Brentani’s Cycling Blog

it pretty much worked. As expected I had to get rid of the 52. I suppose I could slap a 46 on there, but there really doesn’t seem to be much point, since that would only get me 4 more teeth on the big ring. And as gewilli has shown over and over again, you can do pretty well around here with nothing more than a 40 in the front. Witness the fact that he dropped me on a descent last winter, and that he’s been kicking the asses of many a triathlete (with fully tricked out TT bikes and TT cranks with gears like 55-46) at the local TT series with his paramount (w/ a top gear of 40-12). So I might be coasting on some down-hills when I go ride Lincoln Gap and whatnot, but I’m not too worried about that. As promised, it’s pretty ghetto. Here’s what the crank looks like:

And here’s a picture of the derailleur, bottomed out on the bracket, but with just enough room:

Shifting between the rings is pretty hairy (it’s an 18-tooth difference, so what do you expect!), but it works…and 24-26 is stupid slow.

For a variety of reasons, today was my first ride since last Sunday. That day I made the return trip from Manchester to Providence after spending the night at my in-laws. (The day before was Jude’s baby shower.) I felt god-awful that day and even considered having Carrie turn around and pick me up in Dayville or something. But I pressed on, and made it home in about 4:30, almost a full hour slower than the last time I rode from Providence to Manchester. Overall, I’d say the return trip is a little easier, but it felt much harder that day. Later that day I sprained my wrist moving a ping-pong table (after giving a thorough beating to my friends Kevin and Jim). I took Monday off, and dedicated tuesday to doing yard-work. From Wednesday to Saturday I was in Michigan visiting my parents. I wasn’t able to bring my bike, which is too bad, since there are some new hills to try out in the area around Wayne Hill. Maybe next time. Anyway, now I have to get ready for George St. and maybe Tour of the Hilltowns…it all depends on when Jude decides to show his little face.

oh, and my 24-tooth chainring arrived today, so I’ll probably try to install that later today.

…whether a rhode islander would stop to see if a cyclist who had a nasty crash by a busy intersection was ok…the answer is no. I was turning onto the little bike path that runs from Manton Ave up to Greenville Ave (only about 2 miles), and I hit a patch of sand and next thing I knew I was lying on the ground with scrapes on both wrists and my zipper firmly imbedded in my sternum. I got up, examined my bike and my bloody left hand, and everything seemed ok, though obviously far from perfect. after a moment of indecision about whether I was in any shape to proceed with the ride, I decided to just turn around and go home. No problems with the bike on the way home, and my body seemed to be moving normally. trying to get in the front door, I dropped the bike into one of the columns on the porch, and put a couple streaks of white paint on the top tube. That seems to be the extent of the damage to my bike from the whole ordeal. My injuries also seem to be pretty minor. my left wrist is pretty badly scraped up, and I have a bump and scrape on my sternum, but otherwise feel fine.

So the plan was on Sunday for me to get up really early and drive out from Burlington and ride the 35-mile loop around Appalachian Gap and Lincoln Gap. There were 3 problems with that plan: 1. I was pretty tired from Okemo, so I didn’t have a lot of motivation, 2. Okemo was tough enough in the 34-29 that I figured the I’d probably end up walking Lincoln Gap without lower gears, and 3. the weather was sucky. So instead, Carrie and I took a scenic drive back to 89 and rode over Lincoln Gap. My car barely made it up the “easy” side, and, frankly, I’ve never seen any hill like the last mile of the eastern approach. Absolutely mind-bogglingly scary. I sometimes have nightmares about encountering a hill like that, and I’m pretty sure I would have been walking in the 34-29. But now, of course, I want to go back and try it with more appropriate gears. And also, all the gravel and unpaved sections make me very hesitant to take the Circle A up there. So after my ride today I decided to go talk to Brian at Circle A and see what we could come up with for getting me some ridiculously low gears. If it wasn’t already clear, this is going to be a hack-job. After all, bike and component manufacturers don’t really make bikes with roads like Lincoln Gap in mind. If I had piles of cash lying around I’d have Circle A build me a new dedicated climbing rig (with braze-on brackets and frame angles all perfectly aligned to accommodate really low gears…my birthday is in september if anyone is feeling generous. I’m thinking a combination of orange and absinthe green for the colors). Anyway, after much head-scratching, here’s the plan:

• Getting the Circle A ready for horribly steep hill climb races (Washington, Ascutney) isn’t going to be so difficult. It’s really just a one-off kind of thing, and I won’t need a larger chainring than just a single 24, which means I can just remove the front derailleur altogether. For those races, I’ll just pull the Veloce triple off the Gazelle and throw it on the Circle A, with the outer chainrings removed. All in all, pretty easy.
• Getting a bike ready to ride up those kinds of climbs on my own, on training rides, isn’t quite so easy. (I don’t want to do a whole ride with descents and flats with nothing higher than a 24-13. That’s no fun.) Plus, some of the hills (especially Mount Tom and Lincoln Gap) have far from ideal road surfaces and gravel, which would probably wreak havoc on my beautiful paint job. Plus, I want to be doing these kinds of hills on a semi-regular basis, and I don’t want to be constantly swapping bottom brackets and cranks.
• To achieve 1:1 (ideally I wanted better) on the Gazelle, I had to put a 24 or 26 in the low spot on the triple that’s currently there. Unfortunately, the front derailleur can’t handle that much capacity. (With the 52-42-30 combo on there right now, the chain almost bottoms out on the derailleur, so if I put a 24 or 26, it would definitely be too low.) However, I’m willing to sacrifice the 52 for this kind of ride, so the plan is to install the 24, and adjust the screws on the derailleur to keep it from trying to go into the 52. There’s a good chance that with the derailleur moved down far enough for the 24, it will rub on the big chainring, even when it’s in the 42, so in that case, I’ll just remove it an replace it with spacers.
• This also means that converting the Gazelle back into a winter bike won’t be very difficult either. I’ll just re-adjust the screws to keep the chain OUT of the 24 and give myself a 52-42 double, which is more than sufficient for winter Providence riding.
• This would give me (with my current cassette) a low gear of 24-26 (24.4 gear inches, or a speed of 5.1 mph at 70 rpm) and a top gear of 42-13 (which would be a respectable cruising speed of 23 mph at 90 rpm – I’d obviously be coasting down the big hills.) And I could easily swap the 13-26 for a 13-28 for an even lower bottom gear.
• And assuming this works, all it will cost me is one little chainring. The main stumbling block may be that there might not be enough room on the front derailleur bracket to accommodate moving it down far enough for the 24. But if Brian’s willing, I’ll just have him drill it out to get an extra millimeter or so.