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Here’s some of the family transport out in the sun being washed for spring. I really should have done this a lot earlier: not only was there the remains of rust from road salt, but some bikes had autumn leaves stuck in the mudguards.
Cleaning bikes, of course, is a pretty sure-fire way of making sure it will rain for the next day or so. While I was washing the bikes the weather went from bright sunshine to heavy rain in the space of an hour and it carried on all night, so all the jobs I had lined up for the weekend in the Very Smallholding, like finish digging over the awkward veggie bed, get the scythe sharpened and cut the Almost Hayfield while I still could see over the top of the grass, and prepare some kind of space ready to stack the wood from the monster tree when I finally get someone to cut it, etc, probably aren’t going to happen.
This is frustrating, specially as I was already getting behind with everything. So much for this being a way to drop out of the rat race and relax.
On the other hand, I can still plant a fair number of seeds in my home-made starter pots, and the boys are all growing things in containers on the balcony, so we can make a start on that as well.
Having cleaned the Xtracycle I finally got around to replacing the brake blocks. The last ones are were cheap no-name parts and made a noise like fingernails being pulled down a blackboard whenever I used them. They were also nearly through to the metal. This time I got slightly more expensive versions in the hope they last a bit longer: the blurb claimed they are made of all kinds of high-tech compounds so they work better over time instead of squeaking.
They have orange bits and mysterious letters on the side which will of course improve their performance dramatically.
The plan this weekend was to get another load of digging completed so that the garden would look more like a carefully tended vegetable garden and less like a patch of wilderness or the set for a low budget horror movie.
Naturally it snowed heavily on Friday night.
The garden is pretty well inaccessible when it snows, and even if I could get there, I wasn’t about to spend half an hour raking snow back to find where to dig, so we rescheduled the day and worked on the Bakfiets instead.
The Bakfiets is a low maintenance machine but when something goes wrong it is a pain to get at the bit that needs work, in this case the back tyre, which has been flat as a pancake for weeks.
We do have a stand at the bike shop, but this is built for regular mountain bikes, not thirty kilos of wood and steel, so this is the best was I’ve found to get the wheels off the ground. The side of the box is resting on a cardboard cushion.
Fortunately the hub is fairly well designed. There are a lot of fiddly bits to disconnect but most can be unclipped which saves me rebuilding all the brake and gear connections.
Most of the repair went quite well: We found a large hole in the inner tube, but nothing in the tyre that could have made it. I replaced the whole inner tube with one that has a sensible presta valve rather than the silly Dunlop valve that came with the bike. The main problem was that the chain decided to fall off the front cog, so when it came to putting things back together I first had to take the chain guard to bits and retrieve it.
Oh, and the discovery that the axle bearings have worked lose. Of course, I noticed this after putting everything back together, which means I’ll now have to do it all again in a couple of weeks.
Winter has kicked in with a vengeance, and for the last few weeks I’ve been leaving home before dawn and arriving after dusk on weekdays. Once out of the village it is pitch dark, and the wonderfully retro bodged halogen light I fitted on the commuter bike hasn’t got enough oomph to break through the dark and fog that are a feature of the ride, especially on the section where the local council has thoughtfully closed the pedestrian/cycleway to accommodate building work* and I have to navigate over the fields and around some trees largely by memory. When I’m riding in traffic I’m fine while I keep moving but as soon as I stop I become invisible.
I reckon I’ve got at least eight more weeks of this, so I’ve finally got a modern light, which actually lights up the road, and stays on for a few minutes when I’m not riding. It’s a bit of a risk having a better quality light on a bike I’ll leave in a public space most of the day, but the bike parking space seems pretty safe, and weighed against crashing into a tree or being run over, it makes sense.
If I muster up a lot more self discipline than usual, I may even fit it to the bike and take photos before next March.
*Because it isn’t a road, so it’s not like anyone important will be using it.
If I’m honest, it’s about five minutes after I wrote my last post: I’m going to let this go online automatically so I have a bit of time to get settled in and sort out my internet connection in a castle in the middle of a field.
Here’s the bike that I’ve been working on, and if all goes to plan, the one which will have transported me some of the way to Schloss Daschow and the Nee-Naw training school. The finished result isn’t going to win any beauty competitions but that’s not the point. The point was to make something reliable but not likely to be stolen. (and as it used to look like this, I couldn’t make it any worse anyway)
Stuttgart is filled to the place denoting filled-ness with cars. This is means the bike infrastructure is pretty awful (a point I will probably labour next month when commuting in the city) but on the other hand, it means that the chances of your bike getting nicked isn’t high. This is because hardly anyone wants a bike, because everyone else drives a car.
Now, I’min a region known for cycling*, and thus a place where bikes get nicked more often. Fortunately Stuttgart helped here as well because people chuck all manner of useful stuff away for the diligent scrounger to collect, so I didn’t have to spend too much to get this bike working nicely, fortunately for you I can’t remember what came from where so you’ll be spared the details. so you’re spared the details, although I know the mudguards came free from a pile of ‘rubbish’ I was able to get at before the council picked it up and the luggage rack came from another bike a customer brought into the shop last year to “get rid of it”. I just knew I’d use it one day. The tyres are reused as well, but that doesn’t count because they were mine and I bought them about fifteen years ago in the UK, which makes me feel old. The Boss at the bike shop is convinced they will end their days in a formula-1 style blow-out with bits flying in all directions and throw me into a ditch somewhere.
But then if I’m going to have an accident, a school full of wannabe ambulance drivers is the place to do it…
*Which of course, I’m not, yet, but you get the idea.
I’m less than excited about taking the Xtracycle of to central Stuttgart or to the Ambulance school as: 1: I don’t know where I’ll be able to store it, and 2: It takes up the entire width of the trams into the city and I don’t want to be beaten up by a righteous citizenry after the third morning. In the usual unfair manner of the universe, Bromptons are failing to drop out of the sky, so Bike N+1 is currently being allied to this nice bag of parts to turn it from ugly mountainbike into a slightly less ugly touring/commuting bike so I have some transport in the next month away from home.
Now that the situation re: jobs and training is resolving a bit, I can get on with other projects, like fitting up Bike N+1 so I can use it in the UK later this year. It is also intended as a bike for the ‘yoof’ who want to come on the odd tour but don’t happen to have a bike of their own*, so the bike has to be ridable for fairly long distances, but it should also have a fairly low nickability rating, because I’ll be using the bike in a couple of British cities known for making bikes disappear, so it can’t have too many new parts. It also needs to be pretty cheap, so I went down into the depths of the cellar (or at least those bits of the cellar I can get into) to see what I could find, and fell over these:
This got me thinking: what are the pros and cons of drop handlebars? You hardly see them here in Germany except on super lightweight racing bikes: I may have occasionally seen a touring bike with them. Last time I was on a train I noticed the drop bars take up less space and poke people less than flat bars, which would be a consideration in the UK. I also wonder if they are good for riding longer distances: I may have a rather hilly 20km commute soon so that’s a consideration.
On the other hand I think that something unfamiliar like drop bars and un-indexed gears with handles way down there on the main bar, may put a couple of potential cyclists off, (although several of my companions are still the age where they’re invincible: ah, the joys of youth) and which brake handles work with V-brakes?
Any drop-bar touring cyclists out there with thoughts? How quickly does it take to get used to drops? And aren’t they just a development of old-school swept handlebars anyway?
*But who can, from nothing, ride 80km faster than me and still walk the next day. I’m not envious.
Thanks to Really Useful Bikes I was able to replace the broken clip the Xtracycle sustained when it decided to roll down a set of stairs in December*, just in time for the snow and ice to melt so I can get bit further afield.
First long(ish) tour of the new year scheduled for Saturday.
*The shop in Germany I contacted -twice- for a replacement still hasn’t got back to me.
The Xtracycle had an accident this week and broke one of the clips on the luggage panniers. It wasn’t the Xtracycle’s fault: I had to go to something the boys were involved with, locked it to a railing and the wind blew it down some steps while I was inside.
I duly emailed the shop who sold us the Xtracycle, and they promised to send me a paypal invoice sharpish and a replacement part as soon as the money hit their account.
That was several days ago and I’ve heard nothing since. I’m still waiting for a part I ordered under guarantee two years ago, so I’m not holding my breath.
As Xtracycles are made in sunny California I imagine parts are a bit easier to come by in the US. Are there any US based readers who could order me a spare clip, and send it on to me here if I pay the postage? It’s a pain to do things this way but I really need the Xtracycle to be back in operation. Any offers of help would be gratefully received.
Update: Thanks to Nigel’s comment, I was able to get some replacement clips from Rob at Really Useful Bikes, and have a great chat with a kindred spirit about Xtraycles and Bakfietsen and things cycling into the bargain.
Remarkably, despite my usual skills with the soldering iron which meant I ended up using three metres of wire and about fifteen metres of solder flux, the front light is still working, although it has shown a tendency for the bulb to fall out every so often.
Such is life.
Having got used to having the hub dynamo, not thinking about batteries or having a clip on light cluttering the handlebars I wonder how I managed without this for the best part of fifteen years. Mind you, the real test will be winter and all that cycling on unlit cycleways. First impressions are that it’s built for letting others see me rather than riding through fields in the dark, but we shall see…
Disgruntled has advanced the theory that the ideal number of bikes is N+1, where N is the number of bikes you currently own. I like that idea.
Especially as I bought this a while ago.
Honestly, there are reasons apart from ‘Ooo, shiny new bike’. Partly as it wasn’t: it’s quite an old bike with cantilever brakes, 21 gears and a chromoloy steel frame which is why the previous owner traded it in for an aluminium bike.
So why have I bought it?
I’ve been looking for a bike for some time to use as a spare: the Xtracycle is in use every day so any ‘down time’ is a major problem at the moment, and the last brake adjustment was made while siting next to a lamppost in Stuttgart. Okay, we have the Bakfiets, but that’s a bit of a tank and a real beast if I need to climb any real hills. Bike N+1 is for emergencies so I have a backup if I have an appointment somewhere and the Xracycle isn’t working so well. On top of this it’s tatty old bike so I’ve noithing to lose by trying stuff out on it…
I can’t take the Xtracycle to the UK in August because British train operating companies grasp any excuse to avoid carrying bikes and the extra length will probably be taken as a sign of the coming apocalypse by some railway official who will refuse to countenance taking the thing on his nice clean train. I can’t afford a folding bike, so a normal sized bike will attract less attention.
I work with young people a lot, and many of them like to come cycling, sometimes on longer tours. Not all have serviceable bikes and it would be great to be able to invite someone who doesn’t own a bike and say “Don’t wory about a bike, you can use mine”.
It gives us a breather when Eldest Son outgrows his current bike, and it means that I have at least one chromoloy frame in reserve*, so in the absolute worst case scenario, if the Raleigh frame on the Xtracycle gives out, we won’t have to prune the money tree too drastically for a replacement.
If you read those fast enough, it almost sounds reasonable. All the bike needs is a clean and it’ll work something lovely. Well, when it’s got new tyres. And a shorter headset; a V-brakes; and that saddle needs replacing, and so do the handlebar grips, and…
*Just after I bought this, someone gave me an elderly Giant with a Chromoly frame for free, but there we go…
