I got a call tonight from Brian at Circle A, and I should be next up. I should be getting some info on the fit and some prospective sizing things tonight or tomorrow morning. He thought that he would probably start building by the end of the week! Hopefully this will get me the bike in time to take it up to Ascutney before the weather starts getting bad. Very exciting…
I took another crack at Bowen after my ride today. I only did the cobbled section from Benefit to Pratt. It went about as well as could be expected, but it is very difficult, and for now I’m standing by my assessment that it is more difficult than the Koppenberg. Turning onto Bowen from Benefit, the cobbles are so nasty that there is really only about one line you can take to successfully get going. And as I discovered on Monday, if you stop on this thing, you’re not getting going again. The cobbles are bumpy and nasty the whole way up, but they are really only treacherous at the very bottom. The other place it gets dicey is on the transition to the sidewalk at the top. There’s also only about one good line there to get on the sidewalk. Once you get on the sidewalk, things don’t get much better. It kicks up almost immediately to 30%, and I thought I was either going to break my chain, tumble over backwards, or both. I was practically doing a track stand in my 38-25. To make things worse, the gradient actually increases slightly from the 30% section I calculated, so that just before the top, the gradient is probably closer to 33 or 34. This was definitely an experience, and I’ll be back soon to try the whole thing starting at Main and ending at the top of Jenckes.
and I’ve done the Koppenberg at least 4 times, before it was re-paved, so I should know. On my way home from a ride today I decided to check out Bowen, a small street off of Benefit that runs parallel to Jenckes. I had seen it before and thought it was a shame that it was a dead-end street, since it had huge cobblestones, and it would otherwise resemble a tough Flemish climb. But a few days ago, I happened to look up while driving by and noticed that it looked like there was a sidewalk connecting the end of Bowen to Pratt, the cross street running parallel to Benefit. Today, I turned onto Bowen went about 10 feet and came to a dead stop on the cobbles. It was at this point that I realized that my pedals which had been getting progressively stickier throughout the whole ride, were not going to let go of my feet. I fell over sideways and decided not to try it today. Instead I decided to come back with a camera and I took a bunch of pictures of the climb. This thing is ridiculous. Not only is it steep, it has cobblestones that make the old Koppenberg look like a “royal carpet”. Bowen St. starts at Main St., just like the longer Jenckes, so if one were to attempt the climb, you would start there, with a nice steep (but paved) section. Immediately after crossing Benefit the fun begins. Stay to the right as you go up the climb and just before the cobbles stop, hop over to the sidewalk and cross over to Pratt Street. You really aren’t done climbing yet, so take a left. After an easy gradual section, take a right onto Jenckes and ride up the top section of Jenckes. Here is the veloroutes map. I put in one picture which is a cropped version of the brick wall at the top section with the sidewalk. I’m not sure if this is a good way to measure, but the image is 152×499. If we assume that that is a fairly accurate description of the height gained over the distance, the gradient for that section would be 30%. I tend to believe it. I was thinking about including this in the soon-to-be-revived Euro-Tuesdays, but as Andy said today, it would probably be better named “let’s go break some carbon frames day”. I’ll let you know if I summon the courage to try it again.
here it is, my almost finalized paint scheme. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier, but I found a frame builder with a blank template for trying out custom painting schemes, deleted their logos from the bike, and spliced in Circle A’s. Then I printed it and went to work on it the old-fashioned way, with colored pencils. this is a much nicer result than my previous photoshop attempt. The other change, is that I’ve decided against the grey, in favor of a dark, steely blue. Much nicer, I think:
note: several people have commented on the shade of orange. While I do like the shade in the picture, it isn’t quite an accurate representation of what I wanted. The real orange should be the precise shade used on this circle A bike.
Joe at Providence Bike convinced me I should get a medium cage rear derailleur. He says you can barely tell the difference, and it really would make my life much easier. (Then I can just throw on a 13-29 without doing anything except possibly lengthening the chain–I had previously planned on dropping the big ring by 4 to 46 to accommodate the 4 extra teeth in the back and to reduce overall capacity down to 28), and I can put on a 24 in the front without having to shorten the chain, and run the triple as a double (39-24) with the 13-29 without exceeding the der capacity (my previous plan of 38-24, 13-29 was going to exceed the published limit of the short cage by 3). And if no one can tell, I’ll just lie and tell people I got the short cage.
Almost decided now. I was leaning toward Oudburg 52, but given that my Gazelle has now been stolen (still no sign of it, and no word from the police), I think I will go with a decidedly Dutch theme. The name on the top tube (by the seatpost) will be “Noordwijk aan Zee”, and I will also try to incorporate either a Dutch flag or some combination of the Dutch flag and the Gazelle insignia.
(just an idea)
Latest on cranks: Chris and I decided that FSA might be the way to go, since we could install the MegaExo cups and then fairly easily swap out the cranks (I don’t think you even need a special tool, except that you have to move the front derailleur). I was hoping to be able to put on a mountain crank, but the bottom brackets are apparently different. It seems however that the road triple does use the same bb as the doubles, and the only disadvantage there is that I can only go down to a 24 tooth in the front, not a 22.