A Ride Report In Three Parts: Part Four

A Century is A Lot

I got sidetracked halfway through yesterday's Blog and started telling the heartwarming tale of the Family Life of Old Tim Joe, for what it is worth...but I also left myself stranded without beer or succor way up in Ponce Inlet, about thirty miles from the Whispering Pines Trailer Park. The ride did not end there. I had Miles to Go and there was a certain darkening to the sky that made me think I better go those miles pretty quick. The day was getting late and my business and reminiscing about Days Gone By was done and I was more that ready to leave the past behind and hustle on South to yet another little Market where there would be beer and peanuts and a quick sprint home.

Florida Climb

Florida ain't much for hills but we do have these artificial hills called bridges and the big ones are pretty big and I am on one now, climbing and spinning and going pretty quick considering how many miles I have traveled today, but it has been a segmented journey so filled with good moments and swift riding and short breaks that I don't feel a thing. I'm riding Me Little Darlin', a 1981 Schwinn Super Le Tour that I got from Coyote for twenty dollars, but there is considerably more money in her now. Early last summer, I installed a Mavic 36 Spoke Open Sport rim with a Tiagra hub. I also put on a Sram cassette and a new Sram chain and listen, those Were Dollars So Well Spent that I wish I could spend them again, but it may never happen. After 1500 miles or more they look and feel the same as they did the day they came off the truck. The Kenda Kwest tire I put on is showing just a little wear and all things considered I can only report Absolute Satisfaction with these products.

But right now I am descending on the down hill side of this big bridge and going pretty fast and there is something happening with the road surface. It is pretty rough and I just remembered that this is the original 27” front wheel with the rusty spokes and Kmart tire and is this safe?

Something New, Something Old

Sure, why not? I retained the big old wheel because I liked the way it looked and I get a kick out of doing things that might shock the purists; but also my brain tells me that this big thirty-six spoke rim is probably doing more than a little to create this super smooth ride that I get when out ramblin' about on Me Darlin.' Whatever the case, I made it just fine and cut left onto the river road again and it is only ten miles to the beer store and that blessed wind that has held steady out of the Northeast all day has cooled now in the late afternoon and has shifted slightly to the North and this will be a sleigh ride home with a cool, hard tailwind and a heart full of memories and joy of life.

Mumbles the Clown

I put the hammer down and blast those ten miles like nothin' and there it is, the Nova Road market and I dash inside to grab a Foster's and some more honey roasted peanuts. I really love those things. At the counter the cute teenage girl clerk wants to chat. I notice my hands are shaking a little and that I find it hard to speak. I am in Long Road Mode and I realize that I have not spoken out loud in hours and suddenly I feel the effect of almost ninety miles of pedaling my bicycle. I nod spasmodically and mumble at the clerk who now thinks I am a Challenged Person (which I am, sometimes) and then I step outside and I go over to the bike. I stash my peanuts and my beer into my messenger bag and I look at the sky. It is clear enough for now; there are only twelve easy miles left to go and I have a beer break coming up so it will be alright.

The Afternoon Break

I swing a leg over and hit a couple licks on the pedals and once again I am gliding. On days like this I feel more natural while pedaling than I do when I am standing and walking. The bicycle is part of me, or I am part of the bicycle;  it is a thing that is hard to define. I'm pushing hard, stroking steady and smooth in front of that following breeze and now I am crossing these three little bridges that will take me Home. Just on the other side of the third Little Bridge is a secret Creek-Side Clearing that houses the Homeless on occasion and sometimes serves as a Break Room for a certain Trailer Park Cyclist when he is Homeward Bound from a Journey to the North.

 Here it is a Quiet Spot and only six easy downwind miles to the Whispering  Pines Trailer Park and listen:  it makes all the difference,  stopping here.   Stopping here to stretch, fuel up on beer and honey-roasted peanuts is just what I need to get me through to the end. One  Hundred Miles Is A Lot.  One hundred is a lot of miles,  but not really;  today one hundred miles is hardly enough.  Right now  I'm sitting here At Peace and In the Moment;  right now I'm sitting here by Side of Stream: sitting here in the Here and Now  and being the good Zen Monkey I one day hope to become.  I am  Stopping By Stream, I am breathing, sipping the cold Foster's Beer and chomping on peanuts. I am  chewing them really good, so that they can  get in there and do their job. I need that juice now! I am  having a staring contest with a small school of fish that are just a few feet away, wondering who I am and what I am doing.

No Getting Out Of the Philosophizing

Which brings up a point that has beleaguered my brain for Lo These Many Weeks. What is a Century? It finally soaked through to my sometimes almost impenetrable conciousness that what I am calling "Riding a Century" is actually “Riding a Hundred Miles.” An actual Century is a group ride, and organized event. I guess. I really don't know. Nor do I care.

They Came From Outer Space

I saw some comment somewhere saying something to the effect about trying to finish a century ride in five hours, which of course is an average of twenty miles per hour. Now, in a group, working together, why not? But it sounds stressful to me. It makes me think of Responsibility and Concentration and a certain Regimented Procedure and it sounds like trying not to crash into the other guy's wheel and having to watch where you blow snot and worst of all, trying to “chat” and be a Good Fellow.

Not that there is anything wrong with all that. I've never done it, although I suppose it is inescapable and some day I will find myself in a group of guys wearing space-man suits and saying manly things and talking about stocks and hedge funds and carboluminum, even though I don't have any of those things and never will, by plan and design.

But What About Tim Joe?

But what I call a Century is something else. I may have to rename it. The Homeless Century. Those Homeless Guys you see out there on their bicycles are not out riding for exercise. They are not really riding to get someplace, either. What they are doing is Living On Their Bikes. They have no where else to properly be, except to sit in some stand of trees where their tents are and where they sleep. So they spend most of their day on their bicycles because once they stop moving, sooner or later they will encounter the police.

Don't ask me how I know all this.

How I Do It

 This is not a Homeless Rant. I know a lot of those guys and most of them know what they are doing, they know what they are doing and why they are living the way they are living.  It might surprise some of you to know that they like it just fine and that they see some of you as the victims of society.  But for now, let us set that aside. What I am trying to say here is that over the last few months I have fallen into the trap of being a Conscious Cyclist, of thinking about speed and cadence and carboluminum and Shimano and Sram. And while all of this thinking was made necessary by the many long miles that I have been riding in the Year of our Lord 2011, I fear that it has caused me to think of Me Darlin' Schwinn as a machine and myself as a cyclist. She used to be my Easy Chair where I would relax on Long Summer Sundays while I lounged about the countryside that surrounds my home. The casual observer would see a rather bedraggled old guy out pedaling around on quiet roads alone, but I was never alone, as you can see. I was riding with old friends who are gone and thinking about friends who are here. I was sneaking up on wildlife to whom I was no threat. I won't be making any road kill today.

The best parts of my long bicycle journeys are the moments like this one, where I pull off on my stealth machine into a small clearing at creekside and enjoy a well-earned beer and reflect on the day.  Many, many  times at this spot I have wanted to keep going.  I did not want the Ride to Stop. But the Ride never really stops.  The Ride never really stops if you are doing it right.

I think I will call it a Free Century.

And Then,  Home

So that's it! Six easy miles and I will be home. Slightly more than a hundred miles, but when you ride a Free Century, nobody's counting. I will pedal on back to the Park and hopefully Uncle Bill has stoked the fire in the Quasitron 6000 Steam-Powered Search Engine and hopefully he left me a couple cold ribs and some of the potato salad in the fridge. Remember, it is still Sunday Afternoon at Whispering Pines Trailer Park,  Where Time Stands Still. And I know those ribs will be there and I know Cold Beer will be there too, because that is how Uncle Bill (one of the friends still here) Rocks and yeah,  that is How I Rock Too.  Thanks for staying with me,  my friends!

By the Way:  Happy Birthday Uncle Bill!

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Rib Shack
#46

Coyote Brings Me A New Bicycle...Project

     Beware Coyotes Bearing Gifts

The weather here in Florida changed a few days ago as though someone had flipped a switch. An overnight North wind brought down some much-needed cool air and just like that, it was beautiful outside. Perfect bike riding weather and last week Coyote came by with a pretty dilapidated 1981 Schwinn Super Le Tour twelve speed. Some kid who had just moved into the trailer court was looking to sell it for twenty five dollars. The gumwall tires were in such rotten condition that a test ride on the thing was highly questionable. But as I looked her over I noticed how clean the drive train was. The cassette showed very little wear (actually no wear at all) and the chain had zero rust. The white frame had some kind of black over-spray on it, as though someone had leaned a different bike against it and sprayed away. It was covered overall with that aged and sticky grime that indicates long unattended storage. But most importantly it was a large frame, very large in fact and looked to be about my size. I offered Coyote twenty bucks which he immediately accepted (causing me to wonder about the provenance of this relic) and then tipped him a finder's fee of a freshly purchased half pint of Morgan's rum (after first taking a ceremonial slug.) Coyote then rapidly departed for the on-going birthday party on the other side of the trailer court, the one I had been invited not to attend. I heard there was free beer there. I took my new old bike inside to look her over more carefully. I looked up the Le Tour on the web and measured her specs. All in all it would seem I had made one of the better deals of late.

Time For Rehab (The Bike)

She sits here now a week later looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. I wiped down her dingy chrome with some solvent and sanded off the aged and peeling decals with some 220 grit sandpaper. I went ahead and sanded down all the minor rust areas and then applied three coats of primer and then several coats of satin white paint, followed by a couple coats of clear. This bike had the look of the proverbial “barn car”, as though after minimal use when new, she had spent the last thirty years sitting in a basement or shed, being moved only when she was in the way of storing the lawnmower or such. I really enjoyed the cleaning and stripping process, spending two six hour days sanding and painting and polishing. At the end of the second day I mounted two 27x1/14 Bell Streetster tires purchased at K-Mart and rode her home. Fast! Right away I noticed how much faster the narrow, larger tires were and what a difference the gearing made, compared to my single speed '95 Mongoose Alta. I also noticed that the rear tire had a very noticeable wobble, so much so that after the short ride home from the shop to the trailer, I parked her for the evening.

But Then...

The next morning I rode her the mile and a half back to the shop. I put her back on the makeshift work stand I had rigged up and set about truing the rear wheel. I had never tried this before, thinking that I needed an expensive wheel truing stand or at least I would have to make one myself before trying anything as advanced as wheel tuning. But Ken Kifer wrote on his website about truing wheels at roadside and my buddy Bryan King had mentioned doing the same,,,so I decided to give it a try. As I began I realized that this wheel was seriously crooked. It was impossible to center it between the dropouts and then, as I was over-tightening a drive-side spoke, I heard a loud hiss. I had punctured the tube. This did nothing to increase my confidence in my wheel truing ability. I stripped off the tire and remounted the bare wheel. The more I tweaked and swore and failed, becoming more and more frustrated, I started to think maybe I had bought a ruined bike, that it was obvious that the frame was bent and I had thrown away a perfectly good twenty dollar bill and fifteen dollars worth of solvent and paint, and thirty dollars worth of new cheap tires and two days of labor...and a perfectly good half pint of rum. It was getting hot there in the shed and the radio kept playing songs I didn't like. Sitting there staring at the frame, squinting first my good right eye then my not-so-good left eye, lining up frame angles like I was sighting down a pool cue, I searched for the slightest indication of warp or weave or twist or whatever the hell was wrong with this so-called bicycle that made that damn wheel so crooked. After the third beer I decided to get a 2 x 4 and try to straighten out this sorry piece of Japanese Chicago crap using some good old American know-how and brute force.

Just then my stomach gave a growl and I realized I was hungry. Had I eaten today? No, said my stomach. Then I remembered something I had read on the bike forums about “stepping away from the bicycle.” OK, I said. I'll go home for a late lunch then come back and see what's what. I think the little Schwinn shuddered with relief. I mounted up on my old single speed Mongoose Alta mountain bike and peddled home.

Enter The Voice

That lunch was a fine idea. After two big chili dogs and some iced tea and a bag of Cheetos (remember, I am in training for a long bike tour), I rode back to the shop. Opening the big overhead door I was immediately struck by how nice the old bike looked with her new paint, and how graceful the lugged steel frame was, and how the chrome accent on the forks made her look strikingly similar to a Rivendell original. After all, these old Schwinns have a history directly linked to Waterford, do they not? So I sat down in my wheel truing chair and thought things through. From somewhere in the ether a voice said “put the wheel in backwards, with the cassette on the left side.” Huh? I asked. “Just do it”, The Voice said. “Maybe you will get a new perspective.” Indeed.

A Wheelsmith Is Born

After removing the rim strip off the bare wheel, exposing the top of the spoke nipples, I noticed that I could tighten the spokes with a screwdriver instead of the vice grips I had been using on the spokes. With the wheel in backwards, for whatever reason, I actually did get a new perspective. Hmmm...if I turn this spoke one half turn this way it pulls the rim just that much more in line. But won't that make the opposite spoke too tight? Well, not if I loosen that spoke one half turn. AHA! I immediately proceeded around the rim, setting each nipple so that the screw slot was aligned parallel to the rim. Incredibly, things were looking better already. Excited about the possibility of success and even more elated about not having to take the wheel to the LBS for the usual round of subtle ridicule (Vice grips? Really?) (not to mention the expense), I pulled the wheel out of the dropouts and reversed it, re-mounting it with the cassette on the right side. It looked worse, but I didn't care. I was a master wheel builder now. After applying one drop of 3-in-1 oil on each nipple (on the wheel, of course), I started working my way around the rim, turning each spoke one half turn only, pulling on each one as I turned it to compare the tension to the adjacent spokes, making a careful half turn on each, always keeping the screw slot on the spoke nipple aligned parallel to the rim. I noticed that the drive-side spokes were tighter than the left side. This worried me at first but as I proceeded it became apparent that this was appropriate. (Later perusal of Peter White's excellent (albeit somewhat curmudgeonly) web site proved this to be correct.)

My breathing had become steady and a gentle breeze wafted through the shop. The radio was playing Stairway To Heaven as I paused for a beer and sat there spinning the wheel. It was still wobbling a little, but it was centered and not hitting the brake pads at all. Wow! This was wheel-tuning Zen! (Not to be confused with Budweiser Zen, which came later.) That wheel was still wobbling, but I didn't care. I could do this all day!

But I didn't have to do it all day. In fact about an hour later I had that wheel centered and spinning as straight as it ever would. I put on a new tube, remounted the tire and rolled off for a test ride. YES!

Whispering Pines Trailer Court
Late Fall 2010

#1