Very nice...first pics....

Tubular gluing failure...

So yesterday I went to go check on the set of tires that I had glued before.

This was the first set of cross tubulars I glued without using the tape so I was pretty curious how it would come out.

When I was testing the tire adhesion, I was gut wrenched to find that I was able to peel the wheel off just by pulling on it with some force. What I discovered was that for one wheel, the glue did not seem to adhere very well to the base tape, and for the second wheel it adhered to the base tape, but not very well to the rim.

The process took about 4 days total, 3 thin layers on the tire and rim, and a final tacky layer on the rim before mounting.

I am curious how hard it should be to pull a properly glued tire from the rim? I had to use a tire lever to break some of the interface, but it seemed to come off MUCH easier than when I used tape.

Maybe back to tape...

Vallely Barnyard

This is a deck that I used to ride all the time, and would beat the crap out of. I crashed while doing a trick and it fell into the Copley fountain where I left it. Now a new one goes for more than $2000 on ebay.

Much like bikes, I went through about 20 boards in the two years I skated (1990-92).

Here are some memorable ones....in chronological order

Powell Caballero Dragon and bats
Toyoda
Powell Underhill
Powell Barbee
H-street Magnusson
H-street Hensley
Blind Rudy Johnson
G&S Street Chomp 1 & 2
Vision Double Tail
Vallely Double tail
Vallely Elephant
Vision Double Jinx
Planet Earth Miller
New Deal Templeton
New Deal ??
Santa Cruz Slick
Jeremy Klein Super Mario

Nothing

I have nothing of interest to post today.

I thought the Tour of California's last day was pretty boring.

There were no real attacks, racers seemed pretty content with their final GC po-sish.

I would have liked to have seen the "Alpe de Huez" of California be the final climb to really destroy the riders, have a screaming down hill, and a 10 mile finishing straight away.

Also, for some reason, I find many of the "Runners" in American races much more irritating than the ones in European racing. I am not quite sure why that is, but the whole time I was watching the climb, I was thinking, my god, who are these idiots????

Green Line Rant

I haven't taken the Green line in almost two years. Last night I got on at Fenway and traveled to Park street.

In that time, a girl puked on another girl's "expensive" jacket, and a large homeless person wanted to Sumo Wrestle people on the train.

I was afraid a tidal wave of puke was going to take over the train, a la Stand By Me and ruin my new glasses. Luckily, the train just started moving when I started to feel overwhelmed with the savagery known as commuting.

To make things worse, the train got stuck in between stations because the wheelchair device became stuck.

I could see Park street station from my oiled up window...

The 1.5 mile trip took 45 minutes.

Why do Bostonians put up with this crap. Seriously.

A new carbon frame!!!!

I just picked up my new frame and lenses from Eye-Q Optical in Harvard Square.

Those guys are very patient, and awesome, and they have a huge selection of unique and comfortable frames. They also always give you really great discounts.

They were not supposed to be done until Saturday, but for some reason they were already finished. A departure from my Ti and Al frame days, this frame is light, with super thin lenses and anti glare coating. Some would say that I am going with a full carbon frame this year.

The maker is a Japanese designer called Kisura.

Color is light caramel going to a darker caramel in the front of the rims.
These will be my Varsity level glasses which I will take to special events, such as the museum trip, or night at the opera.

Valentine's day...

On Valentine's day, I dragged Meg out to the Quadbikes, which is some sort of a Harvard run bike shop/tool workshop. You can rent space there for $10 an hour, and they have almost every tool you could ever need.

The work area is really large, and although it was a bit messy, you had full freedom to work at your own pace and get things done right.

I installed the King brown Sotto Voce headset, installed the crown race, cut the steerer, and installed the star nut.

It all came out surprisingly well.

Dry land is not a myth!!!

This is a first hand look at the custom made FMB/Fango tubular tires. This tire is a size 32. The tire casing is amazingly supple. Compared with the FMB tires two years ago, these seem lighter and even straighter.

Thank you MZ.

This weekend

It is actually warm this weekend.

Very nice.

Sunday night is a power session at the workshop:

1) Install headset on to the Zank
2) Cut steerer
3) Install star fangled nut

Also, there will be a small amount of riding to be had.

Also I will take pictures of our new custom FMB tubulars that just arrived from France.

DeSalvo Tenth Year Anniversary and the new road ahead..

Mike DeSalvo at DeSalvo Cycles has been making badass racing/touring/cruising frames for almost ten years.

I can still remember when I contacted him in the summer of 2002, or was it 2003?, I can't remember, to have him build me a white ciclo frameset. It really does feel like a lifetime ago.

In the past, I have been lucky to have both a road and a cross frame made by Mike. Recently I have decided to only have frames built by guys named Mike.

Although I have never seen another DeSalvo frame in person, I have seen many of them on the internet. I know there are more out there and I wish more people would post their DeSalvos.

Much like a Dutch Frite, each one has its individual texture, flavor, and color to them. Each one a little treasure.

This year I am going through some new and exciting changes. It seems like many of my close friends, as well as members of my family are going through some large changes as well.

I sold my two DeSalvos this year. I really loved them and never thought that I would sell them. I felt very guilty about selling them, as it is rare in this life to have someone build something just for you. But in many ways it felt really good to sell it so that someone else could really enjoy the frames, as they are amazing frames, built to last a lifetime. In the end, I felt that it was better that someone was putting in some big winter miles on the DeSalvos then having it sit in my basement.

P.S. One of the only times I cried in the last ten years was when someone stole my DeSalvo Cross bike as I was quickly checking email at the HAC Lab at Hopkins...