Home stretch

After I got the frame back from Leon's son, I rode it back over to Greenpoint to get the color powdercoat done. We took a moment to lament Leon's fate. Apparently he was sharp as a tack up through his last days. He was 93. I wonder what his secret was.

I decided to go with a deep bluish indigo for the frame color. The color scheme (blue frame and gold decal) is a little kiss to my Swedish heritage. Here's how it turned out (waiting for the final moment to christen it with the decal):

The last detail that remained was the fork, or more specifically, the absurdly long steerer tube. You can see how long it is in this photo:

For several reasons that will go unshared, I had to go on another wild goose chase to find someone who would thread and cut the steerer tube down to the correct height. This was easier said than done, but yet again, the internet provided the answer. I found an eccentric guy on an online bike forum who offered to do it for $25. I just had to take the train up to Westchester to come to his shop. He was clearly one of those old school roadies who loved talking bikes to anyone. In fact, he even knew the guy from Madison who had modified the frame! He told me that it was very unusual for this guy to make a mistake, so of course it had to be the one irreplaceable frame that he messed up. (I'm obviously not naming the Madison guy or his shop on purpose, out of respect, if you haven't figured that out by now.) He seemed very knowledgable and confident in his abilities, so I decided to go for it.

His "shop" turned out to be the 2nd floor of a huge warehouse with an office in front that hadn't been redecorated and perhaps not even cleaned since the mid '70s. Piles of paper, miscellaneous tools and bike parts adorned every bit of free space. There were probably 60 rows of bicycle brakes alone lined up on the floor of one room. This man was *quite* the character and clearly not someone who liked to play by the rules. I learned almost his entire life story in the brief time that I was there. He wasn't a fan of the environmental nonprofit at which I work--said we resort to "scare tactics". Whatever. I just kept my mouth shut and struggled to keep my facial expression neutral. He did seem to have some respect for my other career (opera) and shared memories of singers from the Met coming to perform at his high school auditorium in the Bronx when he was a kid--I guess we did have some common ground.

So, all in all, a funny experience and just another colorful detail to add to this already outrageous story. Unfortunately, the fork didn't end up working for technical reasons that didn't have to do with the threading and that only the biggest bike fanatics would find interesting. Maybe not even them. Maybe only bike mechanics. Anyway, if you ask, I'll tell you, but I won't bore everyone else with the details. We chose a chrome lugged fork to replace it and I'm actually quite happy with how it looks. I may be able to make the original fork work in the future, if I find a framebuilder to weld a different steerer tube onto it. I'm pondering the various ways I can enshrine the fork at home in the meantime. Suggestions welcome.

With the frame modifications complete, all that remained was to put everything together. My shop built me some beautiful wheels with 36-hole silver Mavic Open Pro rims and Panaracer Rivendell Ruffy Tuffy gumwall tires, armed with a Kevlar belt to withstand the rubble-laden streets of New York. I tried to be as patient as possible while my shop made the final tweaks. Any day now...

Learning curves

I never used the term "learning curve" very much until I started working at my current day job. I work at a kickass environmental non-profit and am surrounded by decidedly non-artistic folks, not economists per se, but much more economically-minded people than your average musician. They talk about curves and discount rates and all sorts of things that are a bit over my head. That said, my learning curve on all economic matters has sped up dramatically...ok, maybe only somewhat...just through osmosis.

My learning curve on bikes, on the other hand, has soared. Can a learning curve soar? See, still not so well-versed on the concept. Can it bend straight up? I feel like mine has, in any case. Even just through conversations with various mechanics and other bike-minded people, my knowledge base has grown considerably. Take this, for example:

"Disassemble front end, disassemble rear end, shorten head tube, shorten seat tube, shorten top tube, shorten down tube, shorten seat stays, 2 new head lugs at appropriate angle."

Huh? Seat stays? Lugs? This is what the guy in Madison said he was going to do to my bike. Six months ago, I'd have thought this was a foreign language. Yes, I've been biking for almost 25 years now and I never knew what a seat stay was. FYI, there's nothing very exciting about seat stays, they're just the part of the frame that come down from the seat tube to the dropouts where the rear wheel is attached--part of the "rear triangle", another bike term. (Cyclists have a lot of lingo.) Lugs, however, are pretty cool.

Up until the last twenty years or so, bicycle frames were constructed differently than they are today, i.e. they weren't welded. They were built using lugs, which are basically metal socket at each joint of the bike frame. The tubing is cut and mitred precisely for a snug fit, and then inserted into the lug and brazed together using a molten metal like silver or brass that basically acts as permanent glue. Since brazing doesn't require as much heat as welding, this allowed framebuilders to use thinner, lighter tubes. Since then, there have been developments in metallurgy allowing tubing to be heated to higher temperatures without adverse reaction, thus eliminating the need for lugs and decreasing the overall construction costs.

I like lugged bikes. I think they have more personality. The framebuilder can put a more individualized touch on a lugged bike. Some get really fancy and hand-cut snazzy lugs like this one made by Rivendell or this super intricate one by Hetchins. Others are purely functional, which is just fine, too. I hope it doesn't become a lost art.

Here's a shot of the Nolan's lugged head tube after the rebuild:

So, while I am nowhere near an expert now, I have begun to pick up the general lingo and have definitely been bitten by the bug. I have two hooks in my bedroom ceiling now--shh, don't tell my landlord--one of which eagerly awaits Maria's arrival. However, as it turned out, she wasn't going to come without a fight...