Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

San Diego has an interesting layout.  The airport is right in the center of the city (literally a 10 minute bike ride from downtown).  Balboa Park is also downtown.  Standing at the corner of 6th and Laurel it feels like you can reach up and touch the landing gear on planes as they come in for a landing.

Balboa Park is huge.  Not as large as Central Park in New York or Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, but larger than Discovery Park in Seattle.  There are tons of museums, some nice gardens, a huge zoo, the velodrome, and lots of other stuff.

What brought me to Balboa Park this morning were trails.  Flying into San Diego I was looking out of the airplane window and there were trails everywhere in the hills outside of the city.  I don’t have time on this trip to ride out to those trails, but I read that there were trails in Balboa Park too.  I found them.

Folding bikes with 16″ wheels aren’t known for their offroad handling.  These trails wouldn’t be technical on any sort of mountain bike, or much of anything on a touring or cyclocross bike, but they were pretty challenging with 16″ wheels.  Trails here are much different than in Seattle — you can look around and see where everything is instead of being buried in thick forest.  The surface was sand instead of mud.  The plants are flowering in early april, and falling might involve landing on a cactus.  All good stuff.

If you are coming to San Diego and have a travel bike then I recommend bringing it.  Having a few days of summer riding in the middle of Seattle’s spring has been very refreshing.  Tomorrow my wife arrives and we move farther up the coast — I look forward to seeing what riding I find up there too.

I’m in San Diego this week for a conference and brought my folding bike.  Yesterday morning I exploring town and the friendly folks at Mission Hill Bikes told me that the San Diego Velodrome has racing on Tuesday nights.  I finished up work a bit early and headed over there.

The ride over turned into a bit of an adventure when my headlight decided that it no longer wanted to be attached to my handlebars and found it’s way into a gutter.  I pressed on in the twilight just pretending that I was extra invisible the cars.  The velodrome itself was pretty hard to find too, but eventually I got there. 

I got the see the last three races of the evening.  The track here is a lot like at home — much longer than normal and concrete.  Lots of fixie folks hanging out at the track and having a couple of beers.  On my way out asked the closest small group for directions (hoping to find a more direct way home).  They suggested that I go out to the bar with them instead, so I piled into their van and five of us went to a place called the Whistle Stop.  A few beers, a taco, fun conversation, and a little dancing later and it was already last call.  Thankfully Joel and Amelia gave me a ride back into town and I got back into my hotel room right at 2am.

Mark, Javier, Amelia, Joel, Adam, Me

Cyclists and other folk in San Diego are very friendly.  I’m really glad that I brought the bike (I almost didn’t) and got to spend some time around town last night.

We came back from playing in the snow on Wednesday evening and watched a dead pigeon drop out of the sky.  We were a little startled and trying to figure out where it came from when Nate spotted a much larger bird flying to our neighbor’s roof.

We all sat inside the living room for 30 minutes and watched the hawk return, monitor the area, and collect his kill.

It’s pretty cool having birds of prey in an urban setting!

Based on our tiny Birds of Seattle guide I think this is a Cooper’s Hawk.

This is a normal internet-BOB (a bicyclemailing list)way of finishing out the year. I sort of missed it this year (spent too much time on the basement to read the list), so I’ll try doing it with the blog. There is bike and not bike stuff here to make all blog readers happy.

Not Bike

Le Creuset Omelette Pan — Le Creuset makes this item really difficult to buy, but it is amazing. I think that it is impossible to make a bad omelettewith it. The non-stick coating is not teflon and works really well. The cast iron retains heat really well, so the pan doesn’t cool down when you add food to it. We have one of their frying pans too, and it gets some use, but the omelette pan is used almost every day. We’ve owned other omelette pans, but none were as good as this. We have the smaller size (7 or 8″) and it is perfect for 2 egg omelettes.

I’ve tried to buy these as gifts and they are really hard to find. They are sometimes in Le Creuset “outlet” stores. Amazon and most kitchen stores don’t carry them.

One Car Family — Christine and I were a one car, one driver family from moving to Seattle in 1996 until 2002. Then we bought a new car, I got a driver’s license, and we bought a second new car. We sold our second car in April and don’t miss it at all. Cars are expensive. They can be handy tools, but we don’t need or benefit from two of them.

Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooker — We rarely use it for rice, but it is amazing for steel cut oats. One of my favorite foods,butI never liked standing around for 45 minutes stiring it. The rice cooker makes it better than I do. The timer means wecan have oatmeal ready when we wake up. I’m not a big kitchen gadget/appliance guy,but this one is great.

Virtual Computers– I replaced 3 servers with one physical machine. The new machine has about 30% of the power consumption of the previous 3 machines, is quieter, and takes up less space. This blog is hosted on a virtual computer.

Smaller Plates — For years I’ve wonderedwhy normal dinner plates hold more than one should eat. I doubt they’ve always been thisbig. I spent a while trying to findsmaller ones and finally did. Denby salad plates are the right size (9″, instead of 10 or 11″) for a normal sized meal. Their stonewear is really durable too, we’ve hadtheir dishes for a year and have chipped anything despite a few drops. They do make full size plates which we use on special occasions.

Eating Fish — I’ve been lacto-ovo vegetarian since my junior year of high school. In 2006 I started eating fish to get more food in common with Christine. My first experiences with fish weren’t great, I didn’t get the subtle flavor and didn’t like the texture. This year I’ve come to really appreciate the flavor, enjoy cooking it, and the lean protein is probably good for me. I am careful with the sources of my fish and worry about sustainability.

Bike

New Clubs — I’ve been riding with point83 and playing Rollo (mini bike polo) this year. It’s fun riding with a younger and less serious crowd. I’d like to finda group that did some more weekend rides but with a similar mentality.

Metal Fabricating — It was only last January when I first lit a torch. In March I bought my own. Since then I’ve built about 5 racks and have learned a lot more. This year Ihope to do even more. Fabricating my own bike parts and modifications is really enjoyable and a nice way to grow the hobby. This week I got a lathe which will take me to the next step of fabrication.

Porteur Racks — Building racks has given me the chance to really get used to big front platform racks. I really like carrying gear up front and have plans to build racks for all of my bikes. The porteur rack does most of what I used a trailer for and most of what I used panniers for. It’s always there too. I wish that there were some good production models.

Bicycle Fixation’s Knickers — In 2006 I discovered the Ibex Breakaway Jacket. A great jacket, but I needed something great for my legs. The Bicycle Fixation knickers do the job. I have them in hemp and wool. I like both, but I like the hemp ones better (unless it is raining hard, then the wool ones are warmer). The knickers are comfortable on and off the bike, lightweight,look pretty good (for bike clothing…pants would be even better) and work well in a wide range of temps. Below around 40F I put very light tights underneath. 40F to 65F they are perfect by themselves.

Flat Pedals (no retention) – about 10 years I’ve ridden everywhere with clipless pedals. Since I ride pretty much every day and don’t like to change shoes I end up wearing my bike shoes all day. I didn’t even really think that there was another option. When I went to the Oregon BCA show I didn’t want to take two pairs of shoes and knew that I’d be on my feet almost all day. Flat pedals with good walking shoes made a lot of sense. So I picked up a pair of the MKS Sneaker pedals and put them on my commuter. A week later I didn’t really miss the clipless pedals much. Now I have one bike permanently setup with flat pedals and might do another.

Bike Friday Tikit — It folds small, it rides well, it is reasonably priced for a USmade product.I converted it to a 7sp internal gearhub (which is how they should sell it stock) and it’s a great bike. It’s my city rider, my folder, and my travel bike. I’ve owned a Bike Friday New World Tourist for years and hardly used it, but the Tikit is getting a lot of miles.

Gifford Pinchot Tour — Bicycle Touring isn’t new for me, but this tour was incredible. 6 months later I still think about it often. This was the best 5 days that I’ve spent on a bicycle.

alex

The workshop remodel is done enough to do other stuff with the basement besides work on the basement.  I’m really happy with how it came out, the new shop layout has much more space and is better organized.

In the photo above you can see the two main workbenches.  The one on the left is more wood oriented while the one on the right is more metal/brazing/bicycle oriented.  It’s nice having these close together, in the old layout they were in different corners of the basement and so tools were never put away properly.

I went back and forth on building vs buying workbenches and ended up mostly buying to save time.  The bike workbench is 8′ long, maple top, and has sturdy legs.  I liked it because it is high enough to put rolling tool cabinets underneath it.  I bought the last two 4′ power strips at Home Depot and used those to get 20 outlets along the back of the workbench.  Probably overkill, but they’ll come in handy.

My old bike workbench had small bins for random parts along the back and I found them useful.  This time I left more space for them.  I’m still experimenting with the spacing and bin size.

The wood workbench has a commercial top with a couple of vises.  This photo makes me laugh because you can see my old bike workbench on the right, it is tiny (and cluttered, as always) in comparison.  I built that a few years ago as a potting bench for Christine, but it ended up becoming my main workbench even though it is too small and not really sturdy enough.

Bike storage is similar to the old basement, 6 bike hooks set at 14″ intervals alternating up/down.  It looks a little messy in this photo because my trailer is jammed in there (I haven’t found a good location for it yet). 

I bought a small lathe (7×8 inch, soon to be 7×14 inch) on Craigslist and set it up on this workbench.  I’ve only started playing with it today and so far I’ve only made a little gear holder to hold some of the threading gears.  I’m enjoying playing with this and think it’ll be useful.  My first bike projects will be some taillight housing and a copy of the Hub-Bub Rohloff Shift Adapter.  If I get really fancy I’d like to build a cable travel adapter to make a 9sp Shimano bar-end shifter shift a 9sp SRAM internal hub gear.

There is tire and wheel storage under the stairs.  I need to clean up the random pile of stuff sitting on top of that, eventually the trailer will probably live there.

Brewing equipment is behind the wood workbench and is much better organized.  It used to be scattered in bins around the basement,now it is all on these two sets of shelves.

There is still more to do,but it can happen slowly instead of all being done today.  I’m still organizing and figuring out what should live where.  I need a place to store metal (right now it is on the floor under the lathe) and need to build a door into the crawlspace.  The back wall (which has the wood storage and connects to the crawl space) is a bit of a dumping ground.

Overall it probably doesn’t look like much, but I think it is a big improvement over the old space.  You can see photos of that taken two years ago.

Thanks to Christine, Rory, and Kathy for their help on different parts of the project and to Jimmy for his idea of combining the storage and laundry rooms.  This layout seems to have maximized the available space.

During the last week we finished the new wall, moved almost everything in the basement, and then today I took down the old wall.

It’s hard to tell from this photo, but the new space is pretty huge.  It’ll make a great workshop after much more work.  It is about 50% larger than the biggest workshop I had thought I’d be able to build.

The laundry/storage room came out nicely too:

The wood rack, dust collector, and general building materials will move out of the way of course.  The wall came out the perfect size for 3 48″ wide by 18″ deep shelves.

Now I just need to figure out how to get the old wall to the dump.  I hate throwing away this much stuff, especially since it appears to have been built in the last couple of decades.  The old storage room was insulated for some reason and that really increases the amount of debris.  There is a lot more to come, I still need to remove most of the ceiling and the back and outside walls.

Christine and I met her sister Janet and brother in law Paul in Jamaica for Thanksgiving.  We went to Negril, which is on the western tip of Jamaica and stayed at a small resort called Catcha Falling Star.

I didn’t know what to expect of Jamaica and actually didn’t do much research on it beforehand.  Christine organized the whole trip.  The day before leaving I looked up Catcha on tripadvisor and discovered that everyone who visited the place loved it.

We arrived on Sunday and found Paul and Janet in the line at customs.  We made it through and found our way to the taxi area where a van was waiting for us.  The drive out to Negril was long (about an hour and a half), but the scenery was interesting.  Buildings in coastal Jamaica seem to be designed for hurricanes and are either basic concrete structures or seem almost disposable.  There were many structures that appeared to be abandoned.  Poverty is severe in Jamaica (33% of the population is unemployed) and this was clearly visible when driving around.

Catcha Falling Star was wonderful.  We got in around noon, explored a little bit, and went for a swim.  It is on the West End Road section of Negril where there are ocean side cliffs instead of beaches.  Swimming at Catcha involves a short jump into the water (around 5′) and you are in 20′ deep water.  If you want more of an adventure there are places to jump from around 15′ and 20′ into the water.

After checking in we walked outside to visit the little grocery store across the street.  This was my first exposure to public roads in Jamaica and I was immediately identified as someone who might buy something.  A guy walked over to me, started talking to me (in a friendly manner, welcoming me to Jamaica, etc) and then tried to sell me a bracelet (which I refused, but only after he started trying to tie it onto my wrist).  After this experience I learned to be more forceful in saying no.  Everyone that we met in Jamaica was really friendly, but I was happier when they weren’t trying to sell me something.

During our time there we snorkeled a lot (a future blog entry will be written just on this subject), took a great day trip up to Mayfield Falls (another blog entry),ate at a few nice restaurants,and explored both the beach and swam around the west end cliffs.  Christine and I rented a scooter for the last couple of days and drove around the hills south of Negril and visited the beach on the far north.  It was a very relaxing trip.

Catcha was a really great place to stay while we were there.  The staff was very friendly and gave us (and all of the guests) a lot of personal attention.  On the first day everyone learned our names.  Every morning we’d walk down to the bar/restaurant and order breakfast from Ordia.  They’d deliver it to the little veranda/porch in the front of our room.  In the evenings we’d usually return from whatever we’d been doing for the day and would watch the sunset from our veranda.  After dark we’d head down to Ivan’s (the bar/restaurant) for dinner and to hang out.  The resort only has about 10-15 rooms so it was easy to get to know people there.  A guy named Kevin ran the bar in the evenings and kept the music flowing (often singing along) and everyone entertained.  I don’t normally hang out much at hotels, but this was a great experience.  Sunsets at Catcha were amazing.  Since it is on the western tip of the island you just look out on an expanse of sea as the sun descends.

We’ve been back in Seattle for a couple of days now.  Looking back on the trip I remember the great swimming, really friendly people, and nice food.  I don’t normally relax on vacations, but this trip was really relaxing.  I also remember the poverty and large divide between the haves and have nots.  While scootering around the hills we found a massive mansion with 4 or 5 luxury cars sunning themselves in a huge sea of manicured grass.  Half a mile away there were tiny shacks that were barely staying together, but which were lived in.  It was an odd extreme.  I’m also reminded of how hurricanes knock everything out and it is rebuilt time and time again.  Our hotel was rebuilt after Ivan and then lost all of their landscaping again after Dean.  It’s worth being persistent though, it really is a wonderful part of the world.  I look forward to visiting again.

On Saturday morning Alistair and I met at my house and biked down to Seattle Amtrak station.  We were heading to Portland for the Oregon Bicycle Constructor’s Association show.  Taking bikes on Amtrak was great, Alistair just rolled his bike into the baggage car and I folded my Tikit it and stuck it in the baggage closet at the end of each car.  Tickets weren’t too expensive ($55 round trip per person, $10 for Alistair’s bike) and it was much more enjoyable than driving.

Saturday afternoon we went to Strawberry Cycles for a gathering of builders.  I talked to Dave Levy (TiCycles), Sacha White (Vanilla), John (a builder in Ashland), Tony Pereira, Andy Newlands (Strawberry) and many other interesting folks.

Joe Broach and his wife Rachel met up with us a few hours later and the four of us went to a good Arabic restaurant for dinner.  Joe and Rachel very nicely guided us back to the apartment where we were staying (I think we would have been able to find it, but not nearly as quickly) and we spent a couple of hours hanging out with our hosts before heading to bed.

In the morning we had a nice breakfast at The Paradox (a veggie breakfast place) with a few of Alistair’s friends, then met up with Joe to ride to the show.

The climb up to the show through Washington Park was great.  I’d love to have a climb like that in Seattle.  Alistair remarked that it was like Interlake only much much longer.  I’d agree.  Oddly (especially for bike centric Portland) we only saw one or two other cyclists heading up there, most people took the MAX (light rail).

We arrived at the show at about 11:30.  It was in a pretty small room and very tightly packed.  The lighting was pretty dim, so I didn’t take as many photos as I’d have liked.  Most of the day went by in a blur of talking to interesting folks and looking at great bikes, but here are some of the highlights.

Bike Friday was there showing off some really nicely made Tikit and other bikes as well as a custom tandem.  The bike that got the most interest was a very lightweight Bike Friday (15lbs) built by Rob English,but I was more attracted to the fillet brazed frame made by Eric (one of their brazers).  It has a little front rack,steel Wald fenders, and a cool homemade seatpost.  The tandem was also incredible, it just had a lot of small details and one off pieces.  I’ve met Bike Friday folks many times, but it is usually the sales force.  It was great to talk to the guys involved in manufacturing the bikes.  I think they have some of the more interesting jobs in the bike world considering how unique the designs are.

Tony Pereira was showing off a few new frames that hadn’t been painted yet.  I really liked the 650B Randonneuring bicycle.  It had a great custom twin plate crown, subtle manipulation of the chainstays to fit wide tires, and excellent workmanship.  I look forward to seeing this bike in person once it is built up.

Jeff Lyon was showing off a collection of road, cyclocross, and randoneeuring frames.  I really like his front racks, especially the one shown here that was made of 1/4″ tubing and chrome plated.  He also has the best headlight mounts out for his front racks.  Jeff is a great guy to talk to, I wish the show was a little less busy so that I could have spent a little more timing hanging out there.

Ahearne always has some interesting bikes.  At this show they had an unpainted bike with a porteur rack, Rohloff hub, and some interesting chainstays.  It was a really stout bike and would be great for dirt road touring.  They also had Joseph Ahearne’s personal camping bike complete with a Ti Spork headbadge, a collection of great racks, and a nice fork built for the Surly Pugsley wheels and tires.

The last builder that I’ll highlight is “m.a.p. cycles”.  Mitch is just starting out but has already built two impressive bikes.  I love the rack on his porteur, I just can’t imagine mapping out of all the twists and turns in the rack deck.  He also built a really nice mixte with a Tubus Fly-like (or maybe a modified Tubus Fly) rear rack.

I have dozens of additional photos, and they are mostly well tagged.

I don’t know if Oregon BCA will become an annual event, but I hope that it does.  I’d like to see it grow to include other NW builders from Washington, Idaho and Montana.  The Oregon/NW focus (compared to the international focus of NAHBS) seemed to allow a wider breadth of experience levels and exposed me to smaller builders that I’d never heard of.

I’ve always thought that the Bike Friday Tikit should have an internal hub gear. The range with the derailleur is less than most 7sp and 8sp hub gears and the hub gear is cleaner and better protected from the environment, all good things on a commute oriented folder. I expect that Bike Friday released it with a derailleur because the hub gear would have added a couple of hundred dollars to the cost.

Yesterday I built a Tikit rear wheel with a SRAM S7 hub. It was probably the most annoying wheel that I’ve ever built…there are 36 very short spokes (around 6″ each) in a tiny little rim. A Park spoke wrench just fit between each of the spokes. It was very comforting to finish it. I chose the SRAM S7 over the Shimano Nexus 8 for a few reasons:

• A LBS (Aaron’s Bike Repair) stocks the SRAM S7 and spare parts. I’ve overhauled SRAM S7 hubs before and they are pretty easy to dismantle and put back together. I probably won’t need to, but it is nice to know that I can.
• The Nexus 8 is pretty hard to find right now (specifically the shifter is hard to find right now).
• The SRAM S7 has a similar gear range to the Nexus 8sp.
• I prefer the clickbox to the shifter cable arrangement on the Shimano Nexus hubs.

This morning I put the rest of the bike together:

The hub gear makes the bike look a lot cleaner. There is no derailleur hanging down low to pick up dirt and road grime. You might ask how I got away without a chain tensioner since the Tikit has vertical dropouts. The answer is that I was lucky — the stock 53t chainring and the SRAM 18t cog work perfectly with the chainstay length on this Tikit. They also give good gearing: 27″, 32″, 38″, 47″, 58″, 70″, 82″. I’d like something in the 60s between the 58 and 70, but this is good enough and the range is exactly what I wanted.

I bought the drum brake version of the hub and removed the stock V-brake. The drum brake should work well in this application and will allow the rim to last nearly forever.

I wanted to experiment with some other flat bars, so I ordered a pair of “Origin-8 Space Bars”. They are sort of a hybrid between Moustache bars and Albatross bars, hopefully it is a combo that works well for me. The make the folded bike smaller than drop bars and work more easily with the hub’s rotary shifter. They also have some rise,so I’ll probably need to cut down the stem mast a little bit.

The bike folds to about the same size as the stock Tikit:

I spent all day working on projects,so I didn’t get to give the new setup much of a test ride (just a few laps around the block). I’ll report back on how the bike works in this configuration. I think it’ll work very well.

Christine and I have been talking about how to restructure the backyard for years. One of my goals is to get a workshop space back there. Originally I had drawn up plans for a garage with a roof deck that looked like this:

I liked the idea of the deck and thought that the garage would be useful for future owners of the house, but she didn’t like how much yard space this consumed. It also would have been a very expensive project involving way too much concrete (mostly for the big pad under the garage and the walkway next to it).

Last week I started drawing a fresh design that is sort of a tall shed. It has a much smaller footprint but is tall. The height gives me space for hanging bikes and a loft for storage. The workshop would still be plenty large for my metalworking/bike shop needs, but it would be a little small for woodworking. This is okay, moving the bikes out of the basement would give me back lost space there.

Here is what I came up with: