3rd March 2015 11 speeds? Why not?

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The new [gear cable] noodles are the only clean part of my poor trike! Cleaning with soapy water at temperatures hovering around zero for months on end is no fun! The noodles have the advantage that they are self-aligning. As they rotate they obviate oblique cable angles. The downside is that they use up a lot of extra cable. So are best fitted when replacing the inners with new. I checked the clearances as I turned the steering from lock to lock and all seems well.

Tuesday 3rd 36F, 2C, bright but windy. Gusting to 30mph later with potential wintry showers all day. The wind was roaring in one ear and out of the other as I walked up to the woods. Three skylarks went up and started singing. The first I have heard this year. I watched a crow soaring on the uplift wave with its fingers extended as it traversed the face of the woods. It was much quieter under the trees except for the wind in the canopy. A wall of cloud came over and it started spitting with rain. Just turning to a few flakes of snow as I returned.

Only a short ride in rather mixed, wintry weather. Gear changing is much improved thanks to the new noodles reducing friction. Delays in changing up have gone. Resulting in an occasional bang when I was pedalling hard or climbing out of the saddle and changed to a higher gear. I'm leaving the brake cable noodles alone for the moment. I was so horrified by the flash image of the trike that  I spent some time cleaning it! 7 miles pm.

As soon as the weather improves I shall have to spring clean the trike. With a new chain and cassette seriously overdue after a long, wet and salty winter. The 10speed Ultegra has lasted well compared with other cassettes despite rarely enjoying a clean.

With the consideration of urgent replacement of the gear train I am now seriously considering changing to a double chainwheel instead of a triple. I haven't used the 48T outer chainring for as long as I can remember. More often than not the chain is thrown right over and straight onto the crank! Any less lateral adjustment and it won't change or the chain grinds on the cage. I even had to modify the cage to stop the middle chainring being wrecked! So what's the point?

My present 38T middle ring has easily high enough gears on the small end of the 10sp cassette for downhill use. While I only rarely use the 28T inner ring too. So could go with a single ring if it were not for a desire to retain an ultra-low gear for emergencies. You never know when you will really need a granny/crawler gear! For a tourist any higher gears are only a useful luxury for those rare occasions.

I already have an unused Campag 11 speed Athena double front changer. I bought it hoping it would act as a triple but it just hadn't the lateral movement to reach the largest ring. It has a minimum stated ring size of 34t so a 33t should be okay. A 33t inner is as small as one can go with a 110mm PCD double crank.[Spa XD-2 or TD-2 with custom TA rings.]

I thought something like a Spa TD-2 43/33 double might suit with a 12-32t 11sp cassette. These cranks are rather light, quite pretty and don't rapidly show their age like the much more expensive, coloured kit. The TD-2 has all five of its spider arms visible. The XD-2 hides one of them behind the crank with a concealed screw. Prices for these chainsets, fitted with standard ring sizes, make a complete and utter mockery of the weekend warrior's foolish expenditure on much heavier bling! 

http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php?plid=m2b0s109p2799

http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php?plid=m2b0s109p2016

I have been using 160mm cranks for quite a long  time now but recently have been [deliberately] doing a lot more climbing out of the saddle. I think I might go back to 170mm cranks. The 160s don't really suit "out of the saddle" efforts. They always feel "too small, too round and too smooth." With no additional torque possible by pulling up hard on the pedals to sprint harder as the rider's weight presses down on the other side. Instead of which it feels like I am constantly under-geared even when my speed is dropping from pushing too high a gear! There just isn't time, at the necessarily high cadence, to pull up on the pedals.

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2nd March 2015 Wet and windy.

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Monday 2nd 38-40F, 3-4C, breezy, heavy overcast, raining. It looks like being wet and windy all day again. Possibly with wintry showers and gusting to nearly 40mph later.

It stopped raining about 9am so I enjoyed an hour and half walk exploring the woods. Saw a male Kestrel [the first for several years] and a buzzard. Which went off complaining loudly. I may have seen my first Skylarks of the year but no song yet. Raining for the last mile but it still looks promising for a ride. It certainly isn't as dark as it was earlier.

I set off after coffee into a roaring wind and light rain. Struggling to maintain 10-11mph on the aero bars into the headwind! Down to 7-8mph for a while. I met a very tall horse with a tiny girl aboard. The horse turned broadside to the lane as I approached from behind! The rider insisted I pass as the horse rolled its eyes at me. It settled down as soon as I was gone. Thankfully it stopped raining and then stayed mostly dry after that.

I bought my brake noodles in an LBS and finished the shopping. No stock as usual! Coming back was a doddle even going uphill. The wind was so strong it was chilling my back though the Aldi rain jacket, rear vent. Saw another Kestrel. It was only a couple of miles from the first sighting so may well have been the same one. It kept twisting and turning as it dive bombed a field from low altitude. Probably hunting a rodent but obviously not helped by the strong wind. Birds are amazing for their extraordinary flying skills. 17 miles.

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March 1st 2015 Hare, of the dog?

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Sunday 1st 36F, 2C, gales, overcast, pouring with rain. Nice! The forecasters offer a ray of hope this afternoon. So, I may put off tentative plans to build floats for the trike. Besides, there are probably too many clearance problems around the pedals. Better not to start from here, then.

  

A drab time of year made worse by vehicular mudding of tracks. Fortunately I only very rarely see the perps. Or anybody else for that matter. 99.99% of the time I have the miles of woods entirely to myself. Except for the birds, deer and hares, of course. 

Sometimes I think it might be fun to cycle the better tracks. But then I would miss out on the perfect sense of peaceful co-existence. The sounds of the birds and trickling water. Cycling may be much nearer to nature, than driving, but walking opens up a whole new world of actually being in a place. Cycling is an ephemeral experience of passing sounds and scenery. Spurred on by a constant sense of urgency to be somewhere else by default. Having to stop to take a photograph, or to judge a scene or building for its interest, or beauty, becomes almost a chore. A dangerous interruption of purpose.

I learned early on that stopping was tantamount to giving up. It opens up the distinct possibility of a failure to finish. A DNF is a far worse crime than a DNS! At least a Did Not Start can be blamed on an innocent bout of diarrhoea from a bad case of beer poisoning caused by an ill-kept cellar. Be warned though: Nobody wants to hear that you were "caught short" on a ride. Too much disturbing imagery for most people to stomach.

Cycling is always meant to be a progression from A to B. The journey continues until the intended goal is reached. This holds true however much it may hurt [or where] however hard it may rain or however hard the wind may blow into your frost-bitten extremities. Poor weather house points are only accumulated AFTER the event. Completion of your superhuman effort is strictly non-negotiable.

Turning back is always an acceptance of abject failure. The same can be said for retracing one's route having "left something vitally important behind." Yeah, right. A token falling on one's [frame fitting] pump is the minimum acceptable sanction. Mini pumps just don't do it in the self-sacrificial stakes. So don't even try!

A return to A is completely unthinkable without the vital addition of the intended B. Pretending to get lost is a sure sign of serious personal weakness of will. You can never fool yourself with such tactics because you are always the co-conspirator in the sorry tale. For example: One cannot claim that you "almost" made it to John o'Groats. [Meaning somewhere just shy of Carlisle.] Not when so many others have clearly managed the task far more successfully. Thereby gaining serious bragging rights in any direct crossbar comparisons behind the bike shed! The trend towards sloping crossbars may have more than a little to do with a lack of steel in today's weekend mounts. While I blame compact crank sets for most girly failures to go the full distance.

Tricycling does at least offer a stable seat on which to sit and watch the world go by. [Though such stops must be kept necessarily brief to avoid a serious risk of a DNF.] A did not finish amounts to much the same thing as [self] discipline-non-functional in my book.

A trike makes a far better imaging platform than one of those ridiculous plastic machines. The ones which fall over when not actively moving forwards. Or not leaning up against a McLardy's. This, despite the manufacturer's expensive extensive efforts to make them light enough to be pathetically fragile. A moving DNF irresponsibility clause is written into every CF frame manufacturer's guarantee. Much like those silly, lightweight tyres which always puncture miles from home. Leaving the erstwhile weekend warrior wrestling with inner tubes and Kevlar protective bands beside the roaring, main road traffic in the pouring rain. Do they make the puncture resistant strips bright yellow so that they are easier to see in the dark and the wet? They obviously don't work!

Remaining seated on a trike does not alarm the curtain twitchers nearly so much as actually getting off the machine. Particularly near a private home or in a leafy suburb. One hopes the seated rider is immediately downgraded from a scale 6 threat of potential burglar, vandal, flasher or trespasser. Perhaps even demoted to a mere Lycra-clad "some clown on a tricycle!" A harmless curiosity, unless one raises the stakes with dubious behaviour. Basically, that means pretty much anything likely to result in a mass call out of Neighbourhood Watch in their Audi-BMW armoured personnel carriers.

In comparison with the fine art of tricycle posing pausing, stopping almost anywhere nice, in any car, is greatly to be deprecated. It is a clear signal of the arrival of Carmageddon! There really ought to be a planning permission application in triplicate for parking in any beauty spot, outside a photogenic house, in a leafy suburb, or quite literally, anywhere which spoils the view!
 
Even walking is not the same as standing completely still to really listen and soak up the unique atmosphere of a place. Condensing the moment, if you will. Though photography is wont to disturb the conscious absorption of one's surroundings and should perhaps be subjugated to taking some quick snaps after the event.

Nature too has a multi-layered, early warning system for human intrusion. Pheasants and Blackbirds are the usual front runners for generally overdoing it. They do tend to exaggerate every warning into a complete show stopper. A "stopping" automatically becomes a greater potential threat than merely walking. The birds will often fall completely silent. Rather than sounding their usual panic alarm dedicated to approaching walkers.

Presumably this is just nature's way of recognising camouflaged knuckle-draggers carrying guns, spears, catapults, rocket launchers, ray guns, crossbows, grenades, sharpened sticks and/or bamboo arrows with 4" nails tied onto the sharp end with combine harvester twine.

Humans never fire anything while moving. It's a fact! The greatest danger is always when they stop to aim. It's the unwritten rule of Basic Wildlife Survival for Dummies. [With Foreword by Sir David Attenborough. Somebody who knows more than most about human intrusion where it is least wanted!]

Much the same can be said for taking aim during a natural [emergency] stop on a ride. Always a dangerous moment of a potential sighting by a passing vehicle full of cheering teenagers. Not helped by the usual day-glo outfit, high contrast, lilly-white, badly shaved, sinewy calves and a serious lack of hedgerows. Not to mention the decidedly deciduous character of most of those few which do remain. Leaving one's Kree LED lights flashing while performing the act is sure to attract an accusation of deliberate attention seeking. Once the blue lights really start flashing in earnest then denial is utterly pointless.

The rules are simple enough: Hide as well as you can. Or bluff it out in full view if you have the nerve. Or are Danish. Always concentrate on the task in hand. Never allow yourself to get side-tracked. And, most important of all: Always, always, remember which way you were travelling before the emergency stop. Or, a very nasty DNF may well rear its ugly head!

Meanwhile, back at the trike shed: It never brightened up and continued blowing and spitting with rain. Another rest day.

The gears have been getting more difficult to change lately. A glance at the cabling to the down tube adjusters showed why. The cables were bent sharply just where they entered the adjusters. So I found a rigid V-brake 90 degree bend. [Noodle] After suitable trimming of the damaged outers to tidy up the ends I slipped the noodle over the rear gear cable. Ease of gear changing is now restored after a trial on the work stand. When I get an extra noodle I'll do the same to the front changer cable. I think I'll replace the flexible noodles on the Tektro brakes for the rigid type for neatness. The adjustable noodles sometime catch on the bare down tube cables at full [steering] lock. The flexible outers and adjusters  may look more "techy" but I could never get the cable adjusters to move anyway. Not once they had seized up. I rather like the look of the rigid, shiny noodles. Photos to follow once I visit the LBS.

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