New Chainrings 50 x 38 Teeth

The first set of chainrings I installed on this 1982 bike frame - large ring 53 teeth, small ring 39

Most road bikes sold say ten years would have two chainrings (the ones in front, with the pedals) that would have 53 and 39 teeth. (Bikes with drop handlebars that look like a road bike but intended for touring and climbing long inclines would have an third smaller "granny" gear chainring, too.) This 53 by 39 combo is what I ended up with when I equipped the 1982 Bridgestone frame with some Shimano chainrings I found on eBay ("lightly used"). In back I have only seven gears, running from 11 teeth to 28. We don't have much by way of serious hills around here (or what few there are, I mostly manage to avoid) so this worked fine as far as far as hill climbing is concerned. Still I felt that I ended up having a lot of gear options that were simply out of range for most (or all) of my riding. That is, when riding with the 53 tooth chainring in front I didn't use the smallest two gears in back at all and the next ones not very much. I sensed that having fewer teeth on the front chainrings would improve my shifting patterns. I would probably be able to ride a more on the large chainring and not most of the time on the smaller one.


The two new U.S. manufactured Vuelta chainrings I found on the Internet

I did a certain amount of research. I eventually concluded that I could live without shaped teeth to assist with shifting, the so-called ramps, and so I didn't worry about that as a feature of the chains I was looking at. It became clear that the smallest small chainring that will fit on my bike would have 38 (rather than 39) teeth, but there were more options for the front chainring - I settled on 50 teeth. At first I was looking at Sugoi chainrings, but eventually I came upon Vuelta and that you can buy the Vuelta chainrings directly from the factory. And that the chainrings are made in the U.S. So I bought them from Vuelta - both of them were a little over 50 bucks.


A bike I still own, but never ride (which is a separate, annoying story) with a "compact crank"

I already have a road bike with 50 teeth on the front chainring - this Traitor that I bought new in 2009. I have had some problems with the brakes and generally fell out of love with this bike, so I am not using it, but the small large chainring was good. I could not just "borrow" (take) rings off of this bike (as I have taken a number of other components since I am not riding it) because the bolt arrangement to attach to the "spider" (the five arms that extends from where the crank arm for the pedal attached to the bottom bracket) is smaller to allow the small inner chainring. This allows the small chainring to have 36 teeth. I didn't want to buy a new spider and pedal arm just to get from 38 to 36 teeth on that ring.

Replacing the chainrings is easy as bike repairs or maintenance goes if you have the right tools, which were included in some set I bought a few years ago (fortunately). It took less than 30 minutes at a leisurely pace of work. I didn't move the front derailleur down closer to the chainrings but when I checked, the front derailleur shifting was still good - I don't see any reason to mess with the location of the derailleur in that case!

The results are great - as I said, I don't have hills so the improvement provided by one less tooth on the smaller ring is probably mostly in my head for what little use I make of the lowest gear available, but I can tell that having 50 instead of 53 teeth on the larger chainring is a noticeable and pleasing improvement. Yay!

Sometimes the Bike Commuter is Lucky

Slightly threatening weather - clouds, anyway

For the past several days, the promised or likely weather was always a little bicycle commuter unfriendly. I don't let that bother me or keep me from commuting by bike. For one thing, the promise of some rain doesn't necessarily mean it will be raining during the commute!


Even if it is raining some, a bit with well-fitted fenders like this makes it not so bad

Thursday afternoon I did ride in the rain, but for about a quarter mile - the rain squall was going one way and I was going another.

Commuting every day, it may be twice a year that I find myself completely soaked in a driving rain while commuting. Part of the adventure, and I try to be prepared for it.

Bait Bikes?

Bike locked to bench for about ten days


Bike locked to pole for about a week

I see these often along my commute - I sometimes imagine that the police lock these up as theft bait - that only seems a logical explanation because otherwise, why would bikes like these be locked up for so long? Just odd.

They are almost always oddly unattractive bikes - the first bike above is rideable - someone has updated an old cruiser bike as a fixie; the wheels and tires were reasonably new. The frame, however, was amazing for its rust - almost perfectly distributed across the entire thing. (This I would say however is not very attractive in a conventional sense.)

The second bike is even stranger. It's a Cannondale, discernible by the "handmade in the USA" on the chainstay. The components (brake levers, in particular) suggest it is almost twenty years old, but then it appears to carbon fiber? Or maybe it is aluminum. Someone has covered up the various branding. The funniest part is the chain used here, which looks like a chain you would use to lock up a motor scooter, not a bicycle.

Some Grim Cyclists From 1896

Title: The Donaldson bicycle lithos for the season of 1896

Creator(s): Donaldson Lith. Co., lithographer
Date Created/Published: Cincinnati : Donaldson Litho Co., [ca. 1896]
Medium: 1 print ; chromolithograph ; 28 9/16 x 42 1/4 in.
Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-08976 (digital file from original print)
Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
Call Number: PGA - Donaldson--Donaldson bicycle lithos... (E size) [P&P]
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003665194/

This is a poster advertising the lithographic services of the Donaldson Company in 1896. The riders depicted are noteworthy for their grim expressions. Or perhaps just determined.

Some of these sorts of posters on the Library of Congress web site were digitized from film reproductions, not from the original, and the color is often not quite right and they are otherwise not great. Good, but not great. This however was more recently digitized from the original item which is 42+ inches across, so it is a pretty nice digital reproduction. Not so noticeable perhaps from the JPEG I copied from the LOC.gov site, but there is a high resolution TIFF image there you can download if you want (which is 58.7 mb).

Thanks National Park Service! New Water Fountain on Mt Vernon Trail

New water fountain along the Mount Vernon Trail near National Airport

There has been some construction work ongoing since (it seems) the end of last summer to improve small parts of the Mount Vernon Trail where it was routed down right next to the parkway (roadway). These improvements took longer than one would have imagined - part of it took longer than six months - but are good improvements.

At the same time, this new water fountain was installed. For a long time it was surrounded by yellow construction tape, but it didn't matter much since it was cooler weather. Now that hot hot weather has really arrived, it is great for this to be there.

Thursday afternoon it was up around 95 degrees (Fahrenheit, or around 35 Celcius) during ~ten mile (16 km) commute home. I have my bottle of water filled before I leave work, but getting through the DC traffic out of the city was hot work it seemed so when I got to this water fountain, I was glad to be able to stop and get a little refreshed.

The photo was taken Friday morning on the way in, around 6:30 - Fridays are a day a lot of people telework so not too much traffic, bikes or cars.

The fountain post has a metal bowl at the bottom that can be filled with water for dogs. Nice touch.

Thanks National Park Service! Happy 100th birthday!

Outbursts of Everett True Against Sidewalk Cyclists

A colleague at work brought Everett True cartoons to my attention - they appeared in newspapers and are now available online online in digitized papers.



From the newspaper "The Day Book." (Chicago, Ill.), 11 March 1913. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1913-03-11/ed-...

According to Wikipedia's article about The Outbursts of Everett True, this was a cartoon published from 1905 through 1927. The cartoon is described:

The original strip revolved around an ill-tempered man in late middle-age who was typically dressed in a suit and bowler hat of antiquated and comical appearance for the time. Without his hat he was completely bald. In the early cartoons he was moderately stout, but in the later ones he became increasingly portly. The first panel of each strip generally had someone inconveniencing or annoying True. In the second panel he would then make an ill-tempered outburst. In early cartoons this was usually an uninhibited rant which expressed what other people wanted to say, but were too polite to. Sometimes it was accompanied by comments from bystanders in speech-bubbles ("that's the way I like to hear a man talk"; "I wish I could hand out one like that"). Later cartoons were more slapstick in character.

From the newspaper "The Day Book." (Chicago, Ill.), 21 July 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1915-07-21/ed-...

Cycling does not appear to have been a common topic; these are the only two examples I found and arguably they are the same cartoon, one with dialog and one without.

Anyway, in his "everyman" role, True seems to be expressing a general annoyance with cyclists on the sidewalk in cities - a hundred years ago. Who knows that the law was on this at that time (and in this place).

Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution (Book Review)

Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution by Janette Sadik-Khan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I didn't read this from cover to cover but paged through it and read some of the sections more focused on cycling. I can't imagine as a bike commuter I need or want to own such a book, but to get it from the library and read up a little, sure. It is readable enough. If you ignore the occasional attempt at making it all more dramatic than it probably was.

I have several quibbles with the title. I don't think this is a handbook, for one, and even if it is a handbook, it isn't for an urban revolution but for incremental urban change. It's just that the way things work around here, it seems like a revolution. To me.

Anyway, as to whether it is a handbook or not - according to wikipedia, "Handbooks may deal with any topic, and are generally compendiums of information in a particular field or about a particular technique. They are designed to be easily consulted and provide quick answers in a certain area. For example, the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers is a reference for how to cite works in MLA style, among other things." If the topic here is urban traffic design, then this is more a collection of case studies than a reference book. Handbooks, as reference works, are something you look up an answer in, not something to be read in large chunks. This is more the later.

The chapter on the NYC implementation of a bikeshare program is sort of amusing since here in the DC area there was much less drama but it seems to have worked out just fine.



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