No End of Useful Life – September. 30, 2024
I recently went to pump up before a ride with my trusty Lezyne CNC Floor Drive, but was sadly presented with no feedback on the downstroke- no pressure to be had. This pump has been with me for over a decade and pumped up thousands of times, consistently and efficiently. Despite the gauge malfunctioning years ago, I calculated the difference of pressure displayed vs actual PSI, and happily continued using it. I ended up purchasing another of the same pump, with a larger, accurate gauge, and a quick connect valve head! Because I can’t just let something salvageable go to waste, I’m going to rebuild this old friend’s plunger gasket, and give it a new life as a backup/travel pump.
The Pants with Nobody Inside – September. 23, 2024
There’s a welcome chill in the air,
Fall is here, so don’t despair,
Spooky season can give a scare,
with lunar eclipses and pricked hair.
Along my commute, there’s a house with a planter that makes me wax nostalgic about a classic book I used to read as a kid: What Was I Scared Of? by Dr. Seuss. There was one particular story about “the pale green pants with nobody inside” that really freaked me out, and I remember clearly trying to work out how they would ride a bike.
HurryCat Adjustable Geometry – September. 16, 2024
After owning a full-service, deep-inventory shop for more than a decade, I ended up with some very odd components. A recent social media post that caught our attention in the shop this week: Bitchin Bikes featuring their new and unique GeoShift bike at this year’s MADE show. It reminded me instantly of one of these extremely obscure and questionably functional items: the French made HurryCat adjustable geometry seatpost! The internet seems to have forgotten about this gem (or intentionally buried it), and it predates dropper posts, so you lose the dual height/geometry adjustment functionality (and double Paul lever), but the principle is the same. I really love and appreciate new and unique ideas like this, it’s never too late to reinvent the bicycle!
Human Handmade Hoodoos – September. 9, 2024
This past holiday weekend I was lucky enough to be able to escape the heat, and get up to Arizona’s White Mountains (I feel like every state has a region with this nomenclature) with the family. It was really nice to be able to spend some time disconnected from the interwebz, and even nicer to get a morning spin in the pines! Next weekend, I’ll be in the shop with Jake, while the rest of the team will be up in the same place doing the Lobo Lupes bikepacking trip. Maybe they will see this cairn collection on their journey!
Choose Your Own Radventure – September. 2, 2024
There’s a big back to the labor rate sign that hangs prominently in the shop area, and on that side, some of our visitors from around the world have scribed their notes while undertaking their treks. I often stand and read the fun tags that folks have left while stopping by, and I imagine all the thousands of miles that the bikes on the board have travelled. It’s a really neat musing to read snippets of trips from people that chose to have R&R at the store. Cheers to being on tour!
Choose Your Own Radventure – August. 26, 2024
There’s not too much more philosophical and reflective than being given a choice of route to take when out on a ride. Do I head straight to my destination as fast as possible? Do I want to explore a new path that I’ve never seen before? Do I want to go visit a friend that I haven’t seen in a while? Lately I’ve been trying to add extra padding to my commutes to allow the time to venture out into new spaces and meander through the labyrinth of bikeways in the neighborhoods, and love all the variety of character I’ve encountered, as well as fun little sections of singletrack carved out by renegade wanderers.
Just Another Sunset – August. 19, 2024
The weather is beginning to give inklings of the impending encroachment of fall: the shorter days, temps a few degrees lower, and more wonderful visuals for my corpuscular neighborhood strolls. While I love the long daylight, I’m into the slight drop in temperature! Also, Leo makes a cameo in this week’s picture, which makes it easy to see the AZ state flag inspiration!
There Is No New Black – August. 12, 2024
For model year 2024, the fine folks at Salsa that decide things decided on a neon tangerine orange color for the Fargo. While I believe that there are no good or bad colors, there are definitely some that I prefer over others. Black, or the absence of color, is still a favorite clothing color (sometimes I’ll mix it up with grey or a dark blue) which apparently is a wardrobe choice that could get me into trouble if I was in middle school in Texas. Anyway, we had a customer that was not feeling the stock citrus paint job, and wanted to have a black frameset with the same parts hung. A few hours of labor and a little bit of cutting and measuring, Toby had it all set up, and it looks sharp! Let us know if you want to custom build anything, we’re happy to oblige as long as it’s reasonable!
Mini Morning Color Melange – August. 5, 2024
Tucson rainbows are a bit uncommon in the earlier hours, but a touch of morning precipitation gave us a treat on the way to this month’s Breakfast by Bike. The monsoons have been healthy this summer, and the opportunistic vegetation is thriving. The evening breeze was actually a tad chilly yesterday, and my dogs have been more than happy to get longer walks with the family, on tarmac that isn’t hot like a lava flow. This was a great visual to start the day!
Remember to Lich, Comment, and Subscribe! – July. 26, 2024
We spend quite a bit of time in our warehouse, which is the basement of a railroad depot building that was constructed at the turn of the 19th century, and the foundation walls are exposed lava rock, quarried from the nearby Tucson Mountains. I’m generally very interested in odd architectural details, and there’s a particular volcanic stone by the shipping station that frequently catches my eye- there is still lichen on it that has been present since the mason placed it more than a hundred years ago! It sits dormant now, enshrining the age when this chunk of rock sat exposed to the outdoor elements for centuries. Even though it has reached an underground sepulcher, I’m still struck by how long it has maintained its form!
Stellar Fusion Diffraction – July. 19, 2024
I was on a family vacation last week, so I don’t have much for a Tidbit this week. Once in a while, I do get to enjoy a sunset while leaving the shop, and even the simple and unremarkable ones are appreciated. The tribulations of the day are almost immediately tranquilized by the soft warm hues on the horizon, and the temps begin to drop to something more manageable.
Sofa at Home, Couch in the Streets – July. 12, 2024
Many years ago, when I still had active social media accounts, I had an idea to chronicle the “Free Couches of Tucson” to show liberated living room lounge furniture in its new environment, mainly because there almost always was something alluring about creating a storyline behind it. I began taking pictures of recliners, sofas. and loveseats that had found new outdoor freedom on the curb, fearlessly accepting their fate while keeping quiet about their past. Recently, the retail space near us was getting cleaned out, and we were graced by the presence of this urban mega flora for a day. Someone picked it up, and I can only imagine the new adventure it has undertaken! To some, it is simply blight, but I enjoy creating an odyssey for these abandoned parlor fixtures.
Fare Thee Well, Drunken Chicken – July. 5, 2024
One of the things I love most about being in an urban center is guerilla art. There’s been paste up murals in the downtown area like these for more than a decade, and they always seem to give some sort of sly snarky commentary. This on e has gone up by the former cavern of bricks known as The Drunken Chicken, where the Marie Sharp’s and maple syrup flowed freely with hearty, breaded tenders and fluffy waffles. Maybe someday we will get a replacement, but for now, we get this fashionable skateboarding poultry.