I was checking on a part with Jarrel one day, and he was looking through a special flyer from one of the wholesalers he brings in some of the more eclectic bike stuff from and they had some nice Japanese bike bells. He had brought in some large Crane (crane as in “tsuru”) brand brass bells previously, but they had a new small bell not unlike the small BBC bell resold on the USDM as the “Incredibell”. He said he would most likely be bringing some in, so I sat back to wait for them to arrive. About a week later, they were in! Continue reading ‘Crane Bicycle Bell’
Archive for the 'bike' Category
Page 25 of 40
This was another Chainlove.com find. For sun, brush, and crash protection, I like to use long-sleeve jerseys for trail riding. I’ve seen this jersey on riders in photos in Decline and elsewhere, so when I saw it pop up for cheap on Chainlove, I got one. There was no sizing info, so I had to dig around online to find some. My chest is 100cm (40”), so I got a “Large”. This ended up a bit big. Even with full armor it’s big. The girth and length are not too much of an issue, but the sleeves have a bit of “Kogami Akira” action going on. I could have easily gone a size down. The sizing is about the same as motocross jerseys. If you are between sizes, go down. Continue reading ‘Royal Racing 24/7 Jersey’
Last week, Ckucke ordered some parts from Chain Reaction Cycles in the UK, so I had him het me a set of Shimano M770 9-speed shifters and a cassette for the Chase. Parts came in on Friday, but I didn’t have a chance to work on the bike until Tuesday, so I took it into the shop to switch them out. Dug around in back for an XTR 9-speed chain, then I put the cassette on. When I opened the bag-o-shifters (they were OEM packaged or take-offs, not retail packaged), the first one was a left (front) shifter, so I just grabbed he other and put it in my tool tray. I took off the bar plug and grip, removed the brake lever, and set about unmounting the shifter, unthreading the cable from the housing, and disconnecting the cable from the old shifter. The cable in use was a trick Teflon-coated one, so I wanted to use that instead of the generic stainless steel one that shipped with the XT. I pulled the new shifter out of the bag and got ready to take the cable out when I noticed that it was a left shifter. I must have grabbed the wrong one by accident. I grabbed the other shifter and it was the left shifter that I had put down earlier. I got that sick, sinking feeling in my gut. No way! I put the two shifters side-by-side. Both were lefts! WTF?! Continue reading ‘Front and Front’
I get home fairly early today, so decide to go out on a road spin on the 10th Anniversary Fat. It’s a nice night, temp is actually a bit warm, I’ll discover later that the winds are strong. I’m on skinny tires and spinningaway on the road like a roadie, it feels good. There’s early evening traffic out, but I’m fairly comfortable with it. I plan to just do some loops in Hawaii Kai. I pull over at the Hahaione 7-11 to adjust my seat height and angle. I’d earlier swapped saddles so needed to shake things down a bit. That done, I saddled up and headed back onto the road. I turn onto Keahole-Hawaii Kai intersection, prob the one portion that is a bit dicey. There’s a lot of traffic from Safeway and Cosco, it’s on an outside curve so cars want to wander to the right into you, the road surface is terrible (any surprise there?), and no one heeds the 25 mph speed limit. Coming from Hawaii Kai Drive and crossing with the light, it’s not too bad as you can usually get a fair way down the road before the bulk of distracted drivers from the shopping center catch up. Continue reading ‘Direct Hit, Tailgunner Daimler’
Congratulations!
Jason and Tracy got hitched this past Saturday at a nice outdoor service at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Met Ckucke on Monday, 06 October 2008 for a St. Louis run. We waited for Root to show, but long after the meeting time, he neither showed or called to tell us that he was late or was not going to make it. I called him, and he was still on the job and was not going to show. Thanks for the heads-up, Root! We drove up to the top and dropped the trail, again running into Kevyn and his dogs along the trail and talking for a while. At the junction of the taco jumps trail to the mainline, we paused while I called Root to have him meet us at Ckucke’s afterwards for food. An Xterra-type dude came up the trail from agave, and a half-naked oyaji came down the mainline. Xterra dude said that there was one rider behind him, and semi-naked guy went down mainline, so we had obstacles to deal with either way. We went down mainline and passed semi-naked guy in the turn just after the little double. He seemed a little perturbed when we passed him, but I don’t know what he expected us to do other than pass him: We were going in the same direction, and he was moving slower than us. Trail etiquitte aside, it wasn’t possible for us to dismount and push the bikes past him, since he was jogging on the narrow trail. This time, instead of taking the ridge right, we took the slalomy left to the hammock tree and went out the regular trail.
D = same as last time, Vavr = a little faster than last time, Vmax = way freaking faster than last time, T = about half-an-hour (I neglected to put the computer back on the bike after the previous week’s ride)
Dropped St. Louis after work on Monday, 29 September 2008 with Root and Ckucke. We bumped into Kevyn at the jumps, and Ckucke talked to him at length about the derailleur/guide thing from Wicked Racin’. Root and I hit the jumps in the meantime, then we took off down to the bottom as the light began to fade. We went down the Taco Jumps, then continued down mainline and took the ridge right out to the rock waterfall to the concrete road and descended the exit trail out to the street.
D = 7.92 km (4.92 miles); Vavr = 13.5 km/h (8.4 mph); Vmax = 42.2 km/h (26.2 mph) on trail, 43.5 km/h (27.0 mph) on road; T= 35-minutes
Pictures here
Found an appropriate 7/16″ (11mm) inside e-clip at City Mill on Wednesday morning, so I was able to reassemble the master cylinder with no problems on Thursday. Everything just snapped together nicely. The brake channel bled fine on the first go, and everything went back on the bike with no trouble. Hooray! I even had enough time leftover to true the wheels on the Moment and switch out to winter tires! Nama-biiru at Koh-no-tori here I come!
Tuesday really didn’t start out as a bad day – it was a normal, non-descript, plain day: Nothing really good happened, but neither did anything really terrible happen. After finishing up at “real” work, I headed over to McBike. The traffic was average too. When I got in and went down to the Pit, I saw Kevyn’s Santa Cruz there. He had joined us on Sunday for an afternoon Maunawili ride, and the master cylinder on the front Hayes brake got blown-up on a crash on the Drop-in of Death. I put the bike in the workstand and took the front brake channel off and started taking it apart. I figured it would be just a case of straightening out the mangled e-clip that holds the works together, reassemble, and re-bleed the system. Of course, nothing goes as planned… Continue reading ‘E-clip Gnomes: Hayes Mag Lever Rebuild’
Just when I thought the sweltering dog-days of Summer were at an end, the winds all but went away, bringing with it early afternoon convective downpours and an influx of Big Island vog. The Trades have returned overnight, so the haze has broken up. Hopefully the nighttime temperatures will drop too. It’s aggravating having been rained out on a bunch of weekday and weekend rides, but the shortening days and approaching wet season will force a taper in biking soon anyway.