Kristi O. had impeccable timing when she sent me an email telling me about an article in today's Daily Camera, Look, Ma, no brakes ..., about fixed-gear bikes in Boulder. It's a good article that explains pretty much exactly why I want a fixed/single-gear bike. Because they are elegantly simple and unique.
Her timing was impeccable because her email came in the five minutes between an email from eBay confirming my purchase of a new set of fixed-gear wheels, and the email from Paypal confirming my payment for said item. These babies have black Mavic rims and black spokes and a black filp-flop hub that can be set up with a fixed-gear on one side and a free-wheel single speed on the other for when I want to be able to coast.
I'm still going to have to buy a few more things for the fixie conversion, including tires for the new wheels, two new rear cog wheels, and a new chain. For tires I'm planning to buy these sweet Michelin Krylion Carbon tires in red. They last forever, are good and grippy (for added safety, ma), and they are super resiliant to puncture flats thanks to several layers of puncture protection technology. Yet they are also reasonably light-weight and have a respectable rolling-resistance rating, meaning they are still pretty efficient tires, and you know how I love efficiency.
Gears and chains are less exciting to think or talk about, but I've been doing some reading about gear ratios too, and I think I'm gonna try a 40 x 14 gear setup which when calculated with crank length and wheel size comes to a gear-inch length of 75.1 which is kind of a medium-high gear, but I don't think it'll be too high (the highest gears on most road bikes are somewhere around the 100 range, whereas the lowest gears on mountain bikes are around the 20 range). I've been riding around town on this gear ratio for the past day or two and I think it should be just right... but it might take some experimenting to get it just right too.
Of course the fixie conversion is just the beginning. Next I think I will be buying some better brakes, then probably a better seat, and then probably a new handlebar and brake levers, and finally some new pedals. But all those things can wait and be added later.
So, good timing with that article Kristi!
As for other news, I've just been working a lot. I don't care about John Karr and JonBenet, not even a little bit. And I guess that's about it. Today I wanted to leave you with a youtube video of some Chinese pop music. I had a hard time choosing between one of the many pretty cheesy Chinese pop songs, or one of the less-abundant moderatly decent Chinese pop songs. In the end I chose this song, Shi Mian Mai Fu ει’εδΌ by S.H.E., in my opinion one of China's better pop bands. Maybe next time I'll give you guys one of the cheesier songs.
5 comments:
of all the S.H.E. videos you chose THAT one??
Yup, I sure did. I listened to a few others and this song sounded the least cheesey, so even though it isn't a very good video, I put it up. I thought about putting up Superstar, but then I decided not to. Maybe next time.
superstar is much better than this one. Well, why not show Jay chou videos?
Ok, ok, so I have no taste in music. I almost put up a Jay Chou video. He will probably be on the next blog.
It's funny, because I've jumped on the fixie bandwagon. Converted my dad's old Puch road bike back in May. I still use my single speed road bike for most day-to-day rides in the city traffic, but the fixie is fun to play around with, and for long rides because it makes you work.
How was Chinese camp, BTW?
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