like gear indicator but otherwise its quality seems good for a plastic part.

I ordered a pair of shifters from Amazon; they arrived yesterday and I installed them this morning. Here is the right one in place,

...and here is the left one.

Happily the installation lacked drama. Installing cables often results in operatic drama and high-pitched swearing fits, but not this time. The nearest it came to that was when I was trying to fit the old, longer cable to the rear. The one that came with the new shifter was juuuuuust a few inches too short.

This meant threading the old cable tip down through the core of the shifter. And of course, one wire didn't want to go, wanted to spiral back and jam. I fired up my old soldering iron and soldered the tip to hold the wires together. Then it went. And the adjustment wasn't hard either, and it shifts smoothly: tick-clunk, tick-clunk.

Of course the indicator reads "backward" with 8 being the lowest gear and 1, the highest. But that's always been true because the derailleur works backward, pulling toward the higher gears.