Once again I managed to get a little Farb time in yesterday:
I’ve been riding it a lot partially because I’m very pleased with the new drivetrain, but also because after you put on a whole bunch of new stuff like that you’ve got to sort of bed everything in, which is why bike shops often include a free tune-up if you buy a new bike from them. This sounds impressive to new cyclists, who don’t understand that “tune-up” in this context just means giving a barrel adjuster the quarter turn it will invariably need after the first few rides–though in the electronic age there aren’t barrel adjusters anymore, which presumably means new cyclists aren’t coming back for their post-purchase barrel adjuster turn, and the shop is losing out on any impulse buys the customer might make while they’re waiting for the mechanic to pretend he’s doing more than just twiddling a barrel adjuster, such as a really ugly jersey:
[Image borrowed from here, and for the love of Lob, DO NOT BUY IT.]
How do I know this? Because I once purchased and wore that exact same jersey. And you want to know the weird part? I didn’t even have a bike with a HeadShok, but in browsing the rack somehow fell under the delusion that this would be a cool thing to wear.
Anyway, to this day I still get embarrassed for myself when I see anything HeadShok-related, though I kind of wish I still had that jersey because I would absolutely wear now.
And if you’re wondering when I see HeadShok-related things, it happens all the time when you’re browsing Craigslist:
Sorry, that bike doesn’t need love, it needs a front wheel.
All of this is to say things are settling in nicely, though there is one thing I still need, and that’s a red car with yellow accents to match my red Farbman with yellow accents.
Fortunately I may have found just the thing:
It looks like it’s wearing one of those nose ring/earring chains:
Actually the Craigslist Cannondale would go with that car even better, now I may have to buy it.
Speaking of that new drivetrain, it of course includes an OM-1 rear derailleur, and let’s not forget I’m the [chokes back laughter] journalist who had the exclusive on it when it first came out:
This makes three bikes of mine with OM-1s, the other two being the Roadini and the Platypus (though technically those are prototypes), and I’ve also got a Shimano Rapid Rise derailleur on the Homer, which was my first one, and which Grant Petersen send me during the lengthy low-normal indoctrination process he performed on me.
So what’s the point of low-normal anyway? Well, the reverse action goes well with friction shifters in a subjective and hard-to-quantify way, but more importantly it’s the ideal derailleur to use with bar-end shifters:
With a low-normal derailleur, it’s down to downshift and up to upshift on both sides, which is not only really intuitive, but also means the levers are out of the way of your knees if you’re climbing or off-roading or any of the other stuff you might be doing in a low gear that could cause you to bump the shifter with your knee.
Also, once again, let the record reflect I am currently using these shifters in clicky-click mode, and the index with the OM-1 perfectly.
But more important that any of this is the question of which bike will get to go on vacation with me this year, and right now it’s between the Farb and the ‘Dini:
And yes, I realize nobody cares about my vacation, but if I could write anything other than self-indulgent nonsense then I wouldn’t be a blogger, now would I?
No, I’d write self-help books or something, for the betterment of humanity:
Okay, so I told the AI to generate “A self-help book by the blogger Bike Snob NYC” and that’s what it came up with. My main problem is that the author looks nothing like me (at least I don’t think it does), though I suppose it did capture my writing style rather well:
It’s true, there’s nothing I hate more than the srumps.
And if you think the fact I generated that image with nothing more than the push of a button is scary, consider that with nothing more than a push of another button I could have the AI write me that whole goddamn book.
But what kind of srump would do a thing like that?
Anyway, we first started vacationing in this location eleven years ago. Back then, gravel hadn’t been invented yet, but I was very excited about the prospect of exploring some roads strewn with Very Small Rocks. So I brought the Milwaukee and headed into the wilderness, where I promptly learned the terrain was unrideable on such a bicycle due to Medium-To-Large-Sized Rocks, and then I got lost:
So it was back to the road for the rest of the trip, and on subsequent vacations I bought bikes such as the long-departed Ritte Rust Bucket:
[Not shown on vacation.]
And yes, Ritte still sell a Snob bike, though they don’t acknowledge its origin:
However, I’m assuming Ritte has changed hands since those days, so they probably don’t even know.
I’ve also brought the Litespeed, also departed, and here’s where you tell me how crazy I was to send it back to Classic Cycle:
[Also not shown during vacation.]
I stand by my decision, yet I’m also not arguing.
But after several years I got to know the area a lot better and was ready to venture into the wilderness again, and so I brought the Jones:
[The Jones, on vacation.]
In fact I’ve brought the Jones with me a number of times, and overall it’s probably been the best vacation bike of them all, because it can go anywhere and do anything. However, I’m not bringing it this year for two reasons. The first is that I’m reasonably sure if I keep riding in the wilderness it’s only a matter of time before I get attacked by a bear or bitten by a rattlesnake, and I know this I often see bears, and because I was hiking with my family one year and would have absolutely stepped on a rattlesnake if a park ranger hadn’t happened by and pointed it out to us. In fact, even after he pointed it out I still couldn’t see it and nearly stepped on it anyway. And the second reason is that I have a new car packing configuration which requires me to carry the bicycle on the roof instead of on the hitch, and even though I guess I could get something to adapt the Jones to fit on the roof rack, I put other stuff on the roof too, and so I want to keep the weight up there to a minimum. So lighter bikes with quick release wheels have the dual advantage of being easy to carry on the roof and limiting me to the sorts or roads and trails on which I’m less likely to get attacked by a bear or bitten by a rattlesnake–or lost without a cell signal or pursued by a psychopathic cannibal like Charlize Theron in that movie I just watched on the Net Flicks:
Then there were The Homer Years:
[The Homer, vacationing.]
During this period, instead of bringing bikey shoes and bike clothes, I just brought the Homer and rode in sandals. Every so often I’d miss having drop bars, but the simplicity of this arrangement made up for it. However, I ride the Homer so much that over the years it has become completely citified:
So absent a complete overhaul it’s not coming this year.
And of course I often used to exploit the Family Bike Loophole, where I’d bring another bike for someone else to use, such as my wife, or my older son once he was big enough to ride my bikes:
[The American M-16, on vacation, ostensibly for sharing purposes.]
But eventually I have given up this ruse since nobody really wants to ride up there except me–though there was the one year when I invoked The Loophole to take both the Jones and the Y-Foil, which was maybe the most decadent vacation of them all:
I brought the Y-Foil entirely so I could take this photo for this column:
However, strange things happen to a man when he’s upstate with a Y-Foil. In fact, it’s the second-weirdest thing that can happen to you in a rural area after getting probed by aliens. See, that’s when I started to really like the bike, which I did not expect. I suppose something similar happens to lonely farmers in remote areas–after awhile they start to look at the sheep differently.
Maybe I’ll buy that HeadShok jersey and call the Ferl back from Classic Cycle…