Bike Hugger 

The pinnacle of summer to me is a long ride in the sun, followed by Chinese take-out. Back in G-ville, my take-out spot was China Express. When they closed after I left town, I felt guilty…like they closed because I didn’t go there 2-5 times a week. Here in Seattle, I go to Little Shanghai on Capitol Hill. Usually not too busy, they cook it fresh to order. Since it’s on the roof lot of QFC, it’s not so sketch that I feel anxious leaving my Sycip just outside the door.

Ride another 8 blocks home, eat, and then pass out on the floor. Call me simple, but that’s what I love about summer.

<

p> One of the things I hate is the proliferation of wheels with spoke nipples hidden inside the rim, rather than having wrench flats exposed outside the rim. There are 3 halfway plausible reasons to do this:

I’ve been running SRAM and Shimano 10sp wide-range cassettes for almost a year now with road shifters, as well as having installed them on a number of custom bikes. They work pretty well. In fact, my SRAM Red shifters/X.9 mtn rear derailleur/XT 11-34 cassette shifts with crisp perfection. I don’t have really strong preferences for SRAM vs Shimano cassettes, and I’ve installed SRAM, Wipperman, and Shimano 10sp chains. But there are certain recipes for shifters and derailleurs.

SRAM Double-Tap shifters (Red, Force, etc): for 11-32 cassettes, you can use either the longer cage Apex derailleur (which is nice and inexpensive), or any of the 10sp mtn rear derailleurs. The Apex rear derailleur is rated for a 32T cog and might not work for cassettes bigger with cogs bigger than that (eg, 11-36). In my experience, you can’t often cheat the max cog rating of a SRAM derailleur. Better to go with the 10sp mtn derailleur. Make sure you choose a cage length with enough chain wrap capacity to deal with the combined ranges of the chainrings and cogset. Also, SRAM’s unfortunate nomenclature for mtn components can be confusing. For example, there is a X.9 rear derailleur that is 10sp and several generations of X.9 that are 9sp. Only the 10sp stuff will work.

Shimano STI: for 10sp road cassettes and chains, the best choice is 9sp Shimano mtn rear derailleurs, though older 8sp might be passable. New Shimano 10sp mtn derailleurs are completely INCOMPATIBLE with any road shifters. Also, the Shimano 9sp rear mtn derailleurs seem to be a fairly tolerant of exceeding the rated max cog size (ie, they were never meant to accept cogs bigger than 34T but in practice they’ll work on a 36T with margin to spare). Again watch the chain capacity.

Campagnolo: you’re screwed, thanks for playing. Well, not completely. Campagnolo doesn’t make cassettes with cogs larger than 29T,and Campag 10sp spacing (cog-to-cog) is physically wider with different mounting splines than the Shimano/SRAM standard. And Campagnolo rear derailleurs aren’t meant to work with cogs bigger than 29T….so what part isn’t completely screwed? Here’s some voodoo that I’ve tried. Take Campagnolo 10sp Ergopower shifters, SRAM 10sp mtn rear derailleur, and a SRAM or Shimano 10sp mtn cassette (on a wheel with the Shimano-type splines). It seems all wrong, but if you calculate cable pull for shifters vs cog-to-cog spacing vs derailleur ratios, it works out. Even better, other people like Lennard Zinn have been doing this with SRAM road derailleurs for a few years. Now that the SRAM mtn derailleurs (10sp) have the same ratio as the road derailleurs, this magic mix is even more useful. I’ve installed that on one customers bike so far.

Note: all this info sets aside issues of cranks. front derailleurs, and front shifters. That is a very complex story of integrated systems, shit that sorta works, and then stuff that just doesn’t. The basic rule is don’t mix and match there.

So I’ve been riding the Fizik Tundra mtb saddle for a while now. I was immediately drawn to the design since my arse has found its soul mate in the Fizik Arione, and the Tundra was directly inspired by the well-received road saddle.

If it is not generally known, Italian saddle maker Fizik is owned by the same people as Selle Royale and recent acquisition, famed British saddle maker Brooks. Over the last few years, they have carefully developed each of the brands by introducing diverse new products that faithfully reinforce the brands’ identities. While Brooks has introduced leather bags and accessories with vintage style, Fizik debuts a sleek, modern seatpost as a natural extension of its innovative, high-performance saddle line. The Cyrano seatpost

Spotted in downtown MPLS. We’ll see more Dahons and Neon in Vegas this September during the Mobile Social Interbike Remix.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

Many of us into the bike view it as a way of life, even a religion, and a new book takes that further into the discussion of a philosophy. Robert Jolly tipped me to a Psychology Today article about Cycling - Philosophy for Everyone: A Philosophical Tour de Force that asks if Lance Armstrong is a success based on Philosopher Thomas Morris theories, which he calls the 3-D Approach to Life:

1. Discover your positive talents.
2. Develop the most meaningful and beneficial of those talents.
3. Deploy your talents into the world for the good of others and yourself.

It’s interesting take, another angle on Lance, and worthy of discussion on your next bike ride. My guess is the bike is already part of your philosphy. Hopefully you can also find success and do good with it.

Besides the bike culture and new Novaras at Carnivelo, they do fun stuff like this slow bike race. The rules: slow as you can ride, feet on pedals, no track standing.

The Start

Halfway

Finish

Visited REI HQ yesterday for Carnivelo, a celebration of bike culture and a preview of Novara’s 2011 line. Highlights include:

Single Speed

Mixed feelings on the combination of colors with a minimalist single speed, but still a nice bike and Novara’s take is to do a single speed without a flat bar or ridiculously uncomfortable drop. It has bottle cage bosses too.

Steel

With the exception of their folding bike, the urban line is all steel like this one. That’s a good industry trend to forego crap aluminum for steel.

Prototype

Seeing this, I said, “don’t tease, build this please.”

We’ll have more details as this line gets finalized. REI is also returning to Interbike with us this year, as a sponsor of the Mobile Social Interbike Remix.

More Carnivelo photos on Flickr.

Where to begin? … chained to a plastic newspaper bin, mini velo, bag over giant saddle, oversized produce rack. Wonder who rides this and what they do cause that bike is so funky, it’s cool.

Uploaded by 6x6isit | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.