Week 36 (July 27-31)

Summary:

Monday - Bicycle
Tuesday - Bicycle
Wednesday - Bicycle
Thursday - Bicycle
Friday - Bicycle

This week was my Mark Buehrle moment: five days of work, five days of round-trip bicycle commuting.

I completed the wheel building class I signed up for on Saturday, spent some time working on the Greenspeed over the weekend, and completed all 10 legs of the week's commute on it. I'll save my assessment of the bike's positive and less desirable attributes for another post though.

Here's what I had to do to get the Greenspeed ready to roll by Monday morning:

1. Build a wheel - I guess this wasn't completely necessary since I already had a wheel on it, but I really wanted to switch to an actual single-speed. A few hours at Hiawatha Cyclery and I checked this off the list.

2. Mount tire and tube on rim - This is normally a quick process, but I didn't know what size tires the frame would handle with the new rim so I had to put it together and see how much space I had. I'd prefer a 700Cx32 for the rear wheel, but I happened to have a larger tire (700Cx35) in the garage so I opted for economy and resourcefulness, sparing a trip to the bike shop. Eventually I'll switch to 32s, but it might not be until I replace the front wheel.

3. Widen rear drop-outs - The link to the pics below will illustrate this a little better than I can explain, but the new axle was wider than the previous one. This kept the wheel from sliding into proper position, so I borrowed a neighbor's hand file to create some space.

4. Size the chain - When I originally cut the chain, it was an appropriate size for the 15 teeth cog and cassette. But the new cog had 17 teeth, so there wasn't enough room on the chain for the new wheel. Again, I wanted to save a trip and $10 so I spliced in three new links from the original chain to lengthen it.

5. Other maintenance - I had gone without the rear fender for awhile so I put it back on to give the bike a more complete look. I also popped off the stem to grease it and the stem wedge (sorry, I forgot to take pics on this one). A new stem sometime soon probably wouldn't be a bad idea.

Check out these pics to see the Greenspeed itself, as well as some visuals of what I've just tried to explain (Click on the white dialog box thing in the bottom left hand corner to display captions, or just click on the pics themselves to go larger copies)