Category Archives: Bikes & Cycling

Everything to do with bikes and cycling.

Will the REAL Cyclist Please Stand Up? by Tamia Nelson

Cyclists are difficult to pin down. Unless your bike is a tandem, riding is a solo act. Which doesn’t mean it can’t be done in company, of course. In fact, a good part of the fascination that attends stage races like the Tour and the Giro lies in this very dualism. The race winner stands alone on the podium—flanked by the runner-up and the runner-up’s runner-up—but much of the credit for his victory belongs to his team. Without their sweat and sacrifice, he’d never have made it to the podium. He might not even have finished the race.

It’s equally hard to assign a single rationale to cycling. What do you do on your bike? Do you race? Commute? Tour? Pick up the groceries? Deliver time-sensitive documents? Sweat away extra pounds? Or do you simply ride for the pleasure of riding? Well, unless your bike has been gathering dust in the garage since the day you got your driver’s license, chances are pretty good that you do most of these things, at least now and … Continue reading »

Petroleum Jelly: A Must-Have For Bike Mechanics

Rust isn’t your friend if you ride a bike. But help is at hand, and you’ll find it in a surprising place&hellip.
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by Tamia Nelson | October 4, 2014

My uncle has been a mechanic all of his life. If it has four wheels, he can fix it. When I was a little kid, I used to spend hours watching him working on his car, and I was fascinated by the gleaming array of sockets and wrenches in his fire-engine red steel tool cabinet. Their shiny state was no accident. He polished them regularly them with a coarse, oily rag. His hands and overalls suffered by comparison, however. Both were always black with grease. Of course, mechanical work and grease go together. My uncle bought the stuff in gallon cans, and he didn’t use it sparingly.

I don’t work on cars, but I maintain my own bikes—and Farwell’s, too, when he’s feeling lazy. (A not-uncommon occurrence!) So I also use grease. But I don’t have to buy it by the gallon. A tube no bigger than … Continue reading »

Swapping Tires and Changing Tubes Made Easy (Well, Easier, Anyway)

Fixing flats isn’t entirely straightforward. Neither is changing tires. So I made a checklist to help me avoid some of the more obvious pitfalls.
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by Tamia Nelson | September 30, 2014

I don’t get many flats, so about the only time I have to change tubes is when I swap my utility bike’s Conti Town & Country rubber for my Innova Tundra Wolf studded tires. And because I get so little practice, I neglect two fundamental steps in the process almost every time I do the job: (1) I forget to deflate the front tire before starting work, and (2) I fail to release the cable on the linear brake. The result? I can’t get the wheel off. It doesn’t take me long to put things right, of course, but I reached a point where I didn’t want to continue repeating these two blunders. So I made a checklist to guide me in future. Here it is:

Size Matters  All inner tube are not created equal, and I recently discoverd that, although I’d been carrying a correctly … Continue reading »

A Leg to Stand On: Installing a One-Legged Kickstand

Are you planning on mounting a one-legged kickstand on your bike? Then read this first.
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by Tamia Nelson | August 19, 2014

I like my bikes to have kickstands, and when it comes to choosing a bike support, my preference is for basic Greenfield one-legged stands. I tried the Pletscher two-legged stand for a year, but just could not love it. So I swapped it out for a basic model:

Happy on One Leg

Most cyclists will be familiar with this simple accessory. The clamp consists of a knobby bottom plate and a level, smooth top plate, and a bolt which squeezes the two plates together over the chainstays.

Greenfield Clamp

It isn’t elegant, but this clamp grips the LHT’s stays securely (better than the Pletscher’s beveled clamp).

Greenfield Clamp

To mount the stand on the bike, I wrapped old inner tube around the stays and secured them with strips of electrical tape, then aligned the folded leg with the stay so that it wouldn’t rub against the wheel or be struck by the pedal.

Lined Up Nicely

The Greenfield’s leg was too long to allow my … Continue reading »