Where I've been...

It's been a long, busy Summer. P-B-P didn't happen for me in part because I bit off way more than I could chew. In the past year I've:
1) Become a dad
2) Worked on restoring a badly neglected 80+ year old house
3) Started a new job

All major life events and all demand a lot of my scarce weekend time. This meant I didn't train nearly enough and was completely unprepared for P-B-P. Despite receiving tons of great advice from vets like Kent Peterson, Jan Heine, and Peter Beeson I failed to follow that simplest piece of training advice offered up by Eddy Merckx: "Ride lots"

All was not a total loss as the trip to France for P-B-P instead became the first overseas vacation for my wife and I. Actually it was a our first real (no relatives) vacation in a couple of years. It was great spending 10 days in Paris with my wife and baby and fortunately for us the French adore babies.

I have had some bike related happenings to report and I'll get to that in the coming days. Lots to catch up on.

Feeling the love

I've been commuting to work most of this week on my new Raleigh Rush Hour. The ride into work only takes 3-5 minutes more than driving since it's downhill for pretty much the entire route. Of course that's downhill on a fixed gear which can get tiring. Heading home is a different story - 3.2 miles almost all of it uphill and with the steepest parts at the end. This definitely takes me longer to get home when compared to driving, especially considering I'm dripping sweat and need a shower. I did swap out the 15 tooth stock cog for an 18 tooth Surly cog. 48 x 18 gives me 72 gear inches. Since I'm old, fat, and prefer to spin at a high cadence I'll probably swap the chainring out for something smaller, probably a 46 (giving 69 gear inches)

My Nitto pursuit bars arrived earlier this week and I like them a lot. Pursuit bars don't give as many hand positions as drop bars but then again this bike is mostly going to be ridden on flatter, shorter rides so that's not an issue. The bars reach further forward than drops so I do need to put on a slightly shorter stem to compensate.

I decided not to run a brake lever and instead modified an old SunTour power ratchet thumb shifter. The first step was to remove the power ratchet feature and restore the shifter to pure friction mode. This was easily done by removing the pawl and spring. Next I had to make the 25.4 MTB bar mount fit a 26.0 road bar. This was a little more tricky. Simply using a road brake lever clamp wouldn't work. I tried both Shimano and DiaCompe models to no avail. So I fired up the RotoZip and installed the grinder tool. I carefully thinned down the tabs that hook into the band and the also thinned down the inner side of the mounting piece. This gave me the 0.6mm of clearance I needed. Note to bike industry: why can't you morons make all handlebars the same diameter?!?!?! What advantage is to be had from having 2 standards within .6mm of each other? This is just yet another prime example of proof that the bicycling industry clearly fails to attract the best and brightest when it comes to product design! Still, the combined stupidity of the bike industry wasn't going to deter me from creating a super stealthy emergency brake lever! The final step was to clamp the lever to the drill press and carefully expand the hole originally meant for the button at the end of shifter cable to accept the wider button at the end of a road brake cable. Even though this will be primarly an emergency brake lever it's still not a bright idea to use a shift cable as a brake cable! Later I'll post some pictures and more complete instructions.

First fixie ride

Today I got to do something I haven't been able to do in a long time: ride my bike to work. It's a funny thing really. When I worked at REI HQ (~30 miles from my house) I commuted by bike on a pretty regular basis. Of course it helped that we had a bike room, showers, and a cafeteria and my job didn't really involve having to meet people face-to-face. My new job is less than 5 miles from home (almost all of it downhill no less!) and yet after 7 months today is my first day of riding to work. Of course the new job lacks showers, convenient bike storage, and requires me to meet people for interviews which means having to look nice. This makes the whole bike to work thing a little more complicated.

I also got to take my fixed gear bike for a spin. The bike is a Raleigh Rush Hour. Pretty simple stuff: Reynolds 520 frame, uber beefy steel fork, and nice albeit generic components. I immediately ditched the dropbars and ordered some Nitto bullhorns (I'm using an old MTB flat bar in the interim). I also eliminated the rear brake and both brake levers. The front brake is operated with a modified SunTour power ratchet thumbshifter. It provides just enough braking power to keep the speed from getting out of hand on long descents and also as an emergency brake should the chain snap or derail. It's been a year since I last rode a fixie so my skid stop technique was a little rusty. On the flat section around Greenlake I was immediately reminded of why I love riding a fixie. There' s just something about tapping out a constant tempo that you can't replicate on a geared bike.

Long term I plan to highly modify the bike after being inspired by the Trackstar/DQM bikes. I've already picked up some chrome - not silver but actual chrome - handlebar tape and am also debating what color of Velocity deep-V rims to get. Pink? Green? Orange? Purple? So many possibilities....

T-minus one and counting....

Only one more day until I pick up my new ghetto sled. I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. I've been living without a fixed gear for a year now and it's killing me. Already debating various changes such as Nitto steel drops versus cowhorns or maybe even a flat bar. Also planning to lace up some wheels with Velocity deep V rims and trying to decide on the color. In general I prefer my bikes to have natural silver parts but after seeing the DQM/Trackstar bikes I'm going to do something decidedly more colorful.

Change in plans

It's looking like Paris-Brest-Paris is going to be a no-go for me. I'm learning the hard way that at about the 300km mark my back begins to give out. 3ookm is only 1/4 of P-B-P so I can't imagine my back holding up to that. I still plan to do the rest of the shorter brevets this season and am thinking about new challenges. Perhaps I'll do the STP single day on my soon to arrive fixed gear? I'm not crazy about the crowd at STP so perhaps I'll do the ride solo on another date? Also thinking about a tour from Vancouver to Astoria on the Adventure Cycling route. That could be a good 4 day tour. There's also riding from Seattle to Vancouver on the fixed gear. The nice thing about a new bike is that it opens up new challenges.

The 80's Live!

Found these on the Razor Apple site (http://tinyurl.com/359ear) and absolutely love them! Never before has something so very wrong seemed so very right! Apparently the store that put them together is selling them for $2500 a pop (they're build off Bianchi Pista Concept track frames - not cheap).

Traditionalists and "steel is real" types will cringe in horror which is all the more reason I love them. Something about the combination of fixed gear minimalism and flashy color just appeals to me. I could never go for a geared road bike looking like this but for some reason fixies seem to a blank cavas that screams for adornment. Time for me to get a beater fixie frame and fire up the spray gun!

Customer Service (?)

Got my latest flyer from Performance. A lot of people really hate Performance/Nashbar but having worked at REI I know many of these people simply hate any big company. For what it's worth, Performance does a good job of offering products at good prices. The two stores of theirs I've been in were also well merchandised and well staffed. As I skimmed through the latest flyer I saw a pair of touring shoes that actually looked nice. They appeared to be honest to goodness touring shoes and not just mountainbike shoes. The soles were fairly thin and had a simple, toe clip friendly herringbone tread.

I went on-line to see if they had any in my size. Here's where things went wrong. The catalog lists the price as $34.99 but on-line the price is $49.99. Pricing mistakes such as this happen for a number of legitimate reasons - it's not a case of the shop trying to screw the consumer as some ranting lunatics always seem to insist (BTW, if you're one of those people let me be the first to congratulate you on being so damn perfect that YOU apparently never make a mistake!) I sent the following e-mail to their customer service addy:
"I received the flyer that lists the Forte Kingston shoe for $34.99 but the price on-line is $49.99. Is the flyer a typo?"

Less than 24 hours later I got my response:

"Dear Mr. Kingston,

What is on the cover of the flyer?

Regards,

Amber

Customer Service"

Not quite sure what to make of this response. For starters they confused my name with the name of the shoe. OK, we all have our moments. But the rest of the response is baffling. Am I supposed to be seeing some fine print? A secret code? Waldo? Am I missing something?

I decided to try their instant chat feature hoping for a less puzzling customer experience. Here's the transcript:
Josh Tech: On the website it is $49.99
Chris Lowe: But in the print flyer it's $34.99
Josh Tech: For the catalog price call the order in
Josh Tech: 800-727-2453
Chris Lowe: OK but the flyer says "Web & Phone orders only"
Josh Tech: Yup, the price was $29.99 on the web when that flyer was printed 2 months ago
Josh Tech: so to get the lower price on the flyer, call the order in
Josh Tech: err, $34.99 when it was printed
Chris Lowe: Uh-huh. Just kind of odd since I got the flyer last night. Professionally speaking, things like this create a negative customer experience. Someone higher up the food chain there should probably know.
Josh Tech: Yup. If it was up to use here in Technical Support, the catalogs would not have prices on them

First, kudos to Josh for his candor and honesty. Having worked for REI I understand all too well how decisions made in cubicles can often make life difficult for the people down at the pointy end of the spear who actually have to deal with the customers. Hopefully Josh will run this up the flagpole so Performance can get their various sales channels all on the same pricing plan.

Overall, the issue got resolved but the question is how many customers wouldn't make the effort? I bet most customers would simply walk away after seeing the pricing error. Worse yet, some of them would call customer service and berate some poor CS rep for an error they had nothing to do with it. Either way, it's likely to be a bad outcome for Performance.