Cycling Coast to Coast

Last weekend, my trip leader Jose was in town visiting his girlfriend and he awesomely decided to hold “shop hours”. I showed up with my bike, and we chatted about the trip and he taught us how to fix and patch a flat. If you’ve read his blog, then you know that Jose is a knowledgeable guy when it comes to cycling, and he cares a lot about good bike fit.

He helped me adjust my shoe cleats, saddle height, and then we were going to move my saddle back about a centimeter.

Most bike saddles have two rails on the underside running from the nose to the rear. A clamp on the top of the seatpost clamps onto these rails, securing the saddle to the rest of the bike. There are different clamping systems, and on my bike, there are two bolts that hold everything together. It looks like this:

And a side view:

If you look carefully though, you’ll notice there’s something wrong… there’s no second bolt! To adjust my saddle position, we needed to loosen these bolts, but as Jose did this, I heard the words that no one every really wants to hear, “…oh shit… um… I’m sorry…”

It appeared that whoever assembled the bike in the first place over-tightened the bolt. When Jose tried to loosen it, the bolt snapped in half, leaving part of it stuck inside the threaded cylinder. Without a second bolt, my saddle wasn’t properly mounted to the bike, and so it wasn’t safe to ride.

However, with some zip ties to the rescue, we managed to jury-rig something so I could ride home at least.

Thanks to Jose for these photos.

Yesterday, I took the T to Landry’s to see if they could fix the seatpost for me, or if they had a replacement part. With some effort, they managed to get the broken bit of bolt out of the cylinder, but the bad news was that the cylinder was completely stripped. It’s actually quite impressive; I’ve never seen anything stripped so badly, and the guy at Landry’s said he’d never seen anything like it either in the 20 years he’s been there.

The additional bad news was that Specialized doesn’t sell individual replacement parts for the seatpost; if I wanted a new bolt and cylinder, I’d need to buy a whole new seatpost. A new seatpost would cost $125, almost half of what I paid for my bike.

In desperation, I called up Jess, who’s a mechanical engineering major, to see if she could machine me a new part. After all, it’s just a simple threaded cylinder and a bolt.

The happy ending to this story, however, is that I called up Zane’s today, and they will be sending me a new seatpost, at no charge, and I should get it by Thursday.

Finally, about a week late, the promised post (and photos) of my new bike.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was out of town two weeks ago from Wednesday to Sunday for a fencing tournament. Thanks to UPS, I was able to track my bike made its way from Zane’s in Connecticut to my dorm in Cambridge, MA…

…where it arrived on Thursday, when I wasn’t in town to pick it up.

When I got back to campus early on Sunday morning, I traipsed down to the front desk and picked up my package…

The unopened bike box, in front of my dorm room.

As you can see from the box label, it’s a Specialized Allez Elite Compact.

The opened box, with my bike inside.

My bike came almost fully assembled. All I had to do was re-attach the seatpost, handlebars, front wheel, and pedals.

Here, I’m adjusting the tension for the front wheel’s quick-release.

Unlike any other bike I’ve ridden, this bike will have clipless pedals. My friend Omari had an extra pair of Time ATAC pedals that he’s letting me use, so I installed those instead of the platform pedals the bike came with. Omari (on the left), is fitting my cycling shoes with cleats.

I also outfitted my bike with a cycling computer. In addition to measuring speed and distance traveled, this computer also has a cadence function to measure the speed at which you pedal (measured in revolutions per minute, rpm).

The cadence sensor is attached on the outside of the left chain stay, near the cranks. It works by detecting a small magnet that is attached to the inside of the left crank arm. With each revolution that I pedal, the magnet passes by the sensor, and it uses the time elapsed between each event to calculate my cadence in rpm.

My fully-assembled bike, ready to ride.

Breaking news! Bike & Build has finalized its deal with Zane’s in Connecticut, which means now I can get a bike. B&B is going with the Specialized Allez Triple, but we’re also getting the chance to upgrade to a better bike. My trip leader, Jose, suggested that I spend some extra money to upgrade to the Specialized Elite Compact, and I think I will. For not that much more money, the Elite Compact is a nice upgrade from the Triple (better components, wheels, etc), and, in my opinion, it’s a much nicer looking bike. One big difference is that the Triple has a triple crankset, whereas the Elite Compact has a compact double. With a triple cranket, you get more gear ratios, but it turns out the the gear range for a compact double and triple is pretty comparable. Because I’m a geek, I spent some time reading about gearing, and made a spreadsheet comparing the Elite Compact and the Triple. It’s online here.

For curious readers, I used Sheldon Brown’s (an excellent web resource for technical bike info) Online Gear Calculator to make the spreadsheet. Another great resource is the Exploratorium’s Science of Cycling. Chain Reaction Bicycles also has short page about double and triple cranksets.

Today, I hopped on my bike and rode over to Landry’s Bicycles in Boston to test ride the Allez Elite Compact and get sized. It was fun to ride, and shifted very smoothly (unlike my current bike). I’m looking forward to to putting a lot of miles on my new bike. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos to post, but hopefully I will soon. I need to get in contact with Zane’s to work out the order, give them my sizing info, and figure out shipping details. Until then, here are the product shots from the Specialized website. I can’t decide which color I like better, blue or red.

Every since I passed the $1,000 fundraising mark, I’ve been really excited about getting my bike. Bike & Build hasn’t finalized the details yet, but Jose (my trip leader) says that most likely it’ll be the Specialized Allez.

So… black or red?