New from Maynard Hershon

I asked Maynard to write some original content for the Earle Wheels Website, and he readily agreed. He wrote a nice piece, much in the vein of columns he has been writing for decades. Any of his regular outlets would have run it without changing a word.

But I am picky, and wanted to coax more out of him. We exchanged a series of emails back and forth, with me suggesting changes and him making some of them. He got closer to what I had in mind, but wasn't there yet. He wrote me saying he had thought of a different approach, and was going to start fresh. I responded with this: How would you feel about a dialog? You write 100 words or so, I respond to it in 100 words or so, and through the exchanges, build the article I want to write, but cannot write alone.

"That's a super idea,"  he responded.

The first installment of that conversation is now spread across five pages of www.earlewheels.com. Please read it and comment.

Self-regulation or County Regulations - We have a choice

http://host.madison.com/news/local/iowa-county-mulls-bicycle-event-ordinance/article_055a5aa7-cc25-52f6-9e3f-eaf3a0377975.html

Iowa County Wisconsin has some of the finest road cycling anywhere, and the cyclists should be smart enough to regulate themselves. But they aren’t. So they face this kind of heat.

Let me explain why: A lot of racer wannabe’s, even some licensed racers, treat large group rides in Wisconsin as closed-road road races, taking over the roads.  I’ve written about it before, as have a lot of other people. The cyclists take up the whole lane, run red lights and stop signs, sometimes even cross the center line into the other lane, even across a double yellow. Certain tough organized rides have become de facto races, with riders looking for a fast time, riding against their friends or their time last year, or some other ideal. And when you get clusters of them together, they forget that they are on open, public roads and need to follow the rules of the road.

Several events every year draw hundreds of bicycles to Iowa County, and the ride organizers don’t always work with local authorities to keep things civil. That leaves the local citizenry angry at the cyclists and angry at the local authorities for not reigning in the cyclists.

The solution should not be a county ordinance restricting rides and making it more expensive to run large events. It should not be incumbent on the local authorities to keep things legal on the road. The organizers of the rides should take care of enforcement themselves.

Here’s my modest proposal: For the big rides, the Horribly Hilly Hundreds, the Dairyland Dare and the Wright Stuff Century, get some more volunteers, or even paid workers. Maybe work with a motorcycle club to exchange support for one of their events. However it is done, get a lot of eyes on the road – at controlled intersections, curvy downhills and other spots where cyclists abuse their right to be on the road. When a cyclist runs a red light, blatantly crosses a center line or rides 3 or more across the road, take their number, call ahead to the next check point, and when the offending rider pulls in, take his/her number, wrist band and/or timing chip.

“Sorry, you violated the rules of the ride that you agreed to, you are off the ride.” Any official record of the ride should list the rider as “Did not finish, violated road rules.”

For smaller rides, agree ahead of time that there is a responsible ride captain. The ride captain and a second keep an eye on the group, and should a rider get out of line, send that rider home.

We as cyclists HAVE to be good citizens on the road. It does not take much for a motorist to have a “tragic accident” and kill a cyclist or two or ten, and probably get away with a slap on the wrist. We owe it to ourselves to obey the rules of the road, especially when there is a huge mob that can get away it, this time. That’s because some county is going to decide this time is the last time and make it really tough to have a ride with even three people in it.

Bicycle: Art Meets Form and High Point Cycling Classic

Over a six-day weekend, I drove 26 hours to and from High Point, North Carolina, for an event that combined a gallery show of bicycle art, a huge gathering of outstanding classic bicycles and the National Criterium Championship. It was worth all of the time and expense and then some.

I was reminded after decades on not seeing him that Bill Humphreys is one of the really nice guys in bike racing. He is the antithesis of the guys he talked about who had big egos that would make them inaccessible to those of us who were new to the sport and would never make it as racers.

Bill had been friendly and helpful years ago, and when I stumbled road weary into the bar at the High Point Plaza Thursday night, he introduced himself and ended up sitting and talking instead of retiring to his room with his take-out dinner.

Bill's book, The Jersey Project, illustrates much of the last fifty years of bicycle racing with hundreds of images of bicycle jerseys. Here is a link: http://thejerseyproject.com/index.php

I also cannot overstate the generosity of the locals, not only Chip Duckett and Dale Brown, but everybody I had contact with.

I was struck at breakfast one morning as a tablemate was trying to calculate the tip. “Twenty five percent of this breakfast is still too little.”  The waitresses were invariably cheerful, put up with random tablehopping and poured gallons of coffee as we sat and talked away the mornings.

The staff at the gallery and the showplace not only granted every request, but also went beyond, looking for things that could make the whole experience easier and more fun.

Tangling with a turkey

I had a turkey knock me off my bike last night riding through the UW Arboretum.

The immediate cause was a young wild turkey in the road, but I was prepared to handle that. I ride a lot in the Arb, and know about the flocks of wild turkeys. I have seen as many as a dozen at a time, and have never before gotten mixed up with them.

No, the turkey who took me down was one of those guys who buys an expensive bike, thinks he knows how to ride and gets himself and other people in trouble.

About a mile before, the wheeled turkey was overtaking a couple who were riding slowly side-by-side. I was coming up faster than everybody, but slowed down to see what was going to happen. Turkey, without looking back, sudden swung wide of the couple, crossed the double yellow into the oncoming lane and went around the couple without saying a word. I passed them and said, "good evening," and they continued on their way, riding in a straight, predictable line. There was plenty of room for all of us in the road.

Turkey, again without looking back, swung wildly back into the lane, which I kind of figured he would do, so I had hung back. I watched him for a few yards, and he was weaving back and forth across the road, not holding a line, but also not getting too close to the lane marker. When he weaved toward the curb, I accelerated past him, leaving about a foot and a half between us, but not saying anything. He looked over as I past and said "Jesus Christ." OK, I should have said, "On your left," but I figured that would have been his cue to swerve left, so I just went to the far left edge of the lane and got around him as quickly as I could. This was on an easy rise, but he fell quickly behind.

Down the treed hill just before the houses, I noticed the rain had washed a lot of sand into the road, so I did not go full speed. As I went up the first rise in the housing section, it looked like Turkey was riding fast and trying to catch me. OK, the road gets safer when it flattens out and straightens out, and maybe I should explain myself, I thought. Once I talk to him, I can soft pedal on the flats and let him ride away.

I did not get that chance, though. In the road ahead of me, there were three young wild turkeys spread across the road. All of them were facing my left, and seemed to be moving that way, so I went to the right edge of the road and slowed down. The wild turkeys ambled left, and it looked like we were all going to avoid mixing.

But here comes Two-wheel Turkey!

Coming up way too fast, he must be sure he is going to catch me and pass me. He splits the flock, with one turkey cut off from the others by his huge buzzing interloper (what the turkey sees when he sees "bike"), and that panicked bird bolts, taking my front wheel out from under me.

[Insert your favorite expletives here, with a couple of exclamation points.]

Turkey turned around and came back, asking if I was OK, as I bled from elbow and knee.

"I'll be OK." I actually tried to tell him about his passing dangerously earlier, but he was so sure he was right, I just shut up. I found his intellect to be about equal to a smart, 9-month-old dog. Eager to please but clueless.

"Do you want me to ride with you a little ways to see if you are OK?"

"No, I am fine." But if you keep talking at me without acknowledging what a mess you created, I'm going to explode, I thought. He had the sense to go on about his way, and I rode back home through the Arb.

Inspection showed a broken helmet, so after I cleaned up the road rash, I went to the emergency room, where I spent almost four hours to find out that I had no brain damage and I had done a reasonable job cleaning up the road rash. Bike is a little scuffed up, and should get new brake lever hoods, but they can wait. Helmet did its job, so needs to be retired.

All told, a very minor accident. But it should not have happened. Anybody who has ever watch a flock of turkeys could have known, SHOULD have known that you don't split up the flock, or they scatter and panic. If Two-wheel Turkey had just slowed down for a minute and followed me past them, nobody would have gotten hurt. And Turkey might be known by some other name.

Madison Wheelbuilding Classes

Through the summer, I am offering smaller wheelbuilding classes at my workshop here in Madison. I would expect that ordering parts and doing the advance work for the class should take about three weeks, then schedule a weekend in Madison for hands-on wheelbuilding.

I will work with one to four students here in Madison, with a Park TS-2 truing stand available for each student. As you look at the classes page on the Earle Wheels Website, http://earlewheels.com/classes.html, the sessions will be Day One on Fridays, with classes available July 12 or 19, August 2, 16 or 30.

If you are a beginning wheelbuilder, you do not need to lace your wheels before you come to class. I will teach you the whole process from start to finish, and you will go home with a very good pair of wheels. More experienced builders should count on bringing two pair of wheels to work on.

Bring a bicycle, so that we can enjoy some of the good riding around Madison. With the three-day class schedule, count on a short ride Friday afternoon, a longer ride Saturday and a quick jaunt through the University of Wisconsin Arboretum on Sunday.

If the three-day schedule does not work for you, contact me to arrange a two-day class, with a longer Saturday session.

Here's the deal on tuition: If you want a one-on-one class, I'll charge $250. Single student in small-group class is $175. Buddy class, two students in a three or four person class, registering together is $300. Club class, three or four students registering together for a class by themselves is $425. The Madison workshop would get crowded with more than four students. I will be able to give each of you the attention you need to finish at least one pair of really nice wheels.

More Maynard if you want it

It turns out the Maynard Hershon has only left the national bicycle magazines. Here's a note from him:

I did not quit writing for bicycle magazines, but I do not contribute to a nationally available one these days. I'm still monthly in the Bicycle Paper, a Pac NW free bicycle paper out of Seattle. My stuff is included in the Bicycle Paper web site and then archived there. You can read years of my columns at that site. I'm regularly in the Rivendell Reader...if you can call the Reader regular.

Here is a link: http://www.bicyclepaper.com/

I need help to get to BAMF

The Bicycle: Art Meets Form (http://www.bicycle-artform.org/index.html) is shaping up to be the best show of the year. I really want to go, but launching Earle Wheels has drained the bike budget for the year. If I am going to make it to this event, I'm going to need some students for my wheelbuilding class http://earlewheels.com/classes.html.

I anticipate that the sessions for the class would be Friday morning, Saturday morning and much of Sunday, say 11 am to 6 pm with a break in the early afternoon. I will work with the students to make the schedule work for most people, and of course, I want to see the scheduled presentations, so we will work around those. Tuition for the class will be $199.

I need at least six students, and I need to hear "I'm interested, tell me more" in just a few days. I know it is short notice, but if you are in that area, or are already scheduled to go to BAMF, here's a chance to learn to build good bicycle wheels.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Sunday mornings I can usually go to the end of my block to the one of the main riding roads south of town and either catch or be caught by somebody to ride with. It is one of the things I love about my home.

This Sunday, however, I was exposed to the worst of cycling and it left me angry and disillusioned.

The organized Sunday ride of a big local club was going my direction at the same time I was, and it took me less than a single block to realize that not only was this a group I did not want to ride with, but that they were actually putting me in danger.

The road out of town has a marked bike lane wide enough for comfortable two-up riding, but the lead section of this group was wider than that and once the group hit the first stop light, they not only clogged the bike lane, but also the full width of the car lane. They did it again a block later at the next light. As I watched from the back of the group, I could easily understand the rage that motorists feel toward this gang on inconsiderate louts.

As we started down the hill, on a relatively straight road with a bike lane, I found myself afraid to pass even one person, because the riders at the back of this group were randomly braking without warning and a couple were weaving across the entire width of the bike lane. So now, I not feared being hit by an out-of-control angry motorist, but was also scared of getting hooked into traffic by somebody who did not know how to ride in a group.

My last post was about classy riding. Well, this was a text book on what NOT to do.

I changed my route enough to escape these people, but the actions of this unruly mob left me feeling a little more paranoid of motorists than before. I kept thinking that the big group would generate a serious case of road rage in someone who had just enough sense not to plow into a big group, but more than enough rage to flatten a solo rider on an empty stretch of road.

We all have to share the road. Let's show just a little consideration for all road users.

One word for a whole lot of attributes

Class.

There was a time when the best thing you could say about a rider was that he had class. "He's a classy rider." Maybe not the fastest guy in the bunch, but still somebody everybody looked up to.

His bike was always well-maintained, his water bottle full, two tubulars strapped under the saddle. His clothes were clean, too. Real bicycle clothes, not just a cotton T-shirt over a pair of bike shorts.

Once the ride started, his class showed through. He could hold a wheel, and if you were on his wheel, he did not do anything to put you in danger. You knew about the glass, the potholes and the cars up ahead. If he accelerated, it was smoothly so you could stay on his wheel. He would let you know when he was slowing down.

The story on the Earle Wheels Website comes from my friend Maynard Hershon. People who have been around cycling and/or motorcycles for a while know Maynard's writing. Classy.

Maynard wrote a lot about classy bike riding, and he embodies it on and off the bike. He wrote a lot about saying "Hi" to other cyclists. He wrote about sharing the road. And then he quit writing for bicycle mags.

Despite the grace of his writing and his popularity, most people ignored his message. And when his writing disappeared, so it seems did the last voice advocating class on a bike.

I wish my words could convey more about what it means to be a classy rider. And I hope when I am out on the road, I can still be a classy rider.

Le Cirque du Cyclisme, 2013

I brought my daughter, Eileen, with me to Leesburg, Va., May 18, 19 & 20, for a get-together of fans on classic hand-made bicycles, and Keeper-of-the-Flame (KOF) new bikes. Le Cirque du Cyclisme http://www.cirqueducyclisme.com/ is associated with the Classic Rendezvous Website and Google group, http://www.classicrendezvous.com/ which was started by Dale Brown of Cycles de Oro in Greensboro, NC in 1999.
Le Cirque started in 1998 in Greensboro, and was moved to Leesburg in 2008, and I have attended each of the Leesburg events.
The bicycles are amazing. The mix of classic and KOF bikes reinforced my opinion about steel bicycles: The best handmade steel bicycles ever made are being made in the United States right now. Steven  Bilenky, Chris Bishop, Brian Chapman, Johnny Coast and others had new steel bikes.
But I go to Cirque for the people. I have some old friends that I only vaguely keep in touch with during the year, and I catch up with them. I meet some new people. I get in some bike riding and for the weekend, just live biking.
For me, the highlight of the weekend was at dinner Friday night. I had told a story to a few people, and then 10 or 11 of us were in a room of our own at a Cajun restaurant in historic downtown Leesburg. Dale Brown told the same story, longer, with much more detail, and none of the people who had heard my version interrupted him. A number of people chimed in afterward to say how hearing the same story from two sources confirmed the truth of it.
Here the story as I know it with Dale's detail added:
In the 1960's, Peter Rich, owner of Velo Sport Bicycles in Berkeley and a huge figure in US road racing, started to import Masi bicycles from Italy. Peter ordered some and got them in, then put in an order for more, pre-paying so he could get what he wanted, including some custom orders.
Peter waited months for those bikes, and whenever he called Masi, he got excuses. Finally, a woman who had ordered a Masi from Peter came in his shop on a new Masi.
"Where did you get that bike," Peter asked.
"From Masi in Italy," the woman said.
Peter then booked the next available flight to Italy.
When he landed, he went straight to Masi's store, where there were some pro riders hanging around. Peter took his list of paid-for bikes, found one of his on display. The pros all bolted when Peter picked up a hammer from a work bench, grabbed the bike and started beating the top tube.
"This is my bike, and I will do whatever I want with it," Peter said.
Masi was aghast and probably frightened, but got the message. The remaining bikes from Peter's order were packed under Peter's direction and then shipped to California. It was the last shipment of Masi's that Peter ever ordered.

"A wolf in sheep's clothing"

I had not thought about my Litespeed in those terms until Gunnar commented on the picture I posted. I don't even have other pictures of it yet.

It really is a mean racing bike under the civilized exterior.

The frame is a 2007 Litespeed Siena, their entry level race frame. Except that it is not a Siena, not really. The tube set started out the same, and the front-end geometry was preserved from the Siena, but the Lightspeed Custom Shop remade the frame to suit me. The wheelbase is a shade longer than stock at a meter exactly. My favorite bikes have always been right around that long. If you look at the seat tube, seat pillar and saddle position, you may note that the saddle is centered on a no-offset Thompson post. That happens when you know where the saddle is going to be in relation to the bottom bracket and the handlebars before you draw the blueprint for the frame. Seat tube ended up with a 72-degree angle. Note also the stem: 2 cm of spacers below a 17-degree stem turned downward. So not only does this frame fit me perfectly now, I have no less than 2 cm in any direction to adjust the fit.

The fork was custom built by John Slawta to match the blueprint from the Litespeed shop. Steel is real. I had full-carbon fork on my previous Litespeed. It was a lot lighter than my new fork, but I am a really old-fashioned guy, and that fork scared me. I have not seen a spate of broken carbon forks, and a lot of people ride on them, but I feel more secure on the steel fork. Probably 10 miles an hour worth of more secure.

Drive train is Campagnolo Daytona/Centaur. It's stuff that is built for people who have always been Campagnolo fans, without the price of Chorus or Record. It works well because I keep it clean and correctly lubricated. Easton Stem and bars came on my previous Litespeed and I had no reason to change them. I guess you could say I'm a "go with what you got" kind of guy. Saddle was a trade for something, but I forget what. It looks right and feels right.

The wheels? Earle Wheels, of course. Campagnolo Record hubs, of course. MAVIC racing rims, of course. Open Pro hard anodized, 32-hole rear, 28 front. Yeah, I know what I say about hard-anodized, modern light race stuff. It's going to break. The spoke holes will start to develop cracks. I would not recommend it for other people's bikes. But they are light and cool, and when they break, I will rebuild them, probably with Velo Orange PBP's. Nice silver rims were hard to find five years ago. If I could have gotten MA2's I would have. I put MA2's on my daughter's bike, and those wheels are older than she is.

The fenders, from Velo Orange, have brazed on bits throughout and work like a charm to keep things dry when the roads are wet.

But that's just the sitting-here-looking-at-it details. The ride is what sets this bike apart. I wanted a fast, comfortable day rider, and I got all of that and more. The bike delivered each attribute I was looking for and then invented new ways to delight me. The low bottom bracket and oversized tubes at the front end, combined with a perfectly matched steel fork means that the handling is precise and predictable, even at speed.

The acceleration is just silly. On flat road, I can wind up the RPM and it doesn't twist around underneath me. Or I can just drop onto the 13-tooth cog, stand up and the bike jumps. Yet with all of this speed available, I can ride for six or seven hours and not feel like beaten up.

There are a few other tricks, but I will write about them later.

Clubman Earle Wheels first showing

I'm excited to have Curtis Odom Vintage Style Bicycle Parts as a partner with Earle Wheels.

As I have posted previously, Curtis Odom hubs are the best I have ever worked with, and I really like the look of the wheels I have built with them.

And now, anybody who wants a good look at them will have to wait until Cirque du Cyclisme, in Leesburg, VA, on Friday, May 17. http://cirqueducyclisme.com/

I will be showing the wheels and sampling other Wisconsin products at the Earle Wheels room in Leesburg.

Please stop by.

Advice from my mother

My mother always said that if you are buying something you want to keep for a while, buy the best you can.

Working with a Curtis Odom hub for the first time, I knew my mother would approve. I was blown away the attention to detail. I was expecting a beautifully finished, smooth rolling hub with an extraordinary design carved into the oversize flange. I got all of that. I also got the best-thought out hub/spoke interface that I have ever worked with. What had appeared to be a price expensive but still fair to both parties is now a bargain.

Let me tell you why: When I snapped the first spoke into place in the hub, it was like only one other hub I had worked with, a particular small period of time during the production of Campagnolo Record hubs. I had spoken with Curtis about a week before I got the hubs, and we agreed that it was harder to lace a wheel with these hubs but worth it for the life of the wheels built around the hubs.

To get the spokes to fit perfectly and settle in for the long haul, the hub flange has to be exactly right. The right shape and diameter of spoke hole, the right thickness of the hub flange, the right alloy for the forging and the right forging itself. Curtis nailed every detail.

A build with these hubs takes a little longer, because the spokes are a tight fit and the flange thickness matches the size of the spoke elbow. Once the spokes are tensioned and pressed into place, the head of the spoke is flush against the hub flange and the bend of the spoke is gently cradled in a trough of deformed alloy. The chances of fatigue failure of a spoke are close to zero. I hesitate to say never, but I cannot see any combination of load and road that would cause spokes to fail in these hubs. 

The only time I have worked with hubs close to this good was in the early 1980s, when Campagnolo Record hubs had tight spoke holes. The were slow and hard to get laced up, but the wheels built with them were special right from the start. Curtis remembered those hubs and incorporated everything we liked about those hubs and incorporated them into his hubs, then made them into decorative art besides. Take a look at the pictures in the posting just before this one. Pictures of the finished wheels will be posted after Cirque.

Introducing Clubman wheels

Between the wars and just after World War II, British cycling clubs established a tradition of social recreation. Groups organized for sporting and recreational rides of a less competitive nature than races. Later, in the United States, serious cyclists gathered their friends and riding partners into some pretty large touring clubs, some with thousands of members and multiple rides scheduled every weekend.

Riders in these clubs, especially the British clubs, would have a single do-it-all bike. By the 1930s, several brands of bicycles offered a “Clubman” model. Meant to be a working bike, the geometry would be more relaxed than a full-on racing bike, the clearances would be large enough for big tires and there would be the capacity to mount fenders and a rack. This would be the road bike “for the rest of us.”

One of the things that distinguished club riding was the variety of events, from loaded tours to time trials. The way to get one bicycle to do all of those things was to have different sets of wheels to match different conditions.

To celebrate that spirit and Earle Wheels new partnership with Curtis Odom, we are proud to introduce the Clubman series of wheels. Built on Curtis’s incomparable ultra-large flange Clubman hubs, the first of these wheels are presented with Velo Orange PBP rims and Wheelsmith 2.0-1.7-2.0 mm butted stainless steel spokes and Duristan nipples.

These highly decorative wheels are also built to be used for decades, then rebuilt at moderate expense. For those of us whose sponsors won’t buy $2,750 carbon wheels, these wheels are a sensible investment at $855 with Campagnolo or Shimano cassette body and 130 mm over-locknut dimension.

Wheel madness

If racing bikes have separated themselves from real-world riding, racing wheels have spun into a whole different universe.

MAVIC, a rim maker whose products I used for decades, recently introduced carbon clincher wheels, with a sticker price of  $2,750 for the pair.

And for this, you get a wheel that, according to one review in a racing magazine, has finally gotten braking effectiveness to the point where aluminum rims have been for at least half a century.

The deep section carbon rim does provide a lot of aerodynamic effect, which is great at speeds above 23 mph or so. Serious competitors may need that kind of advantage. But for the rest of us, I’m not so sure.

There seems to be a weight advantage, at least from the stock Earle Wheels I weighed. The MAVIC set weighs 1545 grams (without skewers or rubber), a pair of stock PBP EarleWheels weighs 1950 grams. Not a negligible difference, but hardly impressive when you consider the cost of the Earle Wheels. PBP rims on Velo Orange Grand Cru hubs are $379.

For $2,371, the rest of us, the serious riders who are not serious competitors, can buy a whole lot of fenders, lights and foul weather gear to broaden our ability to ride our bikes more.

Everything old is new again

Last fall, a neighbor gave me  Univega Grand Rally from about 1982. It had been sitting behind the storage shed in his back yard for nearly a decade. I was not sure what I was going to do with it, but I knew I had to tear it down to the frame and check it over. The frame turned out to need work. Fortunately, Hal Bielstein, a frame builder from Rapid City, SD, needed a pair of wheels that I had, and I was able to trade a lot of work with him. He modified the frame for 650B wheels with modern rear hub spacing, added numerous braze-on bits and had it painted.

New parts include brakes, cranks, fenders, rims and tires from Velo Orange http://www.velo-orange.com/.

The Brooks B-17 was courtesy of Omar Khiel of Oasis Custom Cycles http://www.oasiscustomcycles.com/.

The rest of the parts were lurking in my garage looking for a home. I built it up the weekend before my vacation and rode it the four miles to work a few times, but today I finally got it out for a little longer ride. 

This is what I mean by a bike for the rest of us. I headed out with a headwind and some spitting rain. The low gears let me slow down to fight the wind and the fenders kept the water away. 

I can only describe the ride as plush. On level road out of the wind, it did not feel a whole lot slower than my skinny-tired Litespeed, but its 38 mm tires just float over rough road. 

A store for the rest of us

On my vacation in Washington, DC last week, I visited a bike shop where almost ever bike in the store had fenders, many had internal hub gears and chain guards, and there were NO carbon fiber race bikes. Here is a link: http://www.bicyclespacedc.com/.

Raleigh Sports Updated

Here's my Raleigh Sports, brought into the 21st Century with a few parts from my friends at Velo Orange http://store.velo-orange.com/. Diagonale 650B rims, 650 x 38B tires, tubes and rimstrips and Zeppelin stainless fenders. Tektro long-reach dual pivot brakes and levers from a 1990s mountain bike. It all works well together, and still rides like an around-town three-speed. Definitely a keeper. Watch as I post more of the Earle Wheels Permanent Collection.

A simple bike for a casual rider

A friend, Jack Lyness, recently asked what he should get for starting to exercise after a period of sedentary decline. At 300 pounds or more, he had no need for a lightweight. Living in a fundamentally flat area, he had no need for a multitude of gears.

I was lucky to be able to provide him with an aluminum frame, aluminum rim coaster brake cruiser.

While there is nothing new, high-tech or sexy about this bike, it is what Jack needs right now. It will get him moving without doing further damage to his hips and knees, and moving is healthy.

But the best thing. It will be fun.

What do I mean, “Bikes for the rest of us?”

There must be a lot of bicycle racers out there, huh? If you look at the latest issue of Bicycling, it’s pretty convincing that bicycles are for racing. In the buyer’s guide issue, there are 14 bikes listed as entry-level road bikes. Of those, there were only five that I would call non-race bikes, and two of those had carbon-fiber frames

The articles are all about training for fast rides, riding fast for training, or fast training for rides.  The featured bikes are all racing bikes. Carbon fiber frames, close clearances because that’s what makes bikes look fast, not a fender to be found, but fenders were mentioned is one of the short reviews.

Racing has to be the prime purpose of riding a bicycle, if that’s the ink devoted to it, right?

Wrong.

Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, the biggest trade magazine in the sport, annually devotes an issue to statistics. They had numbers of people own bikes, number of people who ride now and then, numbers of numbers and more. The one that I liked is this: 5.29 million people in the US ride their bike at least 110 days in a year. These are “serious bicyclists.”

The big racing organizations provided these: USA Triathlon has 150,000 members, and USA Cycling just under 71,000 current licenses, for a total of 221,000 “serious competitors.”

Which means that more than 5 million serious bicyclists are NOT serious competitors.

So tell me, why is almost every recreational bicycle in the $1,000 - $2,500 price range a racing bicycle?

Why can’t we find fun-to-ride road bikes with clearance for 700x28 tires and fenders?

Sure, there are a few, but they are hidden behind all of the flashy carbon fiber race bikes so specialized and fragile that they cannot take full fenders and that can break if you fall wrong.

To be continued …

Why I don’t have dial gauges on my truing stand

There are truing stands on the market now that have dial gauges that will show you to the tenth of a millimeter how round and true your wheels are. They present a beautiful picture of precision that the bare steel pointers of my Park TS-2 seems to lack.

People who use them talk about how accurate they are, how quickly they can get a wheel true and round.

Thanks, but no thanks. When I get the wheel round enough that the pointer is a millimeter off the rim in both lateral and radial measure, and when my dishing tool says the wheel is centered on the axle, I say that deviation is small enough, and work only with the tension meter. I will give up a deviation that will be undetectable while you ride the bike to have the tension closer to even. Remember, we are riding on pavement, not a brand-new velodrome with a polished concrete surface.

If I had a better grasp of the mathematics and physics involved, I could manipulate the formulae and finite element analysis presented in Jobst Brandt’s “The Bicycle Wheel” to prove this thesis mathematically, but I don’t ride numbers. I ride bicycles. I have heard from customers and felt on my own bikes that my wheels just ride better. I believe it is because I concentrate most on even spoke tension. 

More on my frame comments

On my Website, www.earlewheels.com, I say that the best steel frames ever built are being built in the United States right now, and customer reminded me about that and asked me to expand on that.

With few exceptions, only American builders have operated one-man shops, measuring customers, designing frames and building them from start to finish

The best of them combine high levels of precision in fitting the frame tubes and high levels of art in finishing the construction. The frames are not only paragons of structural integrity, but works of art as well.

In addition, steel tubes have gotten continually better. Three decades ago, I was discussing the differences between the established tubesets by Columbus and Reynolds and the newer, lesser know Japanese tubes. What I found then is that the upstart tubing made it easier to build a clean lugged frame. And even though steel frames are a disappearing part of the mass market, small suppliers have continued to improve the tubes, the lugs and the brazing materials.

In short, the best of today's craftsmen, using the best of today's materials are building frames that surpass nearly everything that has come before.

Rather than name names, for fear of leaving out some very good ones, I would encourage anyone people to look at the National Handmade Bicycle Show (http://2013.handmadebicycleshow.com/) and any regional framebuilders' shows. There is a lot of brilliant work out there now.

Mixing the loves of my life

Last night I was able to mix two of the things I love most in life - live music and my daughter. Hot Tuna, the brilliant acoustic spinoff of Jefferson Airplane, was playing at the Barrymore Theater here in Madison, and my wife did not want to join me. I sent Eileen a Youtube clip of Hot Tuna and invited her to go, and of course, she said yes. I think it was mostly to please her old man.
It was a wonderful show, with Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy joined by multi-instrumentalist Barry Mitterhoff. The highlight for me was not on stage, though. At one point, when Jack was sailing through a brilliant bass solo, I looked over at Eileen and she was paying rapt attention with a big smile on her face. It just does not get any better than that.

Free hub upgrade for Raid 700C wheels

I don't always concentrate on every detail when I am building a stock wheelset. I get the big things right - round, true, even tension, cleaned up nicely, but I'm new at building for a catalog. I have a pair of VO Raid 700C rims, which are my new favorites for old bikes, that I built with a VO Grand Cru Touring rear hub (Shimano cassette) and a Grand Cru large flange front hub, both 36-hole. This should have been $50 upgrade over the Raid rims and Hi-Lo set I catalogued at $399. I will sell this pair of wheels for the catalog price of $399. Add a pair of Clement X'Plor USH 700x35 tires for $100 and I will supply rim strips and 3 presta valve tubes free.

Music and Dancing with Michael

My wife, daughter and I are taking a quick trip to Pittsburgh to celebrate my brother's birthday. This should be a great party. Michael has lived in Pittsburgh for decades and been involved with music, contra dancing and swing dancing for much of that time.

He has booked a hall, has a band lined up and plans for a variety of dancing the night away.

It will be a flash trip: Fly in on Saturday, back again on Sunday, but should be a plane-load of fun.

A job postponed

I recently was offered a part in a delightful project, the restoration of an iconic race bike to its showroom-new condition.  It was a model and year of bicycle that I lusted after when it was new and to this day regret never owning. I was asked to build the wheels for this bike, and was honored to be chosen for that request.

I had to turn this job, though, because it was not in the best interests of the customer.

The customer a collector who devotes a lot to restoring a bicycle to the condition it was in on the day it was made. Projects like this can take years and untold amounts of money.  It is a labor of love that can produce stunning results. The collector goes to great length to find exactly the right parts in new condition.

How exact is “exactly the right part?” is the barrier this job ran up against.

The job called for a certain brand and model of spokes that have not been readily available for 30 years. The customer had found some, but they are too long. I’m not quite sure how much too long, but they are just long enough to be out of my confidence range.

I do not have his rims in front of me, so I was not able to do exact measurements, but there is a range of effective rim diameters (ERD) that covers all classic tubular rims. I ran his spoke length through two reliable spoke length calculators, and his spokes are a minimum of 2 mm too long and more likely 3 mm long. I am not comfortable with spokes more than 1.5 mm too long or too short.

These spokes are new in the box, and cannot be replaced at a reasonable cost if I build the wheel and find that the length is beyond the range that I can comfortably use, I can neither replace them with spokes of the correct length nor return them to the customer as “new in the box.”

The spokes in question are also chrome plated. Of all of the types of spokes that can be cut to length with a Phil Wood spoke machine, plated spokes are conspicuously absent.

In the end, the customer decided to keep looking until he found exactly the right spokes.

Dinner with my daughter

My daughter is also a bicycle person, and we went out to dinner this evening. First, visited the bike store where we both have worked, talked new bikes, old bikes and other fun things. Then had a nice dinner at the restaurant at the other end of the building from the bike store, all in a complex called Machinery Row, here in Madison.

It gives me great pleasure to see my daughter being excited by the same cycling passion I have enjoyed for nearly forty years.

Website rollout sale

Order any wheel service through www.earlewheels.com between now and February 14, 2013 and take 10 percent off your total order.

This includes cataloged wheels, custom builds and the wheelbuilding class at Cirque du Cyclisme ’13 in Leesburg, Va., May 17-20, 2013.

All inquiries must use the contacts page from www.earlewheels.com.

Thank you for reading.

What I learned teaching my wheelbuilding class

January 18, 19, and 20, I had three students come to Madison for the Brazen Dropouts Bike Swap and my newly formatted wheelbuilding class. Of course, being the teacher, I learned as much as the students, and will incorporate that into my wheel classes.

Even though I have always emphasized even spoke tension as the primary goal with any wheel, my students showed me how to gauge that the wheel hits the right balance of round and true with even tension.

My students taught me to include photos with the text. I'm very new to digital photography, especially the part after the picture is snapped, but I will be learning. This image is from a recent building project for my good customer Joe.

My students taught me that I need to check their homework and then check my own. They also taught me the value of restricting choice for class projects, at least a little bit.

I will be including all of their lessons into my wheelbuilding classes. The class at Cirque du Cyclisme (http://cirqueducyclisme.com) is ON, assuming I get the required minimum of students, and I'm investigating possibilities in Chicago, Milwaukee and the Twin Cities.

A back yard find turned 650.

Last fall, I "rescued" a 1982 Univega Grand Rally that had been sitting behind a neighbor's storage shed for a few years. The frame looked good until I took off the clamp on shifters. Somebody had crudely cut off the shifter bosses that had been brazed onto the frame, leaving deep gouges and some holes in the frame tubing.
I was crushed, because I really like model of bike. It's an under-appreciated Japanese frame with functional but not overly expensive parts, and I really liked the ride of it when I was assembling them at Velo Sport in 1982. I was not sure what I was going to do with it with the frame damage, so I just hung it in the garage.

Fortunately, one of my wheel students, Hal Bielstein, is a frame builder and needed a pair of wheels I had in stock. Hal said the right way to fix the frame was to use some Cycle Designs Fillet Pro to fill the voids, then file and sand it down to be smooth.

Hal and I had also been talking about Peter Weigle's 650B conversions. I like the idea. A performance oriented frame with fat compliant tires set up for road riding. I was going to shoehorn some long-reach brakes on the bike, and make do with the brake bridge where it is, but Hal is going to do the job right.

When this bike is complete, it will become one of my permanent collection. I have bought and sold dozens of bikes over the years, and kept a few for a long time, but have now decided that instead of the "serial collecting" and the random piling up of nice bikes that were good deals, I will assemble a small collection of elegant machines and just keep them. The Univega will be one of those. I will write about the others anon.

Welcome to the new Earle Wheels Blog

Hi, This Blog is to introduce my business, Earle Wheels. There will be three components of the business: New wheels, primarily using rims from Velo Orange; custom builds with parts supplied by customers; and wheelbuilding classes.

The new wheels will be built on hubs specified or ordered by the customer, using rims and spokes that I will provide. For the rollout of the business through 2013, I will be offering Velo Orange rims in 700c and 650b, 32- and 36- hole drilling. Check out their products here: http://velo-orange.com

The rims are well thought out, well made, and most of all, shiny! For classic bicycles and modern bicycles with a classic ethos, these are the rims of choice, with a variety of widths to be everything from fast and light to touring on rough stuff.

My custom work started five years ago with recommendation from one of the good guys in the business, John Barron, http://www.velostuf.com/. Collectors who have located classic rims and hubs send them to me for careful building of their wheels. My long experience, much of it the era of these classic parts, allows my customers to have wheels for their collectible bicycles that they can actually ride.

New for 2012 was my wheelbuilding class. I offered a one-day class at Cirque du Cyclisme, and learned that the classes need to have two or three sessions with some time for homework in between. I taught the new format class on the weekend of the Brazen Dropouts Bike Swap on January 19, 2013. The students told me they got a lot out of it. I know I learned a lot teaching the class.

I will be offering the class at other weekend events throughout the year. I will also travel to teach the class in a 2-day format not tied to an event. Please contact me through www.earlewheels.com for details.


Thank you for reading.