The Face of Jesus in Matt’s Saddle Bag

Look!  I think I see the face of Jesus.  Like the shroud of Turin, inside his saddle bag, the spare tube and Allen wrenches were wrapped in a tie-dye-esque aged rust stained cloth.  I unraveled the wrenches and held out the cloth.  Behold!  That might fetch a few bucks on eBay.  They’ve been in the seat bag a long time, not quite B.C. old, but maybe before Bieber.  25 miles from home, I was helping Matt from Smitty’s Cyclery in Cincinnati replace a broken shift cable.  Yes.  He carries a spare.

Wrapping your tube and tools are just one of the lessons I learned from Big Matt’s saddle bag.  A former racer on the track and on the road, I’m sure Matt’s no stranger to weight weenie tendencies.  Matt proved you can pack a lot and still pack light.  The bag was packed with the expertise of an Everest climber, the necessities of survival in a few cubic inches.  I’ve had a day to think about it, and there’s not a mechanical incident that would’ve had Matt calling for a ride home.  Inside Matt’s saddle bag: tube, mini-tool with chain breaker, select 4-5-6 Allen wrenches, patch kit, brake and shifter cable, a five spot, a zip tie, and a chain pin.  I wouldn’t doubt there were a spare cleat and/or bottle cage bolt in there somewhere.  He kept the mini pump in his jersey pocket.

The black thing is the free hub body.

Matt explained the zip tie was in case your free hub body dies.  The free hub body is the thing your cassette rides on.  Its ratcheting pawls allow you to coast and engage the gears.  When it dies, and they do occasionally, you’re left…coasting home.  To fix on the fly, you can zip-tie the cassette to the spokes and get yourself home in a fixed-gear sort of way.  A zip tie can also fix a broken bottle cage, keep a busted derailleur out of your spokes or can be traded to the locals for corn and beads.

Wrapping your spare tube and tools in cloth accomplishes two, three, maybe four things.  For one, it prevents you from being the annoying Mr. Jangly Bag on group rides.  Two, it keeps sharp edge tools from serrating your spare tube.  Three, I would hedge a bet that it keeps spare tubes from drying out and/or prevents the valve-tube junction from becoming oxidized.  Lastly, it never hurts to have a rag for sweaty hands or keeping gooey chain greased hands from messing up white bar tape.

The black thing is a zip tie.

While Matt worked to get the broken cable end out of his shifter, I reached over his bike and undid the fixing bolt on his Dura Ace rear derailleur.  Matt’s got many miles in his legs, no stranger to being 2 hours from home with a mechanical.  He’s a mechanic at Smitty’s Cyclery in Cincinnati.  Yet even he packs a spare derailleur cable and a spare brake cable in his seat bag.  I scratched my head.  His Land Shark bike was impeccably clean and well maintained.  Having worked at a shop myself, I take pride wrenching on my own bikes and used to have a relative comfort in thinking that my cables are new and all bolts are properly fixed.  I don’t need to bring a multi-tool or anything beyond a tube, cartridge, mini-pump and five-dollar bill.  There on a flat road, 2 hours from home, Matt snapped a cable, fixed it with a spare in the span of 5 minutes and left me questioning my minimalist logic.

Chequamegon Drift - 2009 Chequamegon 40 Fat Tire Festival

By Bill Baldwin – Best Guest Blogger Ever

Conditions were perfect, if not a bit dry. Temperature was 65 at the 10 am start and climbed to about 75 by mid-afternoon. The venue is beautiful -- extremely isolated in rolling hills, blanketed with 80-foot stands of pine trees. The 40.9 mile point-to-point course from Hayward to the Telemark Resort started with a 2-mile paced rollout on pavement through cheering throngs of onlookers in the town of Hayward (risk being DQ'd if you try to pass the four-wheelers leading the rollout). Riding in a pack of 1,778 adrenaline-pumped mountain bikers was a huge thrill, and pretty sketchy as the pack lurched, then slowed, then lurched, then slowed all the way to the dirt. Although I placed my bike in the start chute at 5:45 am, it was not early enough to get me any closer than the 200-300th starting position. So I was completely surrounded during the rollout. Once we hit the fields that led to the Birkebeiner Cross-Country Ski Trail (the "Birkie"), the race began in earnest with the elite/pros flying off the front en masse and everyone else jockeying for position.

(7am hundreds of bikes hold riders places for the 10am start of the 2009 Chequamegon 40 Fat Tire Festival)

Aside from the first couple miles, passing is not an issue on this course. For most of its length, the Birkie Trail is wide enough for four automobiles to drive abreast. It's mostly trimmed grass (think lawn), bordered by towering trees, with a strand of singletrack running the middle. A good portion of the race also covered gravel/dirt forest roads, with a few sections of true singletrack. Although the course is fast, it is by no means flat, best characterized as rolling terrain punctuated by several power climbs followed by immediate descents each mile. And while the course gains quite a bit of altitude over its length, there are some ripping fast descents, with the last half-mile shooting diagonally down the face of a ski hill to a 90 degree turn partially back up the hill before leveling off to the finish. The last 3-4 miles of the race is actually brutally (like Mohican) hilly, getting up to the top of the ski hill for the final descent. And frequently the descents ended in sand pits where it took good handling skills to hold your line at high speed. I remember having the sensation of Tokyo-drifting the turns on a number of gravel downhills. The dry conditions made for a ton of dust -- most racers at the finish line looked like coal miners coming off a shift underground.

The winner set a new course record at 2:02 and, from the account I read, won by less than a one-second margin, as the second place finisher apparently took an insane line down the ski hill to make up about 100 yards in the last quarter mile. Personally I had a great race up until mile 25 when my sciatic nerve acted up and wouldn't let me push the big ring anymore. Although I was inexplicably able to kill the climbs during the last 10 miles, I couldn't generate the power needed to hammer with the pack I had maintained contact with for most of the race. My bike was set up perfectly for the race with Mitch's fully rigid carbon fiber fork. (Thanks Mitch!!) I flew past fellow racers on the steep technical climbs, including the Seeley Fire Tower which is a four-tiered, half-mile, fall-line beast of a climb about 30 miles into the race. On the climbs I was easily passing guys who could hammer me on the flats, only to have them drop me within a qurter mile after the climb. Still, it was extremely gratifying to have the bystanders complimenting my climbing in those tough sections where half the racers were running their bikes up. (Which made it more frustrating to have the back and leg issues prevent me from keeping pace on the flatter sections toward the end.) I ended up finishing in 2:42 for a pedestrian 409/1,778. To give you an idea of the volume of riders on the course, if I had finished only 10 minutes faster it would have been good for 250th. There were a lot of fast guys (and girls) out there.

Overall I'd say the race organizers pretty much have the formula down -- it was a great festival atmosphere with a focus on bands, beer and grilled meat. It's worth noting that there are an additional 800+ racers at the finish line who complete the "Short and Fat" race, which is about a 15-miler that covers a separate course but finishes down the same downhill and at the same time as the 40-miler. A great laid back vibe permeated, and everyone was very friendly. (Of course the excellent weather played a big part in the event's success.) Although I probably wouldn't do it again because of the amount of travel involved, I'm really glad I got to experience this race. Especially those of you without kids should really consider making the trek -- you won't be disappointed. Do it!!

Results & Race Info Click Here

How To: Open A Car Door With A Bike Brake Cable

Like you, since I’ve been cycling, I keep miniscule old bike parts that are still in working condition.  In my toolbox you’ll find old cleats, a used buckle for Sidi shoes, and odd bar end plugs.  I have things in Glad snack bags that I literally have to hold up to a light upside down before I recall what it is.  “Oh yeah!  Those are the spare plastic stops for my wife’s bottle cages.”  As long as they are in decent shape, I keep old road and mountain shift and brake cables.  You never know when you’re going to break one, need to MacGruber one into a cyclocross cantilever hanger cable….or tie one in just the right way to jimmy your teammate’s car door open 15 minutes before a race because they accidently locked their door with their keys helmet and shoes inside. 

That happened Sunday.

No lie.  Well maybe we had a half hour before the official’s gun, but just as everyone is starting to get warmed up she came over to our truck out of breath and in a tizzy.  “Omigod!  Ilockedmykeysinmycar an an and my helmet’s in there.   WhatdoIdo?”  “I guess we could call a park ranger, the office is right over there,” I said.  My wife and another girl went over to stir up a ranger.  In the meantime, I sauntered over to her car.  The door was just barely locked.  I could just about get a finger through the corner.  I overheard someone say, “Does anyone have a coat hanger?”  As I eyed up the latch on the inside of the door, I realized it stuck out just enough that I could probably hook it with something…something like a brake cable!

I jogged back to our truck.  No lie, there’s 15 minutes to post time at this point.  I grabbed a brake cable out of the bottom drawer of my tool box.  I tied the non-stopper end in a 6-7 inch loop.  That way, I figured, I’d have the stopper end to hang on to.  I jogged back to her car.

I fished the looped end through the corner with the biggest gap between the door and the car and fed the slack inside so the loop fell below the height of the latch.  I then slowly worked the whole assembly so it was slightly forward of the latch.  I gave it a few twists and dips and within about a minute I had the loop around the latch.  This is the point where the sweat beads appeared on my forehead. 

Focus.  Steady.  Focus. 

I took up the slack, moving the assembly back toward the corner of the door with the big gap.  I had this doggie lassoed.  Yank!  Nothing.  Yank!  Nothing.  YANK!  Open!  Hugs and cheers all around.

Today I got this group email:  “…Oh, Joe forgot to tell everyone that he is a hero.  I locked my keys in the car right before the race...and he totally got it open with a cable!!!  …you guys rock!  I think Joe has a talent and maybe a second career...? :)”

Hero?  I don’t think so.  Talent for 2^nd career?  Maybe 3^rd or 4^th.  Really I just like to impress my wife with my mad man-skills.  

Got time for more?  Read this previous MacGuyver-esque post about fixing a flat by tying a tube in a knot.

Dear: Waders, Cage Fighters, Hunters, Bull Riders and Hockey Fans

We got ‘er done! Versus is on Time Warner Cable in Cincinnati (Channel 162.) I watched the Giro Di Lombardia around Italy’s Lake Como yesterday, or as Bobke calls it “Lumbar-dee-ah.” I don’t remember getting a letter announcing the “new channel.” I had all but given up, but on one of my errant remote control expeditions through the channels this past Wednesday, I discovered Versus on TWC. I’ve been calling customer service and asking TWC marketing people about it since we moved to Ohio last fall. However, not once did it cross my mind to band together with people who enjoy fishing, extreme cage fighting, guns, bull riding and hockey to get ‘er done.

We’re the Village People of sports. Maybe that’s what it took. The cyclist, the hunter, the fishing enthusiast, the octagon fighter, the bull rider and the hockey fan singing “V-E-R-S-U-S” in unison like “Y-M-C-A.” We macho macho people have to stick together. If you let our woosie Lycra slide, we’ll look the other way at the five minute sweaty shirtless face-in-the-crotch hombre on hombre submission holds. All kidding aside, when you see cycling’s best battle at freeway speeds on the cobblestones of Belgium when there’s still snow on the ground, you’ll see that cycling takes the patience of a fisherman, the balance of a bull rider, the tactfulness and grit of a hunter, the teamwork of the Red Wings, and the brutal quickness and endurance of cage fighting. Now I’m starting to figure out why all these different sports share the same channel. So, thanks for threatening to high stick, hook and pump lead into the behind of TWC Cincinnati for eight seconds until they finally tapped out, bonked and gave us our Versus.

TWC Cincinnati Channel Lineup with Versus (Channel 162)
Link to post a “Thank You” to TWC Cincinnati