Brentani’s Cycling Blog

Yesterday I drove up to Milford, New Hampshire with Radu to try out my new bike on some real climbs. The first climb we did was Pead Hill Road in Wilton, which Doug at Northeast Cycling describes as:

“This climb starts nearly from downtown Wilton on Dale St, then bearing right when you reach Pead Hill Rd part way up. Pead packs a deceptively steep punch for a small hill. Very nice views of the Wapack Range (North and South Pack Monadnock plus others) to the west. Pead hill is often included in our weekend group training rides. Coming back down Lyndeborough Center Rd is both scenic and very fast.”

It’s a nice 1.6 mile climb, and Radu and I kept up a decent pace. Somewhere near the top, I cracked and Radu went up the road. From there, we did a nice little loop back to Milford. Then we headed back to Wilton, and this time took the fork left and followed 101 up toward Pack Monadnock. We weren’t sure if we were going to try it or not. Here’s Doug’s assessment:

“This climb begins in the town of Wilton, taking Route 101 to Miller State Park were you will find the very steep summit road. The haul up busy Rt 101 is gradual at first, then you notice the uphill slow vehicle lanes right about when your quads start to burn. The toll road to the summit offers only 800 feet of vertical, but it packs a very steep punch, steeper than Washington in fact. The last 2/10 of a mile are approximately 20% grade. This road is in a NH state park, so during summer daylight hours a use fee is generally collected. Once you pay though, you my ride your bike up and down as many times as you like. The ranger there has told me he’s seen individuals make many round trips to top and back. This descent has some very tight hairpin switchbacks and bumps, so caution is needed on the descent.”

Radu was hesitant about this climb since he only had 39-25. I figured my 34-25 would get me to the top, and so I wanted to give it a crack. Unfortunately yesterday was not my day for climbing. All was well on Route 101, which is a gradual 10 mile climb up to the park where the real climbing begins. The final section of 101 made the legs hurt a bit. it wouldn’t have been bad, were it not for the ridiculously steep road to the summit that was still in front of us. As the summit road began I kept a decent pace, and avoided going into the 34-25 for a little while. It seemed that my compact crank was giving me an edge over Radu, and I was a little ahead of him for most of this section. And by about the 1/2 mile mark I was firmly in the 34-25 and didn’t shift out until the top. It was at about this point that Radu pulled in front (not surprisingly, given that he was pushing a much harder gear and if he hadn’t he might have fallen over sideways.) Then I started feeling dizzy and knew that I was approaching my HR maximum. I stopped to cool off and watched Radu ride away. I did that 2 more times on the way up. I kept wondering if/when I’d see Radu coming back down, and then I saw the observation tower was close, and also realized that I would soon have to contend with 2/10s of a mile of 19%. And then I saw the wall in front of me and stopped. I kept telling myself that it was just like riding Jenckes. I can ride up Jenckes. It isn’t that hard. Just because I’ve been climbing for the last 12 miles, I should still be able to get up it in a 34-25. I got about 1/2 way up and stopped just at the point when Radu was coming down. Beaten, but unwilling to not see the top after coming that far, I walked the last 1/10 of a mile to the summit. That left me wondering where I stand re: trying Mount Washington this summer. Maybe I’ll put that off another year. Hats off to Radu who made it to the top without stopping in a 39-25, though he admitted to zigzagging up the final section.

These are two hills off to the north of Providence. Manville Hill is a pretty tough hill, though I never find it particularly challenging (I’m not really sure why it is that 2 hills that seem almost identical can feel so different…any suggestions?) The second, closer to Providence, is Cobble Hill Road, which sadly doesn’t not have any cobblestones. Cobble Hill Road isn’t really all that hard, but it’s a fairly nice hill. There are lots of other hills in that area too, so I’ll be back there soon to look for more hills.

Here’s the gradient map for Manville:

And Cobble Hill:

everything except the things from ritchey (seatpost, stem, handlebars, headset) just arrived today. The ritchey stuff is coming from California, so it will probably arrive monday. Two components of note: the mid-cage centaur derailleur is out of stock, so I upgraded to chorus for that part. It looks nice and you can barely tell that it isn’t short cage either, which is good. The FSA SLK lite looks incredible, and weighs practically nothing. I can’t wait to try it out. All the other campy components look stunning as expected. 

Brian also posted some pictures of my bike (along with an announcement of an open house on Sunday where my bike will be a guest of honor.) There’s also a nice slide-show here.

it might just be me, but this is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

I also rode up South Court today on my way home from a ride. This has to be one of the tougher hills on the east side of Providence. Probably 3rd, right behind Jenckes and Bowen. (And it is probably just slightly easier than Wilbur.) It even has a short section of cobblestone (only about 15 feet) in the first section from Main up to Benefit. The final finishing section on Meeting Street is probably the toughest–at least it felt that way today, but I felt good today all around, so the bottom 3/4 felt surprisingly easy. Here’s a picture I took the day I went out to take pictures of Bowen. (If you’re the rider pictured here, sorry.)

The bike is ready to paint, and I’ve finally arrived at (with help from Brian, Carrie, Khalid, Seth, Andy and Mark) a color scheme. My old one wasn’t going to work, apparently. Brian couldn’t get the rear triangle to work in the darker blue. He suggested several alternatives, one with the rear in the light blue, one with the rear and the fork solid orange, and one with dark blue for the panels. We then made a fourth, which had the rear in solid orange, but preserved the blue fork. That one looked nice, but I still liked a little bling on the back-end so I was ready to go with number 1 (blue fork, blue rear). Brian then made one more mock-up, that I decided immediately was the winner. It’s a light blue fork, solid orange rear, light blue panels, darker blue for the text and bands, and two extra panels on the seatstays. Here ’tis:

I had decided on Noordwijk aan Zee for my bike’s name, but Scheveningen actually seems like a better choice. When I lived in Holland, my standard ride was to Ride from Leiden to Katwijk aan Zee. From there, I could either ride the bike path north to Noordwijk, or south to Scheveningen. I usually opted for north, because I knew the roads on the interior better, and could make a loop of it, rather than just turning around. (1-0 Noordwijk) However, Scheveningen had a nice little cobblestone hill on the approach to Scheveningen. (1-1) Noordwijk has resonances of my trip to Churchill, because of the presence of “Noord” (North) and because I named a movement of Saturn and Jupiter “Noordwijk”. (2-1 Noordwijk) Scheveningen has a bit more nostalgia attached to it, because I have great memories of eating pannekoeken along the boardwalk when I was a child. (2-2) And the deciding factor, in favor of Scheveningen…the word “Scheveningen” is a shibboleth. During WWII, the word was used to identify Germans, who pronounced the “Sch” like “Schubert” whereas it should be pronounced like…hmm…yanks can’t pronounce it either…say an “S” and then clear your throat. That will be pretty close.

Brian just posted some pictures and some information on my new bike. You can take a look at that here. these pictures show it in a much more polished state than the one I posted yesterday. It also looks like the non-campy parts of my bike will mostly be Ritchey, which is fine, since they look nice and seem to be well-regarded. And I just got a Mavic computer for a pretty good deal on ebay. I thought it was better than it was, but it apparently is the Wintech FS instead of the ES, which means it does not come with the skewer sensor, but a fork-mounted sensor. A bit annoying since the reason I went with Mavic is that it has the skewer, and I didn’t want to ruin the aesthetics of my beautiful fork with a mount. But, the computer seems to be the same, so I should be able to just get a replacement skewer, and then use the other mount on my Trek, which has no aesthetic value anyway.

I also rode Burlingame for a second time today, this time with Mark. If you don’t know Mark, he is an very strong rider, but much bigger all-around than I am. He looks like the kind of rider that I should be able to drop every time the road swings up. But he isn’t. In fact, I’m usually the one getting dropped. Burlingame was another story though. Any hill that requires him to shift into the little ring (which are few and far between) seems to favor me, and I made it to the top in front of him. Then on the fast descent down the other side he made me pay. oh well.

Without all its paint and still needing lots of clean up around the joints, this is my bike. I stopped by circle A and got to watch (and even participate a little, by waving a welding torch at the bottom bracket) some of the brazing process on my bike. In the picture, you can see that the seattube and the headtube both need to be carved back to the lugs. Sadly, I don’t have any more pictures, since my camera ran out of batteries immediately after taking that picture. I’ll try to go back today and get some more. Estimated final weight for the frame should be in the 3.5 pound range, with the completed bike being about 17.5…which seems incredibly light to me. The Gazelle (using the completely unreliably method of weighing myself on a bathroom scale, weighing myself with the bike, and then finding the difference) was close to 24, so this should feel like a big difference.