Brentani’s Cycling Blog

It’s back! I got the final parts today (a Token Bottom bracket from Circle A, and brakes – diligent readers of this blog may note that I already had brakes, but turns out they were missing the little adjuster barrels, and typical of Campagnolo, I was able to get a pair of brand new Veloce brakes for about the same price it would have cost me to get ONE adjuster.) So Brian helped me install the bottom bracket, cranks and get the drive train running smoothly, and I went home installed the brakes which the mailman had just delivered. I think it looks great. The only issue is that the chain skips a bit, so I may need a new cassette if it doesn’t work itself out. The Mirage shifters are better than expected. Way better in fact. The shifter for the front derailleur allows you to really fine-tune the adjustments, which current campy (centaur at least) does not. I may have to hunt down an older left shifter for the Circle A as well. Here are a few more pics:

Ouch. I knew today was going to be tough. Mark G. announced that he was going out for a long ride (50-60 miles) and “fast.” So far this winter my longest ride was probably about 50, so doing 60 at a hard clip over hilly terrain was bound to be difficult. I felt pretty good for the first 3/4 of the ride, and even did some pretty long pulls. But about the time that Casey decided to attack going up the largish hill on Snake Hill Road, my legs gave out. I was OK on flats and descents for another 5 miles or so, but about the time we hit Johnston, it was all over. I began feeling dizzy, hungry, thirsty. I felt a little bit like I was floating above my bike, except that every bump felt like someone was kicking me in the gut. I pulled off from the other three at Chalkstone to head home. Chalkstone has never felt that difficult. I rode up it in my 34-25 at about 5 or 6 mph. Luckily Sal’s bakery provided me with a calzone, a lemon bar and a fig bar. I scarfed down the lemon bar outside Sal’s, and it was probably the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I would have just crashed and gone to sleep for a few hours, but I still have to finish a paper on Harrison Birtwistle’s Secret Theatre.

I’m only going to bother posting two of these. There are a million ways to get from North Main Street up to Hope Street, including Olney, Doyle, Cypress and Rochambeau (cue South Park jokes…) The two most difficult are Doyle and Cypress. Cypress could be in the running for “most difficult hill in Providence” because it’s one of the only ones where you’re in real danger of being shot or mugged (at the intersection with Camp) and it’s also quite steep.  First Doyle:

and then Cypress:

This is a slight variant of what we did for College Hill the other day. I’ve drawn the map for this one so that you turn left at the top of College St, and keep going up prospect, past Angell. That makes it slightly longer, though it reduces the average gradient from 12ish to a still respectable 9. This one, in fact, is so steep in the initial section that it made the text overlap the climb just slightly.

It is not of the bike, nor of us others that I am thinking now, but you, gewilli, if you pass the second half of Bowen, beware!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist the shameless Lord of the Rings quote. 8:30AM, the ground is nice and wet, and still raining occasionally. I headed over to the east side to warm up a bit before the group ride at 9:00. Why warm up, you ask? Today was the day that gewilli chose to lead the east side hill ride, so after leaving Brown, we went down hill, and then immediately back up College Hill (I’ll post a gradient map for that one sometime soon). College hill is a tough one. According to gewilli, it is 12% average bottom, to top, but the very bottom is probably closer to 21 or 22. Great way to start a ride. From there, straight back down, and up Waterman. Back down, and up meeting. Somewhere around here, Casey joined up, making it pretty certain I wouldn’t be the first one up any of these climbs. If anyone were lucky enough to be walking past meeting street at the time, you would have seen six idiots on bikes climb up meeting, past benefit another 200 meters or so, dismount and carry our bikes up a set of stairs, and then ride another 200 meters up another steep section of hill. Gewilli set the pace on this one, but I caught and passed him just before the stairs. Deferring to his much better ‘cross skills, I let him go up the stairs first. On the second section, I managed to hold off a charging Casey for my only KOM points of the day (not that we were really counting.) Then South Court. The tiny cobble section didn’t feel very good. My wheels felt slippery and so I mentioned to gewilli, that i thought Bowen was not such a good idea. He seemed to agree. We went up the first portion of Bowen, and I assumed we weren’t going any further. Nope. Gewilli kept going. Casey followed him. I hesitated, but then thought, “this is my hill, I’m not going to be the one to skip Bowen.” So I charged up the cobbles. I was a little too late to catch them, or so I thought. I gained considerably, and as I hit the sidewalk section, I saw gewilli unclipping and falling sideways on the 30% section. That’s what you get for doing Bowen with a low gear of 40-23. Luckily, Casey and I were both able to sneak by and finish off the climb. And then we did Jenckes. Didn’t feel very good, but I finished second to Casey again…

Saturday I headed out for a ride with gewilli. The two us have very different riding styles (or shall I say, physiques?) He’s definitely one of the biggest guys I’ve ever ridden with, but he has a very strong engine and is very passionate about cyclocross. We headed north toward Tower Hill Road. That made Manville Hill Road the first climb of the day. During the first, steep part, I pulled away and kept my lead to the top of the hill. (But I’ve already mentioned, I like that hill.) Then, instead of heading directly to Tower Hill, via 114, we went up Wrenthem. I hadn’t ridden that way since I first found Tower Hill Road. Wrenthem, as you’d expect is a fairly sizeable hill, since it goes up to the same point that Tower Hill does. (It also comes quite quickly after Manville Hill.) Anyway, this hill didn’t go so well for me (as can be verified in gewilli’s blog post.) He set a tough tempo…at first I had no problem, wondered if I should go by him, etc…then it slowly dawned on me that I was in trouble, and just before the top I lost his wheel. Things went from bad to worse on the descent. As he is wont to do, gewilli threw it into overdrive on the descent and again I lost his wheel. Funny thing is, he was on his winter bike, which only had a top gear of 42-12. Not that I was spinning out my 50-11…I was cooked from the climb, so I wasn’t really spinning out anything. But in any case, that was humbling. Tower Hill Road: that went much better. The steepest part occurs right at the bottom and I got a gap right there. I knew that I could probably climb the frequent steep climbs on Tower Hill Road quicker than gewilli, but there are also many fast (or they should be fast) sections separating the climbing portions. Those ended up being the hard parts of the climbs for me, because I had to really push myself through those sections or he would have caught me.

Anyway, here’s the gradient map for Wrenthem:

here it is, the reborn Gazelle:

now I really need the parts. It’s a bit bigger than the Circle A, so I’ll need to accomodate that a bit. The biggest difference is a more relaxed seat tube angle, so I’ll probably get a Thomson or some other zero setback seatpost, and a slightly shorter stem. It should be possible to get almost the same fit on this as on the Circle A. Many, many thanks to Achim for packing this up and sending it out, and for being so diligent about following up when it took a while to arrive. (The combination of DHL, Deutsche Post and the USPS seems to be a recipe for slow delivery…)