Back to Work

Yesterday I started working at Geoff's Bike and Ski. It will be my second job this summer as I am also continuing to advise young English majors. The shop is nice, as are the people that work there. So far I have been able to work in small apartment that they use for storage and bike building. It is really quite nice to be alone with a new bike. The grease is all clean and has that sweet, somewhat fruity smell. Some would say I don't get to talk to many people, but I like to think of it as not being bothered. I think I will be building bikes for a little while, but there will be sales and some tune-ups too. It should all be enjoyable.

Tomorrow I go back to my advising job. It is also a transfer day, so I will spend the afternoon looking at transcripts of students who have transfered from other schools to be English majors at Iowa. Sadly most of them come to be the next big thing in creative writing, so most of the meetings begin with me explaining that the Iowa Writers' Workshop is a graduate program only. I often dread these days in the office, but for some reason I'm rather ambivalent about tomorrow. Hopefully it will be ok.

I went and did the group ride tonight. It was a beautiful evening with big puffy white clouds and very little wind. Evenings like this are rare. The ride was fast, perhaps in part due to this guy's presence, but I felt pretty good and thought I'd make it into town with the lead group. But then my chain started rubbing my front derailleur. As I looked down I noticed that I could see a sizable chunk of my bottom bracket axle between the frame and the crank. At first I just went to the back of the group to sit in and spin. But that was not going to last long, so I pulled over, got off, tightened the crank back down as fast as I could and jumped back on the bike.

With the slight tail wind I thought I actually had an ok chance to chase back onto the group. Luckily for me Steve waited up to ride with me. And I was even more happy when he said he just wanted to cruise in. Good company and conversation are usually better than hammering with your head down, and judging by how tired my legs are now, adding a ten or fifteen minute all out time trial to my ride would not have felt all that great. So cheers to Steve.

Tomorrow Robin and I go to the Chicago burbs to hang out at my parents house. We should get a cool night or two to enjoy the hot tub, and its almost Jen's birthday, so we might have some celebrating to do.

Oh, and Robin is currently changing the design of her blog, it looks fun. It might not be up quite yet though, so be patient if it is still light green and wind-chimy.

One Speed

Robin's new townie bike became a one speed much sooner than we expected. After cruising around the bike paths this afternoon we stopped at Geoff's Bike & Ski to figure out my work schedule and get a freewheel. They not only had it in stock but also threw it on the wheel too. Great service. So we spent the rest of the afternoon stripping off the superfluous parts and playing with some old cranks I had in the basement to get the chainline right. She is quite happy with the outcome. We still look for the Jamis when were out and about, but the new Fuji is starting to ease the pain.

Here is a picture of Robin and her new ride.

The seat stay on the Fuji used to proclaim how advanced its shifting technology was with a "12 speed" decal. Robin took a razor blade to it to set the message straight.

Biketastic Weekend

This holiday weekend was filled with bike stuff. There is too much to write it all down, so I'll leave you with the highlights.

Saturday we went to the Bike Library and picked up a sweet red Fuji, complete with world champion rainbow stripes, for Robin. After taking some fine sandpaper to the rusty sections it shines with quite a luster. In the next week or two it should be turned into a single speed. We're all very excited for Robin to become a single speeder.

Sunday I rode out to watch some racing in Muscatine with Michael, owner of The Broken Spoke, and John and Steve, mechanics of The Broken Spoke. We took a mix of gravel and pavement and arrived just in time to see Kim West finishing his race. I watched a couple more races before heading back to Iowa City. I called Robin on my way home and she came out and met me on her bike. It was nice to end the ride with her, she also brought me some much needed liquids and ensured that my ride for the day was just over a hundred miles.

Monday Sean and I met up with a bunch of folks affiliated with Geoff's Bike and Ski. The day started with much coffee at Kevin and Britteny's as we all sat under their porch and watched the light rain. Eventually someone made a move to go and Nick ended up leading us through some very fun trails on our way out of town (they might be a secret, so no more details here). And then we took gravel roads almost the whole way to the Amana Colonies and the Cajun Festival. It continued to rain on and off the whole way there and the festival certainly wasn't dry either. The sun was out, but the beer was flowing and we all had a few too many. The route home involved gravel and bike paths and some stellar mechanical work fixing broken pedals. I'm still impressed Nick and Sean's bikes made it back.

My legs feel thoroughly used, so I'll probably sit around today. Perhaps a little spin to the grocery store, but probably no more.

400$ Brakes

The mail came right when I was sitting down to some nice leftover pizza for lunch. I've always liked mail and so the arrival of the post each day is an exciting moment. You never know what you are going to get. Today consisted of the usual junk stuff, another credit card offer for Vitzys, an alumni magazine from the school I graduated from years ago and continue to attend now, and a new cycling catalog. The perfect thing to flip through during lunch. I love shiny new bicycles and picking out various things that would be fun to own if I had the money.

But after flipping for awhile I tend to get a little angry at the cycling industry. Is there any reason at all to charge 400$ for a pair of road brakes? They are not at all ornate, or beautifully handcrafted. They are simple, black brakes and they are light. But 400 bucks? C'mon, that's ridiculous. And the worst part is, they are on sale. As a potential consumer I am supposed to feel good that I would save 30$ on these things.

This is just one example of the silly expensive bike things that fill these catalogs, 200$ bib shorts 330$ handle bars are just two other examples. While I have plenty of nice, relatively expensive, bike things, I'm happy to say that my seven year old brakes that cost a fraction of what those black ones cost are still doing a great job of slowing me down when I want them to.

Beautiful Afternoon Ride

Yesterday I went for a nice afternoon ride with Sean. Our rides are always fun and we haven't ridden together in awhile, so I was looking forward to it. The temperatures were a bit cool, but the sun was out and the wind was light. We headed north talking about bikes, school, and rabid dogs ruining derailleurs. Sean's, not mine, and it is whole story on its own, though you will be happy to know that both Sean and his titanium frame are going to be alright.

While trying to decide where we should ride Sean suggested a little town north of Solon that had a nice bar and grill. The description of how to get there sounded somewhat familiar and now I'm sure that I had ridden there, but it was years ago during all the frigid winter miles. Now that the weather is nice, and that my priorities are not centered on racing, we sat on the bridge and enjoyed cold Budweisers before heading back to Iowa City.

The Sutliff Bar and Grill is an interesting one. We saw old and young people fishing, riding bikes (leather, not lycra), young families, and a mini-bus-load of people in their 70s and 80s. The burgers looked great, and Sean swears they are, but I stuck with the liquid calories this time. I'll have to go back for a longer stay and a burger in the near future.

For the ride home we had a light tailwind and rode at consistently hard pace. It felt great until we were about a half hour from home and all I could think about was the big hamburger that I didn't eat. I made it home, but if the ride was much longer I would have been in trouble.

Today is another nice day, but I might take a break from the bike. My legs are sore. I haven't ridden this much since my own mini-training camp at the Stephen Ranch. But we'll see, I don't really have anything else to do but take our mountain of bottles to be recycled.


We don't really drink that much, we're mostly just a little lazy. Ok, I'm lazy. Robin has made numerous attempts to get us to take care of this pile. I bargained and said that if I got to spend my free time at the end of the semester adding empties to the pile and riding my bike that I would take them back once school ended. So today is that day.

Two Root Beer Floats

It is starting to feel like summer. After a few cool days and rain, the sun has come out in force and I have that wonderful 'I don't really know what to do with my time' feeling. It is quite nice and I hope it lasts.

In order to not shock my system too much I have immediately started reading again. I selected an extremely fat book that gave Robin much pleasure earlier this spring. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It involves the return of magic to early nineteenth century England. And Clarke does a wonderful job making the book feel like it was actually written two hundred years ago. I remember Robin continually checking the copyright date while reading it. I suggest it. And it goes remarkably well with coffee or tea.


And then of course there are the increased hours on the bike. It has been nice exploring more dirt roads that in turn lead to new paved roads and all of this with no particular goal in mind other than to ride. Yesterday I went back to the Tri-County Bridge area for a little exploring. It is some of the more beautifully rolling and treed countryside in the area. But it left me a little famished and I was still over an hour away from home. When I got to a town I decided I needed a root beer float. They had a special for .99, so I got two, and that was more than enough to push me through the crosswinds and back into Iowa City.

Good Beer Kharma

I finished my last paper this afternoon. It was a good feeling. I savored that feeling as I slowly rode through the densely treed streets on my way to school. In the gutter I noticed a beer bottle. A common site in a university town at the end of finals week. My first thought was something along the lines of disliking stupid people who litter, my second thought was 'oh, that is a New Belgium bottle.' I used to drink New Belgium beers all the time in Flagstaff. You don't see them much in the Midwest and I miss them.

While I was rolling past the trash and waxing nostalgic about past drinking experiences I then noticed that the bottle had a bottle cap on it. I figured it was worth investigating further, and much to my delight I found the bottle of 1554 to be full. It was rather hot, but a little time in the freezer would get it ready in time for happy hour.

Robin and I split it and it was delicious. Tonight we are meeting some friends to go cruise around town on bikes, eat Mexican food, and drink beer and/or margaritas. Cheers.

STOLEN BIKE

When I went to get the paper this morning Robin's bike was missing from our enclosed front porch. It is a Jamis Aurora touring bike, we don't know the exact year, maybe early 2000's. Dark blueish with a hint of green. It has some brand new black SKS fenders on it. The downtube has a sticker that says it originally came from "Johnny Sprockets Cycles." We're working on a picture. If you see it, grab it, it isn't theirs.

Please contact us if you have any news: brian [at] booksbikesbeer [dot] com.

2/3 Done

The printer is noisily spitting out my second paper. This afternoon I'll stroll around on the bike turning it in and gathering some sources for my third and final paper which is due at the end of the week.

Long Ride

It has been well over a week since my last post. I wish I could say I had a real reason for not posting, but not much happened. I've done some work on my papers (even finished one and turned it in). I've wasted some time. And on Tuesday I got dropped on the group ride.

My biggest paper is due tomorrow afternoon. I unsuccessfully worked on it Saturday; I got distracted helping Robin put some new, and very pretty, fenders on her town bike. She also gave me one of her old computers to put on my cross bike, so I did that too. After bike stuff going back to writing just didn't seem like fun, so Robin and I had some adult beverages and conquered some mean alien races in a little computer game called Starcraft.

Despite getting very little work done yesterday I had already decided that for my health it was best that I go on a long gravel road ride with Steve. He is doing some nice rides to get ready for the Dirty Kanza, a 200 mile gravel road race across Eastern Kansas, and I wanted to tag along.

We met at the park at 7 in the morning. It was cool and cloudy and the Iowa winds were already blowing 20-some mph from the east. Steve had mentally mapped out a number of loops that would minimize our direct headwind time. This pleased me.

We started going south and then weaved our way over to the town of Hills for an early stop. The clerk was enjoying an early morning smoke outside and greeted us with a puzzling, but not necessarily cold, look. When she asked how far we were going Steve said that we weren't really sure but hoped to get in six hours. She promptly told us that we would be riding six hours too many. When we sat outside to consume our iced coffee drinks and breakfast pizza she came out to inform us about a bench around the building. That was nice. Or perhaps she didn't want us sitting in front of the convenient store scaring all the locals with their rumbling one-ton pickups.

Either way, it was only a few moments before we were riding into the wind to do a big loop over the Tri-County Bridge and ride some nice rolling and partially wooded roads that I have never been on before. The loop worked out great in terms of wind too. Only a small amount of direct head wind in the beginning and then a bunch of crosswind that was surprisingly easy to ride in. And the loop sent us back to the same convenient store we had visited only a couple hours before. Steve got more pizza and I was content to just fill up my water bottles and eat the plain, dry bars that I had in my pockets.

The remainder of the ride was nice. It stayed cool and cloudy all morning with the western sky looking very dark and ominous, but we didn't have any problems. My legs started to get pretty tired when we hit the five hour mark. I haven't been doing any long rides, so I was pretty happy that I felt good that long. Tomorrow I'll spend the whole day recovering, which means sitting in the brown chair finishing my paper that's due at 4.