Bash

I noted a couple of posts below my creative redesign of my chainring guard on the Quickbeam. I wound up ordering a bash guard to preserve the chainrings. It seems to be nice, some kind of thick plastic, which is supposed to hold up well. Since I was down in the pit working on bikes last night I thought I would get her mounted up. Why do things never go as simply as they should? It seems that the 110 bashguard will fit on a shimano crank, because the fifth ring arm is opposite the crank arm. On a sugino xd crank, the fifth ring arm is under the crank arm. The ring does not fit... Well, no problem, I'll just snag this old set of shimano exage cranks and use them. Whoops. Not tonight. They would seem to need a much wider bottom bracket. Last chance was for a shimano deore triple. This one fit, but they are 170mm instead of 175s. Maybe they will smack fewer rocks. Now, do I want to move the chainrings over to the replacement crank, or keep them intact for an easy swap spare? I dug through the parts trunk and settled on an old (but new condition) 38t biopace ring in place of the 40, and will leave off the 32 entirely. This will give me a 38/23, for 46 gear inches or a gain ratio of 3.4. Flipping the wheel to the fixed cog 38/18 will give me 58.8 gear inches or a gain ratio of 4.4. The only other issue is that I can't go for as broad a tooth ranage when flipping the wheel, due to the big old fat tire I have back there. The wheel won't go anywhere near the front of the track end, so to flip things around I made a short section of chain removable with two powerlinks. This is starting to make things needlessly complicated, so I'll keep the bike mostly in the 38/23 through the end of summer.

I was thinking about how to minimize the amount of stuff I take to Sweden this August. Rather that taking multiple pairs of shoes, I want to take just one pair. My old Sidis were comfprtable enough for this, but my new ones are a bit too "tech" to use off the bike. I may get a pair of Lakes or something or just use the street shoes I have. Since I was putting together a whole second crankset, I put platform pedals on and then added the Powergrips I got last Christmas. I like Kent Peterson's take on powergrips. I don't have to decide just yet, so I'll be riding and testing.

Lastly, I was getting tired of having to carry an allen wrench around in my pocket to adjust my saddle height all the time (or at least at the trailhead). I like the saddle up pretty high when on road, but bring it down over an inch lower when in the rocks and logs. I found an old quick release to replace the bolt. I think it will work pretty well.

And that's why I never throw anything away.