More Fall = Lovely

Had to stop on my ride home last week to capture this beautiful, colorful view. I wish the colors started sooner and lasted longer. Living in a very green area is great, but I sure love the contrast of the yellows, reds, also the fallen leaves are pretty spectacular. Maybe I am so aware of this time of year is because we apparently are beginning what we affectionately call, the rainy season, here in the Portland area. Once that starts, the colors are not so brilliantly, being subdued by all the grey. The leaves on the ground are but a dark mushy blob - bringing more danger than beauty - they can be so, so slippery.

Project MB-1
Okay, I've come up with the name of this project. It is my vintage, retro, new age uber SUB project, because that's what it will be when I put it all together. Vintage, for the pieces I am retaining and/or making like it was originally. Retro, for the components that give the bike that old school charm. New age, for those things that are based on newer designs or technology, even though they might emote a vintage or retro feel.

I did pick up my new wheel set and they are gorgeous! Built by Sugar Wheel Works, an independently owned shop in Portland. Components? Velo Orange Grand Cru high-flange hubs (rear accepts 9 speed cogs), Sapim butted spokes, Velocity Synergy rims with eyelets and Continental SportContact tires (32-559) 26" x 1.3".

Rear Wheel, Hub Side

Rear Hub, Shiny and Pretty

Front Wheel

Front Hub

Now I sit around and think, "I want to build my bicycle ..."

I guess I will really, really enjoy that first ride.

Nearly Full Circle on My Bike Commuting - Fall has Arrived

The lovely fall mornings have been great for riding in to work. At the moment, if I actually get going at my desired time, I arrive at work just past sunrise. I get to now enjoy those great, peaceful mornings and enjoy the serenity of Portland's lights and waterfront. The changing season is beginning to thin out the morning crowds, again, too. Of course, I know it also means cold is coming as well as wet, oh well, loving the seasonal change.

More than the summer mornings, these cooler, darker mornings seem to be more calming to my constantly turning mind wheels before I cross that line from my space to my work space and the daily scurring begins.

By bits and pieces some of the new parts for the uber SUB are coming in, sort of a trickle in holiday, except, of course, I am also the one buying 'em. The hardest part? I can't put them on, yet, since I have to be anstily patient while the frame is being refinished. I suppose it is a good thing as I am forced to think about how I will put it all back together and think about the small details, like cable covers to keep the cable slap from beating up the paint and all that.

Haha, even work looks good in the early morning light (okay, this is a little darker than it actually was when I took the picture, but hey, looks better this way). Oh, it's the low building with all the golden windows.

If you ever get a chance, definitely go for a early morning ride, it truly is the best.

Project MB-1 Progressing; SUB Back to Drop Bars

I will start in reverse order of this blog's title. After a couple of days I had to swap out the moustache bars and put drop bars back on the SUB. My wrists were not happy with the limited positions and I really missed the tops for cruisin' and climbin'. I guess I am just a drop bar girl.

Next week our Team NWEA tshirts should be ready for pick up so I can finish up my team captain duties. In some ways, I feel a void as far as bike commuting support, since we are basically back to "normal" bike commuting. As the weather has changed I have noticed fewer bikes at work, but that's cool.

I continue to be loving the fall colors and the cooler temps, I guess I was ready to  have a change in the color of the scenery, and riding without totally sweating out on the ride in. With fewer folks out in the mornings I can relax and sort of meditate on the way in to work.

Project MB-1 (uber SUB)

I am looking forward to starting the assembly part of my project. The frame is off at Rad Finishes (Portland, OR) and work will be starting on Monday with stripping. I am having a brand new wheelset built, also in Portland, by Sugar Wheel Works. So, I have unbusy hands right now, well only if you exclude all the internet researching, so I am mentally picturing different ideas, products, and such. Also, building up the list of odds and ends to not lose track of. Some of my new parts will come from swapping with the SUB, which will save some dollars and, yet, not totally make the SUB unrideable.

See, this is what it looks like inside my imagination ... "I could do this, and if I do this, then I could do that ..."

Key highlights will be:

• Drop bars - the good ones from the SUB (which I have already taken off and put the other Cinelli ones on the SUB).
• New Tektro brake levers in silver (SUB still has her black ones).
• Down tube shifter bosses w/friction only shift levers.
• This allows me to see if I can get 8 or 9 cogs on the back with the original derailleur.
• Oh, paint wise, I am going with a reproduction of the original pearl tusk (slightly off white base with a red pearl overcoat).
• The new wheelset will consist of Velo Orange hubs, Velocity Synergy rims and wearing Continental SportContact 32-559 (26x1.3") tires - yep, it will have locking skewers, too.

This is will be a fun project, really looking forward to that first ride. A bonus has been to get to know the local folks, who know other local folks in terms of bike builders, painters, wheelbuilders. I am glad I made the choice to buy local for the service work.

Fall, Project MB-1 Heading to Paint

More and more the fall colors are coming to Portland. With the fairly dry weather, so far, it has been pleasant riding, seeing the leaves on the ground to break up the otherwise boring grey of concrete. The color variety is nice, especially knowing that bare trees and an overall grey landscape is not far off.

While most of my neighbors mow and rake, I think the yard is quite lovely to look at with the mix of leaves from the neighbor's birch. Plus it helps the hide the brown-grey of my hibernated grass from our hot, recent summer heat.

Riding is changing as well. A tad fewer cyclists, definitely fewer others out jogging or walking or wandering along the Eastbank Esplanade, most definitely fewer in the mornings. On the days I ride with Evan until his school (only a bit over a mile away) the bike commuting crowd traffic is heavier, I guess because it is also at rush hour, 8ish. I do also have to admit to playing some Cat. 6 games, but, hey, commuting should be fun after all.

Project MB-1
The bike has been in disassembly for a while and I have been researching, getting estimates, researching, bidding on some "vintage" parts, mentally designing and redesigning to create a new old bike that is me.

I'll likely swap some parts with the SUB, since I purchased some good, quality items and put the MB-1 parts on the SUB, which are still good. For sure the MB-1 (still working on a new name, but maybe it will be the new SUB, or SUB par deux), will have drop bars, the 170mm crankset. I think as I start putting it back together I'll figure out the smaller details - cable housing colors and that sort of thing.

I went ahead and ordered up a new wheelset, having them hand-built in Portland by Sugar Wheels. I won't go into details until they are done and I'll accompany the description with pictures. They will be nice, for sure.

The other big time consumer, and a few dollars more, will be the re-painting. I decided to stick with the original color and design (pearl tusk) and the decals will be embedded under clear coats for better durability. I thought about a color, but that seemed to "blend" too much with all the other bikes out there. I thought about a purer white like the SUB, but, then, I already have a bike with that color, huh.

To make it unique, I'll be building it with, are you ready, down tube shifters! So, while it is stripped of paint, I am having the cable stops removed and shifter bosses brazed on. For starters, I'll use friction shifters to manage the 7 cogs in back, unless I find an amazingly great deal on a good set of 8 or 9, but I'll be running a crankset designed for a 7 speed chain,. Down the road, mayhaps.

I am looking forward to getting all the bits and parts together and the fun of watching it all come together. I am especially looking forward to the first ride! WooHoo!

Project MB-1 Begins, Mild Change to SUB

The "new" MB-1 arrived home this past Thursday. Excitedly, I opened up the shipping box to see what lay inside. Overall condition is good, the previous owner(s) seemed to have put miles on it. Many worn areas on the frame, scratches here and there on the components, replaced front hub and brake levers. Well, I did know it would be a project bike, haha.

After taking some baseline pictures it was time to tear it down, get an upclose look at things. Oh my, seems like a lot of internal coating of rust - was this dunked at one time? Headset bearings look good, looks like they were recently regreased, but wet, brown grease coated the stem and seat post. Hmm, what's a good paint job these days. And if I paint, do I keep it original or make it mine, all mine?

Gee, so many options and choices - wheels, handlebars, colors.

With the bike completely disassembled, the first thing I did was to remove any external rust spots, then totally WD-40 inside the frame, I mean I drenched it. No dents in the frame, though, that's good, just lot's of paint chips, no paint in big sections along the chain stay and bottom near the rear axle.

Well, while I decide on paint, and I have a few requests for quotes out in email, I figure I can clean up some things to get a better look at 'em. Let's start with the derailleurs. Suntour XC Pro - good stuff based on some internet research. That's cool, saves me some money.

Okay, front derailleur, pretty dirty, not a lot of maintenance done - at least relative to my OCD maintenace - lol. Pass 1, spray down with WD-40 (sorry, don't mean to plug a specific product). Let soak, wipe, wipe, wipe. Next, disassemble and clean up pivot points, in the nooks and crannies (yep, those are official terms, okay, my official terms) and more wipe, wipe, wipe. Cotton swabs work pretty good for the tight spaces.

Except for a few surface rust spots on the cage itself, they scrape off easily, the derailleur is in pretty good shape. Polish up the aluminum sections with rubbing compound, grease up the pivot points and reassemble. It's a keeper.

On to the rear derailleur. Some scratches, probably lay down scratches versus crash scratches. Same plan, spray and disassemble. Cool, roller bearing jockey wheels, hopefully they are still in good condition, though I noticed you can still find replacement bearings. Probably first time this has been super serviced.

Separate cage from main body, clean and waterproof grease it, clean, clean, clean everything. Mild polish, grease and reassemble. Good to go. Put both into plastic baggies, just waiting to be reunited with the frame.

Here's my Flikr set for Project MB-1. So far, only the pics of the bike as I received it. As I progress, I update the changes.

One crazy(?) idea I had was should I go from the MB-1's flat bars to a moustache bar. There seems to be only 2 schools, love 'em and hate 'em. Well, to see, I have put one on the SUB. I'm really a drop-bar girl, so the nice drop bars will go on the MB-1. The SUB, I figure, will be the short errand bike so the moustache bars should be fine there.

Well, there's the bar. The nice thing is most people have to convert their shifters to bar-ends. Since I  have my custom stem mount for them, I just had to install the brake levers. Cool. Oh, I did swap levers between the left and right lever mounts. The Tektro levers are assymetric and the curve did not feel right, so I switched them. Now the curved section is at the bottom and is a more comfortable, natural feel when using the brakes. Weird, since it was not a problem when the levers were in the standard vertical position.

I did a test ride today, maybe 3ish miles. I miss the "tops" of my drop bars. I would not want to do long rides with these, but for errands, I think they'll be fine. I can also probably survive commuting, just not as much fun and definitely not as many different  hand positions. We will see tomorrow, heh?

Fall Has Arrived

Yep, that's right, Portland is seeing the changing of seasons. Just when I was really enjoying the sunny, warm weather, which seemed to come so late this year. We have had some rain, more clouds, but at least we still have reasonably warm weather, though I must admit it does feel cool at times.

The changing seasons has been fun to see how the videoing changes. You know, things like wiping the rain from the lens once in a while. I've also been taking my new DSLR around so I can learn all the nuances and controls (the picture above was taken with it). Maybe I'll also have a chance to try out the video mode.

Our Bike Commute Challenge month was a lot of fun! Our work team really was awesome, and looks like everyone had a really good time. I know I enjoyed seeing all the new commuters, getting to meet people at work who I've not really met before. Sometimes, it takes more than just work activity to bring you and your coworkers together! Oh, we ended up with 500.5 trips for 5,314.80 miles for a bike trip rate of 8.3%.

To recognize the team, I put this poster together and placed it in our lobby area at work. The nice thing is that others are seeing what the team has accomplished and are very positive and supportive.

I must be feeling a lack of bike projects as I ebay'd another Bridgestone project bike, a 1992 MB-1, highly prized in Bridgestone circles (Bridgestone's top of the line at the time). Here's the posting picture:

This is the same size as my SUB, 1 year older, and lugged versus welded joints. Weight-wise, the MB-1 should be a bit lighter, will run it on my scale and see where it starts at. Who knows, Evan may get the other bike as an all weather and I will build this up as my new SUB all arounder. Stay tuned.

Enjoy your season change and, who knows, maybe I'll see you out there on the roads.