1. Fixed off-road is friggin’ awesome.
I went riding with Topanga Creek Bicycles on Sunday morning on an easy-paced 20-mile ramble along the nearby fire roads of Topanga Canyon and Dirt Mulholland. There was nothing really technical, but a fair amount of climbing. One of the bike projects I’d had in mind since… Japan, I guess, was building up a fixed cross bike using a Surly Dingle Cog for both off- and on- road duty. Well, I finally got that bike together and this was its maiden dirt voyage. The bike climbs like a champ. Like a serious mountain goat. So awesome. This was countered, however, by my perhaps over-cautious downhill descents. I was running slicks so I didn’t want to wipe out, and yet while I came close a few times I was able to recover thanks to the feedback from the fixed wheel.

Also, it was an absolutely gorgeous day. I needed that ride if only to get out of the city for a little while. Here’s a crappy iPhone pic. Forgot to bring a real camera.

2. You can remove a front derailleur without breaking the chain.
How did I not discover this until now? The mechanism is so obvious. As a result of this newly acquired knowledge, I spent last night moving derailleurs around between bikes testing different crank/derailleur combinations. It’s something I’d been meaning to do but put off because I thought it was going to be too much trouble.

3. Hooray for downtube shifters!
I had always been more of a bar-end shifter kind of guy, but liked the look of downtube shifters for their simplicity and elegance. Well, the indexing on my bar-end shifters for my main ride had been feeling funny as of late. I think it’s because I had been running my cable housing underneath my entire handlebar length instead of having the cables come out the front as usual. The extra housing length and bends were probably causing too much friction. At any rate, I had a pair of Suntour downtube friction shifters sitting in my parts box so rather than fiddle with the bar-ends I put those on. So pretty. So simple. So pleasant. I’m still a fan of my bar-ends. I’m saving them for one of my next bicycle projects – putting dirt drop handlebars on my mountain bike.

I think the festival was stronger than ever this year for Los Angeles, both in attendance and in the programs screened. There were lots of great films this year including a 1956 Japanese feature called “Keirin Queen” subbed by BFF staff and brought to the U.S. for the first time. A French film, “Le Dernier Voyage of Maryse de Lucas”, a story of two friends riding out to the countryside to spread on of the friend’s mother’s ashes, had Bronwyn literally in tears. And a redubbed parody of “Midnight Ride”, a Banana Republic and Vanity Fair produced short that takes place during a Midnight Ridazz ride, got uproarious cheers from the crowd. “Midnight Ride” has recently been taken down, I’m guessing because of the negative response it was getting throughout the bike community. How’s that for viral marketing gone wrong? The parody was on YouTube, but was removed because of copyright violations.

Other great things that went on were an opening night concert with Deerhunter, a bicycle art show, goldsprints, and a Sunday block party in the Bicycle District.

Here are the photos I posted on my flickr.

Be sure to check the festival out if it’s coming to a town near you.

Which bike has an acceptable level of manliness? These are tricky questions. As the parade of 10-speeds, mountain bikes and, more recently, fixed-gear designs knocked the upright, old-school bicycle off the road, accouterments like fenders and chain guards came to be seen — by men, at least — as eccentric. If a guy is going to get on a bike, he wants to imagine he’s Lance Armstrong, not Pee-wee Herman.

The article does go on to list a Dutch bike’s disadvantages, particularly its large weight (around 50lbs) and sluggishness that makes it difficult to manage carrying up stairs or navigating through traffic. BikeSnobNYC notes:

the Dutch city bike invasion is yet another example of fashion disguised as practicality. More accurately, it’s fashion backlash disguised as practicality. What happens when people start wearing baggier and baggier pants? Tight pants make a sudden comeback. What happens when ratty trucker caps become all the rage? Clean, flat-brim fitted caps supplant them. What happens when microbrews take over the country? There’s a renewed interest in PBR. And so forth. So what happens when impractically minimalist bikes become fashionable? Impractically practical bikes suddenly seem a lot more attractive.
…
And that’s what’s so annoying about the fixed-gear fad and the fixed-gear backlash. They both seem to subscribe to a notion that there’s no middle ground, and they only define themselves in terms of the other. Hate track bikes? Ride a tank! Don’t like sluggish bikes? Ride a track bike!

One of my bike friends from back in L.A., John Vu, had a great rant on the iBOB list. (Emphasis is mine.)

I love Dutch bikes, but they just aren’t very suited to places like L.A. They are great if your radius is like five flat miles, preferably with good bike infrastructure, but here a lightweight with 28mm tires, fenders, a saddlebag, and a generator light is much more useful.

On any given day in L.A. I can be at work near the beach in Santa Monica and out exploring the hills of Eagle Rock with friends, assisted by the train or bus. I just can’t imagine doing all that on a Dutch bike, sorry. If you don’t believe me try schlepping one up stairs or just onto a bus rack.

And it’s folly to suggest that you need a certain kind of bike to wear non-bikey clothes. My friends and I ride those kind of bikes all over the city, almost always in “regular clothes.”

While I’m ranting: I’m a bit tired of the attitudes embodied by the Copenhagen Cycling Chic and similar blogs. They’ve said what needed to be said: Look, people around the world ride bikes for transport in regular clothes. But what needs to be said now is that we aren’t all so lucky to live in a bike-friendly city and if we are to make progress we have to just start riding and not worry that we don’t have ideal bike situations. Perfect is the enemy of good.

I think we can humanize cycling without Dutch-style town bikes and separated bike lanes and such. Also, I’m a bit put off by how they look down on people who do anything remotely recreational or sporty on a bike or bike enthusiasts. Aim your rod brakes elsewhere.

Another unintended effect is that the nonrider who doesn’t live in a bike-friendly city will read these blogs and see the images of idyllic city bike culture and contrast it with what their car-centric cities, giving them another excuse to not ride. I have this conversation several times a week, the “L.A. is too dangerous to ride in, unlike Portland/Davis/Amsterdam/San Francisco” talk, and I wish I didn’t have to. The idea is to agitate for better bike infrastructure, but now is that going to happen if everyone is afraid to get on a bike in the first place?

He brings up a lot of great points – the reality that bikes can belong to everyone without resorting to the “impractically practical” or snubbing those who have sporty enthusiasm for cycling, and that circumstances are different for every area and pining for a cycling utopia can hurt the cause of bike advocacy.

Case in point of the impractically practical: Back in L.A., Bronwyn had two bikes. One was a lovely, restored, electro-forged Schwinn. The other (and the one she brought to Japan) is a late 90′s GT road bike. Both are really cool bikes, but the Schwinn probably had a good 20 pounds on the GT. Between our apartment and the Saturday morning farmer’s market was a big hill. Guess which bike got taken out on those Saturday mornings more often. Hint: it wasn’t the one with the basket.

Of course Japan has its own form of the Dutch bike – the mamachari.

While it shares many of the same attributes as the Dutch bikes – chainguard, fenders, rack, and lights – it lacks a few notable things. Namely, the fashionista condescension and the $1000 price tag (mamacharis sell for around $150 at department and hardware stores). They carry the same cultural cool as I’m sure Dutch bikes do in the Netherlands – which is to say none. As the NYT writes, “riding a bicycle to work in a suit and tie is as notable an act as drinking a cup of coffee, there is no bike culture — all culture includes the bike.” Though there certainly is a bike culture in Japan, as I’m sure there is one in the Netherlands.

Like John, I do actually like Dutch bikes and mamacharis. I’d never own one because they’re too limited for the kind of riding I do, but I appreciate their place as an everyday practical tool that is useful for and accessible to many. They’re certainly better than the boat-anchor “mountain” bikes available in Wal-Marts throughout the States on which you’d be a fool to actually take off-road (about which an interesting discussion worth reading was coincidentally started on the bikepirates livejournal community today). It’s the fetishization of European cityscapes, and the divisive one-or-the-otherness between the trop pratique and the trop sportif that I find so distressing. It is one of the primary problems in the perception of cycling in the United States. Bikes can be a part of culture, not just bike culture, but Dutch bikes aren’t the only magical keys that can do it.

ADDENDUM: As another coincidence, Bronwyn forwarded the same NYT article to me while I was composing this post. Looks like it’s getting around. While I have my disagreements with the article, I’m at least happy to see increased visibility of bike topics.

I’ve had a dream 3-day bike camping trip bubbling in my head all winter long. Day one would involve riding out to Mt. Daisen, the tallest mountain in western Japan on the other side of the prefecture, and setting up camp. On the second day, we’d hike to the mountain’s summit, then come back down and celebrate our achievement by heading to the nearby Ganbarius brewery and enjoying some tasty Japanese beers that aren’t Sapporo, Kirin, or Asahi. On the third day, we’d ride back, fat and happy.

Only recently with the warmer weather was it possible, so with the forecast looking fantastic all weekend Bronwyn took a vacation day on Monday. I actually had a bit of business to take care of during the day in Yonago, so Bronwyn and I took the train out there with bikes and panniers in tow, dropping them off at the train station’s bike parking lot for a few of hours while Bronwyn enjoyed hanami with friends.

Departing from Yonago we started the 20km ride up Daisen along route 24. Even though it was a short distance, it still took a good two and a half hours or so because it was entirely uphill ending with a long and constant 12% incline for the last couple of kilometers. Still the weather was perfect, sunny and fair at a comfortable 20 degrees C.

Though my original plan for the weekend had us riding out of Tottori, it was probably a good that we left from Yonago as I expect the last thing we’d want to do after riding some 70km would be to tackle the mountain weighed down by a full camping load.

Upon arriving at Daisen-ji, the small ski town at the base of Daisen’s summer hiking trail we set up camp and had a dinner of packaged camp food. There’s also conveniently a Mont-Bell outdoors equipment store where we picked up some snacks for the hike the next day.

We woke up early with the sunrise on Sunday. Breakfast was coffee and packaged camp hashbrowns that were entirely unsatisfying. I want to start bringing out real food for bike camping trips. I think I could’ve done a better breakfast with actual potatoes and other real ingredients.

Finishing breakfast we started the hike. It was only about 2.6km long, but with an elevation gain of around 500m. To make things more interesting, there was still plenty of snow on the ground starting from right around the timberline. Thankfully the snow was compacted from previous hikers and had been thinning from a week of warmer temperatures so it was totally manageable in our regular hiking shoes with the aid of some trekking poles.

Near the top there’s actually a wooden boardwalk of sorts that takes you to the very end where a large cabin is available for mountaineers to use for sleeping if they were making a multi-day trek out of this. We pulled out our little Pocket Rocket stove and boiled some water to hungrily devour our packets of food while enjoying the views.

It took about three hours to make the ascent. The way down was a little trickier. It was early afternoon and the sun had turned a lot of the snow into slush making for some slippery navigation, but it only took about two and a half hours to return to our camp. Along the way, right around where the snow started, we bumped into a group of friends from Yonago who were on their way up the mountain. I don’t think they knew what to expect, though, as one of them was wearing jellies. Probably not the best idea for trudging through snow.

To kill some time before dinner we headed to the Daisen temple and shrine. It was a very peaceful, beautiful area, but our muscles, after a winter of laziness, were starting to ache from the hike and the stone steps of the temple were a small challenge in themselves.

The Ganbarius Brewery was a short 5km away, all downhill. We stopped along the way at the Daisen Makiba Milk no Sato dairy farm, which Bronwyn recommended. They had THE BEST soft cream I have ever had and we were hungry enough that it in no way affected our appetite for dinner.

Finally arriving at Ganbarius, something I’d been dreaming of since… well since the last time I was there, we pored greedily over the menu, ordering up a tofu salad, a prosciutto and basil pizza, and a plate of various meat goodness. Mmm!!! Protein and carbs! Exactly what was needed. More importantly, we partook of the nomihodai (all-you-can-drink) special for 1050 yen (about $10) a head. The result was absolute drunken, satiated bliss.

After about two hours of drinking our fill we started the ride back up to our campground. It wouldn’t have been the best way to end the evening, especially considering how drunk we were, but we lucked out as a bus driver stopped and offered to drive us back up the rest of the way saving us from the vicious 12% climb we had struggled through (sober) the day before. With a full stomach, dizzy head, and entirely exhausted body I slept fantastically.

Waking up on Monday, I made a pot of coffee, and we stuck around Daisen-ji until a restaurant opened up at 10am for an early lunch. Refreshed, we started the ride home. The weather was once again perfect, and the descent to sea level was long, fast, and exhilirating. Once we reached route 9, we assumed a slow and easy touring pace of about 20kmh making for a relaxing return to Tottori.

Kudos to Bronwyn for finishing this. Getting up and down the mountain was no small feat in itself, but this is also the first time she’s carried a camping load with her. It was the closest thing she’s had to doing bike touring and I think this was a really important step in mentally preparing herself for the two-month BEE ride. Upon arriving at our doorstep, I told her, “That’s essentially what bike touring is like; touring is just longer.” To which she replied, “I can do that.”

Spring teased us a bit a few weeks ago with warm days and the first bits of sakura, or cherry blossoms. It was followed shortly thereafter with a drop in temperature and even a bit of snow and hail. This weeks the weather has righted itself once again and the sakura are in full bloom. We’ve been taking full advantage of the season by enjoying the outdoors in proper Japanese fashion.

On Sunday I went on a short little ride with a few friends out to the sand dunes and back, stopping to enjoy a cone of nashi (Asian pear) flavored soft cream along the way.

Bronwyn was working that day, translating for a delegation from Hong Kong who had come to observe the Uradome coastal area. We met up after she was done in a park in Tottori where we partook of unhealthy but delicious Japanese fair food including age mochi (deep-fried mochi balls), taiyaki (fried dough shaped like a fish and stuffed with red bean paste), and takoyaki (fried dough balls stuffed with octopus).

Because Bronwyn had worked on Sunday, she was able to take the day off of Tuesday and we used that time to ride our bikes out to Kurayoshi for more sakura viewing. Rather than take the usual coastal route, we opted for the country route which took us up and over a couple of small mountains, passing through the towns of Shikano and Misasa, past Mitoku-san which we had climbed last fall.

Drivers in Japan are generally quite courteous towards cyclists. Though drivers are occasionally perplexed as to what a bicycle is doing on the street rather than the sidewalk, despite the integral prevalence of utility cycling, they are generally quite courteous towards cyclists. They wait for a safe time to pass, then give a safe amount of distance.

We had one rare bit of asshattery on this ride, however. While going down one of the twisty, two-lane mountain roads some idiot driver came up from behind and leaned heavy on his horn for nearly the entire descent. The thing is, the road had a 40kmh speed limit. I was going 60 and doing just fine keeping pace with the next car, a large van, about 200m ahead of me. The driver behind finally found a straightaway where he was able to pass me maybe two thirds of the way down the stretch of road, but of course then had to ride his brakes the rest of the way as he now had the van in front of him. At the bottom of the mountain is a stop light. Of course it was red and of course I ended up pulling right next to the car, waiting for the green for a solid minute and a half. In L.A. I may have verbally berated the driver for his stupidity. That’s a little too forward for Japan, so instead I simply stared him down. The Japanese do not do well with direct eye contact, especially from strangers. It makes them extremely uncomfortable. Not meeting my gaze, the driver simply fidgeted in his seat until the green light finally came and he turned quickly to me and mouthed what looked like “asshole” before speeding off. That felt good.

At any rate, the annoyance of that whole experience was very much overshadowed by the otherwise entirely pleasant ride. The weather was perfect and the scenery gorgeous.

There were a couple of mechanical difficulties. One was a broken seatpost bolt on Bronwyn’s bike early on. It was close enough to town that I quickly zipped over to Cycle Shop Fukuhama for a replacement. The other was a broken chain, also on Bronwyn’s bike that was a fairly quick fix. That was probably due to my improper installation when installing my old 11-34 cassette, LX derailleur, and chain on to her bike and is the primary reason why I much prefer using SRAM chains with their powerlinks – you can break and reassemble the chains without fear of creating a weak link.

Once in Kurayoshi, we grabbed a few beers and enjoyed more unhealthy Japanese fair food under the sakura, the act of which is called hanami, before riding the train back to Tottori where we ended the day relaxing in an onsen, or Japanese hot spring. ?????!

The Pro Vis 5, or Cyclotouriste cranks as they’re also called, from TA were rather popular cranks back in the day and continue to be a respected choice amongst randonneurs and tourists. Their unique bolt pattern and diameter allows the cranks to be used as a single, double, triple, even a quad, with any combination of rings available from 26 to 64 teeth.

Multi-Range Gearing

For my purposes, I’ve always wanted a wide-range double, what Sheldon Brown called multi-range gearing. Essentially it’s a crank setup that would give me the range of a triple crankset while still keeping the simplicity of a double, minimizing both the need to shift and the redundancy of duplicate gear ratios.

The Sugino compact double I had been using had a 48/34 combination which was pretty good, but not low enough for touring purposes unless I used mountain bike gearing in the back. I had been using an 11-34 cassette and a Deore LX derailleur. That was fine for a while, but not as elegant as my original 12-27 cassette and Dura Ace derailleur, and I didn’t like the big jumps between the large cassette cogs.

With the TA cranks and 46/26 tooth chainrings, I get an even lower range than previously afforded by the 34×34 combination, while benefiting from tighter shift steps throughout. With a 117.5mm bottom bracket, the large chainring lines up fairly close to the middle of the cassette, allowing me to use all 9 gears in the back while on the large chainring where I do about 90% of my riding. The 26-tooth chainring is used exclusively for serious climbing.

For the seriously geeky out there, here’s a gear-inches chart. With the large ring and the middle cog, the 46×17, I get 72.4 gear-inches. Anybody who’s done much fixed gear riding knows that’s in the perfect range for an all-around cruising gear. While there are some redundant gear combinations with the 26-tooth chainring and the smallest cogs, I wouldn’t use those combinations for a couple reasons. More on that in a bit.

Low Q-Factor

The wide-range double gearing was my primary reason for acquiring the TA cranks, but a secondary benefit is their low Q-factor or crank tread, meaning the horizontal distance between pedal attachment points. When set up as a double, they have among the lowest Q-factor of any cranks out there. As Sheldon Brown writes, the benefits are as follows:

For most cyclists, the narrower the tread the better. When we walk, our footprints fall almost in a straight line under the center-of-gravity of our bodies. When we cycle, the “tread” forces our feet to be exerting their force farther apart than they are designed to do. Some theorists blame this for knee and hip problems experienced by some cyclists, but the jury is still out on this. A wider “tread” also creates a greater sideways force when pedaling out of the saddle, so the rider must exert more upper-body strength when riding “en danceuse”.

While I have zero data beyond empirical evidence and my observations are certainly without bias, I can say that the TA cranks feel noticeably better than the old Sugino XDs.

One cautionary note for such a low-q crank is the need to set up the front derailleur just right. When properly adjusted, my front derailleur, an old Shimano 600 FD-6207, has paper-thin clearance from the driveside crank arm.

I need to get the front derailleur this close to the crank arm, though, to get a proper front shift and to prevent the chain from rubbing the derailleur in the big/small combo.

Pushing Derailleur Capacity

When I went in to the local bike shop here in Tottori, Cycle Shop Fukuhama, looking for a new bottom bracket, the shop owner gave me a dubious look upon surveying my TA crank and equipped derailleurs. I knew it was coming. He gave me a warning and amongst a lot of Japanese were the words “total capacity,” and while I couldn’t understand exactly what he was saying I got the gist.

The capacity of the front derailleur is the difference between the large and small chainring. If the difference exceeds the derailleur’s capacity, then the chain will drag on the bottom of the derailleur cage while pedaling in the small chainring. Most modern double derailleurs have a capacity of 15 or 16 teeth. My vintage Shimaon 600 one has a capacity of 18 teeth. The difference between my chainrings is 20 teeth. It’s generally understood that the published capacities for components are on the conservative side and can be exceeded, so I wasn’t worried in this department. Plus Sheldon Brown had gone farther than I had in the past, using a 105 derailleur to shift a 50/28 combo on his Hetchins.

The thing that I was unsure about was whether or not I’d be able to use my existing rear short-cage Dura Ace derailleur. Rear derailleur capacity is based on how much chain slack it can take up, also known as chain-wrap. This is found by adding the difference between the largest and smallest chainrings to the difference between the largest and smallest cogs. For me, that looks like:

(46-26) + (27-12) = 35

My derailleur has a published capacity of 29 teeth. Again, this is a conservative number, but I was definitely past the reasonable margin of error. Any normally thinking person would use a medium-cage derailleur for this, which has a capacity of 37 teeth. I did not want to buy another derailleur.

I had managed to make a 50/34 compact crank with an 11-30 cassette work on my wife’s bike using a short-cage Ultegra derailleur, a 35 tooth difference for a derailleur that also has a 29 tooth capacity (as well as a max cog size of 27 teeth). Additionally, I had read of mountain biking weight weenies who opt for Dura Ace rear derailleurs rather than XTR ones to shave weight, getting the derailleur to even accept cogs up to 32 teeth.

So I tried to convince the shop owner that it was “OK!” and that “people on the internet say it works!” I’m not sure if Sheldon Brown is as renowned here in Japan, so I didn’t name drop. “Test-o! Test-o!” I insisted. He agreed to let me give it a shot and allowed me to borrow the shop tools for the bottom bracket and crank swap.

First I tried running the original chain length that I had on there as was properly measured for the 48-tooth chainring on the Suginos. That was too long, causing the chain to drag on the chainstay in the small/small combo. Too much chain, not enough chain-wrap capacity. So I shortened the chain, finding the length by wrapping it around the largest cog and the largest chainring. Normally, using that method, one would add two additional links for the derailleur to take up. I didn’t. Fortunately, it just barely worked.

This is how the derailleur looks when running the big/big, 46×27 combo. The rear derailleur is almost fully extended. This isn’t a ratio I’d be wanting to ride in regularly, nor should I be since if i need gears this low I’m probably on a hill and should’ve shifted into the small chainring. But if I do accidentally pop into this combo the good news is I won’t be tearing off my rear derailleur. This is a very real threat, too, when your chain is too short.

Here’s the chain in the small/small, 26×12 combo. The chain is pretty saggy, but it does clear the chainstay and under load it doesn’t look this bad. However, in practice I wouldn’t ride this combination anyways, or even the 26×13.

The shop owner was impressed. The moral of the story here is that parts can work beyond their specifications if you’re willing to tinker, but if you tear off your rear derailleur don’t blame me.

Pro Vis 5 Availability

The TA Pro Vis 5 cranks are sadly no longer in production, nor are any similar cranks like the Sugino PX or the Stronglight 49d. They show up on eBay with a fair amount of regularity. In the U.S., N.O.S. TA Pro Vis 5 cranks are available from Velo-Orange. Be prepared to pay a pretty penny. Velo-Orange sells the arms alone (no rings, no bolts) for $235. I paid significantly less that that for mine, but I’m not going to divulge my source (unless you ask really nicely) in case I want more sets in the future.

You may be able to find a pair hidden away in the dusty corner of an older bike shop. Cycle Shop Fukuhama actually had a whole box full of them that they pulled out when I asked them for a bottom bracket. I had no idea. They were selling them for ¥21000, about $210. Still more than I paid.

The good news is that, according to Velo-Orange, a “major crank manufacturer [is interested] in producing a TA Cyclotouriste-style crank set.” I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.

More here.

What is BEE Japan? It’s a group of volunteers who promote environmental awareness and green living in Japan through direct action and education. The photo above is from the 2008 group. Our main event is the two-month tour where we do activities such as presentations at schools or with international groups, participate in clean-up efforts, and raise money for green charities. All the while we try our best to lead by example – supporting local businesses, choosing organic and fair trade products when possible, avoiding chain and convenience stores, avoiding excessive waste from things like packaging and waribashi (disposable chopsticks), and eating vegetarian. Yeah, I know I love my bacon, but I’m willing to go veggie for two months for a good cause.

Throughout the spring and summer the BEE riders will also be doing various events in Japan for additional charity fundraising. We’ve got a number of things lined up for Earth Day in April and I think Bronwyn and I will try to arrange something in Tottori.

Sounds like fun, no? I think it’s a pretty awesome way to bid farewell to Japan and I am totally psyched on having something to work towards.

If you’d like to donate, here’s a handy-dandy Paypal button, and I’ve thrown one up on the sidebar as well. Any funds donated will go to the charities of BEE’s choosing. We pay our own way as far as food, shelter, and ferry costs. (But if you want to help me with that, too, I won’t say no. Just Paypal me at the@jokeisup.com. No fancy donation button for personal use.)

It’s February 5th here in Japan, but I know it’s still February 4th for the U.S. That means it’s been one year since the death of the patron saint of cycling, Sheldon Brown. I’m going out for a ride.

To entertain myself I’ve been watching YouTube videos. Here’s one of Kermit singing LCD Soundsystem.

Reminds me of one of my favorite movies as a kid, The Muppets Take Manhattan. And I can’t tell from the video, but is that actually James Murphy at the end? Kind of looks like it.