20100824

getting ready for the big trip to 中国上海 and have to admit that it will be both a big hassle as well as an exciting trip. the trip is long enough to require major undertaking, but still short enough that it probably won’t even register as a blip on young S’s memory. but who knows? my first memories, fragmented as they are now, were as a two year old in Malaysia, 1975. anything is possible, and in any event, it will be good for S to finally be around proper 汉语 speakers. even better if she picks up 上海话 (my personal favorite).

also ramping up to get plugged into reJon’s events in 中国北京, which should be very good. a timely change from the drudgery of pencil pushing of late.

after the century ride to winchester bay, i haven’t had much saddle time at all. very sad. but of course, the bicycle is a never ending project—most recently in S’s world where she has taken to her little orange kick bike. it should be called a push bike, at this point, because there’s really not much kicking; it’s mostly just happy seated walking.

also spent the better part of the last week working on a site for a professor at UO. i have to say, it simple confirms why i never became a designer or web developer. and it also reminds me of a meeting i had at Cornell with a designer, when i was still at CAPS. double X wanted me to check on a number of trifling changes, which were delaying development and amounted to no big deal. i was not enthusiastic about having been tasked to bring these new requirements (as he called them) to the designer, who had already been strung along without pay. when i finally met with the designer, and after exchanging all requisite pleasantries over Gimme coffee, she looked me in the eye and said: i don’t do vanity work. fair enough, i replied. and that was that. never mind that she got paid much more for less work than i’ve already done on this website: http://cpcp.uoregon.edu so it goes when you are the subaltern in a postmodern bourgeois hierarchy.

20100608 compact Phở gà

Phở gà, in a nut shell: one small boiler chicken in a large pot of water, five or six full star anise pods, a large thumb of ginger skinned and cut into moderate chunks, and a few dashes of coarse sea salt. boiled and simmered for some time, indefinite, until one decides its time to cool it off and pull out the now over-boiled chicken (five hours start to stop?). again, in a large pot, all of the previous broth with everything previously added strained out. (the chicken is often set aside to cool completely and then picked clean for usable meat; i find the meat may be useful for a chicken salad, but otherwise it’s now too dry and unpleasant to be reused by itself, or as the meat portion in the served phở gà; there are ways to avoid this, but when life is busy with other things, i just let the damned thing cook.) i add three or four fresh star anise pods (everyone has their own flavor preferences; i really like the flavor) and set the broth to simmer. meanwhile, take a whole yellow onion (just a cheap yellow onion; no fancy onion for this peasant soup to perform properly), cut into quarters and char it; my mother chars it in an old cast iron skillet on the stove; i’ve done it this way as well as on the grill—both result in a tasty object for your broth, though burning it on a primitive fire might give it a somewhat more authentic “dirty” flavor; or maybe i just like to burn things on my grill. once charred add them to the broth and bring it back to a boil. now prepare the noodles: don’t make the amateur mistake of boiling the noodles in the broth; maybe with your cup’o'noodles, but this ain’t microwave lunch at the cubicle office. bring a different pot of water (i add a little salt) to boil; add the Phở noodles (bánh phở’) and boil; don’t over boil the noodles, and don’t pretend this is some Italian pasta dish where you can smack your lips and pronounce “al dente,” although it is more or less what you’re looking for, it’s just that this is not I-talian cooking; oddly enough, five minutes is usually the magic number. Drain the noodles and either 1) put them directly into each bowl; or 2) put them in a big bowl to await doling. the idea is that you’ll dole them out soon, so there’s no fear of creating a sticky mass; in any event the final preparation often mitigates this. so now to it: noodles in the bowl, add nice chicken pieces to the top (or don’t), add in some nước mắm (absolutely necessary; if you don’t like the flavor, then you have no business eating phở), add in whatever other little vegetal tidbits you feel are necessary, serve with basil, sprouts, chili peppers, lime, and anything else you need. above all else, enjoy it, preferably with others.

20100328 rohloff (1); allergies; fathers in the ‘hood

simultaneous occurrences:

1) prepping the bike for its (probably) ultimate conversion into a Rohloff cross bike. part of that involved removing the rear disc brake mechanism (a BB7 road mech), installing the new Monkeybone [link] in place of the stock disc post, and cleaning the mech itself. i first installed the brake two years ago, and while i’ve always kept the bike cleaned and garaged, the brake has taken a beating from the ithaca winter (road salt, sub-sub zero temps, sand, mud, ice, and more); this became especially evident after i removed the two joining hex-bolts to properly clean the middle space of the brake mech (where the pads reside). the mech’s cavity were filthy with pad and road residue—a fine black soot-like layer of grime that withstood several minutes of brushing (toothbrush with mineral solvent) before finally cleaning away.

the brake lines, housed in compression-less Sram Flak Jacket housing. first, the cable itself, having never been serviced in two years, is in perfect grime-free condition; this seems testament to the housing’s effectiveness considering the range of crap the bike has been through. second, the housing itself, with the exception of the thin-plastic joining pieces, is still absolutely bomb-ready, and thus apparently bombproof.

there’s a lot left to be done before the bike is done, including the addition of new separable bullhorn-h-bar hybrids (a custom modified “STI-bar” job by Bike Friday [link]), canti brake levers, and a compatible bottom bracket to match the required 54mm chainline of the Rohloff.

Finally, there are not a lot of resources for Rohloff retrofitting, which makes sense since there are far fewer Rohloff IGHs on the planet than any other kind of bike drivetrain, including other IGHs, and the nigh ubiquitous front-rear derailleur drivetrain; and most retrofits are highly idiosyncratic, depending on frame type, rider intent, and so on; if you’re lucky enough to own an OEM-compatible Rohloff frame, then you may be unlucky to realize the quality of some of these few resources on tricks and hints. Three or four sites prove to be the most useful for retrofit (and general Rohloff) advice (and all three reference each other frequently); they are (in order of establishment):

(a) Sheldon Brown’s discussion of Rohloffs [link] (Sheldon, as many of you may know, is the common man’s reference point for all things bicycle); Sheldon also did an interesting fit to a custom Phil Wood frame, archived at a seemingly unmaintained sub-site [here [link]]; the wiring job on the bike (one cable going up through the brak-mech piston loop) is the first of its kind i’ve seen.

(b) Thorn cycle’s discussion (in PDF) [link], and Thorn’s own Rohloff forum [link].

(c) Vik’s various discussions of his own Big Dummy retrofit [link], which he has since migrated to his Lazy Rando blog [link] (both sites have excellent Rohloff tales and helpful accompanying photos). Vik’s pages are probably the most useful for the custom DIY-er.

Numerous other useful forums exist, including the Yahoo! groups IGH cycle/”Geared-hub bikes” forum and Cycle Monkey (the makers of the above-mentioned Monkey Bone), as well as the standard piecemeal hunt through bikforums.net (their search engine is terrible—it is keyword driven but picks up everything, including user signatures—but workable and somewhat useful if you have a good amount of time). Of course there is the official Rohloff site, too.

I’ll be tracking my own conversion in the next weeks for my own sake, and for anyone else who might be interested.

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2) it’s allergy season in Eugene. it’s been far worse than any other tree-blooming, pollen falling season i’ve ever experienced. in the past, a regular dose of claritin or zyrtec would solve 90% of my problems. the occasional layering of Diphenhydramine hydrochloride (e.g., Benadryl) would take the edge off the remaining 10% (as well as take the edge off of existence in general). well, this year has been far worse than that: my eyes itched so badly that my eyelids became swollen and crusty; my sneezing was incessant; i couldn’t sleep for sinus problems—in a word, wretched. thankfully, we have some seriously good medical insurance, so kaining got an appointment for me with an allergy doctor [link], not one month, and not even one week from when she called, but two days after she called! the allergy specialists (Oregon Allergy Associates [link]—possibly the best website name for a medical office i’ve seen) were recommended to us by some nerd friends of ours who have a son that is more allergy prone than anyone else we’ve met (and he’s a lovely, lovely boy); in short, a good recommendation. two days and one hour later, i left the office with the typical grab-bag of pharmaceutical goodies, and the first moment of relief since the season began nearly two month ago. the doctor, Kehl, was excellent and genial, even though i showed up in pure allergy misery. the best part, however, was being able to view my allergy cells under the microscope, dyed a bright fuschia; i wanted a picture to take home!

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3) i’ve been thinking that i need to keep better track of my daily routine with Sasha + part-time work juggling, especially as a part of the growing-but-still-highly-uncommon stay-at-home dad paradigm shift. let’s just call it for what it is first: it’s a woman’s world, where the presence of men is often (a) welcomed with a certain trepidation, (b) wholly unwelcome, or (c) met with complete bewilderment that generally transitions to either (a) or (b)—more frequently (b). of course, there is an important minority of women who are both supportive and welcoming, which is extremely important to me because there are not a lot of people whom i can turn to in my daily parenting life. there are sometimes stay-at-home-fathers support groups, but besides the common point of gender, the groups’ limited membership (it is a small subsection of men, after all) makes for somewhat limited selection of important qualia, e.g., personality. so in this sense, it’s vital to me to find parent’s groups (by which i mean women who are the primary caregivers) that share what i consider to be more substantive interests (i.e., not gender). even so, the fit is not perfect, and it’s often difficult (for me) to fully integrate, bring to fore once again the role and power of gender bias and its frequent (and frequently ardent) maintenance by the matriarchy.

20100302 Rohloff test review

I went and rode the Rohloff-equipped Americano at Co-Motion today.  I’ve read so many reviews on the Rohloff, both pro and con, that the only way to spin them into meaningful truth for me was to get on one and try it out. I only spent about 40 minutes on the bike, not under touring load, and on relative flats. I did try and approximate load conditions by riding with a heavy grip on the dual disc brakes in order to test for myself the impact to shifting under (simulated) load conditions. For comparison, i normally ride either a 1×9 Ultegra/XT CX bike (Salsa La Cruz), or a 24-speed 3×8 MTB (Schwinn Mesa); i often trail 70-100lbs in a Chariot trailer behind both bikes.

My scattered thoughts on the Rohloff:
In a word: amazing.  The 13% ratio between gears really does mean perfect cadence.  The twist shifter is stiff, but less stiff than a twist-actuated derailleur set up; in relation to that, it twisted very smoothly.  Twist resistance was enough to make changing from gears 14-1 while applying force to the peddles—something which i would never or rarely do while riding anyway—more difficult than doing the same thing at a full stop (at full stop changing gears is very fluid).  Even so, the 14 gear change under load is still better than attempting the same on a derailleur front+rear simultaneous change; which i have (kind of) done on my MTB, but only from the rough Rohloff gear equivalent of 4 to 1.  In all cases, shifting the Rohloff under load is far far better than any attempt to shift a front derailleur from larger chainring to smaller chainring under the same load.

Up shifts from 7 to 8 were a non-issue; in almost any situation this change would not be a high-pressure shift, since shifting here at regular cadence (60-90rpm) means you’re going roughly 9-12mph (had to guess since i had no cyclometer on the test bike, but i could feel the wind in my hair and the road moved swifter beneath me). Down shifts from 8 to 7 were also a non-issue, unless you try to make it one, like i did: keeping the hub in 9th gear, i slowed to a crawl, applied both brakes to keep it at a crawl, and then stood and mashed the pedals while changing the gear to anything 7 or less. the Rohloff did not like this very much, in the sense that the shifter was very difficult to twist between 8 to 7, and i was forced to let up on the pedals very quickly (a quarter revolution at most) before it finally clicked down to 7. After that it was easy to downshift again, although you could hear it make a very tiny ‘click’ noise if you didn’t let up under load when downshifting; another very quick pedal release (maybe 1/10th of a rotation) solved this. Two important things to remember: 1) this never occurred during upshifts; and 2) while changing gears from 8 to 7 was difficult, this same situation under a regular derailleur would produce the same, if not worse results. I’ve been there when i had to downshift while under heavy load, and my derailleur bikes choke, consistently. But because they only cost half as much, at most, i am more forgiving. Nonetheless, in pure riding terms, the Rohloff wins here.

As for general riding performance/pleasure, and other intangibles, i cruised as nicely or nicer on the Rohloff than my Ultegra/XT-equiped 1×9.  The even perfect is, well, perfect.  When coasting in gears 1-7, you can hear the hub whirring (but not while pedaling; or maybe you can if you go really slow and you aren’t breathing too heavily, but i can’t verify that), but it’s still quieter than an equivalent angry-bee Chris King.  Coasting in gears 8-14 makes less noice than my current XT rear hub, and a lot less noise than a Chris King.

With regard to (vaguely measured) friction, the rear wheel spins down a little faster than a perfect chainline derailleur set-up (tested by picking up the rear triangle and spinning the wheel in the direction of normal drive).  A single-speed would probably beat both types of bikes.  However, the assumed friction is pretty minor; maybe at the same speed-to-stop my XT hub would take 15 seconds, while the Rohloff stopped in 11 seconds; in short, i didn’t notice it while riding, and i can’t imagine it will impact performance against other more prominent issues such as wind drag from the rider’s body or panniers.  Never mind that i frequently out-coast road bike hubs with my XTs on club rides (and yes, i weigh less and we start at roughly the same speed at the top of the hill); it just makes me think that this speed-to-stop test is purely meaningless.

With regard to weight, standing starts on the bike were fast, and any difference in speed was a result of the Co-motion’s heavier frame.  Real difference would be fractional in stop sign sprints; i’ve lost more time trying to clip into my pedal.  I’ve also out-sprinted racing bikes with my commuter, which makes me point out once again that it’s about the thighs, and not the gear.  In terms of “feel,”  there was no discernible difference from the heavier hub; if anything, i was less prone to standing-sprint rear-wheel spinouts.  Shifting in the sprint (the test bike had Titec H-bars) was no problem; in fact, the Rohloff up-shifts faster than my Ultegra brifter… really.

My bottom line?  It’s absolutely amazing.  First gear could easily tow my 100# load up our local 9-10° hills; 14th gear is way more gear-inches than i currently have on my 1×9 (42×11), and without the obnoxious threat of losing my chain.  The lack of a front twin/triple-chainring, common on most bikes is perfect, since shifting these under load is pure hell, and there is no issue with a moving chainline or a chainring dropped chain.