Vintage Raleigh Comes Home

My nice Co-Habitant picked up the Raleigh from my parents' house! He reports that the bicycle is in operational condition: It is structurally sound. The tires hold air. The brakes work well. The hub is fine, and only the shifter requires adjustment. The saddle needs some care and the chain is rusty, but otherwise all is in great shape. This bike is about 40 years old and had been lying in the garage abandoned for the past 20. Amazing! You can read more about it here.

My only concern now, is the size. You can see in the photo how small the bike looks next to a 6'1" male body. I am 5'7" -- will it be a good fit? It will be a little sad if after all this excitement, the Raleigh will be too small for me.

Flying to Geneve

Hi, I’m flying to Geneve, Switzerland tomorrow early morning for work. Will be staying there for a week. Will be busy so no sightseeing really unless after work hours. We shall see.

For now I am faced at packing and I am not really in the mood to pack. I guess it’s easier this time as I am bringing business suits, so it’s easy to pick them as they are pairs compared to when travelling for pleasure where you have to think of the mixing and matching thing. I used to like packing, now I am dreading it.

It’s going to be an early morning drive to the airport. YAWN. I hope I can get up early. I’m reminding myself to eat breakfast at home, at 5AM—I don’t like sandwiches for breakfast and KLM serves them for their short distance flights. I’ll have coffee though at the airport and tea during the flight.

See you in Geneve, Switzerland.

Advice from Fixed Gear Experts? And a Look at MKS Stream Pedals

I have been riding my Francesco Moser roadbike as a fixed gear since July. I love this bicycle and ride it considerably more than I thought I would. For an aggressive roadbike, it is puzzlingly comfortable and easy. My bicycle handling skills have improved thanks to this bike and I have grown very attached to it.



But here is the problem - or rather what I keep hoping is not a problem, and would like your opinion about: The frame has a low bottom bracket. In our innocence, we did not notice this when we were building it up, and I don't even think the person who gave me the frame noticed quite how low it was. The bike originally came with skinny tubulars, but we fitted the frame with 700C wheels and 28mm tires - which raises the bottom bracket off the ground more than originally.



The cranks are 165mm, which is already as short as I can reasonably go with here, and just recently I switched the pedals (originally MKS"Touring") to the narrower MKS"Stream". All of this has helped ward off "pedal strike," but I still worry whether it is safe. A couple of people have taken one look and told me that I should get a different bike, with an expression of concern on their faces. Others have told me that it's not too bad and there should be no problem as long as I am not too aggressive on turns and don't take it on the velodrome.



So my question: Is there an objective way to tell? How high should the bottom bracket be off the ground in order for a fixed gear bike to be "safe"? And "aggressive on turns" seems like such a subjective concept. I think of myself as a bad cyclist and I think of my speed as slow - but I am not sure how to quantify these things. Once I get going, I like to ride 15-18mph on this bike. But I am consciously very careful on corners and slow down on them due to paranoia over this issue.



So far, the MKS "Stream"pedals (purchased from Cambridge Bicycle) seem to have made a big difference, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that perhaps they solved the problem. This is what the lean of the bike used to be in order to get pedal strike, but the Streams have improved things considerably.



Here are the MKS"Touring" (left) vs the MKS"Stream" (right) pedals side by side. As you can see, they are very similar except for the size.



TheMKSStreams are basically touring-style pedals that are the size of track pedals. They are comfortable and accept both toe clips and Power Grips. I was worried that my feet might feel cramped on them, but I have felt absolutely no discomfort so far.



Here is another size comparison.



And notice the difference in teeth. The Streams are more grippy.



The ride quality with the new pedals feels the same as previously, with the benefit of additional "room to breathe" on turns. But is it enough? If I do need to start thinking about a new frame,I doubt that I can find something as good as theMoser (Columbus tubing, Italian quality) in anything resembling a reasonable price range. My best bets are probably to look into Mercian or to wait for the Rivendell "Simpleone". And if you can recommend a vintage model that resembles the Moser in ride quality but has a higher bottom bracket, I am of course all ears. I do not want a new fixed gear roadbike. I love this one and would prefer to ride it forever. I just want to know whether that is a good idea.

Fluffy Clouds

Yesterday the fluffy clouds looked like they were so close that you could reach up and pull them out of the sky and use them for a pillow.

Happy Hour at the Zukas

We love a good Happy Hour and we really love them when they are hosted by someone as fun as John and Shelly. They threw the first Happy Hour of at their place, which was conveniently located right in front of the pickleball courts.



As usual, there was tons of food and lots of fun friends. John entertained us by teaching us a game that started with "the moon is round".



Some of us tried to figure out the trick behind this unique game.











You can see the crowd trying to figure it out too:



After that, John and Julia entertained us with a joke each.







Since we were right there, some of us headed over to play some pickleball. I didn't get any pictures but you can see them on Rich and Donna's Blog. It was a great night!

Summit, Camp Muir, Guiding, Bureaucracy

Two separate teams reached the summit of Mount Rainier last week! Such a feat wouldn't normally make blog headlines but with the park closed, it's fun to hear about anyone who gets anywhere near Columbia Crest. The details? Two men ascended the Emmons Glacier, and a RMI guided team climbed the Disappointment Cleaver. There are more photos and descriptions of the Glacier Basin Trail too (and it's not "that" bad).

Helicopters ferried loads to and from Camp Muir last Friday. The primary push is to support the new mountaineering guided concessions as they prepare for the summer. Those familiar with Camp Muir will note a change in who operates out of what buildings. The client shelter (eastern 2/3 of the big rectangle building in the lower right photo) will house RMI. The Gombu (west 1/3 of the same building, different entrance) will be shared by AAI and IMG on alternating nights. The NPS will move out of the Butler Shelter and into the Cook Shack (rock hut in the lower left). RMI will gain use of the Butler Shelter as a storage and cooking facility. All three of the guide services will have access to an independent weatherport on the Cowlitz Glacier.

There are a lot of changes with regard to guided operations on the mountain. Here are a few key elements:

• Along the Camp Muir corridor, RMI can lead 24 clients and guides per night. AAI and IMG are allowed 12. This is an overall reduction of 11 "guided related climbers" per night when compared to previous years.
• On the Emmons Glacier, each guide service can lead one trip per week, for a total of 120 clients and guides per year. There is no commercial guiding allowed on Friday and Saturday night.
• The same is true for the Kautz Glacier route, only each guide service is limited to 80 clients and guides total per year.
• There is NO commercial guiding from Success Cleaver west and north to Ptarmigan Ridge.
• Independent climbers will note a reduced number of guides and clients on the Muir routes during the summer. They will note a mid week increase of clients and guides on the Emmons Glacier route. Almost all of the western half of the mountain is closed to commercial activity, so there's plenty of room to stretch out.

On a completely unrelated note, you can download an electronic version of the Climbing Registration Card. If you want to save a little time in the ranger station, fill the Climbing Registration Card out completely ahead of time and bring it with you when you come to register.

Spinning Under the Christmas Tree

This post, "Spinning Under the Christmas Tree", was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.

April was nine months ago - that's how long it's been since I posted one of our YouTube music videos. That one was "Greened House" - a song parody of "Greensleeves" - this one is an original holiday song from my copyrighted collection of more than a dozen songs, many connected to gardening in Austin, which fit together to tell a story.

In my long-in-progress pipe dream of a musical play the songs are sung by different characters and there should be many different voices. Until I can figure out how to persuade some of you to come over to my house to sing or play musical instruments you just get Annie, a piano, and some guitar riffs from a friend.

This simple little Christmas song has been in the works for awhile - an ode to an Austin holiday tradition that started over 40 years ago, when the Zilker Park tree was first constructed, using a replica of one of our famous Moontowers as the center pole for a huge tree of lights. People soon figured out that looking up while spinning under the lights was a lot of fun.



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Spinning, Spinning, Spinning Underneath the Christmas Tree

The Zilker Tree has a separate tree lighting ceremony early in December, but once the Trail of Lights begins a week later [this year it started on the 10th], it's part of that festival.

No one shows a movie now without outtakes... this photo of a Funnel Cake did not make the Director's cut, but was delicious.

The enormous fire pit didn't make the video either! It would have been decorative but not functional for most of the past week, with record high temperatures up to 80 degrees F. We're not experiencing the dangerous ice and winter weather that has the Midwest in its grip, but even our comparatively warm forty-degree evenings make a fire welcome at the end of the trail.

This post, "Spinning Under the Christmas Tree", was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.