Ready for my closeup.

I bought one of those cheap “ring lights” in a vain (in more ways than one) attempt to look less homely on video calls for work. Of course, it failed miserably at that task - a few bucks worth of plastic and LEDs can’t work miracles - but as I studied the mounting clip, I was struck by an idea:

Voila! Basket-mounted, USB-rechargeable bike headlight!

No clue how well the clip will hold up over bumps, how many lumens this bad boy puts out, or how long it will last on a full charge, but I figure it adds some visibility to my basketed steed as a supplement to my “real” light, and what else was I going to do with it? 

For the beam nerds, here’s what it looks like lit up in my garage:

I was never destined for YouTube stardom anyway…

Overcoming some deep-seated snobbery.

The first bike shop I worked in was just a corner of a hardware store. Our clientele wasn't particularly interested in the minutiae of tubing butt profiles, chromoly versus aluminum, Shimano's complex and arcane product hierarchy, and the like. So I learned quickly to point out visible differences between different bike models that would justify the difference in price from one to the next.

One easy marker (at least in the late 1980s) was wheel retention: the cheapest bikes had bolt-on wheels front and rear. Spend a little more, and you'd get a quick-release front wheel - which could be sold as "easy to remove so you can fit the bike in your car." Another rung up the price ladder got you quick-releases front and rear, which made flat repair so much easier - a dubious value proposition when most people brought their bikes to us to fix their flats, but at least it was a visible thing I could point to.

For those who weren't impressed with wheel retention, I'd turn to pedals. The cheapest bikes had all-plastic pedals. Further up the line, you'd get plastic bodies with metal cages. And the good bikes would have pedals with both metal bodies and metal cages. Now that we're in an era where all bikes either come without pedals (under the assumption that the buyer will add their own favorite model of clipless pedal) or come with those cheap, all-plastic pedals as test ride placeholders, it's hard to believe that pedals could actually be a selling point, but there you have it.

That formative experience has left me as a bit of a metal-pedal snob, though. So it's a bit surprising that my main steed is now wearing these:

What can I say? The supply chains are weird these days, I'm a cheapskate, and I wanted something big, thin, light, and concave, so I put aside my anti-plastic bias and gave these Tioga Surefoot Slims a shot since they seemed to tick all the right boxes on paper. Too soon to give a full, definitive review, but I like them after a few rides. We'll see how they hold up after a few months under my paddle-feet.

The best Shimano cantilever brake that Shimano never made.

I know that declaring the "best cantilever brake" in 2021 is not unlike announcing the best dirigible (insert "oh, the humanity!" joke here, unless 84 years later is still "too soon" for that), but I'm going to yet again make a bold-yet-outdated pronouncement and call this the BEST CANTILEVER BRAKE EVER:

What you're seeing is a Shimano BR-M550 (a.k.a. Deore LX) brake (or more accurately, half of it) from the early 1990s, brought out of the Age of Grunge with some modern brake pads (the modern-ish straddle hanger is just there because I was too lazy to put something else in its place). So what makes this thing so great, you ask? (Humor me and ask, or I'll just pretend you did.)

1. Medium-profile geometry. If you want to go deep down the cantilever brake theory rabbit hole (hey, I don't judge), there still isn't anyone who's done it better than the late, great Sheldon Brown. But for those who just want to finish reading this list and get back to their corn flakes, a medium-profile brake is easy to set up while offering scads of power and modulation from both flat-bar and drop-bar brake levers.
2. That little pad upgrade. Shimano was SO close to perfection with these back in the early 90s, except that they hadn't figured out the now-ubiquitous threaded-post brake shoe hardware (that would come with V-brakes around 1995). Instead, the brakes came with these comically fat pads (seriously, they're like a caricature of a brake pad) with awkward and insufficient toe-in adjustment (as an annoying bonus, the choice of pad and hardware also made these brakes somewhat intolerant of little details like varying rim width or cantilever post spacing, likely because this was when Shimano thought it could bend the entire industry to its will and mandate such dimensions). Dump those, throw in some modern pad holders (I'm using Tektro holders and Kool Stop inserts), and you've made a brake that was already easy to set up laughably easy.
   
3. Shimano's good stuff. These babies were made in Japan when the Japanese bike parts makers were absolutely at the top of their game, and it shows. I do have a soft spot for modern Tektro cantilevers, but you can install one brand-new from the box that has more play in it than this 30-year-old LX. Is it a little heavier than it absolutely needs to be? Maybe. But when you pair the brick-shitehouse construction with the precise tolerances, all your squeeze goes into stopping rather than flexing or squealing. That's worth a few grams in my book.
4. No respect. I don’t remember anyone being enamored with these back in the day (likely due to the foibles mentioned above), and they haven’t seen a huge growth in popularity since (though I’m sure this post will cause a run on them). The vanishingly small subset of people who convert vintage touring bikes from 27” wheels to 700c report that they work great with the narrow post spacing on some of those bikes, but otherwise, these are seen as parts box detritus - which means you can snap them up on the cheap.
5. Not-stupid design. Why for the love of all that is good and decent do so many modern cantilever and V-brakes not open up all the way when you undo the straddle? Is it that hard to design a brake that lets the pad clear the fork blades and seatstays? What's the point of a brake that clears a super-fat tire if you can't get that super-fat tire past the brake pads without deflating it when you try to take the wheel off the bike? Do I have any more rhetorical questions? Could I possibly just illustrate this point with a photo instead?
   

Shimano has tried to recapture and improve upon the 550 magic a few times in the three decades hence, most recently with a couple (now discontinued) CX-series models, although those used yet another oddball style of pad mounting hardware. So if you want the good stuff, head (safely, please) down to the local bike co-op and dig through the boxes for some crusty cantilevers of yesteryear.

This again?

Yep, back like a bad check. Because nothing's more timely and cutting-edge in 2021 than... a blog. (I considered TikTok, but if you've seen me dance, you know that's a terrible idea.)

Rather than offer a tiresome explanation of where I've been and what I've been up to (because I think we can all agree that nobody needs a rehash of the last few years), I'm just going to try to pick up where I left off, boring all six of you with my increasingly outdated and curmudgeonly look at obscure bits of bike stuff. In short, I'll be writing about things that entertain me, and if I happen to entertain or inform you along the way, well, that's just grand.

All good? Then buckle up, because it's going to be a yawn-inducing ride.

Outsourcing Strikes The Cycle

It's about time to turn this dusty corner of the internet over to another one of my beloved (because he ain't me) guest reviewers. This time, it's long-time Internet BOB member, known cycling sartorialist, and the man who's never met a steel frame he couldn't improve with a ball peen hammer and a hacksaw, Patrick Moore. I sent Patrick a sampling of my Leg Shield booty so he could put it through its paces in the desert climate of Nuevo Mexico and see how it fared compared to here in Iowa. But enough of my mindless circling the airport... take it away, Patrick!

---

When I opened the package and first saw it -- bright yellow -- I laughed. It reminded me so much of the greaves of a medieval knight, or even better, of a cast for a broken tibia. Although I've often thought that puttees should make a comeback to protect one's pants while riding in dirty conditions, this thing seemed in comparison to the old fashioned metal spring "trouser clips" that used to hang by the cash register at every bike shop huge overkill, yet compared to puttees or spats they are too short to protect more than your ankles. I debated between "insufficient" and "overkill" and finally decided on the latter. You don't, I thought, need something this elaborate to keep your pants out of your chain.

But I did try it. I often ride the 7-8 miles to church in civilian clothes, and recently I've been wearing a $16 pair of Target "khakis" made  from nylon. Don't laugh; they look better than they sound, and they are much more comfortable in the saddle because they don't bind and chafe as cotton khakis do. They have 80% of the looks and none of the discomfort. The nylon is well woven and sturdy; it doesn't pill, and it doesn't bag. And they cost $16.

But the fabric has a more slippery hand than cotton twill, and my trouser clips slip off after a mile or less. The reflective ankle band supplied by the same company, which I used on my left leg, slipped off after 1 1/2 mile. But the Leg Shield stayed on. And, the Leg Shield was easier to attach: its tall and full shape helps gather the fabric when you strap it in place. 

I rode 7 miles to church via our sandy acequia (irrigation ditch) roads -- this is NW Albuquerque, where the pre-Colombian and Hispanic-era irrigation system diverting water from the Rio Grande is still very much in use, with the ancient water laws still in place under the independent water authority. The system of ditches and sluices extends the length of the state and, in the Albuquerque area, I've read that there are some 600 miles of acequias an associated paths and roads.

The Leg Shield went on easily, without having to fight to fold the fabric underneath; it stayed in place for the distance; and it kept even slight traces of acequia trail dust off my hems. It does work. I ordered a second from Amazon. Black, this time.

The company's ankle bands are wholly undistinguished; you can find those things anywhere. I didn't even bother with the wrist band, after at first trying to attach it as an ankle band and wondering why it was so short. But the Leg Shield, as risible as it is, is worth at least a look.

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So there you have it, folks. Big thanks to Patrick for classing up the joint, teaching me the very apt word "greaves" (praise be to my MFA, I already knew "risible"), and making me wonder how I've thrown words at this blog for so long without finding an excuse to mention sluices.

What's In The Box?!?

Proving that every bike nerd is his or her own unique and precious snowflake, here's something from the Bicycle Museum of America that caused me to geek out mightily, yet most visitors probably never gave it a second look:

If you've already zoomed in on the signage, you're probably asking, "What's so special about a 1913 Shawmut Racing Safety in Crate from Bigelow & Douse Co. in Boston, MA?" Or maybe you've looked at the top of the crate and wondered if Willard C. Spencer of (some illegible town in New Hampshire) is a distant relative of mine.

It's the "In Crate" part. Having unboxed and assembled literally (and I literally mean literally) hundreds of bikes in my brief career as a bike mechanic, I was nerdily fascinated by this example of how bikes were packed for shipping over a century ago. Surprisingly, this early 20th century box job bears some striking resemblances to its late 20th century counterpart. (Having been out of the business for a while, I don't know if the 21st century has brought about some new jetpack-fueled Jetsonian miracle of modern bicycle packaging technology, but I kinda doubt it.)

Your late 20th century bike arrives in a corrugated cardboard box about the same size and shape as this 1913 wooden crate, though it will have its front wheel removed and tucked alongside to reduce the length of the box slightly (I guess UPS drivers weren't so picky in 1913). Its handlebars will be zip-tied to the frame, zip-ties being the Y2K equivalent of the twine holding the 1913 bike's bars (unless you're Grant Petersen, in which case twine is the Y2K equivalent of twine). And finally, all the small, loose parts will be packaged in a separate, smaller cardboard box inside the larger box, just like the wooden cubby in the upper left of the 1913 crate containing what appears to be the saddle, a bell, and a little adjustable wrench (IKEA's got nothing on Bigelow & Douse). In both cases, your bike travels mostly assembled, just waiting for some shop mechanic to set it free via crowbar or boxcutter, finish the assembly, and make the final adjustments. After that, it's New Bike Day for Willard C. Spencer of (unintelligble) New Hampshire!

It does appear that we've become better about protecting paint in the last 100 years, since today's bikes travel with all their tubes swaddled in foam, cardboard, or both. 1913 bikes also didn't have delicate, dangly rear derailleurs to protect in transit. Still, having traveled by plane with a valuable bike in a cardboard box, I'd feel much safer trusting my precious to a crate from 1913... if only to see the TSA guys scratch their heads and go searching for a crowbar.

Bucket List: Checked

Dear Spouse and I recently spent a long weekend in Columbus, Ohio. Yes, you heard me correctly: I vacationed in Columbus Frickin' Ohio. The rumors you've heard about the jet-setting, party-never-stops lifestyle of the amateur blogger are true.

During our journey, we took a short side trip out to New Bremen, Ohio, home of the Bicycle Museum of America. That website may be a trip back in time in an entirely unintended way (I kid! I kid!), but the museum? Wow. I can almost guarantee that even the most jaded bike nerd will see at least one bike in the collection they've only seen in a book, and maybe one more they didn't even know existed.

I intend to share and possibly pontificate upon all sorts of lousy photos I took in the museum, but for now, here's one from Dear Spouse, capturing me achieving a Major Life Goal:

That, dear friends (like I have to tell you) is Pee Wee Herman's bike from the greatest cycling film ever committed to celluloid, Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Think I'm wrong? In the words of Mr. Herman himself, "I know you are, but what am I?"

I tried to buy the bike, but it's not for sale, Francis.

Strap In

My long-ago promised long-term test of lots of light-reflecting, leg-strapping technology has at long last arrived! (See, you thought there wasn't even a blog here any more, didn't you?)

In a nutshell (so you can stop reading and go back to cat videos): I am duly impressed by this Leg Shield stuff, especially their ankle and wrist bands. Sure, it's hard to get super excited about reflective ankle bands, but if you're going to make (or buy) a reflective ankle band, why make (or buy) a crappy one? The price difference between "lousy" and "really well done" is about the price of a fancy coffee, and it's safety we're talking about here (though one could argue that not giving me coffee is also a safety hazard).

Nothing illustrates that "safety" point better than this photo I just snapped in our top-secret testing laboratory here at The Cycle World Headquarters:

In the interest of science, I grabbed all the reflective bands I could find in the garage (er, laboratory), wrapped them around the basket of my commuter mule, turned on the flash on my phone camera, and snapped away. The two visual representations of the word "meh" on your right are the sort of thing you can find at just about any sporting goods store (I think the brand is Nathan), while that retina-searing, sci-fi-movie special effect on your left is a Leg Shield ankle band. The Leg Shield folks confirmed that their reflective material is not made by 3M (for now), but jeez, looking at these results, who cares? Not I. The thing is so bright, it even summoned the ghost of another reflective band which you can see on the floor next to my front tire.

So let's talk about the less-photogenic Leg Shield, which is the product I was really interested in at the start of this test. Sure, I have a chain guard on the mule photographed above, but my go-slightly-faster bike sports no such built-in pants protecting technology, and I often ride said go-slightly-faster bike in human clothes on my morning commute. As such, I need something to keep chain grunge off my pants, it needs to be easy to take on and off, and it shouldn't make my calf gross and sweaty during my commute.

I'm happy to report that after several months of testing, the Leg Shield hit 2.5 out of 3 of those requirements. It keeps crap off my pants, both of the chain variety and the "puddle scum that got around my front fender" variety. It's easy to put on and take off. And for my short, relatively low-exertion commute, it doesn't trigger my Sweaty Calf Syndrome. However, in the interest of science (yet again), I wore the Leg Shield over jeans a couple of times this summer and took my "long way home" (about 10 miles) in legendary Iowa humidity as a "worst case scenario" simulation of what someone with a longer commute might encounter. In those admittedly sub-optimal conditions, the sweat was pretty prodigious (even for me), leading to one obviously wet and wrinkly pant leg when I took the shield off, even after stopping to loosen it up for improved airflow.
 
In response to my initial concerns (since confirmed) about Sweaty Calf Syndrome, the good folks at Leg Shield had this to say: "We tested various materials (perforated neoprene, felt, spandex) but they weren't much cooler... if we make the shield smaller it's not as effective. Neoprene is durable, flexible, and not as flimsy, so it's easy to put on." Fair enough. So my recommendation would be, in cooler temps or areas of the world with less humidity, go with a Leg Shield. When the temperature (or your commute distance) climbs, use the ankle band instead. It's wide enough and grippy enough to keep your pant leg off the chain but doesn't have enough surface area to fire up the sweat glands... and you get more reflectivity to boot.

With all that said, it's now shifting to winter here in Iowa, and I'll be switching almost exclusively to the chainguarded klunker for my commute needs, so I won't have much use for leg shielding for a while... which is why I'm going to share my test samples with a Mystery Guest Reviewer (stay tuned!) to get even more opinionated blather. I'm wrapping a couple straps around strategic parts of the klunk-muter, though -- no way I'm letting something that bright go to waste during the darkest months of the year.

I said it before, but it bears repeating: I was not bribed, coerced, or otherwise unduly influenced to review this stuff favorably, though the Leg Shield folks did send me free review samples. I am susceptible to schwag but tried not to let that influence my opinions.

Spoiler Alert

Rosebud was a sled! Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father!

Sorry, nope, not that kind of spoiler. Here, I'm talking about bicycle accessories that I once thought were dorky, but now that I've given them a chance, I find them eminently functional and kinda hard to live without. In other words, they've spoiled me.

Exhibit A: The front basket. Dorky, right? I mean, what are you, a paperboy? A Frenchman delivering baguettes? The one shown was purchased for Dear Spouse's now-departed single bike (what can I say? she likes riding the tandem despite having to look at me the whole time) and languished in the garage until I brought home the Klunker Project. I slapped it on there on a lark, and whaddya know? It's downright nice. Who needs a fancy commuting backpack (and a sweaty back) when you can just throw your lock and lunch in a basket? Picking up some groceries? Basket. Garage sale? Basket. Six-pack of malted adult beverage? Basket. Stray puppy? Basket.

Exhibit B: The kickstand. Epitome of dork-ness. How many times did I have to stifle my bike-shop-snob sneer when a customer asked, "Can you put a kickstand on my new bike?" Sure, I put one on our tandem because it's not always easy to find someplace to lean that two-wheeled stretch limo. But a stand never graced my single bikes... until the Klunker Project arrived. For an errand/townie bike, self-leaning is a pretty nice feature. Consider this a retroactive apology to every customer I silently judged back in the day.

I'm getting a three-fer in this photo:

1. Singlespeed drivetrain: So little to go wrong.
2. Flat pedals: Who needs special shoes? Just pedal!
3. Chainguard: My pant leg shall never know the touch of grease again.

So, those are my spoilers. What are yours?

Let's Get Visible, Visible

It's time yet again for a product review here at The Cycle! All together now: "Yay."

I was recently contacted by the folks at Leg Shield to see if I would be interested in trying out a few of their visibility aids. Being somewhat obsessed about not getting run over while commuting (hence my status as the World's Most Conspicuous Ninja), I said (paraphrasing), "Heck yes."

Shortly thereafter, an envelope arrived in the mail containing the following:

You're seeing two of the eponymous Leg Shields (one stealth black, one tennis-ball yellow with reflective stripes), two ankle bands (both are reflective on the outside, I just flipped one over to show its black underbelly), and two wrist bands (ditto). All are made from a fairly thin, stretchy neoprene material.

Now, the real fun with reflective stuff is to turn on the flash on your phone and take the same picture... so I did just that:

As expected, the stealth Leg Shield disappears. The reflective parts of the yellow shield light up, but there isn't much reflective there. The stars of this simulated headlight scenario are the screamingly bright wrist and ankle bands. My benchmark for good reflective material is 3M Scotchlite tape, and these are just as bright, not to mention having more reflective surface area than any other reflective band in my vast collection.

Construction quality seems good at first glance -- the stitching is well done, and the Velcro even has nicely rounded corners. That's a nit-picky detail, sure, but it does feel better when you use it compared to a squared-off corner. Brace for groaner Dad-joke wordplay: I guess you could say that by cutting corners, they're not cutting corners. (Thank yew! I'll be here all week! Tip your waitress!)

I wasn't planning to put a "ride test" in my first impressions post, but after tonight's commute, I noticed this:

See the little schmutz spot above the lower reflective stripe? I lubed my chain last night (first time in months), but I wasn't very fastidious with the "wipe off excess" step. It certainly wasn't a planned, scientific test, but the photo doesn't lie -- the Leg Shield did in fact shield my leg.

I'll have more to say once all the shields and bands have spent an extended test period wrapped around my chubby ankles and wrists. I'm especially curious how they'll fare over the long term compared to the bands I've been using, and whether or not the shields will trigger Sweaty Calf Syndrome (SCS) given than I have an almost superhuman ability to produce a disproportionate amount of perspiration from the most meager exertion.

The usual disclaimer applies: I was not bribed, coerced, or otherwise unduly influenced to review this stuff favorably. The Leg Shield folks did send me the products you see above at no cost to me, but I will do my level best not to let that color my opinions about the products themselves.

Whoops

Every once in a great while, the Mechanical Gods cut a big slice out of the humble pie, glop some hubris on top, and force-feed it to me. Here's a prime example:

Ugh. Just looking at that photo again makes me throw up in my mouth a little. What you are seeing is one end of a no-longer-produced-and-increasingly-rare/somewhat-coveted Salsa Bell Lap handlebar. I picked it up as part of a long-forgotten Craigslist bike purchase (seeing a trend from my last post?), but at the time of purchase, it didn't look like it had lost a battle with a rechargeable drill. In fact, it was nigh on pristine, a real survivor.

So what happened? Near as I can figure, when I installed brake levers on the bar, the mounting bolts were too long and protruded out the back side of the clamp, drilling into the bar before they could sufficiently tighten the levers. How was I so stupid and ham-fisted that I couldn't feel that happening? I have no idea. The multiple puncture wounds tell me that I was that stupid and ham-fisted not once, not twice, but thrice (and the not-pictured other end of the bar provided evidence of yet another thrice).

Thankfully, I was struck by the urge to swap these bars to another bike and discovered my stupidity before putting too many miles on them in this condition. Talk about the mother of all stress risers... it wouldn't have taken too many cycles of my girthy torso flexing them to snap the ends right off and send a mouthful of expensive dental work to the pavement. I took a hacksaw to them multiple times before throwing them in the trash just to ensure that they will never grace a bicycle and risk someone's life and limb again.

Project Update: Klunker v2.0

Just popping in to show off the progress of my recently acquired cruiser/klunker/olde school MTB project. It's looking pretty darn good, if I do say so myself (and I do):

Kickstands make garage posing so easy.

Changes since this steed last graced these pages:

• Disintegrating cruiser whitewalls replaced with Tioga PowerBlocks.
• Similarly disintegrating foam grips replaced with some from my stash.
• Rubber block pedals replaced with big BMX flats.
• Several tons of steel seatpost and couch saddle changed out for an aluminum post and slightly more svelte saddle.
• Original chromed steel bars swapped for aluminum ones with slightly less sweep.
• Added a full front/rear BMX caliper brakeset (with cable zip-tied on, because I've made peace with the zip-tie -- and it is a klunker, after all).
• Accessorized with a bottle cage, lights, and a bell.

I also dropped the stem a bit to give a more balanced riding position -- still far from what I'd consider aggressive, but at least I don't look like I'm doing the shopping cart when I ride it. In a completely vain and superficial bonus, I think it makes the front end look more retro-MTB cool (those chubby blackwall PowerBlocks help too):

Since it still has the original 3-speed coaster brake wheel, I have a bit of brake redundancy in the back with the BMX rim brake. It's been so long since I rode a coaster brake regularly that it just isn't as natural to me as reaching for a matched pair of brake levers. Plus, since this will likely be my snow bike, an extra means of slowing down in sloppy conditions isn't such a terrible thing.

If it's truly going to be a utilitarian city brute, it probably still needs some means of carrying stuff, but for now, I'm happy with keeping it (relatively) stripped down and wearing a backpack if necessary. The nice thing is, most of this stuff came from my stash, so I was able to customize it to my somewhat eclectic whims without driving up the total cost too far. Bless you, Craigslist and deep parts boxes.

Looks Good on Paper: The Public V7

One of the downsides of being an amateur/armchair bike blogger is that nobody's clamoring to send me stuff (especially bikes) to review. After all, what's the benefit to the bike company? They spend money to ship me one of their bikes, and I either like it (which about three readers will see) or I hate it, thus branding it as a dud to every casual Googler from here to eternity.

One of the upsides of being an amateur/armchair bike blogger that nobody's clamoring to send stuff to, however, is that I can wander around the vast internets and choose stuff that looks good to me without all the hard work of actually riding and reviewing said stuff. Sure, it's a clear-cut violation of my own Advertising & Review Policy, but that's why I included the "mutable at my whim" clause. So, consider it muted for this post, as I give you the (never ridden by me) Public V7:

(Image horked from Public's site, where you can learn more about the bike.)

During a recent globe-trotting, the hotel where I lay my head kept a small fleet of remarkably sensible-looking bikes on hand for guests to borrow. I never did, but I was intrigued enough by them to internet-stalk the maker and model, and it turns out it was this here Public V7, wearing the hotel's logo.

To me, this simple steed (and any number of hipster-bait, Americanized-Dutch clones) is all the bike most people need. In fact, if I'm being honest, it's probably all the bike I need. Here's what I like:

• Chubby tires for comfort.
• Fenders to keep your butt dry.
• Upright riding position for (again) comfort.
• Easily adjusted and maintained dual-pivot brakes.
• Simple, user-friendly 1x7 drivetrain.
• A chainguard to keep your pants out of said drivetrain.
• Stylish/non-garish paint and decals.
• Brazeons for carrying stuff.
• Bolt-on hubs to thwart wheel-thieves.

Being a picker of nits, I would tweak a couple things, of course:

• Threadless steerer, please, even though I know it kills the traditional/retro look. I just like 'em better.
• White tires? And white Kenda Kwests (Tires of the Zombie Apocalypse) no less? Double pass. They'll look like crap after one ride, and ride like crap forever.
• I'm meh on the brown saddle and grips, but that's aesthetic, not functional (yet they had me at color-matched rims, which is probably just as silly).
• $500 MSRP, while perfectly reasonable for the feature set, is still pretty steep for the casual "not bike people" audience this thing is targeting (there's a singlespeed version for $100 less, but then you're trading versatility for simplicity and cost).

Again, I cannot stress enough that I have never ridden a Public V7. For all I know, it could go down the road like a walrus in labor. But it ticks many good, sensible boxes... and if someone from Public (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) happened upon this review and wanted to help me make it more exhaustive, I certainly wouldn't refuse a visit from the Big Brown Truck.

All Hail the Humble Dork Nut

Technically, it's called a presta valve nut, and if you're unfortunate enough to haunt the online bike forums, you've likely heard its utility/necessity debated ad infinitum and ad nauseum. It's the (usually knurled) metal donut that comes with every presta valve tube, designed to be threaded onto the valve once the tube is installed.

What's it supposed to do? Shoot, I was a mechanic for years, and I've ridden presta valves since the days I was tight-rolling my jeans, but I have no idea. I suppose it keeps you from pushing the valve down into the rim when you put a pump head on it (which, 99 times out of 100, the air pressure already in the tube will do, and in the other one time, your hand can suffice), or maybe it keeps the the valve perpendicular to the rim if your pressure gets low and the tire/tube rotates on the rim (though in that case, the valve is just going to get ripped out of the tube, a slightly more troubling development than a valve at a 70-degree angle).

In my experience, the only thing a dork nut does when installed in its intended location is slowly loosen and rattle. Thus, I don't use them on my wheels as designed... but I save and hoard them like precious currency. Why? Because they make great spacers. To whit:

Installing a bottle cage on your seat tube but the stupid front derailleur clamp is in the way? Dork nuts to the rescue! Note how one dork nut installed between cage and frame on each bottle brazeon creates just enough space to clear the clamp on my trusty Rockhopper. The knurled-ness just adds a bit of custom bling beyond an (equally functional but not as pretty) stack of washers. One is sufficient on the thin steel clamp of the vintage MTB front derailleurs I prefer (like the one shown), but you might need a stack of two per brazeon for the clunky clamps of Shimano's more modern offerings. Just make sure your bolts are long enough to engage the brazeon fully.

Another place where I often use a dork nut (though not on the current fleet, so you'll just have to imagine it without one of my terrible photos) is on the driveside rear rack/fender brazeon. If I install a rack or fender and find that the bolt protrudes beyond the brazeon enough to keep the chain from engaging the small cog, I'm usually way too lazy to find a shorter bolt or cut the one I have. A dork nut under the head of the bolt takes up that extra space with minimal effort, and I'm good to go. You can also hide the nut between the brazeon and whatever you happen to be mounting, but I'd be wary of doing too much of that with something load-bearing like a rack. Will a couple millimeters of extra leverage on that bolt really matter? Probably not, but why chance it?

Minutiae? Sure. But it's a good hack using something you probably already have littering your garage floor, at least if your garage floor is anything like mine.

Klunk!

No, that's not the sound of a post dropping on a blog that's been dormant for... sheesh, 10 months? Let's just pretend that hiatus never happened and move on, shall we?

Instead, that titular onomatopoeia (yeah, somebody got an English degree or two) is an homage to klunkers, the original mountain bikes. If you've hung around here through my many ramblings and random disappearances, you know that I'm nigh on obsessed with early mountain bikes and the vintage cruiser bikes that provided their DNA. A search of this blog for the word Phantoms will show you my futile attempt to render that obsession in a serious, writerly pursuit (an effort one of my grad school cohorts half-jokingly suggested should be titled "Bicycles: A Love Story").

That lengthy airport-circling introduction is just my way of saying I have a new toy, snared from the local  List of Craig for the princely sum of fifty bucks:

(Not my saddle height.)

You can't tell much from a rainy-day garage photo (especially when the photographer sucks), so I'll do my best to provide the thousand words that picture should be worth. What you're looking at is a 1995 Schwinn Suburban, from Schwinn's 100th anniversary year. The Suburbans I remember from my 1970s youth were upright-barred, fender-equipped 10-speeds, probably categorized in marketing-speak as "lightweights" even though they weighed a small ton. My mom had one in copper, which teenage me did my best to wreck with limited success. Schwinn took that lifetime warranty seriously and built 'em to last.

This Suburban, however, is cruiser/klunker/heavyweight all the way, though. It appears to be based on their Heavy Duti (sic) "industrial-grade" cruiser, a massive camelback-framed, double-top-tubed beast of a thing designed to be bashed around factories and warehouses. The more-refined Suburban version takes the Heavy Duti frame and gentrifies it slightly with a three-speed coaster brake rear wheel. It also gets some surprisingly modern frame features, most notably a standard threaded bottom bracket shell rather than the Ashtabula/one-piece style of most cruisers, and even a full host of brazeons for racks, fenders, and two (two!) water bottle cages. Go figure. Oh, and of course it features one of the most iconic headbadges in the business:

I've ridden this around town a bit in its stock configuration, and it's a hoot. Stately, upright, yet ready to bash into things when necessary. As a die-hard derailleur guy, I can't say I'm entirely sold on the 3-speed/coaster brake setup, even though it was fun to relive my wayward childhood and lay down a couple wicked coaster-brake skids. I've since replaced the small couch masquerading as a saddle and chunk of rebar masquerading as a seatpost with slightly lighter, more modern counterparts and dumped the disintegrating foam grips.

It would be fun to go full-klunker on this one:

• Strip the fenders and chainguard.
• Replace the 3-speed rear wheel with a freewheel equivalent.
• Add a thumbshifter, claw-mount rear derailleur, and full cable run zip-tied on.
• Add a BMX rear brake, big four-finger brake levers, and BMX bars.

Can't really justify the expense for a whim purchase, though, so it will likely stay close to stock and serve as a beater/backup/snow bike for the time being. But man, if Tweed Rides ever introduce a "Repack" category (complete with jeans, flannel shirts, and work boots), I'll be ready.

Prognostications 2017: The Return of Schraeder

No, not this guy:

This one:

That's right, I'm getting bold and saying that 2017 will be the Year of the Schraeder Valve.

(Aside: Don't be fooled by the metal valve in the photo. That's not a Presta valve; it's a fancy, newfangled Schraeder valve as blathered about here.)

Okay, so it's not that bold. It's not like the Schraeder valve ever went away. You'll still find them on scads of low- to mid-range bikes, not to mention those four-wheeled, gas-powered horseless carriages that seem to be all the rage. But I'm saying here and now that in 2017, the Schraeder valve will make a comeback on high-end bikes. Here's why:

One, everybody's going wide. Fat bikes with 5" tires. Gravel bikes with 700x45. Heck, even pro racers are riding 700x25 or 700x28 these days. And they've all figured out that wider tires are better supported by wider rims. In days of yore, high-performance, light rims were stupid-skinny, narrow enough that you'd be pushing your luck drilling the larger hole needed to accommodate a Schraeder valve compared to the narrower Presta (which didn't preclude me from doing it a few times, because, well, I was dumb). With a wider rim, why not? Probably shaves a fraction of a gram, too.

Two, with wide comes low. As the tires get wider, the pressure in them gets lower, to the almost comical extreme of fatbike tires at single-digit pressures. The knock against the Schraeder valve was always that it didn't cope well with high pressures. In a skinny tire at 120psi, that little valve flatulence from removing the pump head from a Schraeder valve could cost you 20 psi. In a big honkin' tire at 40-50 psi, you'd never notice.

Three, tubes are passe, don't you know? The big thing now is TUBELESS. You're still running tubes? Well, so am I. But, man, that's so 20th century! And tubelessness brings with it two needs that the Schraeder valve meets far better than Presta. First, setting the beads of the tire takes a lot of air volume in a big hurry, something best delivered by an air compressor -- and most air compressors use Schraeder fittings to work with those horseless carriages. Second, tubeless relies on sealant to fill small holes in the tire, sealant best delivered through a removable-core valve stem. Yes, there are plenty of Presta valves with removable cores, but they're fiddly compared to the good old fashioned Schraeder valve and its ubiquitous valve core tool, likely found in every hardware store and gas station from coast to coast.

I haven't really put my money where my mouth is on this one yet. If you look at the vast test fleet here at The Cycle, you'll find a mish-mosh of valves... some Presta here, some Schraeder there (it helps that my battered old floor pump has been upgraded to a dual-sided head and is thus valve-agnostic). But when I look at that fancy metal Schraeder valve with dork-nut above, I'm sorely tempted to break out the drill and make the whole fleet Schraeder-compliant.

Rub Some Dirt On It

Poked around my old photos and found yet more evidence of my own folly dating back to those more innocent times in early/mid-2016. Y'see, when I added the Red Sled to my collection, I borrowed the fenders from my Rockhopper for it and (very briefly) considered the Rockhopper a stripped-down "go-fast" (snort, snicker) bike.

Of course, I then decided to commute on the stripped-down "go-fast" (chortle, guffaw) on what promised to be a dry day... which promptly turned into a rainy day the moment I arrived at my office. At least the commute home provided some artsy-fartsy blog fodder photos, to whit:

Mmmm... crusty drivetrain parts. Can't you just hear the sand in the chain, grinding its life away? (To add the tiniest bit of value, notice the presta valve dork nuts under the bottle cage, spacing it out over the front derailleur clamp. Pro tip!)

I am perhaps the worst smug bastard on earth whenever I see a fenderless rider get a skunk-stripe of grunge on his or her back. Here's karma in the form of a serious mud bath all over my Arkel backpack, a fairly new addition to my increasingly large and embarrassing bag collection that I have yet to fully review on these pages. Mini review: The stuff inside stayed bone dry, and the crust wiped right off without a trace.

Jeez, now it's a "how many different brands of (non-matching) bags can he stick in one post?" contest. This is my who-know-how-old Jandd handlebar bag, one of those tubular/barrel-shaped throwbacks that adorned the saddle or bars (or both) of a lot of 1970s ten-speeds. It may look like this bag took the brunt of the front wheel spray, but trust me, there was still plenty left for my face.

The moral of the story: Fenders. Or mudguards, if you're British. After this ride, I abandoned the silliness of a "go-fast" and adorned that sucker with a set of legit full-coverage fenders post haste. The bike still gets filthy because I'm lazy, but at least my teeth don't.

Prognostications 2017: The Year the Rim Brake Died

Predicting the future in the bike business is an exercise fraught with peril. Take for example, my pal Bill, a former bike shop owner and my former boss, who saw mountain bikes coming out in the 80s and predicted that they would be the end of his business, since they were "so durable that they would never need repair." (For the record, Bill is now out of the business by choice, not because he was driven out by those indestructable mountain bikes.)

I wasn't in the business when MTBs hit, but if a customized Delorean had pulled up to Bill's shop in 1999 with a message from 2017 that the 26" wheel (a.k.a. 559mm bead-seat-diameter) was all but gone, replaced by some obscure French size we probably didn't have in stock, I would have laughed that fool right out of the parking lot. Yet, here we are in 2017, and see how many 26"-wheeled bikes you can find in the catalogs of any of the big players. They've all been pushed aside for 27.5", a.k.a. 584mm bead-seat-diameter, a.k.a. the obscure French 650B.

Still, with all that evidence of past failures piled up against me, and my own Luddite retrogrouch tendencies crying "say it ain't so!", I'm going to step out onto a dried, cracking limb and say that 2017 will be remembered as the year that the invasive species known as the disc brake finally sucked up all the oxygen, leaving nothing for rim brakes.

Sure, the pro peloton hasn't embraced them (yet). But that (finally) doesn't matter. We're in a marketing moment where new riders just aren't excited about skinny dudes on skinny tires in tight shorts (not that there's anything WRONG with that). For all my grumbling about the hooey around gravel bikes, the industry push these days is away from one-trick race machines towards all-surface, all-purpose bikes (you could say that Rivendell's vindication finally came). For once, a bike can still sell even if it doesn't look like the one some doped-up freak with 2% body fat rode real fast around France for three weeks. And for better or worse, the big players (and fashion police) have decided that those all-surface bikes must be disc-equipped.

Once those high-end/enthusiast dominoes have fallen (and you don't have to spend much time looking around your local bike shop or trail to see that they have), it's just a matter of time before rim brakes go extinct all the way down to the Wal-Mart level. The message that discs are better in wet, mud, and snow is pervasive... even though a huge percentage of riders won't go out in those conditions anyway, and would be just as well served by a good rim brake. The stores are going to love it, because the ability to brake no longer relies on the ability to keep a wheel trued. And the manufacturers are going to love it because they only have to weld on a couple disc tabs per frame rather than four precisely-aligned cantilever posts.

Fear not, those who come here for retro-grouch grumbling. The Cycle World Headquarters remains a disc-free zone, mainly because I'm not the least bit dissatisfied with the cantilevers and V-brakes in my fleet -- they even work on (gasp!) gravel. (It also helps that switching brake paradigms at this point would be a costly and time-consuming endeavor, and I'm a cheap, lazy man.) Still, even though I've held out vain hope that discs would be the Biopace chainrings or chainstay-mounted U-brakes of the 21st century, I think we're stuck with them.

PSA: Pal Steve Announcement

If you're a Des Moineser (Des Moinesian? Des Moinesiac? You'd think after 17 years, I'd have the answer, but all I know is that it's French for "The Moines") or plan to be in/around Central Iowa on Saturday, January 21, y'all should get down to Hy-Vee Hall for the Iowa Bike Expo.

Sure, some snarky blogger gave last year's expo a meh, but the 2015 expo featured The Cycle's own Local Steve, Steve Fuller, chatting up his plans for the 2015 Tour Divide... and this year, Local Steve is back, talking about his (SPOILER ALERT!) successful completion of said Tour Divide. I have to go since I was there in 2015 and I'm an obsessive completist. You should go because it promises to be entertaining and informative, despite my presence in the room.

So, Saturday, January 21, 2017, 3-5 p.m. Central Standard Time, Hy-Vee Hall room 105, 833 5th Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa. Be there or pedal squares.

The Ad-Man Cometh, With a Crapload of Shrimptm

You heard it here first, folks: Red Lobster has trademarked the phrase Big Festival of Shrimp. So if you were planning to have a Big Festival of Shrimp^tm, you're going to have to come up with another name for it, lest you receive a visit from Red Lobster's legal department.

If you're scratching your head because you came here for the usual bike drivel, hang in there. I'll get to it. The reason I noticed that little "tm" in commercials announcing this (one must assume) large, festive event that involves the consumption of tiny crustaceans is because, for a brief, misguided moment, I was a advertising agency copywriter responsible for coming up with similarly inane trademarks. Here's how the process works: 

The client goes to their agency with some idea, be it a crustacean-fest, or in my case, a redesigned part for a washing machine (for the record, I'm going to be cagey about who my former client was, though after 15 years out of the biz, any non-compete/non-disclosure I had with them is as dead and mouldering as my soul). I might get a little blurb from the engineers about what this new part is supposed to do, then I'm sent back to my desk to come up with a list of catchy names. I brainstorm for what feels like days (but is probably only an hour), make a list, scratch off the obviously stupid ones that may have gotten me to the less-stupid ones, then run the less-stupid ones through an online database of existing trademarks to see if anyone else in an industry vaguely related to my client is already using them. If all goes well, a few of my names will survive the "already trademarked" culling and will go to the client. If they like one, oh happy day, and their legal department does the reams of paperwork to stake a claim on the name. If they like none of them, I start over.

Here's how I imagine it went down for the copywriter at Red Lobster's agency: The client said, "We're going to have a festival. It will be big, and it will involve shrimp." So at the top of the brainstorming page, the copywriter scratched down "Big Festival of Shrimp" just to start the mental gears turning. Unfortunately, the copywriter forgot to remove that phrase from the final list of ideas that went to the client, and the client said, "Big Festival of Shrimp! That's brilliant! Send it to the legal team immediately!" (As anyone who's done client-driven creative work knows, you should NEVER present an idea to the client that  you think is stupid, because -- without fail -- that's the one they'll choose, and then you're stuck with it in your portfolio forever.)

Bike people who've stuck with me through all that Inside Baseball nonsense, the (admittedly small) payoff has arrived. Here are the takeaways you should always keep in mind when consuming bike-related advertising, based on my experience writing ad-drivel in other industries:

One, the person writing the catalog copy probably doesn't know anything about bikes or care. I certainly knew next-to-nothing about washing machines or tractor tires or water filtration systems or cotton towels or anything else I was writing about, and I cared even less. Someone on the client end does (or at least should) know and care, but that information is filtered through any number of intermediaries (creative directors, client services flacks, engineers, lawyers, you name it) before it reaches the writer, and it will see just as many filters (editors, proofreaders, middle-management flacks, lawyers again, and graphic designers cutting out random words to make the copy fit the page) before it shows up in print. Thus, the copywriter can be forgiven if, for example, he or she winds up accidentally touting the benefits of 37-spoke wheels or sealed-bearing head tubes.

Two, the lead times for producing a catalog (even in the Brave New World of the Internets) are long enough that what may have been accurate information at the outset might not match the reality of what shows up on the shop floor. For washing machines, sure, there were some stalwart models that had zero changes from year to year. Bikes? That's a rapid-turnover industry. The model name might stay the same from 2016 to 2017, but maybe Shimano couldn't provide the derailleur that the bike maker planned to spec in the right quantity or at the right price, so a different one gets substituted at the last minute. The bike with the other derailleur has already been to the trade shows and photographed for the catalog, and the spec sheet has already provided grist for the catalog copy -- a catalog that's either at the printer or already in a box at the bike shop. Thus, counting on the catalog as the Holy Text is a fool's errand at best, and busting the chops of your local shop because the catalog says your bike should have a 36-tooth middle chainring when yours came with a 34 is just not cool.

Hopefully, after all this, I've shed some light on how marketing nonsense gets to the consumer, deflated the Don Draper myth a little bit, and made it utterly impossible for me to get another job in advertising. Now, I'm craving some crustaceans...