Fortune Cookie Zen

Visit Starboard Tack on Atlantic between Sahara and Karen. It’s good.

Well, The west side of Stillwater, OK burned down. We first heard word of evacuation orders around 6 pm, and made the decision ourselves to leave around 7:00 and were on the road out of town by 8:00.

Our hearts go out to those who lost their property or their livelihoods.

A SpaceX rocket exploded again. It’s like the 4th of July came early.

Life, man. Like the title says, I really need to write more.

For the last four years, I’ve been attending the disintegration of my extended family. My immediate family (wife and kids) are great, you could even say we thrived during Covid.

But since then, I’ve lost my mother-in-law from my previous marriage. (I’m a widower) She had been a mother-figure and dear friend since my first wife’s death. I carried out her wishes and delivered her advanced directive to the nurses, joked with her in the hospital, and then held her hand while she died. She had grace, she was a character. My life is so much richer for having known her. I miss her every day.

I lost my dad. I don’t think he was very happy with me, but he didn’t appreciate the shit sandwich I was dealt; his dementia had pushed my brother out of the family and drove my mother to refuse to let him return from the skilled nursing facility. I was forced to take over. He was resentful of it. He died in assisted living.

My brother has cancer. I haven’t lost him yet and, although the cancer he has is horrible, it seems to be responding well to chemo and radiation at the moment.

My mom. My mom, the center of all this drama, is determined to be miserable and make all of our lives miserable.

I really need to write more.

Yesterday, I was asked about my Soma Grand Randonneur Build and whether or not I liked how it rode. Since I referenced this build, I guess I should post about it.

Here are the build details:

• Velo Orange Polyvalent frameset with Velo Orange fenders and Randonneur rack
• 26″ Velocity Cliffhanger rims laced to a Hope rear and SP front dyno hub with 26″ x 2.3″ Rene Herse Rat Trap Pass tires
• Rene Herse Randonneur handlebars with Nitto stem and Berthoud decaleur, bags, and saddle
• Rene Herse crankset and IRD square taper JIS bottom bracket, which, while beautiful, turned out to be the worst fucking pain in the ass I’ve dealt with since that piece of shit Velo Orange crankset on the Grand Randonneur.
• Drivetrain is Shimano 105 R7000 because it just fucking works. Least problematic thing about this bike. Gearing is 11 speed 11-32 x 46/30

So, let’s talk about Jan’s Rene Herse crankset and the fucking fits it gave me. First, the drive side pedal threads were all wrong. As in it was impossible to get a pedal onto the crankset at all. Looks like a step may have been missed as the ridges on the thread were very deep, effectively reducing the diameter of the pedal bore. This had to be chased with the proper tap, and frankly for as much as I spent on this crank, that’s totally unacceptable. Secondly, and far worse, in my opinion, is the tendency of this crankset and|or bottom bracket combo to back off the crank bolt. On five consecutive rides, within 5 miles the crank bolts would loosen so much that I would be forced to return. Each time I would re-install to specification (because I can fucking read) and each time they would back off again. The solution was to replace the beautiful but worthless Rene Herse bolts with bog-standard SRAM crank bolts, put some blue loctite on them, and let them sit over the winter.

That aside, this is a wonderfully riding, albeit not overly spirited bicycle. Total weight as pictured above (sans water bottles) is around 29 lbs, definitely not a lightweight, although you don’t really notice the weight so much, even on hills.

I spent about half of November, 2018 in Las Vegas. I have family there, and I was presenting at re:Invent, so I made it a family trip, and then stayed over for the conference.

Anyway, this is just setting the scene. While staying at the Park MGM, I really had the first champagne cocktail I have ever enjoyed: a Garibaldi, at the Primrose. It was lovely. Later, I would have my first Aperol spritz at The Barrymore, a truly kickass place you should eat at.

Now, I’m just fucking ruined.

As a side note, I heard someone say: “The difference between Prosecco and Champagne is Prosecco tastes good.”

New Mavic Open Pro UST Disc hoops laced by Colorado Cyclist onto Hope RS4 hubs. Still awaiting rotors, lock rings, and a skewer for the rear. #sexyaf

The Idea

It started out as a simple enough idea: ride two State games cycling events back to back on the same bike and same tires. I registered for the gravel event on Saturday, and the road tour on Sunday. This should be a test of my fitness as the year progressed. Then work|life became unbalanced, the day arrived, and I flunked the test.

The Bike

This is my Salsa Colossal build. It happens to be the later version with more tire clearance up front, which is why I thought it would be the right compromise for road and gravel. OK, I have a Surly Midnight Special that would have been aces for this event, but I put some time and money into building this ride and wanted to try it out.

It was a bad choice, but more about that later.

It’s actually a great bike, Salsa improved the tire clearance in the later model, so it will take most 32mm tires. Overall, the build is Ultegra 6800 with a few odd changes: Absolute Black oval 34T inner chainring and the newer Ultegra r8000 front derailleur. The cockpit is a mixture of Thomson and carbon, and it is generally a nice riding bike. To keep it road’ish, I used Look Keo Blade road pedals and Giro road shoes. The tires were Vittoria XN 31mm file-tread cyclocross tires that measured about 33mm wide when mounted on HED Belgium+ wheels. Upon seeing the bike, my friend Josh (who turned out to be the overall winner) commented that I was just adding additional difficulty, and for the first time he has ever known I would be on narrower tires than he was. 🤔

The Day

It rained a lot on Friday night before the event, so I was worried that the trail used for the first part of the event would be soft. The trail turned out to be in great shape, it was the sandy gravel roads leading south from Roca, NE that became my undoing. South 38th Street generally rises in elevation towards Princeton, NE and usually is an easy ride. Usually, it hasn’t rained and become all spongy, which for a 240lb rider on 31mm tires means I am carving 1″ deep ruts all the way towards Cortland, NE. This turned into a really frustrating and energy-sapping technical ride to the first checkpoint, and in hindsight, sapped my energy so badly that the return trip quickly turned into a nightmare of cramping and exhaustion.

The Finish

I managed to finish, with a shitty time of over five hours. I gritted it out because I knew my ass was cooked for the road tour and it came down to whether or not I was going to quit one event or two.

The Lesson

The bike wasn’t the right bike for the road conditions, mostly because the tires were too narrow for wet spongy gravel. On a positive note, despite the exhaustion, I never had to walk it up a hill. The Absolute Black oval ring did improve my climbing endurance. Everything else was a total failure.