Peugeot PX-10 happy life as a commuter

Here's a picture of the PX-10 frame I bought on eBay and built-up a couple of weeks ago. Serves it's purpose - rides fast, feels light, and I hope you agree - it's ugly!
There are no gears on this bike, the derailleur functions as a singlerator. Commemorated below.

I didn't get dropped from the prospect park race last night and it felt a lot easier. Maybe something to do with the three hours I spent riding the mtb bike during the blizzard on Sunday warmed my legs and lungs up for it.

Winter bike race for fixies only

The last time I was at the bike shop - I learned of a bike race being held on thursday nights in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.



The thermometer read 33° when I left the apartment. I rode out to Brooklyn and was totally plussed to see about 30 other fixed gear riders waiting around for the start at 10pm.

We did a warm up lap, then someone shouted "GO" and it was a two lap race around the park. These guys were really fast! I got dropped on a hill. Seeing other riders behind me kept me going.

It was a blast to cruise through the park with 30 other guys in the dark, blinkie lights flashing, sometimes at 30+ mph. I met a couple of nice guys who live in brooklyn and we rode back together to the williamsburg bridge.

I put in 23.1 miles that night, and I had to ask Molly to smoke outside because my lungs hurt when I got home. Today I feel great.

What makes bikes beautiful?

Simplicity. Bikes have few moving parts, and don't require much maintenance. For what little maintenance they do require, the average Joe can accomplish with a few good but simple tools. No extreme amount of brunt or might is required to maintain a bike as it would be for a car. Almost all bikes are essentially the same.

Reliability. There not many things that can go wrong with a bike to make it comletely un-rideable. But in case you wanted to see, here are some examples.

Freedom. Having a bike gives you great ability to go places quickly. Makers of the Segway state the average speed between any two points in the 20 largest cities in the world is just 9mph. I average about 14 on my bike.

Unlike cars, bikes parts are mostly interchangeable thanks to a design that hasn't changed much in 100 years. There's still idiosyncrocies in working with French, British, American, Japanese, and ISO standards.

In case you were wondering, Here's my top ten list that would come in handy for the home-bike-mechanic

1. Anything from the Park Tool Company

2. A patch kit and some spare inner-tubes. Old inner tubes can be re-used to protect metal parts from getting scratched, stretched like bungee cords to tie things down, and can prevent anything that clamps-on from slipping. Below is a picture of a thin strip of tube glued to the back of my cute little topeak whitelight bike-light so it doesn't slip, and to prevent it from scratching the bars.


3. In lieu of a an expensive workstand for you bike, hang it by the seat from a high object. Most bikes will achieve a natural balance in this position. Having a bike high up allows free-spinning of the cranks for easy lubrication of chain, derailleurs, etc. and it's much more stable and better for your bike than flipping the bike over.


4. Wheel bearing grease from any auto-parts store. Phil Wood brand lubes are the best (link to pdf), but heavy bearing grease from the auto-store is just as damn good and costs a lot less. About $1 for four ounces.

5. Needle-nose pliers (for pulling and holding cables).

6. Allen wrenches. 5mm, 6mm, and 8mm seem to be the most popular for adjusting things. Box wrenches are handy too in sizes 6, 8, and the entire 10-15mm range.

7. Truing stand and dishing tool, if you want to work on your own wheels. Building and truing wheels is probably the most advanced thing you can do working on a bike, but it's a lot more convenient to true your own wheels than to drop one off at the bike shop.

8. Chain tool. The cheap ones don't last very long. Be gentle and it'll last longer.

9. Odds and ends from the bike shop, like cable-ends, nipples, and spokes.

10. If you want to keep your hands clean get disposable latex or rubber gloves from the pharmacy (think bike-surgeon). But remember that latex gloves will fall apart if there's a lot of grease, so get at least one pair of non-latex gloves too. Latex and petroleum based products (i.e., grease) are not compatible.

Simplicty is beauty.

Spray-can black ugly 1972 Peugeot px-10

I couldn't resist the urge, and bought another frame that will become a fixie. After negotiating a price with the seller, he agreed to end the auction early since I had bought other stuff from him online.

Here's the description, "Circa 1972 Peugeot PX-10 road frame serial number 2432 713 that has had the rear derailleur hanger tab removed. Has plain Nervex lugs, fancy Nervex Professional BB shell, and long horizontal Simplex dropouts, so it will work great as a fixed gear. Includes a French threaded Campy bottom bracket which feels very smooth. Also includes a Campy lookalike Tange headset. seat tube measures 53 CM center to top and the top tube measures 55.75 cm center to center.

The paint appears to be spray can, and is very ugly black. The chrome looks great! Full return privilege if not satisfied."

I am very much looking forward to seeing this in person. French bikes can be a little difficult to work with because of the french threads and sizes. Fortunately this one already has a bottom bracket and headset installed. :)

More biking... Fixie!

I rebuilt a track bike this summer here is a picture of her. She's fast and sweet as sugar on the uphill, but not so fast on the way down (no brakes).

Since I took these pics I had to replace the stem and handlebar because the first stem had a fracture in it. Lucky for me bikeworks had a brand new-old-stock cinelli model #63 bar to match the same cinelli XA stem that I bought online.





Here is a pic of the track dropout on my schwinn madison.

Last night was the 10th annual Poets House bridge walk. At the end of the night, Bill Murray read "A True Account of Talking with the Sun at Fire Island" by Frank O'Hara. This is officially now one of my favorite poems. In it The Sun is speaking directly to Frank O'Hara. I especially like this part,

...You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you’re different. Now, I’ve heard some
say you’re crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you’re a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You’ll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don’t appear
at all one day they think you’re lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

Best Buddies 90 miler

I should have posted this right after the ride but it took me some time to get the pictures together. I went on a 90 mile bikeride from Boston to Cape Cod on 5/22/05.






It was a fundraiser in support of kids and adults with mental disabilities. It was in the cold (sometimes freezing) rain, with heavy winds, and my bike tire sprung a leak at the 18 mile marker that had me stopping to pump air every 30 minutes. I couldn't get a spare tire because I was riding "tubular" sew-up tires and I had packed my own spare tire in the wrong bag!

To make a long story short, I got off course for 4 miles (8 miles out and back) and eventually didn't finish the full 90. I made it to the third support stop at the 62 mile mark and was so cold that it was hard to stop shaking. Here are the stragglers (me included) walking our bikes across the finish line in Hyannis Port.



On the bright side, I got to shake hands with a presidential candidate and I even rode with him for a bit. I hope he runs again in 2008, HE did finish the ride. Kerry is genuine and tough.

The next day, back in New York, being frustrated at not having finished I went for a 20 mile bike ride around Manhattan and Brooklyn to make up for it. I'm hoping this is the year I get back on the bike.

Holy Car!

Pope Benedicts XVI's 6 year old Volkswagen sells for $244,000. Full story.

3-d web browsing

What I'm referring to is the ability of web pages to display actionable sub-menus.

There are lots of navigation menus that do this, but what I'm referring to is a bit different. After some thought I realize navigation menus are idempotent -- they have no lasting effect on the world.

Fill out forms and server side programming are different. When a user clicks on a button or a hyperlink, it triggers an event on the server. This changes the content of subsequent pages. For example, at eBay the sold items have sub-menus where an item can be relisted, an invoice can be sent, or an item can be marked as paid, etc. [screenshot would be appropriate].

Clicking an actions such as 'mark as paid' changes the contents of the menu so that the choice is no longer visible. Because the 'mark as paid' link is in a sub-menu that requires a click to be made visible, I call this 3-d web browsing. It feels like you're visiting a new page when you click the link to show the sub-menu, but what is really happening here is that a sub-menu div is being 'unhidden'.

Is 3-d web browsing the right word for this? Was it a design flaw, or on purpose? This is just starting to catch on for cgi type actions. This plus XMLHttp, and a little javascript, and things could get really interesting. (ajax==actionable javascript?)

final note: I think most designers would make the unhide effect something that happens onMouseOver instead of onClick. But end-users probably prefer the click effect since that gets you really focused on the list of actions available.

cool stuff!

I was looking for a way to make a USB charger for my rio karma and, in my searching I found these neat idea. Did you know that you can run linux through gmail?

But this invention will blow your mind. A guy burned audio onto rfid tags. They play back when the tag is near the rfid reader. I'm imagining "Hello my name is... Floovio" name tags that play automatically when you're near the reader.

A great way to kick off a shy people's convention, or for the blind... or more apriopriately for the mute?