Thought Sausage

Am sitting in the Anchorage Airport waiting for a plane that may or may not be coming before 10pm. Apparently weather has fucked Delta's schedule up all kinds of fierce and I'm now on United. This isn't a bad thing since United's service is pretty decent, they have good movies and the seats are alright. They also let me check one bag for free and only charged $100 for the bike (as opposed to Delta's bullshit $150). Plus this is a direct flight so I get into Chicago tomorrow at 7am (theoretically at least). I'm probably not going to stroll into work until 10 or so (if then even). It all depends on how much sleep I get between now and then (I'm fucking exhausted at the moment).

The race went pretty good I suppose. I got 5th in the 100 mile solo (and first in my age group, which basically means I beat some other dude who has yet to turn 30). I would have actually placed higher except I had a slow leak in the back tire I had to stop and pump twice. The first time I got off the bike (around mile 60) I had 6 bikes pass me. I made up all but two of them.

The course itself was a hilly motherfucker. TONS of climbs. This was by far the most challenging century I've done (although to be fair, I was riding a lot harder than I normally do). The fact I was able to come in around 5:10 is pretty good though...especially since this was a solo race (aka no drafting) and the hills were so brutal. Pics are imminent. Unfortunately we didn't see any bears or moose. However, I was on about mile 70 or so and looked to my right and a fucking fox was running alongside me. Not like it was pacing with me, it was clearly interested in something going on to the right of us. But it was pretty cool seeing that species up close. I'd say it was probably about the size of a lab/golden retriever. Had a massive red bushy tail just like the firefox fox. He was only alongside me for a good 20 seconds or so and then darted off.

Roly and I then bummed around downtown Anchorage a bit. Not a bad place and booze is fairly cheap here (we found a place that was selling vodka/redbulls for 4 bucks). Lots of locals were out and we ended up hanging with a group of chicks that live up here. I'm given to understand that the locals are under the impression the only reason people under the age of 70 come to Alaska is to fish. So when we told them we were here for a bike race, we got some curious looks.

Spent today wandering through all the shops on 4th street that are more or less the toursity enterprises that specialize in selling knick knacks and random shit that has Alaska emblazoned on it in some creative fashion. I got some stickers for my bikes and Roly got a shirt.

So anyway, due to this whole flight change situation, Roly is now on a plane pointed towards Detroit so I'm here by myself.

So that's that basically. Alaska is in the can. I can now say I've been to all 50 states which is pretty good for a guy who hasn't turned 30 yet.

I finally decided to join the rat race and get a Flickr account. So whack this link to see the pics Roly took (I'll upload mine to flickr too once I get a chance).

Am back on my own couch in my own living room watching the E True Hollywood Story on Britney Spears (yes, this is all that's on as the Detroit/Sox game is dull). But that's not the point. We just got back from RAGBRAI 08 yesterday. I don't really have the gumption to coin a full recap, but I imagine that'll be forthcoming.

So here's the Cliff's Notes version

-Our bus died. The new bus. The 3rd bus. The engine apparently threw a rod and that particular engine is not too easy to come by. Anybody who happens to have a spare 1987 Detroit Diesel they just can't get rid of, feel free to email me because I'll take it right the fuck off your hands. In the meantime, the next 12 months will likely involve coming up with a solution to this matter that doesn't cost 25 grand (nothing is cheap on buses).

-I lost my credit cards. So I called and cancelled them. Then I found said credit cards. Now I have 5-7 business days where I can't use plastic. This is becoming fantastically problematic for me.

-TUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUG FESSSSSSSSSST

-In my haste to leave I grabbed Paddy's helmet out of my car and forgot to close the trunk all the way. As a result, the battery died completely. AT&T Roadside Assistance is en route to jump (hence why I'm sitting here watching these C-List celebrities ponder where "Britney went wrong").

-The Tallywackers, Team Pucker, Subtle Savages and Party Patrol are some of the coolest motherfuckers like, ever.

-You bet your ass I'm ordering one of these as soon as I have plastic to do so.

- Took in the Dark Knight in Ames on Wednesday (or was it Tuesday?) night. Holy fucking christ but that movie is amazing. I can't wait to see again (which I will...repeatedly, and on the IMAX).

So next up is Steelhead on Saturday and I think I'm fairly leveled out from the ride. I definitely need to get some runs in and hopefully get myself sorted out and ready. I've decided to camp while in Michigan for it. I've been living in a 1 man tent the last 7 days and have come to decide this is pretty good living for races. So there ya go.

Jesus it's already August?

Behold the orange beast has grown!

You'll note there is now a front rack which is housing my tent and a new sleeping bag (it's a 10 degree, and oughta do the trick).

Sorry about this one being blurry.

Other additions that have occured since I last posted pics of this bike include the ipod/stereo in the rear water bottle holder. That bad boy comes with a nifty little remote which is mounted on the aero bars next to the computer. That in and of itself is one of the coolest additions here, cos that thing is LOUD. Also, you'll note a chair mounts behind the seatpost, so I'm like locked and loaded. You probably can't see them, but I also had Armadillos put on so as to put up with the added weight and the inherent shit that is on the road.

All and all, this bike is weighing in around 70 pounds now. It definitely slows me down, but I have the weight balanced on it pretty evenly so going up hills and such isn't really any big thing. Hell its probably good training. the good news with teh extra gear is that the warmer sleeping bag allows me to ride later into the season, so I'll like, get my money's worth out of all this shit.

Am laying in bed at the Econolodge in Waterloo about to get up for the race tomorrow. Sorry to everyone I didn't see. This turned out to be an in/out trip without a whole lot of fanfare. As you can imagine, partying and doing the things required by me to hang and catch up are completely un-conducive to having a good race.

I DID manage to procure a UNI cycling Jersey at Scheels today....BONUS. I've been meaning to get one forever and they had them on clearance.

Speaking of UNI, I spent today doing two things. Checking out the 90th Anniversary stuff in downtown Waterloo for John Deere. Some old tractors, some new ones, and lots of REALLY old motors from the Waterloo Boy days (WB was a motor company John Deere bought about 90 years ago and began making tractors that powered themselves). The other thing was that my brother and I wandered through the UNI Campus. That brought back memories. It's been at least 7 years since I've strolled through there, and this is the first time I've really felt nostalgic about a place. Like I remembered exactly what I was feeling like about college and so forth. Very good times basically. Knowing what I know now about the way the world turns, I would do a lot of things different if I could. I would have gotten more involved with activities at the school, played more intermural sports, and just all around taken more advantages of the social aspects of being in college (for those who don't know, I spent most of college playing shows and being away from college in a van somewhere). But ultimately, everything worked out for the best I suppose.

Anyhow, the fucking Larry the Cable Guy movie is on the TV right now, so naturally I have to change it to something else.

I can see having a Spokeasy Twitter page is going to bring some of the crazies outta the woodwork. I had to post this, and even though non-riders may not fully appreciate the fuckard-nature here, riders will find this utterly awe-inspiring.

Ladies and gents, meet John the Freemason cyclist from western bumfuck Iowa. John rode Ragbrai 5 times. John has very strong opinions of Ragbrai and the stresses it seems to put on his harmony joyridin', recumbant-havin' lifestyle. All of which he detailed in a massive Tome on his 'bicycling blog'. You see John wants you to be informed of how stressful Ragbrai can be for experienced cyclists. Among the highlights that seem to have put a pain on John's pussy over the years:

-Got a bug in his eye for a stretch...oh noz!!

-Had to borrow money in 1998 because he hadn't yet obtained an ATM card (!!!!???!!!!)

-Slept at the town center one night and the fireworks show kept him from "getting the requisite 7 hours of sleep needed in order to cycle the next day"

-2 days into the ride...the separation anxiety from his wife (who was 50 miles away) and the stress of 'hiding his emotions from other riders'

-A gut ache once

John, since you are going to inevitably read this when you troll your logs or Google yourself to see if any Christ punchers mentioned you or the freemasons or recumbants I won't bother commenting on your blog (not that I could possibly meet the stringent requirements for doing so anyway, as per your rules at the bottom). While I would never begrudge anybody for venturing to ride more...you should probably know that one major requirement for a multi-day ride like Ragbrai is that you can't be what the natives call "a pussy". Pussies are like porn. You can't define it but you know it when you see it. And you sir, well...you see where I'm going with this. Let me enlighten you to the real stresses that occur with real riders (also note our team has grown year over year):

-Carpal Tunnel

-Blown knee (twice)

-Broken Rim

-Stolen bike

-a Bus broken down on the middle of the highway with 20-40 people stranded (one year ours, one year another teams)

-lost/missing team members (for a whole three days...like more than you have ever been away from your wife)

-dudes getting killed in front of your bus

-tornados (Pro Tip: Tornados and sirens are louder than fireworks)

-brakes going out on a bus while careening down into Guttenberg

-severe dehydration resulting in emergency room trips

-2nd and 3rd degree sunburns

...well it like...goes on and on.

John I can't speak to whatever hippie dippie peaceful joyride trip you are on, but I can speak to the fact that if your stress threshold can't handle any of the above, you really should consider a nice elementary school ice cream social or amish getaway for your 2009 summer adventure before you make yet another idiotic representation of yourself and Ragbrai.

A couple weeks ago, I snagged this on Ebay and will begin restoring the bike in earnest over the course of the coming year. For those of you not into the whole 'clicking on links' thing, that's a black 1971 John Deere Men's 10 Speed Bike. I'll be logging the progress (or lack thereof, depending on how you look at it). This is my first REAL restore (as in, taking a bike from abject travesty to potentially-pristine shape).

The Bike:

In its day, if you wanted to buy a John Deere bike, you didn't go to the bike shop (as far as I know at least). You went to the farm implement shop where these were sold right along other John Deere products. I guess it was some sort of relationship marketing device. Anyway, this, along with a women's version, and later more cruiser 5 speed models were produced up through the mid 70's.

The reason I've been searching for this bike is that the women's version is quite common, but the men's 10 speed has become exceedingly hard to find. If it's anything like the Schwinn Stingrays from yesteryear, it's because boys/men tend to beat the shit out of their bikes, whereas girls/women tend to take care of them more.

My interests in this bike are A. old 10 speeds from this vintage are just rad pieces of art in and of themselves and B. The John Deere 10 Speed is a bit of an oddity more than it is/was a high performance bike. So I figure if I'm going to try my hand at bike restoration, why not start with an oddball?

Anyway, I toddled out to Oswego with Marley 'n Matthew in tow to pick the thing up. The guy was nice enough...said he'd gotten it in an estate sale and would have thrown it out with the trash if his wife had her way. He didn't know much about the history (or didn't say) but it was pretty obvious the thing must have been left to rot in a barn or something for the past 15-20 years. The rear derallier is missing. No matter. I figure in for a penny in for a pound right?

My initial thoughts:

Well there's a nice helping of surface rust that looks like it'll come off with a fair amount of WD-40, Steel Wool and rust sealant. I set about to tinkering at the chrome on the lower fork and endcaps and they shined up pretty easy. That part should suffice. The decals are in AMAZING shape considering the condition of the bike. Before picking up the bike, my thoughts were that I needed to track down somebody who could either re-produce those or a parts place that (for some bizarre reason) still sells them. Now I'm starting to wonder how feasible it'd be to re-spray the frame without touching the decals. I'm probably out of luck on the actual John Deere Lettering, but the trim on the fork and the sizing/manufacturer decal on the vertical post are immaculate. The actual headplate with the 70's John Deere logo (where the deere has the big antlers and is facing downward instead of up) is in tact and looking awesome. The bike also has the reflectors intact. Nice.

On the downside, I have no fucking clue what to do about this derailler situation (I can't even spell the word for christs sake). Marley's landlord has this Free Spirit from roughly the same vintage which has a usable one on it. He said we could help ourselves to that, plus he's got 3 other bikes (of which I know nothing about) he says I can have. So hopefully there's a cadaver somewhere that can give itself to the cause. I'm planning on fixing up the Free Spirit in the garage so Marley has something to bang around town in and leave at the train station if needs be, so if I can keep that one hanging on the wall together that'd be great (plus it's done up in that pukey-70's yellow/phlegm color scheme and who'd wanna see something that fantastic go to waste?).

That rear brassy lookin chain guard on the rear tire? Yeah that's not brass. After some steel-woolin' it revealed itself to be of chrome origin. I can see some serious re-chroming will need to occur on that piece. I'm going to replace the seatpost outright as that's completely and utterly pointless to try to re-chrome/polish.

Other than that, it's got a few spokes out, so I think I'll just have all but the most egregiously rusted ones replaced. It'll get a whole re-cabling for the drive-train and the brakes. the chain will get replaced, and it'll need new brake pads (and a new brake caliper on the rear left side).

I'm a little nervous about tracking down parts from this vintage as the manufacturer of this bike clearly didn't share parts with Schwinn or Free Spirit (the Sears brand). I'll decide how much of a purist I want to be about it when I get into replacing those parts.

As it turns out, my buddy James (who is not-unlike Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption...he can get you ANYTHING) knows a guy who is starting a vintage bike restoration shop in Wicker Park and will paint a bike frame for 70 bucks. He also does re-chroming. With any luck, he's also going to have a line on where the brake caliper and rear derailler can be obtained.

My next step is to take care of as much surface rust as possible. A lot of it as pretty offensive and will need to be taken down to the metal and re-chromed (especially the crank and rear chainguard thingy). I have it in parts in Marley's garage at the moment. As soon as I get word back from the Wicker Park guy, I'll start plotting out what parts i can afford to start fixing immediately.

Welp, work on the 10 speed has begun in earnest. I have it all torn apart, which counts for something. I have yet to connect with the dude in Wicker Park who restores these things. I have a race this weekend and we're planning on a multi-day ride next weekend (on my Trek touring bike mind you...not this thing), so I my time for TLC with this thing is somewhat limited. No matter. Rome wasn't built in a day right?

(as an aside, I was in Moline Illinois this weekend and while scoring various John Deere pieces of propaganda, I came to find out there is in fact a surplus leftover of these bikes. In other words, you could theoretically buy a brand new 1971 John Deere 10 Speed if you have the right connections...but what'd be the fun in that?)

So when I picked this up, I actually thought that back guard was brass. Some steel wool action revealed that it is a chrome piece (although in serious need of some help). Those spokes are in pretty sorry shape (you'll note one is missing entirely). I don't really know any efficient way to shine them up. Any ideas? Obviously one will need to be replaced and that will sort of ruin the patina effect the others have. I'll see what he'd charge just to replace all of them (I imagine it'd border on prohibitively expensive on the premise that it'd just be stupid to sink that kind of cash into a rim like this). Luckily I have a line on some tires like those in the pic, so I can keep the side-wall action. Nice.

So this actually wasn't in as sorry of shape as I thought it'd be. The actual crank is pretty much ready to roll just as it is. The gears and the drive-train is another story (You'll note the chain is still there...I didn't have a bolt cutter handy). All that will need to be re-chromed.

So as you can see, the frame desperately needs a fresh coat of black paint unless I'm going to try to pawn the scheme off as gray. However, as mentioned, the decals themselves are perfect...not really faded at all. I haven't tracked down a surplus place that still has these yet, but to be honest, I haven't really started looking either

So the handlebars are actually in pretty good shape. The brakes will need to be tightened, but all in all, save for a few minor spots, this is fairly usable.

Another decal specimen. This one is crucial...what with the Made in Taiwan moniker. This bike was originally more of a matte/satin black, and I'm thinking of spraying it in a more modern glossy black (none of that metal flake though...as that'd just be silly).

So contrary to what people have suspected, this isn't actually a Brooks saddle. It's just a brown vinyl thing. Looks pretty good, but as you can see that seatpost is almost a lost cause. I mean really...why bother when these things are a dime-a-dozen?

So that's where things stand here. I oiled/cleaned up that Free Spirit in Marley's garage. Aside from a new set of tires, we're pretty much ready to dance with that one. Pics forthcoming.

I've been busy training and tending to matters on my other bikes so I haven't had much time to work on this lately, but we're back at it this week (although I have the Hy Vee Tri this weekend, and various things in the coming weekends so we'll see what that leaves for time).

I'm getting down to the serious business of getting rust off this thing. I've been looking at various homespun remedies on the interwebs and it seems that vinegar is actually pretty good at getting rid of most forms of surface rust. So with that in mind, I decided to begin the process of dipping damned near every piece of un-painted metal on this thing into a dog bowl and piece of tin full of vinegar. So you'll note the fine mess I'm making in Marley's garage now:

There's really no rhyme or reason as to what's going on. I have all the parts in there so I'm not worried about losing anything. I guess we'll see how much it matters if the pieces are touching or not. The plan is to leave them in here for a few days and see where we're at. It sounds like that's about the norm for this kind of buildup. I'm finally getting somewhere as far as disassembling the bike is concerned. After some serious winching I got the pedals off. The big challenge now is that it occurred to me on the train this morning after reading a few other ehow articles: that gooseneck is actually RUSTED to the fork. So it looks like a hammer/mallet of sorts will be involved in whacking it loose:

Other challenge: the way they put the crank on back then is nothing like how they do it now. There's like, tools and shit that will unscrew it now, whereas this looks like some Tawainese dude winched the pedals in with no intention of them ever coming undone. I'm going to try to track down a manual for this bike and see what they say about them coming off. We have to take Marley's Free Spirit (yeah that one I said could be a donor bike...we decided it's just too fucking retro-cool to part out) to the shop to get tires on it since they are an odd size, so I may just take this frame down too and see if they can get that crank off. They'll probably give me the usual "are you fucking kidding me" speech bike shops give you when you walk in with something like this, but I'm used to that.

On another note, I'm starting to kick around the idea of painting this thing myself rather than taking it somewhere. I haven't entirely resigned to the idea, but A. it's not like it'd be all that hard if I'm going to strip it down anyway and B. I am thinking rather than a straight black, give this thing a black with gold metal flake (minor metal flake though, not that big thick glitter shit on Mexi-mobiles). The rub here is going to be to find a way to either mask off the decals or get a new set. I could always reprint 'em I guess, but it'd be a LOT easier if they are already available.

UPDATE: Holy fucking shit but the manuals for these things command some coin! Seriously? 70 bucks for a 10 speed manual? The bike cost less than that! There's got to be a PDF of it somewhere. Looks like I have some Googling to do on the way to Des Moines on Friday.

UPDATE 2: Welp it appears this here bike has a cottered crank. Good thing there happens to be a group of people (who seem to be from the UK) that are fans of these things and have written all about them. This gentlemen in particular goes through all the ins and outs of getting a cottered crank apart. So I guess I'll be taking a hammer to this bike next time I see it.