Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

I setup this blog back in July and promptly forgot about it mostly because I didn’t tell anyone about it.

Last week the subject of blogs came up on the iBOB listand I remembered that I had this blog.

Kent Peterson, also a new iBOB blogger, just posted a nice intro, and I thought perhaps I should do the same.

I’m a guy with way too many hobbies and not enough time to spend on all of them. On the internet I’m best known for my cycling hobby, where I enjoy riding and working on bikes. I host a bunch of mailing lists at bikelist.organd I’m active on even more of them. I enjoy experimenting with bicycles and have a good memory for obscure parts details, so friends (on and off of the internet) often ask me about weird gearing, brake systems, and stuff along those lines. I own a lot of bicycles but the common theme is that most are lugged steel (all are steel) and can fit fenders and wider tires. These days most of my riding is done on my Bridgestone RB-T, but that could change by the time you read this. Most recently I’ve been spending a lot of time off of the bike due to a knee injury, but I’m currently doing physical therapy to fix these issues.

Professionally I’m a software developer for Microsoft Exchange (an email server). I work on the High Availability group, which as the name implies, figures out how to make your companies email servers stay online as much as possible. I’ve been working in Exchange for 9 years and have worked on many aspects of this product,but most of my time was spent working on the internet protocols (SMTP,POP, IMAP, NNTP).

My list of hobbies changes about as often as my list of bikes, but here is what is keeping me interested right now:

• Woodworking — We needed some custom radiator covers at home, and the cost of buying even ugly ones was quite high. I’m still getting around to building those, but in the meantime I’ve been doing some smaller practice projects. My most recent one was a end table for our bedroom that holds the bedroom stereo. I’m trying to build projects faster than I buy tools, but I really like tools and this is difficult for me. Recently I’ve been trying to find a cheap used jointer on craigslist, but they all sell before I send email.
• Photography — I’ve been interested in photography since high school whenmy father and I setup a darkroom and he taught me how to process B&W film. My shooting tends to be on again and off again, with lots of photos being taken on vacations. Perhaps I should start a photo blog to remind myself to take photos. My favorite subjects are landscapes, but recently I’ve been having fun taking some sports photos (cyclocross racing for instance) or photos at concerts (when they’ll let me bring my camera). My camera of choice has been a Pentax SLR (these days it is their Digital SLR, *ist D) for pretty much all of that time, I like their user interfaces and smaller lighter weight than most of the competition. On the other hand I’m a strong believer that the photographer makes the photograph, not the photographer, and don’t think that choice of camera is that important to the final outcome.
• Beer Brewing — I brew my own beer and make my own mead (honey wine). My beer preferences arefor hoppy or dark (or both) ales. My biggest brewing problem is that I normally brew faster than I want to drink it, so I need to find other people to help out. Currently on tap I have a pale ale, a porter, a hefeweizen (german style, not NW style), a sweet/strong ale that was supposed to be a clone of Mac and Jacks, and some peach/ginger mead. Aging and fermenting I have a light ginger mead and two kegs of a barleywine or strong ale. I mostly brew using all grain and in the last year have been working with my friend Peter to build a new brewing system that can do larger batches (so we can split them) and which is more efficient. There will probably be a post on that later.
• House Stuff — My wife and I own a 1908 Craftsman house in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle. There are always projects to be done. Last year we refinished the dining room (a messy project since it involved removing a layer of plaster and 4 layers of wallpaper), the living room, and the office. This year we are working on the kitchen and pantry and I have some small project ideas for the basement.The basement is always a challenge because it is a little small and fighting for space we have bicycles, woodworking, beer making, computers, and laundry.
• Computers — I host a tiny army of servers from my basement. They serve up this blog, the mailing lists, and personal websites and email for family members and friends. I use both FreeBSD and Windows Server, but I’ve been moving more things to Windows Server as I’ve had the time (not that there is anything wrong with FreeBSD, I just don’t want to keep on top of security patches for two operating systems). For the last 18 months I’ve also had a machine running Windows Media Center which records TV for us (both HDTV using an over the air antenna and regular cable feeds). I enjoy writing software in my free time, but since I also do this at work it usually gets pushed low down on the priority list and happens very very slowly.
• Biodiesel — My wife and I own two Volkswagen TDIs and run them on 100% biodiesel. Biodiesel is a diesel alternative fuel which is primarily made from vegetable oil. I’m somewhat active in the biodiesel scene in Seattle and host nwbiodiesel’s websiteand have helped them with organizing meetings and their annual forum. I don’t like cars and think that most americans (probably including myself) use their cars way too much. Using them less and using high fuel efficient cars fueled withrenewable and cleansources is something that I’m very interested in. More on this in another post.
• Music — I really enjoy listening to music and going to shows. These days I listen to a lot of alt country (think Wilco) or alt pop (think Death Cab for Cutie) but my musical tastes are vast and I’m always learning about new bands. I’m a member and supporter of KEXP(I wish every major city had a station like KEXP) and often listen to them at work. I’m lucky to have a lot of friends and a wife with similar musical tastes who turn me on to new music. As I get older I strive to keep up with new music and never to stagnate and get stuck on my musical tastes from my twenties.

Anyway, there it is, a short snapshot of what makes me tick. A common theme is that I’m technical (perhaps overly so) and like to know what makes things tick and how to make things myself.

alex

This question comes up a lot on the bicycle lists and just came up again today. I figured I’d save my response in the blog so that I can easily find it and reference it in the future.

On Tue, 19 Jul 2005, John Gruber wrote:
> Correct me if I’m wrong. The cages work for different
> numbers of teeth on the rear cassette. More teeth =
> bigger cage.

This is not accurate. The geometry of the parallelgram defines how large of a cog the rear derailleur can work with.

Cage length determines how much chain the rear derailleur can wrap. You can compute the amount necessary by adding the difference of your large and small chainring along with your large and small cog.

So if you run a typical Shimano crankset with 44/32/22 chainrings and a 12-32 cassette you need a rear derailleur capacity of (44-22) + (32-12) = 22+20 = 42t.

If you replaced your outer chainring with a bashguard you could get away with (32-22)+(32-12) = 30t. That would let you use a GS cage derailleur instead of an SGS cage.

If you are good about not using the smallest cogs with the small chainring you can get away with using a shorter cage rear derailleur. I don’t recommend this practice on mountain bikes (where remembering what gear you are in can be trickier) but I do it all the time on road bikes.

As an example my road bike has 46/31 chainrings with a 12-32 cassette. Doing the math above I would need a (46-31)+(32-12) = 35t capacity. The older GS cage XTR rear derailleur that I use has a 28t maximum capacity. I can use this if I avoid the smallest cogs on my rear cassette. The cassette gearing is 12-14-16-18-21-24-28-32. I need to gain 7t, which is 12+7 or 19. To play it safe I should only use the 31t chainring with the 21-24-28-32 part of the cassette.

If you cheat like this and accidentally shift into the 12 or 14 nothing bad happens, the chain just rattles against the rear derailleur and makes a lot of noise. If you cheat in the other direction (making your chain too short so that you can’t use the large chainring and large cogs) you are likely to trash your rear derailleur or derailleur hanger or both. I’ve been there and have done that and it isn’t much fun.

Shimano only makes the GS (shorter MTB length) cages at the XT and XTR levels. This is too bad because I like using a short cage derailleur on my MTB (where I have a bash guard instead of an outer ring) but would be fine with running a cheaper LX or Deore rear derailleur.

There was this followup discussion about using road GS cage derailleurs (such as a 105 triple) with a wide range mountain bike cassette:

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Justin Vander Pol wrote:
> Good write up Alex. A lot of us run the cheaper Shimano 105 road
> rear derailleur in a GS cage to get a mid cage and keep costs down.
> Shimano says it won’t work, but it runs great with a dual ring/bash
> up front and standard 11-32 cassette in back. You can find 105
> derailleur for fairly cheap on ebay since a lot of roadies are
> ashamed to run mid-level gear on their bikes.

I don’t like doing this because it requires a large chain gap in the smaller cogs, which makes the shifting less precise. The only real functional difference between the “road” and “mountain” rear derailleurs is the geometry of the parallelgram. The road ones ones are designed for a tight ratio cassette. If you max out the B-tension
adjustment to use a 105 GS cage derailleur on an 11-32 cassette then you’ll have a small gap between the upper jockey pulley and the 32t cog, but a large gap between it and the 11t cog. For the best shifting you really want a roughly 1″ gap here and you want it to be pretty consistent across the cassette.

For a 12-28 cassette the road GS cage derailleurs work well.

> Also, what raodies call long-cage, we call mid-cage,so make sure
> you look at the model. Like Alex said,SGS is long, GS is mid, and
> SS is short.

Yup. I always go by the cage code instead of the abitrary terms “long, medium, and short”.

Yesterday started witha visit from my friend Tim to work on the headlights of his bicycle. He has one of the cool Schmidt generator hubs and wanted to add a second headlight to it.It already had a single switched headlight. The new headlight was unswitched. We wired the second headlight in series with the first using a DPDT switch from Radio Shack. In one position the switch turned the headlight on. In the other it short circuited across the headlight, allowing the the first headlight to get all of the power from the hub. Normally external switches look pretty out of place on bicycles, but his bike had a cool little front rack.We clamped the headlight and switch to the rack, out of the way under the handlebar bag. In the end it was a pretty cool setup.

—

In the afternoon my friend David from Missoula came to visit as he passed through town. He brought a nice luggedTrek 400 that was sized too big for him. This bike had a 24″ (61cm) frame when he is about my size and would normally ride a 23″ (58cm) frame. A shorter stem brought the bars closer to the saddle and we put on barend shifters (the normal Suntour Power Ratchet ones) to make shifting a little easier. When checking out the wheels we discovered that the rear wheel had a couple of spokes pulling through (a common problem with the old Matrix-branded rims). I poked around the basement and found a wheel that I inherited almost 10 years ago but which wasn’t tensioned. It looked like a good option, and I started to put it back together. Then I remembered why it was not tensioned — the rim was majorily out of true and had a big flat spot. I spent about 45 minutes on it and got it good enough, but we really need to find him a better wheel. The bike also really needs a triple crank, but we ran out of time.

I can’t ride my bike this week due to hurting my knee, so it was nice to spend some time working on bikes. My bike collection isn’t changing so much anymore, so I need to find other bikes to work on…

alex