Tag: bicycle

Columbine Quikchainger – Wow!!

This is on of those things you wish you had thought of first.  This little piece of brazed on metal will be on every bike I have built or re-coated from this day forward.

It has been almost a year now since I received my Roadeo from Rivendell.  When it came in from Waterford  Mark called to confirm my choice of color, or lack there of.  I asked if they could add a chain peg, and Mark told me I did not want one, what I really wanted was a Columbine Quikchainger. I had not really ever paid any attention to these before, and Mark assured me I would be much happier with one of these over a simple peg.  If you have never used either the point of each is to assist with keeping things clean when the rear wheel is out of the bike.

For the last year or so I have figured that this metal widget had some sort of magic spell over my bike, I have not needed to take the back wheel off in almost a year of riding.  I am doomed now that I put it in writing, but none the less, before Thursday morning of this past week the wheel had never come off since the original build last December.  I thought I had everything ready to go the night before for my morning ride, and came down in the morning to find the rear tire flat.  The thing is, I was actually excited to finally get to use the chainger. 

It is so simple I could not really believe it.  With the bike upright, you shift into the outermost cog, and remove the wheel as you normally would.  But you do not have to lay a finger on the chain.  It rests on the Quikchainger and is held cleanly above the stay.  To reinstall the wheel I pull the derailer back a bit, slip the wheel in with the chain on the outermost cog.  The distance between the rear dropout and the quickchainger  exposes a bit of chain for this engagement.  The only thing you touch is the wheel and the derailer, no greasy fingers from the chain.   Absolutely flawless, so simple, yet works so perfectly.  The pics give a step by step:

Thank you for Mark at Rivendell suggesting that I go with this, and the guys at Columbine Cycle Works for creating these.

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.