twentynine inches • one gear • zero travel

Old Road Bike Reborn

Litespeed Ultimate

Purchased in 2000 and ridden many years on Sonoma County’s greatest roads, King Ridge, The Geysers, Sweetwater just to name a few. Later rolling across just as spectacular roads in the Swiss Jura, the Litespeed Ultimate has taken me on thousands of miles through beautiful places. Sometimes alone and sometimes with friends. This timeless piece of bike can proudly keep up with the latest crop of road bikes. It’s fast, it’s stiff but for my older getting bones also a little too unforgiving. With lots of great memories attached, it’s not destined to become someone else’s. Instead, it was modified over the summer to be my first singlespeed road bike to commute to work or to hop on some shorter flatland training spins. Amazing how light and agile the new setup feels in comparison to a geared road bike. I doubt though, that I’ll drop road gears entirely as I did with mountain bikes some 12 years ago.

Specialites TA Squale Chainring

Converting my old Litespeed Ultimate into a singlespeed road bike, it was time to retire my old FSA carbon cranks and ISIS bottom bracket and move on to an external BB and a more modern crankset. There was no question what cranks were going to be mounted - ’s 3D+ cranks with a 30 mm aluminum spindle along with their BSA30 steel bottom bracket - beautiful Spanish CNC work. The Cervelo Edition I ordered came with round 53/39T chainrings. 53 up front and 17 in the back happen to be a magic gear, and I just happen to have a Chris King cog with 17 teeth. But 81.6 gear inches just isn’t quite enough for my flat city commute, I gave it an extensive test. 51/15 offers 88.9 gear inches and provides the same magic gear on the Ultimate’s rear triangle. An new 15 teeth steel Chris King cog was quickly found on Ebay. The search for a chainring took me to the web, a visit to my local bike shop, more research on the web and back to my LBS to place an order for a pretty cool looking, heavily machined ring by Specialites TA - their Squale model with special bolts that screw in from the back. The bolts are obviously too long for a single ring setup, but fortunately I had just the right spacers, which I had turned on a lathe many, many moons ago. Always good to hold onto stuff like that. Unused for several years, these spacers came in handy to mount the Squale chainring onto the 3D+ cranks. I’m still waiting for the cog to arrive from across the pond. Stay tuned for an introduction of a sweet old road bike reborn.

Gears Only For People Over 45 I still feel that variable gears are only for people over forty-five. Isn’t it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailleur? We are getting soft … As for me, give me a fixed gear! Henri Desgrange, the father of bicycle stage racing who believed the Tour de France had to be gruelling, to the extent that the perfect would be one that only one rider could finish. Zoom

Gears Only For People Over 45

I still feel that variable gears are only for people over forty-five. Isn’t it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailleur? We are getting soft … As for me, give me a fixed gear!

Henri Desgrange, the father of bicycle stage racing who believed the Tour de France had to be gruelling, to the extent that the perfect would be one that only one rider could finish.

(Source: cycleangelo.cc)

Singlespeedin’ Friday

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Rode my favorite singletrack after work. I’m not quite ready to provide GPS data for the ride as it contains my favorite singletrack on which I have never met another biker yet. Sharing a set of six photos from today’s ride above, though. Enjoy!

Chasseral Loop

Today I took off on my good old Niner to head up to the Chasseral for the first time of the year. Well, the first time on knobby tires, I should specify. The weather was amazing - sunny blue sky and a fresh breeze - absolutely perfect for such a bike tour. My tiny GPS logger didn’t make it to my mailbox Saturday. In fact, it could very well be that Swiss mailmen don’t have to carry packages on Saturdays. If I think about it, I don’t remember ever having gotten one on a Saturday. Never mind, I’ll leave this post with a collection of nine photos from today’s singlespeed ride. A detailed route description including GPS track will follow on another occasion. The Chasseral is after all one of my frequent destinations.

Pace 129er Made of Reynolds 853 all handmade and fillet brazed with chrome plated stay and coachwork line detailing. More photos of this British race horse at Singletrack World. Zoom

Pace 129er

Made of Reynolds 853 all handmade and fillet brazed with chrome plated stay and coachwork line detailing. More photos of this British race horse at Singletrack World.

Waiting for mine Photo taken by bicyclebloggers at Sea Otter 2010. Zoom

Waiting for mine

Photo taken by bicyclebloggers at Sea Otter 2010.

Back in the 26er days. A short history of this mean, green machine. Zoom

Back in the 26er days.

A short history of this mean, green machine.

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