Last week I mentioned that the lack of high-profile drug busts in pro cycling lately is making people suspicious, which is ridiculous, because a ride like this shouldn’t raise any questions at all:
Look, I’m not saying he’s cheating. I’m also not saying he isn’t cheating. I’m not even not saying he isn’t not cheating, or that he’s not not not cheating. The truth is I really don’t care what he’s doing, or he isn’t doing, because whatever he is or isn’t doing is probably the same as whatever everyone else is doing. Or nobody is doing. Or everybody isn’t doing. (Confused yet?) All I’m saying is holy crap.
Oh, here he is “blowing the field,” according to the commentary:
What a strange, strange sport.
Meanwhile, as Pogačar and Pals gear up for the Classics, I too welcome the coming of spring, which more or less raised its hands in victory over the winter this past weekend despite the fact it’s still a few kilometers shy of the equinox. Basking in the first truly warm weather we’ve experienced in months, I stopped along the mighty Hudson River on Sunday morning, where I took in the following scene as the fog lifted:
I’m not sure what’s going on there, but I like to think it’s a barge laden with rock salt making its way back to Canada because we don’t need it anymore, and if so good riddance–though I suppose if we were to get rid of all our rock salt that would virtually guarantee another blizzard.
Still, I too celebrated prematurely, by riding this:
I should probably have waited for things to dry out a little more before going completely fenderless (for my sake, not the bike’s, it’s a cyclocross bike, it doesn’t mind if it’s dirty), but when you have a bike like this in your possession it’s extremely difficult to refrain from riding it–which I have since late last year, for while I’m certainly not mollycoddling it, I’m also not taking it out when the roads are heavily salted, because what’s the point?
In a way, riding it this past weekend was like riding it for the very first time, since so much of last year was a period of adjustment (literal and figurative) for both of us. First, there was the death of a friend, with which the bike was inextricably associated. Then, there was the sheer enormity of being in possession of a Richard Sachs, something I always just took for granted would never happen. It was like I was George Costanza, the bike was Marisa Tomei, and it seemed only a matter of time before she came to her senses and left me:
If all that weren’t enough, then came the fussing. The bike didn’t really feel like it was mine, so I wasn’t going to completely change it around or anything like that. At the same time, I was absolutely going to ride it, and so I had to make it fit me and stuff, and it’s a bike built for a taller rider. Plus, there were other little things to fix, like some mild brake chatter–none of it crazy, and stuff I might even overlook on another bike, but in this case the stakes were much higher because it was a Richard Sachs, and I wanted it to be Just Right. So all of these things together made the first couple months with the bike feel like inheriting a really nice house where you’re kind of afraid to touch anything even though it’s yours now and the owners are never, ever coming back.
But I did eventually get everything sorted out, and by the late summer or early fall I found could just get on the bike and ride. And ride it I did! Because the bike is a goddamn dreamboat. But then it started snowing, and they started salting the shit out of everything, and so I set it aside for awhile and rode bikes with fenders instead.
So this time, post-hiatus, getting on the bike was different. It was a new year, and all that fussing and weird insecurity was behind me. Everything was working and fitting me just how I wanted. It was like returning to that really nice house after a road trip, dropping your bags, looking around, and thinking, “Holy shit, I live in a really nice house!” Before I’d been tiptoeing around; now I was sinking into the couch. And it’s a really comfortable couch.
Even so, as I said, I haven’t substantially reconfigured it or anything like that, and I’m not sure that I will. For example, if I were putting together a bike like this from scratch, I doubt I’d use a 1x drivetrain:
I mean I would if I were using it to race cyclocross, but those days are behind me, and for general riding I’d almost certain have gone with a double, possibly even with bar end friction shifters, Lob help me. But this is what’s on there, it works very well, and why not just let a cyclocross racing bike be a cyclocross racing bike, even if I’m not racing cyclocross on it?
As for the mild brake chatter, it’s completely gone with this particular rim and pad combination, and the braking is excellent:
Like the 1x drivetrain, if starting from scratch, I doubt I’d have used these particular brakes. To be sure, they’re very nice brakes indeed; I’d even go so far as to say this was Peak Cantilever, as it was Avid’s (SRAM’s) most ambitious take on the form, and appeared at the very end of the canti’s reign, just before the disc brake took over completely. You can even set them up with a “wide or narrow stance,” as you prefer:
But what you have to remember is that I’m a numbskull, I’m lazy, and I like simple. Remember those variously-branded Tektros you used to see all over the place?
Including on the Richard Sachs team bikes?
[Via here.]
I always liked those because they were cheap, they were easy to set up, and they worked well, so I’d probably have used something boring like that. Meanwhile, the Avids have lots more features (the barrel adjuster is a great one, for example), but they also have lots of little parts and tiny bolts, so there’s more to think about, and being a numbskull I need to be careful not to tax my tiny brain. Also, there are these little rubber o-rings, which tend to fall apart:
This doesn’t affect the function of the brake, but they’re the only things keeping those little red barrels in there when the cable isn’t connected, so if you open the brake to take out the wheel or something they fall out and you’re liable to lose them. Fortunately, I discovered this post, and I’ve been replacing them one by one as they break with those little rubber bands you use for braces:
[From the post.]
So yes, an ideal brake for someone like my friend who raced seriously and was very fastidious and prepped his bikes methodically every season, but overkill for someone like me who’s a complete dirtbag.
But like the 1x drivetrain, they’re already on there, and they work well, and they’re cool, and so they’re staying.
And yes, it’s true, nothing rides like a finely crafted steel frame:
Though I also picked up a titanium frame over the weekend:
I’m seeing things much more clearly now.