Metamorphosis!

It was nice having a bike that looked like this...


...but I have much more use for a bike that looks like this:



Booyah! I've been rocking either a 42x15 or a 42x16 depending on how I feel and where I'm riding. Burke-Gilman? 15. Mercer Island? 16. The short hills on MI are loads of fun. 50 RPM tempo uphill, 140 RPM downhill, repeat 20x.

I've also been working at Cycle U, just like Sam, Adrian, and Dan before me. It's a 6'4" legacy that I'm proud to continue. Also, given the historical record, I should have a pro contract within 2 years guaranteed. I've mostly been teaching Cycle U's flagship program, InCycle, but I've also been turning wrenches when they need turning, which for some customers is pretty frequently. Just look at this pulley I took off a customer's bike.


It's a little blurry, probably because my camera refused to focus on such a thing. You can only actually see about 10% of the surface. That's because by volume, there was literally more grease than pulley wheel. And it wasn't just the pulleys. The chain looked like it had been dipped in black tempura batter, the frame was smeared and caked with a patina of grease and road grime, and even the water bottle cages were covered in a mysterious greenish skin. The owner had complained of "bad shifting." No wonder--there was petrified grease in the chain's path.

And what bike did this come off of, you might ask. A derelict 1980s Huffy? A ramshackle 10-speed fished out of someone's shed? Well, an astute viewer might recognize the trademark brake hoods in the upper right of the corner, or the distinctive taper of a 3T fork, or the patented triple spoke build of the wheel in the lower right. This pulley wheel belonged to a 2010 Cervelo R3 with an 11-speed Campy Super Record groupset. The nerve! Now granted, the owner of the bike is probably a much greater value to society than I am, and thus spends much more time than I do on non-bike fawning activities, so I understand that I can't be too critical. But I couldn't help but feel a sense of injustice at what I saw. It was like watching someone clean a well-seasoned cast iron skillet with soap and a steel scrubber.

This made me think about how much enjoyment I get out of listening to a well-built and well-tuned racing bike purr. Extra enjoyable if the bike is curated.

Lang Reynolds' bike is curated. As a sport, cycling involves an interplay between man and machine. When it comes to training, there is no shortage of things to work on in the 'man' department, and a fast rider will always beat a weaker rider with a nicer whip. But for me, working on and taking pride in my bike has few rivals in terms of generating excitement about riding. This goes for both equipment selection and maintenance. As for selection, the process of choosing each component based on its engineering and aesthetics for its intended purpose instills an awareness of my machine that I carry with me when I ride. As for maintenance, spending time looking at, thinking about, and working on it is therapeutic, in addition to obvious practical benefits. The combination of the two means that when I chamois up, look at my bike, and ask, "do I wanna ride this thing," the answer (hell yeah!) is based on a complete familiarity with the machine, respect for its construction, and confidence in its functionality. Thus, rather than taking away time from training, it actually removes impediments to training, so that I can mount up and giver skidoo in the big ring with confidence.

Man I like bikes.

Canoe

I'm restoring a canoe! Since graduating from Whitman in May, I've been living mostly like a monk--racing, training, and taking long road trips in my beloved Volvo. My parents have been kind enough to help me by letting me live back at home, and in lieu of rent money, I'm working on cool projects that have some tangible or sentimental value to them....like this canoe!

(the canoe after about 25 years spent biding its time)

As you can see, it's hard to fit in one shot. This is a photo of the hull. Brief history of this canoe: 70 years ago, this canoe is born. 35 years ago, it comes into my dad's possession. 34 years ago, it receives a new yellow paint job to cover the aging maroon gel coat. Some time in the 1980s, the canoe is involved in a crash involving my dad and my grandpa, accounting for the various patches of busted and patched fiberglass you see in the photo. Since being patched, the canoe has slowly fallen into disrepair: the patches aren't sturdy, the hull leaks, the fiberglass is coming un-laminated from the cedar planks to which it once adhered, the gunwales are dry-rotted. So, what is one to do about this? Fix it!

I bought some paint thinner, fiberglass fabric, epoxy, an orbital sander, a respirator, and have been going to work. The process (as far as I can see) will involve tearing off the aging fiberglass patches, taking the paint down to the original fiberglass, redoing the patches, injecting epoxy into certain parts of the hull, pulling off and replacing the gunwales with new hardwood strips, and repainting the whole thing.

It's a stereotypical relationship, but my mom and dad are always butting heads over what to keep and what to dispose of. My dad always errs on the side of conservation and reconstitution, while my mom likes to get rid of anything that doesn't have an apparent use. While there's usually a middle path that's more reasonable than either extreme, I've got to go with my dad on the contentious issue of the canoe. Despite the disrepair of the boat, when I look at the old planks, laid over the cedar skeleton, and think about throwing the boat away because it is going to take so many hours of work, I feel like it would be profoundly wrong. Imagine the guy who put the thing together. He'd be rolling over in his grave.

More on that later. Now, here's what the canoe looks like. I've stripped the top layer of paint off and am preparing to sand down to the fiberglass. For areas that are structurally sound, I'll leave just a bit of paint so that I don't damage the FG by sanding it. For areas that need to be repaired, I'll take all the paint off since they're getting patched anyway.


The spots you can see straight through to the wood are the parts that were punctured by knots in a fallen log that my dad and grandpa couldn't avoid while paddling a few decades ago. Time to FIX EM!!

When I'm not working on the canoe or blogging about working on the canoe, I'm usually riding my bike or playing with Lucy, my 9-year-old Golden Retriever. See?

(my track bike trying its hardest to be a road bike)

With Elite Track Nationals coming up at the end of September, I've been putting more and more time into track-specific training. I'm planning on racing the Omnium, Individual Pursuit, Scratch and Points Races, and maybe the Team Pursuit (if I can find a team), and I've been lucky enough to hook up with a local training group of cyclists who are also going to Nats, thanks to Jen Triplett. First session is tomorrow, coached by Jennie Reed, so we'll see how that goes.

Riding the track bike on the road is a lot of fun. I haven't got a lot of gear combinations, so for now, I'm forced to roll a 52x16, which means I ride on mostly flat terrain if possible. That bike, while incredibly heavy, is also very stiff, and can go quite fast in a straight flat line. Since my TT bike is disassembled (mined for track bike parts), as is my road bike (still in hill climb mode), I'm doing most of my riding on this bad boy.

And look at this awesome dog! The golden retriever, not the ugly giant dog that didn't want to do anything except follow her around Lake Washington.

Big stupid gray dog just harangued Lucy the whole time she was trying to get the ball!! What the heck??