Don't mess with perfection

It ain't as pretty as Meligrosa's ride (below),
but it gets me where I need to go.

Anchorage has been enjoying a spell of freakishly beautiful spring weather. The only crappy day in the past week was—of course—on Bike to Work Day. I took pride in riding in the cold rain, because I keep a filthy, fender-equipped commuter bike in the garage. When the weather turns foul, there’s nothing that keeps you riding like a 13-year-old bike that’s been retired to beater status.

Of course, Friday was also when I made one of my regular visits to Meligrosa’s photo-driven Bikes and the City blog, which always has entertaining photos of bike life in one of the great American cities—San Francisco, birthplace of the Grateful Dead. Whenever Meligrosa uses a close-up shot of her bike, it’s clean enough to make my commuter look like a piece of battered farm equipment.

Now, I know the weather is a bit milder down by The Bay, but this woman must show her bike a lot of love. Meanwhile, my crusty old Stumpjumper—which has reliably carried me over trails from Santa Fe to Moab to Anchorage, and even survived a near-tragic encounter with the top of the entrance to my garage—gets rode hard and put away wet far too frequently. These days, it might get washed a couple of times a year.

I’d like to pull out the bucket and brushes and put a shine back on that pretty blue frame, only ... well, I’m not really superstitious ... but, you know how it always seems to rain the day after you wash your car?

When you’re on a roll with Alaska weather, you don’t screw with it.

Paging Ted Kaczynski

The friend of a friend recently brought this knife to a gunfight—aka the VaMoose 25—and found himself walking back to the parking lot before the ride on snowmachine trails really even started. It was completely the wrong bike for the conditions. Still, it was fun to see a such a relic.

For you youngsters, or people who have come to this sport in the past 16 or 17 years, what you’re seeing is a Stumpjumper Comp, circa 1989. And I’m pretty sure you’re looking at a whole pile of original parts. Early TIG-welded steel; toe clips; threaded headset; cantilever brakes; a metal frame pump; and, best of all ... Biopace chainrings. Seriously. They’re shark-toothed as shit, but still in action (sort of).

The guy who owns this thing seemed to still love it. Loyalty is a beautiful thing, But so is modern bike technology. I think this guy owes himself an upgrade.

Maybe after he buys a color TV and switches from vinyl to CDs ...

Somebody stop me

"You may ask yourself, am I right? Am I wrong?
You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?"
—Talking Heads, "Once In a Lifetime"

Holy shitballs, I must be out of my mind.

After years of calling singlespeeds a dumb fad, I've broken down and converted my old Stumpjumper so that I can see what all the excitement is about.

I'm not a convert, just an experimenter. Like most people, the first bikes I rode as a kid were singlespeeds. We didn't call them that, they just were. And I remember pushing a bike up a steep hill every hot summer afternoon on my way home from the town swimming pool.

That's why I place good derailleurs somewhere up there with vaccines and indoor plumbing. They make life better.

But I've known too many people who added a singlespeed to their collection and found that they loved it, so now I have to give it a try. They say this will make me stronger, and I like the sound of that. I'll have to wait and see how my knees like the extra work.

My goal is to make it through the sloppy mess of spring without worrying about gunked-up derailleurs, and then decide how I feel. For all I know, the new Surly Singleator and other bits will be in a spare-parts box by July, and I'll be pulling out my cable cutters and re-installing a drivetrain for sane people.

For now, well ... it does look kinda cool.

Zip it good

I think zip ties and duct tape may be the ultimate tool combination. One or the other will often get the job done, but combine them, and you can really kick a little ass. Whatever situation you're in, if you can't accomplish at least a temporary repair with both of them, you're probably in big trouble.

I've used zip ties to attach all sorts of things to my bikes, but I really love the utilitarian beauty of mounting a pair of fenders to my commuter bike with a bunch of sticky tape and plastic.

That's part of the beauty of old bikes: You don't have to care what they look like, so you can rig up whatever works. (Yeah, yeah. I know some of you take this approach even with new bikes, but I prefer to maintain at least a modicum of aesthetic appeal for a few years, especially on an expensive bike.)

My old Stumpjumper was my last big purchase before leaving New Mexico for Alaska back in 1996. It's down to being my commuter these days, but I still love the old thing. The M2 frame is bomb-proof. It has survived more crashes than I can count, not to mention a roof-rack collision with the entrance to my garage. Other than the frame, the only original part left of this bike is the stem. Everything else has been replaced at least two or three times, and after going through a couple of Rock Shox forks, I took it rigid with a Surly Instigator fork that has no seals to blow out when I'm riding to work at -15F.

In '96, the Stumpjumper M2 was an off-the-shelf XC race bike with no braze-ons, so mounting full-coverage fenders requires a bit of ingenuity. I wrap some black duct tape around the parts of the frame where I need to attach fender supports, then zip-tie on the metal supports. The tape helps keep the ties from slipping, and protects the frame from nasty scratches.

The supports that come off the back of the fender don't reach any part of the frame when the fender is pushed out far enough to make room for studded tires, so I zip 'em to the middle of another pair of supports and then tape 'em up like a nerd's broken glasses so they can't slip downward.

Badda bing badda boom, I've got a commuter that looks funky, practical, cool and dry all at the same time.

Zipped

I love zip ties. These things are right up there with duct tape, red wine and polio vaccine on my list of Shit I'm Glad Someone Invented.

After getting sloppy wet a week or so ago while riding home in the rain, I was really missing the fenders I used on my old commuter bike, which is now a stripped frame in a corner of the backyard shed. Problem was, my old '96 Stumpjumper was designed as a race bike, so the frame is devoid of braze-ons and threaded eyelets for stuff like racks and fenders. That was cool in 1996 but now that the beloved Stumpy has been put out to pasture as a commuter and errand bike, its streamlined frame is more of a liability.

That's where the zip ties come in. I decided to try mounting the fenders with nothing but plastic, and it worked like a charm. I stripped all unnecessary bolts from the fenders, zipped everything to frame and fork in approximately the appropriate places, and voila, the Stumpy is a nerdy but utilitarian machine.

The zip ties were a cheap, efficient solution—especially since I'll be yanking the fenders in a couple of months when the rainy season gives way to the sleety, snowy season and I have to ditch the slicks for studs.

I have mixed feelings about fenders. They're great on rainy days, but I still feel a little self-conscious about riding around with them. I feel a little better when I remind myself that I don't exactly look like Lance on a bike anyway, so what do I have to lose, other than muddy legs?

At least I'm not on a recumbent. Right?