This bike was as close to a barn find as you could get. My Uncle-in-law, Marty, was the original owner and remembers ordering it custom when he and his family lived closer to the Bay area. He rode the bike often when they lived in Modesto (flat) but it sat idle once they moved to Atascadero (hills). I saw tha bike hanging in his shop for over a year, then he asked if I could help him sell it, although I do not think he really wanted to part with it. We talked about it a bit and I ended up buying it from him.
Albert Eisentraut paved the way for generations of custom bicycle builders in the US. Many of todays top builders are now a second or even third generation product of the Classes Albert has tought over the years. This bike was built around 1973 or 74. Like most of the Model A custom frames of the era it is a beautiful shade of dark blue with yellow decals. Marty, recalls asking for a "Crit" style bike to fit his tall lanky dimensions. By my measure the bike comes in around:
Seat Tube C -T: 64 cm
Top Tube C-C: 60 cm
ST angle 72 deg.
HT angle: 74 deg.
BB Drop: 67 mm
Fork offset; 55mm
Chain Stays: 425 mm
I put the bike back together mush the way it was originally built with the Phil/Avocet hubs and Suntour Cyclone era drive train, but updated the contact points with a berthoud saddle, Nitto stem and RM013 bars as well as some 27mm RoughyToughy tires. A little has changed here and there with some of the build over the last year, but it is pretty much as shown in the pictures. The bike is an absolute blast to ride, and is what led me down the path from my Surly CrossCheck to the Roadeo. Once I knew what a good road bike should feel like, a new benchmark had been set.
The Geometric trail calculates out around 41mm as built. Trail figures in this range generally result in a bicycle that handles better with a front load of at least a few pounds or so. This is interesting as the bike was not originally built with the intent of front loading. I have set up the bike with a HoBo style handlebar bag to carry my camera and extra water for long rides and the leap from great to excellent in the handling was astounding. This was my first taste of the low trail coolaide, and I like it.
Enjoy the pictures, there are not many of these masterfully built frames still around or in pictures on the web:
I probably should have been surfing this morning, but would have had a 45 min time window. I can ride with lights, surfing is a little harder in the dark. Daylight savings time is the bane of people who enjoy their mornings, I have dreamed for years of abolishing it.
This is on of those things you wish you had thought of first. This little piece of brazed on metal will be on every bike I have built or re-coated from this day forward.
It has been almost a year now since I received my Roadeo from Rivendell. When it came in from Waterford Mark called to confirm my choice of color, or lack there of. I asked if they could add a chain peg, and Mark told me I did not want one, what I really wanted was a Columbine Quikchainger. I had not really ever paid any attention to these before, and Mark assured me I would be much happier with one of these over a simple peg. If you have never used either the point of each is to assist with keeping things clean when the rear wheel is out of the bike.
For the last year or so I have figured that this metal widget had some sort of magic spell over my bike, I have not needed to take the back wheel off in almost a year of riding. I am doomed now that I put it in writing, but none the less, before Thursday morning of this past week the wheel had never come off since the original build last December. I thought I had everything ready to go the night before for my morning ride, and came down in the morning to find the rear tire flat. The thing is, I was actually excited to finally get to use the chainger.
It is so simple I could not really believe it. With the bike upright, you shift into the outermost cog, and remove the wheel as you normally would. But you do not have to lay a finger on the chain. It rests on the Quikchainger and is held cleanly above the stay. To reinstall the wheel I pull the derailer back a bit, slip the wheel in with the chain on the outermost cog. The distance between the rear dropout and the quickchainger exposes a bit of chain for this engagement. The only thing you touch is the wheel and the derailer, no greasy fingers from the chain. Absolutely flawless, so simple, yet works so perfectly. The pics give a step by step:
Thank you for Mark at Rivendell suggesting that I go with this, and the guys at Columbine Cycle Works for creating these.
Watching the sun come up over the strawberry fields, the smell of fresh food all through your ride is fantastic.
And on the way home, the siren song to the north
I had this rack kicking around in the garage as a keeper from a craig's list find. The Bruce Gordon Front Mountain Rack made it into my possession a couple of years back when I was lucky enough to be the first responder to an ad for a "grocery getter" that turned out to be a 1985 Specialized Stumpjumper Sport, thanks to sharp eyes, was wearing this rack. The bike was a very fun fire road machine, but had to go and now lives in the Pacific NW. The rack however, stayed on the shelf for a later project. Based on the Oregon location for Bruce's shop on the sticker the rack is likely as old as the stumpjumper, Bruce is now in Petaluma, Ca.
I have been thinking about fitting a front rack to the Rawland, but after looking at the front racks available I was not really happy with what I saw. The most likely candidate was a Surly nice rack with a bit of grinding it could be made to work, but all that hardware looked like trouble for trail days. The BG rack was originally intended to clear the cantilever brakes that were popular for touring and off-road back in the 80's, while keeping the bags clear of rocks and the load as close to the steering axis as possible. I had used the rack on the stumpy and it had actually helped with the handling of the older slack geometry. I pulled the rack down to see if and how it would play with the disc brake calipers on the Rawland.
Low and behold the fit was almost perfect. The biggest problem was with the design of the plug dropout and brazeon for the front fork. This has always been a problem with this bike and required spacers to bolt on just about anything. I mounted it up with 4mm of spacers, the original 2mm, a presta nut and the fender R-clip on each side. The top is held in place with clamps for now, but if need arises or I get this bike re-coated, brazeons will be added. I have now used the rack for a few weeks both on and off-road and it has been rock solid.
The load has little detrimental effect on the handling at all. I have used it mostly for errands and trips to the Sunday farmer's market. Average loads are around 15 lbs and handling was fine. The heaviest was around 35, and yes the handling was a bit slow with that much weight in the front, but things never got out of control.
I would recommend this rack to anybody in the market for a front rack that can clear you brakes. This design proves to be fairly timeless as it predates the disc brake design by decades yet adapts easily. Bruce is still making and selling these, and you should look him up if you are in the market.
Some of you may remember my love of riding for wild or semi wild foods from my Walnut Ride. Time to enjoy the dry weather and the morning chill, and ride for the pomegranates I had seen a few weeks ago. No laws were broken and the trees are on public easement. Living in an area surrounded by agriculture it would be all to easy to just grab fruit from the end row of the farms and orchards, but that would kind of defeat the point, and I am pretty sure it is stealing. These particular trees are on the fence line of land grabbed by the water district when they built the Casitas damn. Many ranchers and homeowners lost land to eminent domain with this one, and there are quite a bit of interesting things tucked into the corners of this area without having to jump the fences lined with "No Trespassing" signs. This morning it was a truncated version of a favorite loop to get the quarry and make it home in time for baby duty. Having fresh fruit keeps you out of trouble when you are a little late.
I am looking forward to daylight savings time coming to an end, a little more morning light for a bit.
Saturday started off with a drive down to Santa Monica for a screening of Ride the Divide put on by Erik Mathy of 1Gear1Cause fame. The movie was awesome, it really put the difficulty of the ride into perspective. For readers not familiar, the Divide race is an informal unsanctioned race along the continental divide that was pieced together from a collection of forest service, ranch, logging and other dirt roads and trails by the Adventure Cycling Association. The route is over 2700 miles with 200,000 feet of vertical climbing, and the racers that do complete are averaging it in around 20 days, that is really hard to think about when you sit down and think about the sustained daily averages. Erik had organised the screening as part of his pursuit to raise funds and awareness in the battle against cancer and will be riding the race next year on a single speed Salsa Fargo. Prior to the race Erik had ridden down the coast with Jason and Joe from Salsa and Eric from Adventure Monkey. It was great to meet these guys after reading on their blogs about their inspirational adventures and photography for so long. Salsa had helped to sponsor the event, and after the movie there were raffle prizes from Swerve, Ergon and 1Gear1Cause, as well as water bottles from Salsa. I won the first draw and took home a set of Ergon Grips, the only time I came in first all day. Thanks guys
After the movie everyone headed over to Topanga reek Bicycles for a BBQ and ride. If you are in the area and have not been to their shop yet, you are really missing out. They are one of the few shops have been to in southern California that actually sell and STOCK touring bikes and gear, Arkel, Brooks, Berthoud, surly, salsa, tubus etc. Great shop and great people. The food and company were great. After the BBQ most of the group headed on a ride up Santa Maria Rd for a little dirt and single-track in the Mulholland area. Genius that I am, I had all my camera gear, tripod too, and even my 6lb Ulock. It is likely I was hauling more gear than the guys did on their tour. Needless to say I was running sweep the whole time and my legs were feeling dead, thanks to the whole crew for waiting for me to catch up more than once. Again though it was a great time. Here are a couple of pics from the trail:
I was pretty Lazy with the camera and hopefully some others will chime in with more pics from the ride.
Sunday
Sunday was back to normal 22 mile loop to the farmer's market at Chanel Islands Harbor. It was a beautiful day and a chance to run at my own pace, working out yesterday's sore legs. The haul was not as big this time, but respectible:
The Rawland performed well when front loaded.
I am working on a writeup for later this week on the Bruce Gordon rack and bag set up I have switched to with this bike. Even with 20-30 lb loade on the front the handling has been fine, but that is another post.
Fun weekent, lots of time in the saddle, and it feels good.
While I have loved my DiNotte 140L tail light for a few years now it has been a mixed relationship due to the mounting. If you are not familiar with these lights they are extremely bright AA powered LED lights with a very simple O-ring mounting system. While elegantly simple the mounting requires attachment to a round tube, i.e. handlebars, seat post or frame tubes. Not so easy when you have an assortment of racks and bags that can block the light from behind defeating the whole purpose. I have a Old Man Mountain "Cold Springs" rack on the back of my Rawland. This rack combined with my saddle bag has always left me a bit challenged with mounting solutions that leave the light visible, yet allowing for a secure place to mount the battery pack and panniers.
Then I had my eureka moment while modeling ideas with a short piece of scrap dowel. I will expand on my love of dowels and wood for prototyping in a future post. This time I only needed a short piece less than 2 inches long, drilled a hole through the center, and filed some grooves in the top side for O-ring retention. I ran a long M5 bolt through the mounting track on the rack and bolted the mount between the rack and wheel.
I used the light this week in the rain on multiple rides, and it worked fantastically. The cord is the perfect length to put the battery pack into the side pocket of the carradice bag, and everything has stayed in place.
This light when mounted well will not blind approaching motorists but they will have little excuse to not see you. I have found that even on the lower powered non-blinking settings cars still give far wider birth when passing then with any other tail light in my collection. Hopefully this or a similar solution can be adapted to help you better mount your own tail light far a safer night ride.
