Brews you can use

I got a late Christmas present today. Well, not so much a late Christmas present, but a quarter century delayed inheritance.

My Grandpa died almost 25 years ago, and left some nice wristwatches for me and my cousin. I was a kid then, and my cousin was less than a year old, so it’s probably for the best that they took this long to get to us. Mine’s easily the nicest watch I’ve owned, and probably ever will own. I usually go for the sturdy yet disposable inexpensive digital watches, but this is a beautiful mechanical wristwatch made in Switzerland by one of the older Swiss watchmakers. I’ve been wearing it since this morning, listening to its rapid ticking, marveling at the fine mechanisms strapped to my wrist, and thinking of Grandpa.

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I brewed yesterday, but nothing as odd as I thought I’d need to do. I had the hops to make a decent American IPA, and picked up a few more ingredients to complete the recipe. My last few beers have wound up underhopped, but I don’t think I made that mistake this time — my hops stash is gone now

I also finally got my bike out of the car, assembled, and installed fenders. The weather forecast calls for sub-10°F temps tomorrow, which knocked me out of my bike commuting routine last time. This time around, though, I have a fleece balaclava and a better base layer for the rest of me. I could wait for the higher temps later this week, but I’m itching to get back on the bike…

A couple days ago, I started to understand the appeal of the car-free life.

After digging the car out from being plowed in, I wasn’t able to get it into our backyard parking spot (its snow handling leaves quite a bit to be desired) so I parked it on one of the side streets, across from a sign reading “Night plow route this side of street”. It was towed the next morning when I went to run a few errands.

Turns out that marking one side of the street for nighttime plowing renders the opposite side a daytime plow route; this isn’t marked by any signs, I had to go to a St. Paul web site to figure this out. Having my car towed was a pretty effective hint, though….

Well, I had been meaning to get back on the bike. I more or less stopped bike commuting when the temps dropped to 5° in late November, but the weather this week was pretty nice. I took the mountain bike out for my first ride on slushy roads. Kept it in low gear, took it easy and slow, and … wiped out spectacularly right out of the alley. Only my pride was injured or damaged, and I stayed upright for the rest of the ride to breakfast and then to the impound lot. A mere $240 got my car back, and I packed my $200 bike into the back seat, and went on with the errands.

…
The bike is still disassembled in the back of the car. I hope to get around to reassembling it in the next couple days. I’ll also try to get some fenders on it — I was wearing quite a bit of road salt from that short ride, so I added “buy fenders” to the TODO list. “Buy Nokians” almost made the list, but I’ll save those for later.

The Schwinn is downstairs again, after a couple enjoyable (if more physically taxing) commute rides. I just need to finish installing and taping the handlebars, and either get some 27 inch knobby tires (not as much variety in that size) and fenders or wait for more slick-friendly weather.

I also need to brew something before I go ack to work. I had been planning a pilsner, but the hops have become hard to get. Another experimental Frankenbeer it is, then

Good week this week, and not just because I’ve been off work:

• I brewed on Monday. This is almost getting to be a regular occurrence. I probably won’t get back to the 10 gallons per month rate I had going a few years back, but the chances of me selling off brewing equipment in disgust have dropped quite sharply. The beer? I don’t know what it will be, other than beer. Something dark, mildly roasty, hopefully hoppy, with a bunch of rye. For the moment, I’ve given up targeting styles/flavors/other beers. It’s my beer — I’ll probably like it.
• We hosted thanksgiving dinner. Jess’s aunt took the kids for an evening and we cleaned. Cleaned like we didn’t have to worry about waking the kids. Cleaned till we dropped. We have a reasonably clean downstairs now, and with 4 cats and two kids, that’s precious and fleeting, but quite satisfying.
• Oh yeah, dinner. Good turkey, excellent stuffing and squash, heavenly desserts (five-spice pumpkin pie, chocolate cranberry hazelnut torte, and the cranberry apple pie Jess’s friend contributed), and lots of family and friends to share with.
• Most of today was spent noshing, vegging, and snoozing. After the kids went to bed, I got the project bike set up so that I can feel safe commuting with it, put on some lights, and took it on a late-night test ride. There’s still a bit of work left, but it’ll get me to work and back, I think. It’s still a new and fun ride, so I’ll enjoy whatever portion of the commute it survives

I re-greased and reassembled the headset last night, and bottom bracket tonight. Both are quite smooth now.

Then, since I was halfway assembled, I put the wheels, seat, and handlebars back on, re-ran the front brake, slapped a headlight on, and took it out for a quick test ride. Everything felt quite good mechanically, and it was very pleasant to ride. I’m hooked.

There’s still some tweaking left to do before it’s ready to ride for real, but I’m quite surprised I was able to get this far so soon.

The project bike is now stripped down to the frame and the bottom bracket and headset bearing cups, for the cleaning of the latter. When I finally got the headset apart last week, the races and bearings were in pretty good condition, although the grease looked like it had been in there since the bike was first built. The bottom bracket was even worse, with chunks of grease and foreign grit tumbling out when I disassembled it. All the bearings looked pretty good after a partial cleaning, though, so they should be fine after a thorough cleaning and regreasing. The cups and cones got a good wipedown with mineral spirits, and the races are soaking in alcohol until/unless I think of a better degreaser for the task…

I also purchased a BMX freewheel and substituted it for the old cog set. That may not have been the smartest thing to do just yet — the chainline is off by about 5-6 mm, which is marginal. The only real fix is to get some axle spacers, move the hub over by 5 mm, and (the fun part) redish the wheel to center the tire again so the bike rides straight and the rear brake works. It’ll probably be a while before I’m riding the bike, hopefully in a reasonably straight line

…

Of course, this is all the more interesting because of the lack of bike-mechanical aptitude I demonstrated today. We pedaled the kids to a playgroup at Como Zoo this morning, and I decided to fix my chain’s routing before I left — it had been running around the outside of part of the derailleur cage since I replaced it a couple weeks ago, making riding it quite noisy among whatever mechanical damage it was doing. The chain has a master link so it can be removed without tools. I couldn’t remove it without tools, so I broke out the chain tool, and re-routed the chain by separating it at a regular link.

Less than a mile into the trip, the link exploded…. I had some spare chain, so I replaced the link a bit more gently, but couldn’t get the links to actually rotate around the rivets smoothly. So, Jess and Arlo went to the playgroup, and I limped up to County Cycles with my skipping chain and Grace in tow (her choice — she really wanted the bike ride, apparently, even at ~8mph with occasional loud popping and cursing noises ). Of course the fix was trivial: flex the frozen links side-to-side after inserting the rivet, using much more force than I had tried. They also noticed and fixed the seriously loose headset I’d been riding on for <mumble> months. It took about five minutes, and was quite educational.

So, I still have a bunch to learn to become novice bike tinkerer, but at least I have something to play with without endangering my primary ride. Again :-/

I bought a new old bike Monday, a 1974 Schwinn Varsity for $30 from the fine folks at Capital Deals, a surplus/bike shop in southern St. Paul.

The previous owner had done a rather crude single-speed conversion. They removed the derailleurs and one of the chain ring, ran the chain around one of the rear cogs, and flipped and chopped the stock drop bars, but didn’t deburr the chop, much less plug and wrap the handlebars. The rest of the bike isn’t so hot — it would have been marginally rideable with a brake adjustment, but to be safe, it needs:

1. headset replacement (it currently exhibits “indexed steering”)
2. bottom bracket overhaul or replacement (it’s an old-school one piece crank, which means it’s one of the rare repairs which doesn’t require special tools…)
3. new rear brake cable
4. smooth and plug/cork the chopped handlebar ends

I took a stab at the headset replacement tonight, trying to get the fork out so I could get a new headset to match but (argh) found that my big crescent wrench was about 1/2 mm too small for the locknut, so tomorrow, I’ll try to get a bigger crescent wrench, as well as some copper pipe to drive out the cups somewhat nicely.

All of these repairs should make a rideable hacked singlespeed. If I get that far, the next plans are:

1. replace the handlebars — the current ones were chopped too short, and barely have room for my hands. I haven’t decided between simple drop bars, or fancier moustache or better bullhorns.
2. replace the rear cassette with a single freewheel or track cog, or buy a new fixed/free rear wheel
3. Accesorize.
4. ?
5. Profit!

After putting it off for way too long, I finally started biking to work last Tuesday. I’ve car commuted twice since then, to give my legs a break, but I think bike’s the definite preferred commute. The bike commute keeps me awake and my mind engaged, so I just feel more energetic and alert throughout the day. It’s a nice natural high, and I can feel the beginnings of an addiction — I’ve noticed myself getting uncharacteristically cranky when I’d rather be biking.

I still have a bit of learning to do until I really know how to ride a bike, though. I remember it being much simpler as a kid — “pedal this way really fast, if something gets in your way, turn “. Part of that could have been simpler equipment. My first bike was single-speed cruiser, and by the time I moved in to a ten-speed, I didn’t really see the need to shift.

The ride this time around is a decent used Raleigh mountain bike with nice fat (and heavy) tubes and more gears than I know what to do with — 24 nominally, including the way-too-useful-for-me “Granny gear”. I chose it because (a) I liked the sturdy feel of the cruiser I outgrew long, long ago, and (b) I’m nearly 300 pounds, so part of me thinks I would crush a nice sleek (and light) road bike. I could use the exercise, anyway.

No pictures yet, but think:

but only one of me, and not as well-dressed.

I still haven’t gotten the hang of pedaling smoothly, or found a good cadence. One experienced biker at work suggested 90 rpm as a good spinning speed, and I started trying to find that. 90rpm = 3 revs every 2 seconds, or 3 pushes of the pedal every 2 seconds…. Think 3 beats per measure. Accent the first beat, and you’ve got a nice brisk Walz. “Tales from the Vienna woods” would be a good target. Currently, I seem to be dialing in at more “Blue Danube” speed when I can actually maintain a cadence. The usual mode, though is more like “Hall of the Mountain King” followed by panting and coasting.

Well, at least it gets me there…