My buddy Sid and I rode out to Forestville for this conclave of heads, and had a great time!
I think this is the third one? FOURTH! Volo coffee was there with a popup coffee shop as well.
It was coooold on the ride, and dark by the time we got back into Santa Rosa.
Lots of friendly faces, both new and known, lots of cool bikes.
I thought I took pics of the refurbished 1939 Schwinn Paramount track bike with a 1953 AW 3 speed hub but I sure don’t see them on my phone.
Taco Tuesday riders were at the head of the parade. I’ve said it before: all parades should be at night!
I got this pretty SimWorks rack from Analog Cycles, but the TravelAgent conflicts with the mounting rod.
I’d need to switch to a cantilever brake in the back to make this work. Or… just move a pad washer to get the brake off the rack strut… hm.
Out to Forestville for pizza (Sonoma Pizza Co) with some friends and back, almost all on the trails. Made a wish at 11:11 on 11/11. The usual: “some peace, somewhere, for a little while.”
The veganized pizza with added mushroom was delicious! Brian’s shop was closed (Tuesday/Holiday).
Cleaning the rim seemed to help the crazy squeal, so I put the shiny brake and new pads (sanded of course) on the Fitz for tomorrow’s road run out to Forestville.
UPDATE: better braking and no shrieking!
UPDATE (full story below): this is a Gripshift Bassworm invented to add more “spring” to Gripshift shifters to work with updated Shimano derailleurs.
This looks like a special way to keep the gunk out of a derailleur cable. The rubber tube has a metal connector at one end that holds the cable with a grub screw. There is a strange swinging stop that attaches to the frame stop, and looks like they work together in such a way that I couldn’t steal the swinging stop for another bike.
A friend returned a bike I put together for them, and included an old Cannondale! Yay! But… 1.25” headtube, blown Judy fork, bent derailleur.
Kind of made me mad, since I’d just got a new bike (the Fitz), and sold a bike (the Swobo), and I was looking to downsize not metastasize. Which is why there isn’t any kind of documentation to this weirdo bike.
It was also a bad sign that my friend “CannonDave” who will drive four hours to buy a $50 Cannondale frame wouldn’t take the whole bike off my hands for free.
Sam, a reader and iBOB writes:
Hi Philip
I saw your post about the weird vintage detail on the Cannondale frame you received. I totally see how it would also keep gunk out, but the set screw that clamps the cable is a clue to its true purpose. That is a Gripshift Bassworm. It came out in the mid 90s as a shifting “upgrade”. As Gripshift gained market share and replaced Shimano rapid fire shifters both in the oem and aftermarket, Shimano lightened its return springs in the rear derailleur. The Gripshift have a coil of cable in the shifter adding just enough friction to make their performance quite poor with the light action return springs while leaving rapid fire shifters unaffected. Coincidence or aggressive competition tactics by Shimano? We’ll probably never know. But Gripshift put these out to increase the return springs pull and make up for the extra friction in a Gripshifter. The rubber tube is the “spring” and you were supposed to install it with a bit of stretch while in the smallest cog. As you shifted through the rear cassette, the rubber tube would stretch and then when you shifted through back down to the small cog it would yank that cable back through the housing, effectively increasing the return spring. Gripshift didn’t want to advertise that there was a problem with its shifters and Shimano derailleurs, so it marketed these as an upgrade for everyone (and it worked the same on any bike so it was universal I guess), but it truly was a way to bridge a cunningly engineered compatibility gap. Soon after Gripshift became SRAM and started making its own ESP derailleurs and the rest is history. Anyway, thanks for ringing a bell in this old mechanic’s memory, and sorry to bend your ear with an unsolicited tale of bike industry intrigue from the mid 90s. I do enjoy your blog, so chapeau bas!
Thanks,
Sam in Brooklyn (ibob member)
My friends were like, “is this a NORMAL mail day at the Biketinker house?”
No, it’s pretty superlative. 100 Tacos shiny Suntour sticker, Jacquie Phelan postcard AND a mini-letter with a new green Wombats patch!
This new Fitz Porcorosso is an update to my 2019 Fitz Supermoto. Both are custom drop bar, rim brake, go anywhere (carefully) bikes. Big tires, big dropper post. The main update with the new bike is “make it bikepacking” with zits galore on the forks and frame. Fitz Cyclez
I want to keep the Supermoto at our Grass Valley glampsite, since that bike can go anywhere I want to go, has lights, and the dedicated basket rack can carry groceries home.
The new Porcorosso doesn’t need to do everything, since it slots in between the Frances and Quickbeam (baskets and lights) and the Stooge Scrambler. Out of the gate it has 48mm knibblies and no light or racks.
I had collected some inspiring parts, which is always dangerous. I wanted to try brifters for the first time, so I got some eBay 10sp SRAM shifters and the Ratio 12sp kit. I got good bargains on a closeout Onyx hubset, shiny XTR skewers and cranks. I also got on the list for the new silver PNW dropper, and it seemed churlish to not buy one.
I wanted this bike to be fancier than the utilitarian Supermoto. Raked fork blades, shiny details, and a new Fitz thing, a curved top tube.
Seeing Sonoma and Marin and SF as the sun comes up.
Curved top tube lots of custom details. Illusion Cherry powdercoat. Fitz Cyclez
State of the Stable 2023
I bought the frameset used at Christmas time 2022. The stem had been sold, but I got a matching Valentine Red stem from a friend a couple days later. Currently I’m using a slightly taller stem with less reach, but may go back to the red one.
It’s built up with 3×9 parts off the Fitz. XTR rear derailleurs and Ritchey Logic cranks have been signature parts for me since they were current.
A friend gave me (‘gave,’ not ‘gifted’) a set of gray brakes which kicked off the build set: gray PNW pedals and tape, but the tape discolors unpleasantly; gray XTR hubs I built into wheels with DT Swiss A319 rims (cheap wide good); gray Cambium saddle with a cool topo map pattern that looked good with the bar tape when the bar tape looked good.
I’ve had this bike for almost two years about six years now. Here’s a New Years 2022 update photo:
People are shocked that it’s ‘new,’ since it’s steelier and beautifuler than most modern bikes. It’s a Frances, out of Santa Cruz, custom built by Joshua Muir for someone who is not me. I like it.
It checks all my boxes: steel, fillet, gigantic, “all this by hand” custom, built with American tubes and fitments. Also a crazy color I did not pick. Color-matched stem and custom racks. I’ve met the builder and I like him. I think he’s a genius. Have you seen his cargo bikes??
I have three friends that regularly text me links to green bikes “YOU SHOULD BUY THIS.” This one I saw on Craigslist, looking for “custom.” The ad didn’t even say “Frances,” just “custom by Joshua Muir.”
“I know who that is!” I met Josh at a Portland NAHBS, or similar bike show, and fell immediately in love with the bikes and the pretensionless air of his whole presentation. Zero other builders had Nashbar brakes on their bikes. Josh had borrowed back bikes from his friends and customers, and they all had workmanlike quotidian builds, instead of self-conscious overwrought bling like everyone else.
This frame is unselfconscious bling. The color is amazing. It’s a metal flake green called Illusion Mist. The stays are bowed in a trademark way, and the stay ends and custom stem feature whale fluke details. The tubing is all True Temper, because Josh bought up as much as he could afford when TT got out of the bike tube business, and the fitments (dropouts, lugs, crown) are all Henry James or Pacenti. The stem and racks match the frame. Maybe one day I can afford a Wayfarer trailer, painted to match.
2023 New Year’s update. Knobby tires, original XT cranks back from the Fitz. I moved the RTP tires to my sister in law’s Trek 930, and I sold off all the XTR cranks and funky bottom brackets, including the XTR/Jericho setup (which would have looked amazing on the Fitz…).
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2022 New Year’s update. Rat Trap Pass tires, Nitto riser threadless stem, XTR cranks. Unicanitor saddle for all-weather riding. I stole the old-style Bontrager innertube sleeve to protect the seat post slot; I got the idea from the RoadLite, and found old catalog pictures showing other Bontragers with it.
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One of my current older project/brainworms is to convert my Bontrager to a fat-tired road bike. Bars are On-One Midge bars with bar-end shifters. I swapped the SID Dual-Air for a Kona P2 canti fork, and bought some phenomenally expensive (for me) Compass Rat Trap Pass tires. I’d been planning the conversion for some time, but changed the fork the day after I rode down Mt Tam and back to the top with knobbies and a suspension fork.
I visited a couple of cool bike shops in Sebastopol, and got some bar tape, since I like to buy something when I visit a shop. Black bar tape replaces the dingy faded cloth tape, looking a little more intentional. Spot the electrical tape fanciness on the stem!
Here’s the “finished” bike, still wanting an LD stem (UPDATE: I tried an LD stem, and it was too tall), and A23 rims for tubeless setup. Maybe a setback (or just fresher-looking) 27.0 seatpost (UPDATE: I got a Thomson post).
I rode it for a week with the rigid fork. Less funky dive in the corners. I like it. I chose the canti-only fork because it’s lighter, I don’t like extraneous bits, and I’m happy with V-brakes on this bike.
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This was always a fine bike, and it came with Bontrager-modified King hubs. Keith Bontrager once told an interviewer they were the one piece of kit he wished he had a secret stash of.
An online acquaintance mentioned that he was leading a 31.4 mile Pi Day ride, and I had to steal the idea.
It’s a nerd’s nerd thing, Pi Day, and today’s is special. Today’s date is 3/14/15, which is the first five digits of Pi, 3.1415. Further, at 9:26:53 this morning, we were good to 10 digits of Pi!
Bike nerd? Check. All-’round Nerd? Check and double-check. I started my ride at 9:26:53 (Strava should have a time counter into the hundreds of seconds for starting rides like this. You know, the ones that happen every hundred years)… or so.
I was kind of surprised I started on time, but I woke up naturally (the reason we have Saturdays), thought, “I’m not sure if that dream was troubling or comforting,” and started putting on bike clothes. Full Riv regalia: sneakers, wool socks, Riv knickers, Wooly Warm jersey, Devold underwear. The jersey was green, which didn’t match all the blue everything else, but my baby blue jersey is looking kind of green itself after all these years.
In addition to the ONCE IN A LIFETIME MAGICAL NUMBER THING, I also wanted to get some miles in before the Strada Rossa, and assess how enjoyable the 50k is going to be after a “winter” of sloth. Turns out, that’s a good length to feel like I accomplished something, but still enjoy the whole thing.
So, I rolled out, bought a double Americano (very nice, $2.07 (that’s a stupid price – not egregiously high, just a dumb number. I was going to pay cash, but switched to a card because I didn’t want 93 cents in change rattling around my pocket, so it cost them whatever the card companies charge)), and headed to the Prince’s Greenway.
Holy Grounds coffee shop
My plan was to run the loop of Sonoma bike paths I’d mapped on Google Maps that added up to 31.4 miles.
Oh yeah – this is me, before the ride.
Mostly I did that, with a couple wrong turns side quests. I have to say, that the trails are pretty awesome, but the signage is designed to please the people standing back admiring their handiwork, not the people navigating intersections while focusing on moving automobiles.
I took the Greenway/Creek Trail to Willowside road, shelling grandpas and kids on trikes like a Cat 6 monster, then took Hall Road into Sebastopol, where I finished my coffee in front of the Whole Foods.
Heading North on 116, I stopped at Andy’s Market (legit produce) for another Americano. This one was marginally cheaper, at $1.75, and tasted smokier than the Holy Grounds espresso. I very much enjoyed it, and it would appeal to people who like Portland espresso. Frankly, it had all of the good and none of the bad (“What? This is no longer a fluid. It’s a solid. You just steamed the grounds.”) aspects of Portland espresso.
Every Bay Area Rivendell Rider who mailed me an SASE* from Canyon, CA (a place fighting to keep its post office) last Sunday got a free Entmoot patch. A bike drawing was worth extra points, but was not required.
These are the outgoing patches, with the incoming envelopes.
Cool stamps were also worth points.
*Self Addressed Stamped Envelope. From the old days. You buy two stamps, and two envelopes. On one envelope, you write your own address, affix a stamp, fold it in half, and put it into the second envelope, which you mail. Someone puts something in the first envelope, and mails it back to you.
