Tag: v-brakes

Prepping for Spring and Beyond

Carpal Tunnel Recovery Update

The recovery from carpal tunnel surgery is going splendidly. Immediately after the surgery my hand was so weak that I was restricted to lifting anything heavier than a paperback book. Yesterday, 23 days from the surgery, I easily lifted The Tank and, later, The Mule onto my bike rack. The next milestone will be when I can comfortably do a bird dog pose during my daily stretching routine. My guess is that will happen next week.

I no longer have any stitches or steri strips on my incision site. I keep it covered with an oversized band-aid to be on the safe side.

Bike Physicals

As I alluded to above, I took The Tank to Beth at Bikes at Vienna for its annual physical and picked up The Mule. Beth spec’ed Wolf Tooth cushy handlebar tape for The Mule. It seems a bit like overkill but I suspect that I won’t feel that way once I get the bike out on the road. Once I try this tape out, I’ll decide what kind of tape to put on The Tank.

I had Beth install a Paul Mini-moto v-brake on the front wheel of the Mule. I had installed one on the back a couple of years ago and love it. Mini-motos brake better (I can even skid) and are much easier to adjust. Moreover, they disengage much more easily when changing tires. No more knocking the brake pads out of alignment for me.

Natchez Trace

Having signed up for a one-week, van-supported tour of the Natchez Trace Parkway I did a little research on what I am up against.

Adventure Cycling rates this as Level 4 out of 5 for difficulty. I think the rating reflects the fact that there are three days between 72 and 82 miles. They will certainly be a challenge but most of the route isn’t very hilly. Judging from some Strava metrics I have seen, the rides around my neighborhood have about 30 feet of elevation gain per mile. That’s less than all but two days on the tour.

I also checked how this compares to my ride up the Maine coast in 2022. Google Maps says that from Wells to Bar Harbor is 220 miles and 8,200 feet of elevation gain, 37 feet per mile. I handled this without much trouble. And it’s much less than the 45 feet per mile between Lexington and Damascus Virginia that I did last summer. I did both those rides unsupported. It’ll be nice not to have 35 pounds of stuff on my bike for this tour.

StartFinishMilesElevation Gain in FeetFeet Per Day
Day 1NatchezRock Springs611,33222
Day 2Rock SpringsRidgeland4891219
Day 3RidgelandFrench Camp821,45018
Day 4French CampShannon701,60023
Day 5ShannonTishomingo541,20022
Day 6TishomingoHohenwald792,90037
Day 7HohenwaldNashville622,18535
Total45611,57925

I have several friends who have ridden or driven the Trace and they all say it’s pretty and pretty easy.

I also will be taking one or two days off before the tour to drive to Nashville so I’ll have fresh legs. The tour starts April 7 which gives me a little over six weeks of time to prepare my aging carcass for the effort.

Hurry Spring!

Bike Tour Mechanical Aftermath

I took The Mule in for some post-tour TLC. In the process I learned a few things about the bike’s components.

Rear hub: The rear hub is badly worn. (The wheel wobbles a tad from side to side.) I had new wheels built for this tour but for some reason didn’t replace the rear hub. Since the worn part is no longer made, I have to replace the hub and have the wheel re-built. The shop that did the original build is giving me a generous discount on the labor.

Rear derailleur: The rear derailleur is starting to show signs of age. It has a bit of lateral play independent of the shifting mechanism. I can probably get some more miles out of it but I am putting it on the winter to-do list.

Front derailleur: For some time now I have had problems shifting into my small chainring. I had at least five mechanics look at the derailleur but none of them could solve the problem. Just before the tour I took the bike to my local bike shop where a mechanic finally fixed the problem. I have no idea how long this fix will work but everybody I have talked to who knows about these things says the problem is likely a worn spring in the mechanism. Add a front derailleur to my winter to-do list.

Rear brake: My rear brake has been giving me fits. It’s hard to work on and never seems to work properly. The head mechanic at my local bike store told me why. Bike brake mechanisms are actuated by levers. The Mule has short pull levers. The front brake is compatible with its lever. The rear brake, which is made by a different manufacturer, requires a long pull lever. The result is a mushy feel to the rear brake lever and very little room between the brake pad and the rim.

The distance between the rim and the pad is set using a tiny screw that pushes against the end of a tiny spring. If these get misaligned, adjustments to the brake pads is extremely difficult. I am definitely replacing the rear brake this winter. I may pay big bucks for a Paul brake that, in addition to being compatible with my short pull levers, uses a wrench instead of a tiny screw to adjust the pad/rim gap.

Fixed it at last

I am mechanically inept. In fact, when it comes to anything handy involving my hands, I am not only useless but a danger to myself. A few months ago while chopping a small piece of a tree trunk, I ended up in the ER with blood running down my face. The tree trunk objected to the axe and attacked me. Rude!

I woke up today with sore legs, the result of riding every day for a week. A few weeks ago I noted that riding daily was making me stronger. Lately, however, I’ve been feeling very fatigued from my rides. Yesterday I found out why.

One of the pads on my rear rim brakes was not releasing from the rim. This is the exact problem I had more than once on my bike tour last summer. In order to go my usual pace I was putting out much more effort than normal. In a way, it’s the opposite of a tailwind. Just as a tailwind convinces you that you are Greg LeMond, a rubbing brake pad makes you feel like Uncle Fester.

Thankfully, the interwebs have beaucoup bike repair videos. I watched four and decided I should be able to fix the brakes with plenty of patience. I also needed a day off the saddle so I figured my foray into brake mechanics would chew up an hour or so.

I put the bike up on my repair stand. Then I checked to make sure the brake cable had proper tension. I did this by squeezing the brake lever. It didn’t bottom out against the handlebar. All was good

Then I spun the rear wheel and saw that, like yesterday, the left pad wasn’t releasing from the rim. I decided to try releasing the tension on the spring on that side of the brakes. The spring makes the pad retract. The adjustment mechanism is a teeny screw. From one of the videos I learned how this works. You tighten the screw, the screw presses harder against the end of the tensioning spring, and this pulls the pad away from the rim. I tried this yesterday and nothing much happened. It was very frustrating to do this on the side of the road.

When I looked really closely at the spring, Both the tensioning spring and the adjusting screw are black and they sit in the shadow of my rear bag. It’s easy to miss where the two come in contact. In this case, when I looked very closely I could see that the end of the spring had moved away from the adjusting screw. When I turned the screw it was missing the spring entirely. AHA!

I backed the screw out and used a flat head screw driver to re-position the end of the spring. Then I re-tighted the adjusting screw. It pushed on the spring and the pad retracted from the rim.

The end of the spring is the little black wire pointing down.

Normally fixing bikes follows the same rule as writing computer programs. Whatever time you think it will take is an order of magnitude shorter than it actually does. If you think it will take a day to write a program, it ends up taking a week. A week means a month, and so on.

Rather than take the hour that I expected,this bike repair took all of one minute. It took far longer to set up and take down the work stand than it did to fix the bike.

This brake issue drove me nuts all last summer. I had my brakes adjusted four times between Pueblo Colorado and Carson City Nevada. Now I know what the problem was.

Tomorrow, I hit the road like an April fool. Maybe I even get a tailwind.

No Name Tour: Day 22 – We Approach the Rockies

It was a goof thing we grabbed the hotel last night as the pleasant forecast turned into a thunderstorm. The park where we would have camped was already wet from a sprinkler system. We fit 3 in a room with Corey sleeping in his sleeping bag on the floor.

The morning began with a quick bite in our room. When I retrieved my bike out of its hiding place I found that the front brake was grabbing. Mark worked on it for 30 minutes and got it functioning again.

We headed off into another light headwind. The forecast called for tailwinds. Just like last summer’s tour. Local weather forecasts out here are very unreliable.

The first 15 miles had us rolling through high desert.

Pretty arid out there

The air is dry making me constantly thirsty.

We rode 15 miles then turned south off-route to locate a proper breakfast in the town of Fowler. Sadly, the town eatery was closed so we settled for Subway.

After an ATM stop, we stayed off Route and headed toward Pueblo on US 50 (Arlington Boulevard and New York Avenue to my DC area friends). It was a busy truck route but the paved shoulder was about ten feet wide with a two foot rumble strip. We were safe but for someone pulling a horse trailer with his pickup. He swerved toward the shoulder as he passed me and earned the first bird flip of the tour.

The Mule broke 53,000 miles today

Approaching Pueblo we saw two super long unit (all one cargo) cold trains. The last few miles it felt like all the water in my body was evaporating.

Coal train headed east in the BNSF

Once in town I caught up with Mark and Corey who stopped at the Great Divide bike shop. I purchased some long fingered gloves for the mountain descents in the days ahead.

We were going to eat at a Mexican restaurant across the street but it had no windows and, therefore, no way for us to keep an eye on our bikes.

Must be pretty old

So I stopped a passing letter carrier and asked her about local eateries. She was incredibly helpful and sent us downtown. We ended up at Bingos, a hamburger joint. I had a cheese burger and fries and a vanilla shake that really hit the spot.

I noticed that once again my brakes were grabbing so we headed back to the bike shop. One of my brake pads in front was unevenly worn and gripping the rim. The back one was having troubles too. The mechanic fixed them both, I hope, for good.

While there he also replaced my chain and cassette (the gears in the back). My chain had stretched the length of a full link in two months. Corey’s chai was also worn but he had an unusual drivetrain. My chain cost $25; the chain the store had in stock for his bike cost $100. The owner offered it to Corey at a generous discount but Corey wouldn’t bite. He is mighty thrifty.

We rode a few blocks to a motel that I thought was gross. Cigarette butts everywhere. The laundry room smelled of mold. Cars in the parking area looked beat up. The room was nice and inexpensive. Corey and Mark has tried to hook up with a Warmshowers host but couldn’t close the deal do they took a room at the hotel. We said our goodbyes. They head north on the TransAm tomorrow. I head west in the Western Express.

I found a hotel north of town that is pretty nice. The only choice for dinner is the Mexican restaurant next store so that’s where dinner will be.

Tomorrow, assuming my bike behaves, I’m doing a climb over a 9,000 foot mountain. (I’m at around 4,700 feet now.) it should be challenging.

I am now a day ahead of schedule. I planned a rest day for Pueblo but I’m not particularly tired. I’ll save it for a bad weather day.

Many thanks to Mark and Corey for keeping me company. I’ll have to rethink solo touring after my experience with them. I wish them safe travels and great adventures through the Rockies and beyond.

Miles today: 57.5

Tour miles: 1369