Author: Rob

Bruce Gordon Front Mountain Rack

I had this rack kicking around in the garage as a keeper from a craig’s list find.  The Bruce Gordon Front Mountain Rack made it into my possession a couple of years back when I was lucky enough to be the first responder to an ad for a “grocery getter” that turned out to be a 1985 Specialized Stumpjumper Sport, thanks to sharp eyes, was wearing this rack.  The bike was a very fun fire road machine, but had to go and now lives in the Pacific NW.  The rack however, stayed on the shelf for a later project.  Based on the Oregon location for Bruce’s shop on the sticker the rack is likely as old as the stumpjumper, Bruce is now in Petaluma, Ca.

I have been thinking about fitting a front rack to the Rawland, but after looking at the front racks available I was not really happy with what I saw.  The most likely candidate was a Surly nice rack with a bit of grinding it could be made to work, but all that hardware looked like trouble for trail days.  The BG rack was originally intended to clear the cantilever brakes that were popular for touring and off-road back in the 80’s, while keeping the bags clear of rocks and the load as close to the steering axis as possible.   I had used the rack on the stumpy and it had actually helped with the handling of the older slack geometry.  I pulled the rack down to see if and how it would play with the disc brake calipers on the Rawland. 

Low and behold the fit was almost perfect.  The biggest problem was with the design of the plug dropout and brazeon for the front fork.  This has always been a problem with this bike and required spacers to bolt on just about anything.  I mounted it up with 4mm of spacers, the original 2mm, a presta nut and the fender R-clip on each side.  The top is held in place with clamps for now, but if need arises or I get this bike re-coated, brazeons will be added.  I have now used the rack for a few weeks both on and off-road and it has been rock solid. 

The load has little detrimental effect on the handling at all.  I have used it mostly for errands and trips to the Sunday farmer’s market.  Average loads are around 15 lbs and handling was fine.  The heaviest was around 35, and yes the handling was a bit slow with that much weight in the front, but things never got out of control. 

I would recommend this rack to anybody in the market for a front rack that can clear you brakes.  This design proves to be fairly timeless as it predates the disc brake design by decades yet adapts easily.  Bruce is still making and selling these, and you should look him up if you are in the market.

Twilight Tour de Pomegranate

Some of you may remember my love of riding for wild or semi wild foods from my Walnut Ride.  Time to enjoy the dry weather and the morning chill, and ride for the pomegranates I had seen a few weeks ago.  No laws were broken and the trees are on public easement.  Living in an area surrounded by agriculture it would be all to easy to just grab fruit from the end row of the farms and orchards, but that would kind of defeat the point, and I am pretty sure it is stealing.  These particular trees are on the fence line of land grabbed by the water district when they built the Casitas damn.  Many ranchers and homeowners lost land to eminent domain with this one, and there are quite a bit of interesting things tucked into the corners of this area without having to jump the fences lined with “No Trespassing” signs.  This morning it was a truncated version of a favorite loop to get the quarry and make it home in time for baby duty.  Having fresh fruit keeps you out of trouble when you are a little late. 

I am looking forward to daylight savings time coming to an end, a little more morning light for a bit. 

Weekend Recap – Movies, Rides, BBQ

Saturday

Saturday started off with a drive down to Santa Monica for a screening of Ride the Divide put on by Erik Mathy of 1Gear1Cause fame. The movie was awesome, it really put the difficulty of the ride into perspective. For readers not familiar, the Divide race is an informal unsanctioned race along the continental divide that was pieced together from a collection of forest service, ranch, logging and other dirt roads and trails by the Adventure Cycling Association. The route is over 2700 miles with 200,000 feet of vertical climbing, and the racers that do complete are averaging it in around 20 days, that is really hard to think about when you sit down and think about the sustained daily averages.  Erik had organised the screening as part of his pursuit to raise funds and awareness in the battle against cancer and will be riding the race next year on a single speed Salsa Fargo. Prior to the race Erik had ridden down the coast with Jason and Joe from Salsa and Eric from Adventure Monkey. It was great to meet these guys after reading on their blogs about their inspirational adventures and photography for so long.  Salsa had helped to sponsor the event, and after the movie there were raffle prizes from Swerve, Ergon and 1Gear1Cause, as well as water bottles from Salsa.  I won the first draw and took home a set of Ergon Grips, the only time I came in first all day.  Thanks guys

After the movie everyone headed over to Topanga reek Bicycles for a BBQ and ride. If you are in the area and have not been to their shop yet, you are really missing out.  They are one of the few shops have been to in southern California that actually sell and STOCK touring bikes and gear, Arkel, Brooks, Berthoud, surly, salsa, tubus etc.  Great shop and great people.  The food and company were great.  After the BBQ most of the group headed on a ride up Santa Maria Rd for a little dirt and single-track in the Mulholland area.  Genius that I am, I had all my camera gear, tripod too, and even my 6lb Ulock.  It is likely I was hauling more gear than the guys did on their tour.  Needless to say I was running sweep the whole time and my legs were feeling dead, thanks to the whole crew for waiting for me to catch up more than once.  Again though it was a  great time.  Here are a couple of pics from the trail:
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I was pretty Lazy with the camera and hopefully some others will chime in with more pics from the ride.

Sunday

Sunday was back to normal 22 mile loop to the farmer’s market at Chanel Islands Harbor.  It was a beautiful day and a chance to run at my own pace, working out yesterday’s sore legs.  The haul was not as big this time, but respectible:
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The Rawland performed well when front loaded.
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I am working on a writeup for later this week on the Bruce Gordon rack and bag set up I have switched to with this bike.  Even with 20-30 lb loade on the front the handling has been fine, but that is another post.

Fun weekent, lots of time in the saddle, and it feels good.

Rack Mount for Dinotte 140L Tail Light

While I have loved my DiNotte 140L tail light for a few years now it has been a mixed relationship due to the mounting.  If you are not familiar with these lights they are extremely bright AA powered LED lights with a very simple O-ring mounting system.  While elegantly simple the mounting requires attachment to a round tube, i.e. handlebars, seat post or frame tubes.  Not so easy when you have an assortment of racks and bags that can block the light from behind defeating the whole purpose.  I have a Old Man Mountain "Cold Springs" rack on the back of my Rawland.  This rack combined with my saddle bag has always left me a bit challenged with mounting solutions that leave the light visible, yet allowing for a  secure place to mount the battery pack and panniers. 

Then I had my eureka moment while modeling ideas with a short piece of scrap dowel.  I will expand on my love of dowels and wood for prototyping in a future post.  This time I only needed a short piece less than 2 inches long, drilled a hole through the center, and filed some grooves in the top side for O-ring retention.  I ran a long M5 bolt through the mounting track on the rack and bolted the mount between the rack and wheel.

I used the light this week in the rain on multiple rides, and it worked fantastically.  The cord is the perfect length to put the battery pack into the side pocket of the carradice bag, and everything has stayed in place.

This light when mounted well will not blind approaching motorists but they will have little excuse to not see you.  I have found that even on the lower powered non-blinking settings cars still give far wider birth when passing then with any other tail light in my collection.  Hopefully this or a similar solution can be adapted to help you better mount your own tail light far a safer night ride.