Team Lope Tyre Clubbe

I haven’t been riding fixed that long, relative to die hards. As was illustrated in other threads, I feared them for a long time, based on what could happen to my already fragile knees, loathed some of the riders I saw around town, and was simply unfamiliar with how they worked, let alone WHY you’d want to ride one. Obviously all that’s changed. Lately, I’ve been pushing my personal limits on what I thought could, and should, be done with a fixed gear bike. Being a ‘tool for the job’ designer, it never made a lot of sense to me to haul ass or climb on a fixed any more than to noodle around the city on a racing bike. But I’ve done both.

A few days ago, I rode the fixed gear into work again, and this time, on the way home, decided to try and tackle a local climb called the Marin Headlands. It’s not the steepest, craziest climb around. But it’s virtues are that it is close to home, steep enough to give you a workout, and one of the most picturesque rides int he Bay Area. You start at the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, and work your way up Comzelman Road, a nice curvy paved noodle that carves up the side of the Headlands to Battery 129 and finally the Hawk Lookout. Like much of what you find on the South (SF) side of the entrance to the bay, it is surrounded by former protective battlements that long predate the bridge, back when we were worried about interlopers poking around in our little vista. The total climb is about 1000 feet from sea level, but you start arounf 200 at the bridge, so it’s just under 800 feet of climbing. It SEEMS longer, to me, but that’s because the profile of the grade is that it starts steep, which kind of beats you up, then levels off to an easier gradient, than pushes upwards, three sections. Before I was doing lots of year-round riding, when I first moved to SF, I remember blowing up on this climb, pushing myself wayyy too hard on the first section, letting my heart rate go too high for too long, and spewing my breakfast at a point I call One Vomit Hill (there’s a lone tree at this crest, vomiting has ensued, thus…) especially after mashing hard from the other end of the city or, say, Marin somewhere, before hitting that first section. I learned, over time, that if you pace it, it’s a much more manageable climb. But I’m not afraid to say, like most climbs I do regularly, they never get EASY, just less torturous. Also, again, the value add here is that Marin Headlands can be done before or after work easily for me being right by the bridge as it is. Normally, you taks a steep descent down from the battery and into the base, and take a windiong loop back to the bridge again, on a stretch of miserable modest gradient I call the Trail of Tears, because it looks flat, but wears you down because it’s juuuust enough grade, and there’s juuuuust enough wind, to keep you from pacing the way you think you are. But then you get to blast through a single lane tunnel under the freeway and you’re back at the bridge again…much speed to be gained in that pitch black tunnel…

Anyway, I rode up from Mill Valley on fix-e, after riding the Look in the day before and breaking in the new saddle, so I had the tender vittles. We have been in a record-breaking little heatwave, so this day was even hotter than the day before, and when I Ieft the office? 101 degrees. In Mill Valley, that’s not only uncommon, but a record. Fortunately, I prepared as if doing a desert ride, with lots of food and my hydropack reservoir full up, which normally wouldn’t be the case for a ride home OR the Headlands. Good thing though, because before I even got to the Sasualito Grade I was tuckered and overheated. Dragging a fixed gear up the grade is something I’ve only just started doing. Fixed-gear vets don’t care, they just plug along, but it’s new to me, to be turning over those cranks SO SLOWLY. It seems like you’re going to fall over at any second, and certainly that you’re going 1mph or whatever. In fact, I passed some road bike riders and made great time to the bridge, 45 minutes… not bad at all for 40/16!

I was supposed to meet Team Lope rider Eric for the Headlands, though I had been thinking about abandoning, based on that overheated fixed gear climb. He was escorting a bunch of people from work since it was Ride to Work Day. They were delayed, and after about 15 minutes of calming down, drinking and eating some dried lope, I decided to just go for it.

That first section was like molasseses. I started nice and smoothly since I had been at rest, and eased my way up to that eased-off section. In fact, though it was slow-going in that one gear, I did it seated and was euphoric to get the ‘hard’ part behind me. But then as I pushed through the easier patch and then up towards One Vomit Hill, I started to suffer. The back to back rides, the seat pain, and the climb in from Sausalito on the fixed gear had taken it’s toll on my legs. I was burning up in the quads, and my heart rate was high: all indications of another trip down Techincolor Yawn lane. Fortunately, I didn’t heave, and got about a third of the way past the tree before deciding, wisely, to slow up and take a one minute break to get my heart rate down. I’m glad I did. Becuase I saw some riders working their way towards me from below in their bottom gears, spinning away, and took off, only to find that about 20 revs later my legs were blown AGAIN. I basically tunnel-visioned my way up the rest of it, staring at the crest, hoping it was the top but not certain, in my addled state. Finally, I came around the curve and saw the benches and new I had made it, focusing on not laying the bike down in Lung style… and hopped off to recover in the wind, with that glorious bridge view before me. I doubt I could have ridden another 100 feet at that point.

Descending was just as hard, because in order to keep the speed manageable on the fixed gear, I had to push back constantly, lean on the brake, and basically work the grade at what seemed like the same speed with which I had ascended it. Tough on the legs, the hand, the arm, etc. Finally got down to the bridge, and noodled home, admittedly exhausted.

So pleased, though, because this was a personal best moment. Fixed climbing!

So there we are!

So, after completing a Century on my Look’s current saddle, a Sella San Marco, I decided that was about 20-miles too many on a hard plastic saddle for these wrongSitbones. So, while considering my next gelly, succulently comfortable saddle consideration, I suddenly had an about-face… if I was going to drop a ton of cheese, as one Lung would say, on a new saddle, why not buy one to last? So, knowing full well that it would be short-term misery leading to long-term joy, I invested in a Brooks Swallow.

The raw, untreated Swallow. Hard enough to chop melon thereon.

The Brooks saddle company has been hand-building leather saddles since the mid 1800′s. Back in the day, all bike saddles were leather. The deal was: cheap bikes had cheap leather saddles, and expensive ones had nice ones. Later, saddles became plastic in the postwar period, but Brooks continued to make them the old fashion way. Unlike former competitors, instead of stamping out as many saddle leather panels from a given hide as possible to maximize efficiency and minimize waste (leading to most saddles being at wrong grain) Brooks only stamps saddles in the longitudinal direction of the grain of the hide, using the trim for other products like the bar tape. They use far thicker hides than others have done, which lends them the reputation as the hard, miserable ride which in fact is only the pre-broken-in experience. Or so I’m told. Gulp.

Unlike plastic or gel saddles, leather conforms with use. The Brooks is a time-honored but simple design: a rigid longitudinal frame supports the general shape of the saddle, with a tension bolt to make limited adjustments over the life of the product. brass pins hold the leather in place at the front and rear. Most Brooks saddles, like the vintage ones I have on fix-e and will have on the next bike to be built, have a larger wing of leather coming down the sides, which is designed for comfort. The two road saddle models, the Swift and the Swallow, have a narrow profile more familiar to those using road bikes. A popular method of obtaining this road saddle form is to ‘butcher’ a conventional Brooks saddle, which is an inelegant but cool sounding way of saying that you grind off the sides, and a bit of the front and back, and shape your own road saddle out of the rigid leather. I plan to do this to one of my vintage saddles, for the science. But for the Look, I wanted to start fresh with the real deal.

Unlike a butchered saddle or even the Swift, the Swallow includes two side panels that swoop under and are laced together… this allows it to retain it’s form over the life of the product. I bought the chrome version, which was expensive enough. The titanium version, popular with the rich and the competitive racers who still use leather saddles, is now upwards of $500 due to the scarcity of titanium at present. Thus, there is a scarcity of titanium in my WrongRoom as well.

The saddle new is pretty daunting. There are a million posts online from enthusiasts, about the various homegrown methods to treat, and soften, the saddle. Some soak it in a bath of mineral oil overnight. Some hammer them and oil them and all this. Brooks simply recommends using their Proofide cream, applying liberally, polishing, repeat, for the first few months of use, and every 6 months thereafter. It’s the only warrantied treatment, which provides water protection, and a sustained softening of the leather. It’s fat. five kinds of fat. Plus me, above, for six, I guess.

I completed the first treatment, which was liberal application to the underside (left on for maximum road spray protection) and a polished off application on the top surface after leaving it on overnight. You can see the coloration is starting to gain complexity, which I love. My vintage saddles, you can’t even tell what color they were originally stained. Anyway, I figure I have about three more applications, then I’ll start riding on it. Supposedly, after about 200 miles, the saddle will conform to your unique sitbone configuration. It will always be hard to the touch, but like a well-designed wood chair, when properly conformed, it will provide a support modern saddles cannot do.

Pray.

The Fix-e that Came to be from the ashes of Lookery

So, as readers of R3 know, I rode a sweet black LOOK KG361 for about 6 months in 2007. I had craved this bike since I saw it when it was released in 2000, the same year I bought my Bianchi Veloce, thereafter known as Toro, in use as an AidsRide bike by one Lung. After six blissful, if not-exactly-properly-fitted months of riding, including that las-minute save in Calistoga, I overconfidently, if absent-mindedly, decided to lock it up outside the Metreon, and never saw it again. Before I got the Vervelo, and eventually the new Look, the FIRST decision I made was to have a city bike: something simple, that I could lock up around town and not worry about. Not theft-proof, but at least not theft-fearing, either. Something that was easily replaceable. So, I worked Craigslist for awhile, and ended up scoring a single-speed quick-and-dirty conversion from some fixie guys for a few bills, and I was good.

The bike ended up NOT being that fire-and-forget, nearly disposable city bike I intended. It was doomed to be awesome from the start. See, I loved co-piloting some of Lung’s bike (and other) projects, but always felt like it wasn’t so applicable to my riding needs, because I rode these nice road bikes which didn’t want to be effed with (my opinion, not lungs… you should see Toro now) so I lived vicariously through his bikery. But once I got that single speed, I felt the need for bikery of my own. It was poorly assembled, a quick conversion intended for a quick sale, using around the ManRoom parts, and was clearly so, but it worked for me. It was a prime candidate for experimentation, i thought, since hell, it was cheap to begin with and it was the disposable city bike, after all.

Yeahhhh.

Fortunately, Lung still lived in my building and had the ManRoom next to my WrongRoom so he was able to help me with most of the conversion of this bike, originally called Singl3, into the bike I cherish today as fix-e. While I would shed a tear at it’s loss or theft, despite my original intent, it does remain replaceable in the sense that I’m probably going to be working on bikes evermore, now that I’m so obsessed with it, thanks to Lung’s tutelage. If it were to be gone tomorrow, I’d just accelerate work on the next one. That said, it’s tied for favorite bike with my new Look. And frankly, given the choice, I’d rather ride it than anything else. I LOVES it.

The only known photo of Singl3… as if you can see it behind all the other general awesomeness abounding…

Fix-e started out, in the contemporary period, as a simple converted old timey road bike, a Le Jeunet frame from the early 70s. It sported a lux champagne gold mixed with Martinelli’s paint job, well chipped, with UV-radiated-integrated decals. It had the original or similar stem, a pair of chopped straight bars with old finger-grooved hard rubber grips, which I loved to look at but less to ride for more than an hour at a time, and a single 40-tooth chainring in the cranks, which I’d personally never seen before (typical modern road rings are 39/53) it had plastic pedals, an old beat up black plastic seat, one weak brake in front with an old BMX lever, and for wheels, it had a mismatched pair of a 700 and a 27 (I think) one being a complete wheel by someone or other and the other being an Ultegra hub and a Mavic rim, with blue spoke nipples. It rode, it turned, and until the chain came off, it cranked, too. It needed work, like half-mast needed work.

I don’t remember the exact order of upgrades, the way meticulous (read OCD) Lung would, to his benefit and my detriment, but they included:
-a complete strip down, lube and rebuild, during the painting process
-sand/grind of frame and mask/repaint
-new wheels
-new tires
-new bars (twice)
-new tape (twice)
-adjunks (at one point, a bar extension sitting in front of the handlebars, to which was mounted a drink/fritz holder made from hose clamps (Lung genius again)
-new chain
-new cogs
-new old seat
-new brake cable
-new brake lever (twice)
-spikey half-clip-in, half-flat pedals
-top tube pad
-concealed dope

Doing the math, you’ll see that all that remains is the frame, fork, and three piece crank/bottom bracket assembly.

The process of renovating this fine machine was enlightening. Lung helped me strip it down and separate out that which was initially kept from that which was discarded into my ‘future art’ bin. Heh. I was introduced to the exciting, somewhat perilous world of floating bearings (sorry, don’t have the jargon) and bottom bracket mysteries, of chain tension and gearing logic. We only lost a few bearings in the disassembly/reassembly process. I did most of the stripping of the frame, fairly careful not to grind my femoral arteries open or lose right hand articulation in freak sanding mishappery. It took forever! Finally, probably the most exciting step, the repaint process.

Matte black is the new black. Less reflecty for snipers… except for the chrome. Shown here with optional MEGAHORN for SUV alertery.

I wanted a flat matte black finish, so I got high-temperature engine paint. We primered it and then gave it some coats of the black and it came together nicely, with few drips. I sound vague here because by we, I mean largely Lung, who was blessed with both the enthusiasms, and the free time, to hit the frame on intervals. Awesome.
One lesson learned, though: I don’t care what temperature rating the paint has: seal it with a matte clearcoat. Because that thing has proven quite chippable since.

Here’s Singl3 prior to the fixed gearery… handsome bike stand, too.

The wheels are now a Mavic open pro on Shimano hub the front, new, and in the back, a sweet, sweet ENO Eccentric hub in the back, one side being a fixed 16 cog and the other a free 17. Same 40-tooth chainring, new chain, nice and tight. There was a fair amount of manhandling of the wheelstays because the frame was bent and the spacing back there was deformed. Very hard to get the wheel in there and tightened properly by yourself (if you are me; I was convinced I was screwed, unable to get them wide enough to accept the ENO even on a stand with a breaker bar; I was preparing to HEAT the metal, a bad idea, with Lung at his house when he simply dropped them in, using different leverage. As you can see, I remain not very mechanically inclined.)

Sweet’ knobby tires.

I started with these sweet textured knobby tires, but I longed for the familiar ride of slicks from my road experience, and subsequently sold those to one Lung, and picked up gorgeous white stripe slicks from SOMA Fabrications.

The scheme, clearly, is matte black, chrome, with leather accents. The original chrome on the Le Jeunet ("the the") was taped off and remains, though the lugs were painted.

Original chrome, seen! ENO hub, not yet seen!

The seat is a vintage Brooks saddle, well worn with the asses of generations past. I love it. I’m all Brooks now.

The bars were kept as-is for quite awhile, but I was getting a good amount of shoulder fatigue from that position and ultimately decided to go for something swoopy and funky, so I added Nitto Mustache Bars. These were taped in Brooks leather tape in Antique Brown to match the saddle.

Those old-timey mustache bars…

The bars were awesome, but they ARE old timey, and fix-e was increasingly moving towards a more contemporary fusion of styles, so I decided to pull them off and use them on the next bike, and replaced them with a pair of Nitto Bullhorns. These give me more reach and a confident riding position. Wrapped in honey leather tape, this time, for some contrast. This was also timed with my decision to change the brake lever. I was originally using a small black BMX brake lever on the original flat chopped bars, but when I put the mustache bars on there, they were too wide a diameter for the single clamp lever.

At one point I even tried using the bar extended and moving the brake lever onto the stem. Not successful. Proven in EPIC FAIL on test ride.

Few double clamp levers exist other then an old, let’s say budget model SunTour, so I decided on what I THOUGHT was a Thommovation: using a bar-end brake lever on the end of the mustache bars, in a ‘reverse’ position. As it turned out, I ended up seeing it on another bike, and later on singles sold at Sports basement, so not so unique an approach. Never did see it on mustache bars though. So, bar-end lever on the bullhorns now, complete.

Note also that the bullhorns allow for a perfect tuck when ascending stairs with the bike…

The final details are an aesthetically pleasing, in other words fly, custom top tube pad I had made, black denim on the outside, with sick red perforated leather concealed on the inside, but never shown. It’s like I’m a rigid librarian wearing sexy lingerie under my sensible herringbone suit! (And I’d like to meet, uh, me.) And tucked into that? A vintage playing card… the 3 of aces, in fact.

You will also note the custom custom and superfly exclusive TRDL crest on the head tube. A more elaborate crest exists on my own right arm, of course, but this is a badge of wrongPride(tm) I say!

Since the day I photographed the bike for this belated post and deemed fix-e both completed and named, there have been changes, non-deliberate and of little consequence.

My sweet leather underseat tool bag was lifted while I bought eggs on one of my and Lung’s Saturday breakfast spins. And in an ill-conceived transport of Fix-e within the MINI, I inadvertently allowed the front wheel to rest loosely on top of the frame on the way in, and back, from Marin (it was on a towel… then wasn’t.) the road vibration quietly allowed the spokes to shear all the paint off of the left seat/top stay, so there’s subsequently been a bit of black electrical taping, which was mandatory anyway.

Oh, and lastly, because the frame is technically too short for me, I’ve been continually looking for ways to extend my stretch in the riding position, from the bullhorns, to my latest part, a drainpipe seatpost from the old school BMX days (I saw one in the wild, and Lung identified it with childlike glee, the glimmer of his BMX trophies twinkling in the reflection of his red-tinged eyes…)

All in all, a fantastic experience. It taught me the basics of ten-speed to fixed gear conversions, allowed me to gleam the satisfaction of hand-made projects in my otherwise digital day to day, and gave me a new obsession. A second fixed conversion is underway for the summer. More Lung assistance will be required. But man, what a treat. And besides, the process of riding a single and eventually fixed let me not only get over my aversion to fixed gear riding, but learn to really appreciate it as part of a balanced riding style.

The rub? I’m still in need of a city bike.