My Own Super Course!!!

 

Bike Stickers!

It's been a year and a half since I last posted because I got swamped in work, as we all do. I've just finished school and will now present something that I, for whatever reason, got involved with a few months back: Bike stickers!

Sir Wild Toad Gets A Little More Wild?

My move from Ann Arbor to Pittsburgh necessitated that a few minor changes occur on the Lenton before I was fully comfortable with it.

A22CASEFAIL

Dun dun dun

Sir Wild Toad

Can you see it?

The Mechanic

Throughout my entire life, with my fascination with automobiles and now bicycles, the question always lingered in the back of my head: Am I "the driver" or am I "the mechanic?" Automobile racing has existed ever since the second car was built, and as with any form of racing whatsoever, there is always the competitor on the front and the guy behind the scenes who keeps everything running. Nobody has time to be both at the same time, yet both are needed at all times. I have always loved riding, driving, and wrenching on my own vehicles and it has been unclear to me whether I was the driver or the mechanic.

1979 Ross Professional Gran Tour 1-Year Review: Not Really Professional, Grand, nor Touring but Still Quite Alright!

So I've had the bike for a year now and it's been almost as long since I last looked at the "before" photos. After being given a year to "develop our relationship," the Ross now looks and feels like a totally different bike to me.

I remember taking the bike for a ride shortly after getting it, learning how it felt as it was. It was my first road bike and I had only ridden a road bike once before. I used to think that the frame was super stiff and although it is a little stiffer than my bendy Raleigh frames due to the molten-salt-bath brazing method, it's not all that different. I think the feeling was in part because old saddle put pressure in all the wrong places.

Gilbert Lives Again!

As a recap, my 1979 Raleigh Superbe restomod had been immobile for about a month due to a broken axle.

Well, the folks at Sturmey-Archer were nice enough to give me replacement internals free of charge.  It turns out the people who sold it to me on Amazon were supposed to sell them as replacement parts for the Torker Graduate (which has since switched to derailleur gearing) but did not specify it.  They told me that my hub shouldn't have been warrantied, but they did it anyway.

Road Users

When I'm using roads and sidewalks, whether walking, biking, or driving, I'm pretty passive and defensive. I prefer to follow the rules and give others the benefit of the doubt; however, I've been becoming increasingly frustrated by the incompetence shown by many road users ever since I started driving or cycling for transportation.  This is only natural, of course.  I guess I could say that the last straw before I said something about it was last night when I nearly ran into three cyclists with
no lights while I was biking home from work. Anyway, here goes.

I have zero tolerance for the following:

In the Black of the Night

After returning from the Dream Cruise on Saturday, which I wrote about yesterday, I threw down some dinner and met my friend Nikolai to go biking again.  I decided to bring my Raleigh Sports for the ride.  At 8 PM, we headed east along Hines Drive further than we had ever ridden before.  The sky quickly got dark but we both had blinky taillights and Nikolai had a super bright LED headlight that way outperformed my Dynohub LED.  Visibility was not too much of an issue.  We cruised about fifteen miles down the road and decided it was about time to head home.  Since I had been riding at least ten miles nearly every day, I felt as though my energy reserve was endless.  Despite the weight of my all-steel 3-speed being a few times that of Nikolai's road bike, I was keeping up comfortably in second gear.

20 Mile Ride to ZZ Ward Concert

I'm assuming not everyone really knows who ZZ Ward is at this point because she's not that popular yet, but she's a singer from Oregon who started out singing the blues and fusing the style with hip hop.  That was very apparent in her first mixtape but her album Til the Casket Drops has a more pop-oriented feel.  I actually like that one more, but that's just my opinion.  If you haven't heard her stuff, I suggest that you check it out!

Anyway, my friend Nikolai and I decided to ride our bikes from our homes in Northville to downtown Ann Arbor yesterday to see ZZ's live outdoor performance hosted by Sonic Lunch and Ann Arbor's 107.1.  I lacked a long distance bike of any sort so I borrowed his family's 1990 Fuji Arcadia ten-speed.  When I first lifted it up, I was like "Man, this is light!" and Nik's father said "Uh, that's light?" Nik and I sort of laughed because it didn't occur to us that his father was unaware that I usually ride a heavy, old, English three-speed.