From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume VIII

Introduction

This is the eighth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, and Volume VII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another.)

As with the last installment, these are taken from emails, back when I archived them as simple text files so that one day, when I was a celebrity blogger, I could mine them for tasty nuggets that would thrill my readers without requiring me to write anything new. How prescient, since the Internet was just getting started and blogs were not yet a thing…

March 14, 1995

The [HP] Vectra [computer] is still down at work. I found the setup disks and ran setup to check the CMOS settings. They were all okay; I don’t know what the problem is. I called tech support and when they heard what year the computer was, they said, “Oh, you’ll have to get in touch with our HP Classics department. The only problem is, the old geezers we’ve got down there can’t always hear the phone ringing.” Actually, I made that last part up. But there really is an HP Classics department, and they really don’t answer their phone.

May 10, 1995

I was in the company president’s office the other day having a big important one-on-one meeting, and the phone rang. The big boss got embroiled in a conversation, and you know, I’ve always really hated that. Am I just supposed to sit there in his office, contentedly watching him as he talks and as he twirls his hair around his finger in little curlicues that eventually match the phone cord, which is all twisted from his endless pacing? No way could I do that. But could I just leave? No—any motion towards the door and the boss is frantically gesturing for me to stay. What do I do? So I idly picked up three company-logo-embossed golf balls off of his desk and began juggling. And, sure enough, I dropped one, and it began rolling across the floor, and just when I was on my hands and knees retrieving it (in my $500 suit, of course) the boss got off the phone. I casually put the golf balls back on his desk and we continued our conversation. He didn’t seem fazed, so I guess he’s used to my behavior—and that can’t be a good sign. Will I ever grow up? It reminds me of how you got in trouble for your rubber-band fights at your first job out of college. You’ve really been an inspiration to me, you know.

January 6, 1996

I got a voicemail from my old boss, from [the job I’d quit about a month before]. He said the Vectra, which is the shared hallway computer, had crashed, and he had no idea what to do. They’re in a panic because it’s the only computer with CompuServe access. I had to laugh. I’d been warning people for months that the computer was showing signs of a bad CMOS battery and that its days were numbered. I even put a sign on it saying “Don’t turn me off or I’ll die.” Well, they should have listened. Asking for help now is like saying, “Well, the house burned to the ground. The fire department just finishing hosing things down. Did you say something a while back about smoke detectors?”

January 28, 1996

[To my brother Geoff] … I’ve been thinking lately about our Murray Street Station [San Luis Obispo] days. I still have that original microwave oven, and even one of those big plastic lidded pitchers we used to keep the refried beans in. Remember that awful Thanksgiving dinner at Sizzler? Man, those were the days. Remember all the Canadian-bacon-and-pineapple pizzas K— [the bike shop owner] used to buy us? And how great it was to get free pizza, but how sick we were of that variety? Like, it would be petty and annoying to complain, and yet we’d like pepperoni and mushroom so much better? I actually oddly miss those factory days, too. Sure, the work wasn’t so fun but I became fond of our routine, like how we’d stop at that grocery store (what was it called? Willie Bros, yeah, that’s it) and get Snickers bars to console ourselves because of the brutal cold wind facing us all the way home, every night? And how we used to rent videos at that one place 24/7 because the clerk was so fly? And the Lady Lee Deluxe Chocolate Fudge Brownie Supreme ice cream we’d split, just sawing the half-gallon carton down the middle? And all that cake? And our pushup and sit-up regimen, that made you so buff but never did anything for me? Man, I kinda miss those days.

February 9, 1996

Please retransmit your last email, with the attached article, in some other form than MIME (whatever that is), if possible. Or maybe you could use OCR to convert the article to plain ASCII text? Hmmm . . . I’m not sure Apple computers do ASCII. Or, you could fax the article to my computer, except I have no idea how to set it up to receive faxes, nor do I want to leave it turned on all the time. Then there’s the problem of screwing something up so that the fax answers the regular phone and deafens the hapless caller with its shrieking session-handshake protocol. (My modem came with voice-mail software, too, but I don’t think I want to mess with that, either.) Basically, I’ve got more computing power than a third world country, and no desire to use most of it.

April 24, 1996

We were in L.A. last weekend for a book festival, and Ray Bradbury and Geoffrey Wolff were both speaking. The lines for both were quite long and we worried we wouldn’t get in to either one. Wolff’s seminar, called “Memoirs,” seemed like the slightly less popular one and I thought I might have a better chance of getting into that, but it would mean giving up my spot in the Bradbury line. When I complained about my dilemma, one of the other people waiting in the line said, “Yeah, that’s a tough decision: you’ve gotta choose between the past and the future!”

I was doing my Marin Headlands loop today and I caught up to a pretty fit looking mountain biker. I passed him, and he immediately passed me back, and started hammering. I sat, bored, on his wheel for a while (it was pretty steep so I wasn’t getting too much benefit from drafting) and eventually I decided he was going too slow, and I passed him again. Well, this incited him further, and he took the lead again and started really jamming. Well, woe be to me, he simply rode me off his wheel. On a damn mountain bike! Knobby tires and everything! Man, that was humbling. I just couldn’t keep up. He took some time out of me, too, and finished the climb well ahead. Well, I was encumbered further by a couple of cars on the descent that followed, but on the next climb I blew by him. I was going so hard he couldn’t even get my wheel. I continued to hammer and basically never saw him again. I know they say he who laughs last laughs best, but still . . . he who is laughed at is still laughed at. Man.

June 18, 1996

With regard to your inquiry about bike frame geometry, I doubt there’s anything shallow about your Guerciotti’s head tube angle. My Guerciotti is the same model and only like a year older, and its head angle is like 74 degrees! Yours might be a bit more shallow than mine because it’s a smaller frame, and because you have a smaller penis than I do, but still, I’d expect it to be at least 73 degrees. In any case, this should have almost nothing to do with the way the bike climbs. What do you mean, the front wheel is “slow to move”? As far as I know, the only motion you want is for it to roll. And if it’s rolling too slowly, I would think that’s a fitness problem on your part. (The only other time I’ve heard somebody complain of something like this was when I sold my wife’s would-be-ex-stepmother-in-law a Bianchi and she said it handled “like a cow” when she got out of the saddle. We isolated the problem: low pressure in the front tire.) Anyhow, my Team Miyatas, all three of them, had shallow (73 degree) head angles and they seemed to climb just fine. Actually, they climbed like shit because they were heavy, but I had no problem per se with getting the front wheel to rotate.

June 30, 1996

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
ALBERT ON NATIONAL TELEVISION

HERTOGENBOSCH, THE NETHERLANDS: American television audiences received a long-overdue treat today: Geoff Albert, one of the finest looking young individuals the free world has ever produced, graced the airwaves with several seconds of his normally elusive presence.

The footage occurred during routine coverage of the Tour de France bicycle race on ESPN, an American sports network. No sooner had Stage One coverage of the race begun than the camera panned over Albert—not just his face, but his entire body as well. The camera, held by a motorcycle-mounted cameraman, was giving a racer’s-eye view of the course, and thousands of screaming, hand-waving fans struggled to get into the picture. However, when the motorcycle approached Albert, it found him strangely aloof from the rest of the crowd—somehow closer to the road, and totally unobstructed. In the nonchalant style of someone accustomed to the spotlight, Albert made no move to draw the cameraman’s attention. He simply stood there, hands thrust in his back pockets, Pentax camera hanging around his neck … the very image of nonchalance. As the motorcycle passed him, his eyes tracked the camera. As an estimated 1 billion people watch Tour de France coverage worldwide, and the footage is the same across TV networks, so it is expected that millions of female viewers were instantly, and irrevocably, smitten. Also likely is that many millions of men grumbled enviously. One thing is certain: for those fleeting moments, nobody was thinking about the bicycle race.

Why Albert was so calm and unimpressed by his moment of glory is simple to understand: he is no stranger to celebrity, and would consider this episode more of a gift to viewers than to himself. Less easy to understand is why Albert commanded such a large spectating area in the otherwise totally packed sidelines. His twin brother Bryan, an expert on such matters, speculates that “Geoff probably forgot to wear his deodorant today.” Such an oversight is not hard to imagine; after all, both of the Albert twins have earned quite a reputation over the years for their casual approach to hygiene.

Network spokesmen predict that those precious few moments of footage will boost ESPN’s ratings and help secure many more years of cycling coverage on the network. Meanwhile, journalists everywhere are speculating that this year’s coverage is well on the way to winning numerous awards for its shrewd camera work.

Albert was unavailable for comment. And, with the Tour moving to Belgium tomorrow, it is unlikely that viewers will be given an encore. With three more weeks of racing ahead, it’s entirely possible that the racers, not this sole spectator, will begin to command the attention of sports aficionados. But for today, Geoff’s televised moment is the hottest news in cycling.

August 24, 1996

Wow, I just figured out how to hook the CD-ROM in my computer into my normal stereo. It works great—so it looks like I bought those new computer speakers for nothing. Oh well. Now I can play CDs, which I never could before. Only problem is, I only own two CDs and they were both freebies E— got from her work. I guess I can check out CDs from the library and tape them. (Of course I could buy some, but E— and I are trying to save up for a house, which is no easy thing to buy around here.)

December 17, 1996

At our company holiday party we had a “white elephant” gift exchange whereby you wrap up something that you don’t want, that somebody gave you as a gift, or that you can’t believe you ever bought, and you bring it in and put it on a table. Then everybody draws a number and the person with #1 chooses first. Now, #2 gets to either choose a gift or take #1’s gift instead (meaning that #1 gets to choose again). I brought this large cheese holder, ceramic, that’s basically a plate with a 4-inch tall cylindrical cover that goes over it, so you can store cheese at room temperature. It said “CHEESE” on it. E—’s mom gave it to us and E— never did like it. The person who got it, our receptionist, was totally stoked, I could tell. (She said later she was in total suspense the whole evening, hoping that nobody would take it away from her.) I stole our other receptionist’s Martinelli’s sparkling cider. The look on her face was one of absolute shock and unbridled grief. She was devastated. (It was one of the first gift takeovers of the day.) I felt so bad, I decided I’d offer to trade her later. She ended up with a pair of Christmas mugs, one shaped like a reindeer head and the other like a Frosty the Snowman head. They were just too hideous and she looked crestfallen all over again. I told her, “Look, I’m not willing to trade gifts, but I would like to just give you my Martinelli’s. The look on your face ... it was like I ran over your dog.” She insisted that I keep the cider; then, minutes later, the director of the entire western region (who got a Mag-lite, the lucky guy) reappeared after a brief absence: he’d gone out and bought the receptionist a replacement bottle of cider. Disaster narrowly averted. I hope my hostile takeover wasn’t career-limiting.

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Ride Report - Mount Baker (WA) with Brother & Nephew

Introduction

It’s SOP on my bike club, after a glorious race, to send around a report, which traditionally focuses more on the food (which is always copious) than the glory (which can be elusive).  Since I chickened out of the Everest Challenge this year, I’m reporting on my biggest ride of 2015 instead:  Mount Baker, up near Bellingham, WA, with my brother Bryan and his son John.  Read on, or at least skim the photos, to be immersed in timeless themes:  Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Man, Man vs. His Father, Man Struggling to be a Man, Man vs. Food, Man vs. Bike, and (for the ladies) Fish vs. Bicycle.

Executive Summary (i.e., condensed version)

• Breakfast:  two cups strong coffee, black
• During:  Four bottles Powerade (red flavor); unknown quantity Gatorade (cucumber-lime); 3 Clif Bars (1 Thin Mint, 1 Beef Jerky, 1 Gluten-Free Donner Party flavor, which fortunately tastes more like leather than like scabs); two Powerbar Gels (expired ca. 2009)
• Lunch:  nothing
• Glycogen window snack:  one banana ( infirm, or at least not-firm); 1½ bottles New Belgium Long Table Farmhouse Ale (seasonal; highly recommended)
• Dinner:  homemade pasta with homemade meat sauce; garlic bread; garlic hot dog buns; meat lasagne; salad; pumpkin pie with whipped cream; whipped cream without pumpkin pie (sshhh!)
• Ride Stats:  120.2 miles; 7:57:36 ride time; 7,618 feet of vertical gain
• Verdict:  epic pass, though I lost most of the city-limit sprints

Full report

It’s a long road, figuratively speaking, to the non-figurative open road.  Family life, with its careers, chores, children, and logistics always interferes.  Maybe that’s why the great outdoors beckon so strongly.  Our biggest obstacle was getting Bryan’s fleet running.  I’d flown to WA without my bike (because the airlines are such thieving bastards) and had to borrow.  Both of Bryan’s spare road bikes were out of commission (but on the plus side, what a boon, to own two spare road bikes!).  “I almost had one of them ready to go for John before he went off to college,” Bryan said, and then added wistfully, “Four years ago.”  (John just graduated.)

So we headed to Bryan’s office, which has a full bike shop for its employees.  Pretty sweet perk, eh?  The company is called Faithlife, for those of you already polishing your résumés.  Here we are at work:

The first bike, a 1983 Team Miyata, had belonged to my dad for awhile, before he gave it back to Bryan.  Dad had a 180mm TA Cyclotourist triple crankset on there (all but fused to a Phil Wood sealed bottom bracket); Grab-On foam instead of bar tape; front and rear racks; old-school wheels that only took a five-speed freewheel; weirdly narrow handlebars; and of course a giant puffy saddle.  He’d also removed the gold “Team Miyata” panels.  Poor bike.  Bryan had stripped the crap off before but hadn’t replaced all of it yet.  Getting that bike running felt more like an intervention than a renovation.  I feared we’d have to go out and buy a new front derailleur.  Fortunately, every former bike mechanic has a big box called The Box, and Bryan’s was full of treasures.  Check out this sweet Dura-Ace mech, from around 1980 (and no, he has no idea where he got it):

The other bike, an ’84 Team, was in better shape and needed only brakes, a saddle, and a chain.  It actually had a chain, but it was older than George Burns and almost as dead.  We ended up keeping it on there because it was enmeshed in a codependent relationship with the equally worn-out cogs.  The saddle we threw on there was a Fi’Zi:k knockoff that came with Bryan’s new Fuji, and was designed to be thrown away.  It was better than nothing, but just barely.  Sitting on it was like sitting on one of those Spenco fake boobs we used to pass around in health class, to feel for fake tumors.  At least this saddle didn’t have any of those.  The brakes we installed were Tektro—also from the new Fuji, and also designed to be thrown away.

On ride day, I woke at 6 and thought I’d have to go shake the other guys awake, but they were already up.  Look, my nephew John (a college baseball player) even stretches out before exercise:

Couple quick things:  yes, that jersey does in fact match the Miyatas, and thanks for noticing.  (It was a hand-me-down from his Evil Uncle Dana, which is also where Bryan got both Team Miyatas.)  And look at that whiteboard:  we worked out the physics of this ride in advance.  The power required for the climb, all the vectors for taking high-speed switchbacks on the way back down … it’s all there.  We don’t stumble blindly into these things.

Here’s the requisite “before” photo.  We hit out at 7:12 a.m., fully caffeinated from good, strong coffee that Bryan made.  If I were a coffee achiever I could devote a paragraph to the beans, the blend, the machinery, etc. but I’m just a NoDoz Underachiever.  We didn’t have any breakfast, because we never do, and as for its being the most important meal of the day … oh, stuff it!

Man, it was fricking cold (41 degrees, 88% humidity, and I don’t want to hear about your “real winters” and all that—I’m a Californian).  Mist rose from all the fields as we rolled out of town.  Most of the roads had been repaved recently, and featured those rumble strips that used to keep drunks and somnambulists from going off the road, and I guess still do, but now they’re mainly for drivers who can’t resist texting while driving.

Speaking of annoying drivers, you know what’s all the rage in WA?  Putting an oversized engine in your jacked-up truck, and then, when passing cyclists, flooring it so the groan of the engine and the whine of the turbocharger make the bikers jump out of their skins.  We bikers need to be taught a lesson, you see.

We got a great view of Mount Baker, our destination, on the way out of town.  Cameras, for all their recent improvement, still do a lousy job compared to the naked eye.  I wish they responded quasi-intelligently to voice commands, so I could say, “No, don’t focus on the chain, focus on that ancient front derailleur!” or “Fix the exposure so Mount Baker shows up, duh!”  My hands were too cold to do a lot of futzing so I had to add the mountain in post-production.  (Full disclosure:  I’m not actually sure this is Mount Baker, and I guessed on the scale.)

We sprinted for every city limit sign.  I thought I’d do pretty well, because Bryan is even older than I am, and this was—I kid you not—John’s first bike ride of 2015.  (He commutes short distances by bike, but that’s about it.)  I know you’re tired of all the hackneyed excuses bike racers give, so I have some new ones:

• My contact lens prescription is on the weak side, and the city limit signs in WA don’t feature elevation or population, so they’re hard to discern from a distance;
• I was afraid to shove hard on the pedals due to that ancient chain;
• I’m just a big sissy.

When Bryan and John launched their sprint into Glacier, I was riding no-handed with the camera out so there was no way I could participate.  So did I at least get an awesome photo of the glorious sprint?  No … by the time this occurred to me the guys were too far ahead for a great photo.  My brain was being as sluggish as my legs.

It’s a bit hard to describe the climb up Mount Baker. Technically, it’s about 30 miles long, but the first 20 miles average just 1%. The climb proper begins 9.5 miles from the “summit” and averages 5.5%. (The road doesn’t reach the actual summit.) About a mile from the top is a pretty steep section, maxing out at 13.7%.

There are a few buildings along the road, one associated with a ski resort, but nothing was open so we couldn’t get any water. About 5 miles from the summit we had some Cliff bars which we washed down with recycled saliva (our own). The modern bars have caffeine in them and come in all kinds of new flavors. I can’t tell, in this photo, if John is savoring his, or using Zen techniques to ingest it without suffering.

Look at their shoes.  Those Lake cycling shoes Bryan is wearing?  They technically belong to John.  They’re his only pair, which is why he’s rocking the Nike sneakers.  Does he complain about having to ride 120 miles in sneakers?  No.  Does he complain about his dad swiping his stuff?  No.  Did he complain, six years ago when we last attempted this ride, that it rained the whole time and we got turned around by snow a couple miles from the Mount Baker summit?  No.  Does he complain about overuse of the serial-rhetorical-question literary device?  Possibly, and I couldn’t blame him.

By the way, here’s a movie from that ill-fated Mount Baker ride of 2009.  I still have the scar on my leg from where Bryan tried to take a bite.

Fortunately the weather was great this year … it was still cool on the mountain, but nice and sunny.

Go ahead and zoom in on that last one.  Note that Bryan’s gloves don’t even remotely match:  one is full-finger, one isn’t.  Guess what he’ll be getting for Christmas!

So how was John doing, considering that he’s not a bike racer, hadn’t ridden all year, has more extraneous muscle on his upper body than Chris Froome has in total, was wearing sneakers, and was riding a bike with wheels handed down from his aunt’s early-‘80s Univega?  Quite well, though he must have been suffering pretty badly to get gapped like this by his dad.

Actually, maybe he was gapped only because he was futzing with his GoPro or something.  He did admit later to having suffered, but who knows … maybe he was just being polite.

Here’s the only halfway decent action photo I got of all three of us.  It appears I may have suffered a mild stroke at some point, based on how the side of my face is collapsing and on how I’m grinning like an idiot.

Look, we made the summit, Artist’s Point!  The elevation is 5,100 feet and we started at (basically) sea level.  A friendly hiker snapped this photo, and also gave us a whole bottle of Gatorade, which was cucumber-lime flavor.  You know what?  It actually tasted pretty good.  That’s what hours of exercise will do for you.  (I remember enjoying some ice-cold Tequiza after an hours-long hike in Yosemite; I bought some when I got back home and realized it was actually quite gross.)  We were really stoked at the hiker’s generosity, because there was no water at the summit, either.  We only managed to fill our bottles once during this ride, about 80 or 90 miles in.

For those albertnet readers who’d like to get into a big argument about irony, here’s a photo that may or may not be ironic.  (Capri Sonne, aka Capri Sun, is one of those rare beverage companies not owned by PepsiCo, which is Gatorade’s parent.)

The descent was glorious (if a bit brisk).  Toward the bottom of this post is a YouTube video where you can see some of that.  Following the downhill, when we finally did stop for water, we compared our helmet-heads.  Bryan’s was fricking epic:

You can tell he was going fast by the piece of straw there.  My own helmet-head was pretty sweet, too.  I didn’t get the corn row effect, but the bugs are a nice touch. 

The redness is because the helmet I borrowed from Bryan was too small.  I was relieved it didn’t actually wear a hole in my forehead (though it felt like it was).  There was a missing pad above my crown, which due to my lack of hair and the male Velcro bits caused an unpleasant sandpaper sensation.  John suggested I put some wadded-up paper towel in there, and it really helped.  Such a fine lad!  His heart must go out to my brother and me, the way our hair is disappearing faster than glaciers in Greenland.  (Actually, our hair is migrating to our backs … but I digress.)

I did manage to win a city-limit sprint, into the little town of Nugent.  Just now I looked up that town to see if it was named after Ted Nugent, and I can’t find it on a map.  I guess it’s not a town at all … there’s just a random green sign that says “Nugent” so I didn’t really win anything.

The final sprint into Bellingham was one we’d talked about the whole ride; it’s the equivalent of the Champs-Elysées stage of the Tour de France.  Bryan and I were watching each other like hawks on the approach, and just as I was about to launch my sprint, Bryan said, “I don’t think that’s it,” meaning the city-limit sign.  I hesitated, and just then John came flying by us.  There was no way to catch him.  It was a brilliant move.  Later I accused Bryan of treason; after all, saying “I don’t think that’s it” is a lot easier than giving his son a lead-out.  Bryan denies any such tactics.  In any event, John has not only great strength but great instincts (exemplifying 3 of the 5 sprinting tips I give here).

Here’s a video of ride highlights from John’s GoPro:

Here’s the “after” shot, juxtaposed with the “after” shot from our 2009 expedition.  John has certainly grown.

We sat on the back deck and ate bananas as our glycogen window treat.  My legs really hurt … this was my longest ride of the year by almost 40 miles.  My dad was visiting as well, and I attempted to scandalize him by saying, “I’m going to take an over-the-counter muscle relaxant.”  I think it worked:  my dad (an acolyte of Dr. Andrew Weil) asked worriedly, “What kind?”  I replied, “Brewski.”  Man, that Long Table ale is yummy.  Like a Saison, but stronger.  I brought out one for John too because hey, he’s of legal drinking age now!

If you’re wondering how I came to drink 1½ beers, it’s because there was a limited supply, and John gave me half of his.  I commented on his temperance and he said, “It’s not that … you just look like you need it more.”

Dinner was straight-up massive, and tasty:  hand-cranked pasta, a previously frozen lasagne we’d thawed just in case which was nice and meaty, salad (well …salad), garlic bread, and some hot dog buns that had been given the garlic bread treatment.  Then the pie, and whipped cream.  Have you noticed that aerosol whipped cream seems so often to come in a 3-pack nowadays?  It’s almost entrapment the way its overabundance leads to fist-sized puffs atop tiny slivers of pie.

The aftermath of the ride and dinner was predictable enough….

Next time I do this, I’m bringing my older daughter, Alexa.  I just informed her of this.  She replied, “You are insane.”  You can imagine her eye-roll.

Dyna-Drive - Letter to an Old Gearhead

Introduction

Recently, I got into a long, rich e-mail exchange with a guy named Kevin, who is my friend John’s older brother.  I know almost nothing about Kevin because back when we all lived in Boulder, we were teenagers, and no teenager ever has anything to do with his kid brother’s friends.  But Kevin is restoring a 1983 Team Miyata, which instantly provided enough rapport for us to practically become pen pals.

That’s where you, vicious reader, come in.  (You didn’t think I was going to call you “gentle reader,” did you?)  Because I don’t know Kevin, he could be any 40-something collector of excellent old bikes and their paraphernalia.  If that’s you, read on.  If that’s not you, what’s wrong with you?  Racing bicycles of the early eighties are far cooler than fantasy football, online gaming, etc., and the sooner you realize it the better.  (If you love old bikes but are a young dude who can’t stand the thought of anybody being in his forties, click here instead.)

Dyna-Drive – Letter to an Old Gearhead

It’s been awhile ... maybe you thought I forgot about your Team Miyata restoration and the parts I offered you.  Not so.  And even if I did forget, my wife would’ve reminded me.  I told her about the project, explaining it in a way that would interest her (“I’m giving away some bike stuff”) and she asked, “Does this guy need any whole bicycles?”

So, I finally went out to The Box to find out if I really do have the parts I promised you.  Sorry it took me so long, but hauling out The Box is no small matter.  It’s buried under a bunch of other stuff in the garage, and the garage itself (a small one, built to accommodate a Model-T Ford) is like a jack-in-the-box, where when you pull out one thing, the top pops off and suddenly there’s crap everywhere and it looks like the home of a hoarder, so you can barely thread your way through it and then there’s a TV crew out there in the driveway wanting to film an installment of “Filthy Hoarders Bay Area:  Bike-Induced Squalor.” 

I also have to be braced emotionally for such archeological projects.  I start to get sentimental because whenever I blow up the garage, I come across relics of my daughters’ recent past that remind me how fast they’re growing.  I’m chucking aside new winter boots, winter boots that won’t fit anymore, little coats they barely got to wear, and then the rag bag, which is actually a box, which is always overflowing and is 90% kids’ garments.   I guess there’s some guilt there because we could have given these garments to the Goodwill, except they’re all stained because my kids are, apparently, slobs.  So I’m like, “Dang, Lindsay was wearing this dress only a month ago.”  The way the years have flown by, it’s like the kids just got here, but they’ve already got one foot (each) out the door.

Below the rag “bag” is the New Bike Stuff Box, which is a Huggies diaper box, so I feel guilty about that.  Should’ve used cloth.  In the New Bike Stuff Box are gobs of new cogs, new chains, new cleats, new Conti 4K tires, and little-used 4Ks I took off my bike so I could put on new tires for Everest Challenge but then afterward was too tired to put the old tires back on, and all of this is enough to make me drool over how well equipped I am for all the miles I have yet to ride, but of course there’s some guilt there, too, because I have so much, and there are people in this world riding Forté (i.e., house-brand) tires, or fricking Ultegra, or low-end Campy, or worse, some of them are on cobbled-together mixed-part mixed-vintage bikes like all those poor Europeans had who dropped my ass on Alpe d’Huez despite my big fancy American equipment and attitude.

So then I get to the second diaper box, which is The Box itself.  The Box is fricking heavy, with the accumulation of decades of bike stuff, and I dreaded hauling it out because my back is currently in the thrown-out state.  I don’t know how it got here.  I sat down too quickly, or got up too quickly, or sat too long, or blasphemed too many times, I have no idea.  A buddy of mine threw his back out putting on a sock.  It sucks being old, but I guess the alternative (i.e., being dead) is no better.  I wish you could have heard the wounded-animal noise I made hefting The Box onto a rubbish bin so I could rifle through it.  (Did I say “rubbish bin” instead of “trash can” just to sound British?  Of course.)

The stuff in that Box ... it’s just amazing.  It’s like the parts are copulating in there.  I always come across stuff I cannot account for, like (in this case) an extra Dura-Ace Dyna-Drive crankset.  I know I promised you some chainrings off this crankset, but since then I verified with my brother Bryan that I had actually put my extra Dyna-Drive crankset on his old Team Miyata a couple decades ago.  (My original Dyna-Drive crankset is on Full Slab.)  So I thought Bryan was going to have to send you the chainrings you need, which means you’d almost certainly never get them, because he has more kids than I do and doesn’t even have time to read his e-mail—and hasn’t, in fact, even read any of our glorious Miyata restoration e-mails, hasn’t even stumbled across the link you included to the treasure trove of old Miyata catalogs online where he could drool over the very catalog that once hawked his very bike.

But lo and behold, I do have a Dyna-Drive crank from which to cannibalize chainrings.  Sweet!  And that’s not even the weirdest thing I found in The Box.  I also found a cadence transmitter for a Polar bike computer.  How is this in here?!  I’ve never owned a Polar device in my life, and I’ve never been a big fan of measuring cadence.  I do have a cadence mech now—I couldn’t outrun such nerdy technology forever—and it’s kind of depressing sometimes when I’m slogging up Lomas Cantadas in my lowest gear, which is shamefully low due to the unholy combination of a compact crank and a 27-tooth rear cog, and my cadence is in the 40s.  At that point can I even call myself an athlete?

I’ve got a slew of corn cobs in The Box, even a Regina which is weird because I’ve never owned a chain that’s even compatible with Regina.  Just all kinds of stuff and it takes a mighty, mighty long time to go through it all looking for specific stuff, especially since I keep getting sucked in, inspecting this or that part closely, not just because it’s cool-looking (which of course it all is), but because time after time the picture gets all wavy, like how old TV shows used to indicate that a dream sequence or flashback was beginning, and suddenly this isn’t just a 53-tooth Mavic chainring, this is the chainring off Pete’s old Rossin, the chainring we all called “the working man’s chainring” because it was so manly, so Sean-Kelly-like, because at that time having a 53 was unusual and was the equivalent of an amp that goes up to 11.  If you were willing to fork out big bucks for that extra tooth, it meant you really cared about going fast.  (As juniors, we had gear restrictions, and the 53x15 was actually still legal, whereas a 52x14 was not.)  This led me to ponder whether or not it’s pathetic that as teenagers my brothers and friends and I talked enough about any specific chainring to have to name it.  Well, maybe we were, but at least we were disciplined, sportive teenagers who weren’t glued to screens all the time.

Then I found myself looking at a Suntour Sprint rear mech, which was on the Sanwa I bought in 1986 from this Brazilian twerp whose goal in life was apparently to go as long as possible without actually working, no matter how much freeloading this required, and no matter how many belongings he had to sell.  He tried to sell that Sanwa to me for months, and my bartering tactic—“I don’t need another bike, and I don’t even like that bike, get it away, I don’t want it”—was so ruthlessly effective that I finally got the bike for like $140 and gave it to my brother Max, who, years later, was sprinting all-out on it, on the Broadway bike path, when the frame snapped in half and he stacked so hard he got a case of whiplash that bothers him to this day.

So, yeah, I’ve got original Dura-Ace Dyna-Drive chainrings for you, but oddly the inner chainring is a 39, which definitely was not stock on that crankset.  Nobody was using 39s until about 1987 or 1988.  That crank is a 1982.  Oddly, even though it’s newer than the crank, that 39 is really, really worn.  Kind of a wave-shape as well.  Very likely to skip.  Look:

See that chainring next to it?  It’s practically new.  It’s got at least 10,000 miles left in it.  Also, being a 42, it’s more appropriate for your restoration.  But though it’s Dura-Ace, it’s not Dyna-Drive, so in that sense it’s not very authentic.

So what else did I find?  The Dura-Ace AX pedals are in better shape than I remember.  Pretty smooth, actually.  You’ll have to furnish your own toe straps but those  aren’t hard to come by.  But the thing is, you need to get past your fear of these pedals and actually install and use them.  Get yourself some old-school cycling shoes, in plain black leather, some old Vittorias or Dettos or something.  Why?  Because clipless pedals on your old Team Miyata is just not right—it’s almost a crime, really, particularly when the Dyna-Drive pedals are arguably the most distinctive thing about that entire era of Dura-Ace componentry.  

Besides, you have to honor these pedals, given the good long while I spent staring at the right one, recalling the cool old machine shop I took it to after stripping the threads during one of my many overhauls (back in my college days).  These were the little threads on the inside of the pedal, where the spindle would be if these crazy pedals had a spindle.  The machinist installed a HeliCoil for me, which worked like a champ, but he also got a gleam in his eye and offered to modify the pedals to use cartridge bearings, and even a special setup for races that would involve mineral oil instead of grease, for maximum efficiency.  I almost went through with it (but was too broke).  Anyway, I raced for years on those pedals and never had a problem.  That yours exploded was probably just God punishing you for doing a triathlon on a pure road racing machine like your Team.

Alas, though I did find a Dura-Ace bottom bracket, in the original box no less, it ended up being the spindle, one matching cup, and another random cup from a totally different era of BB.  The one Dyna-Drive cup is 36x24, which (needless to say) is the Italian thread and size, totally useless to you, though a BB with only one cup is pretty damn useless anyway.  The spindle is pretty badly pitted, as you can see from this photo (note also the close-up of the worn-out chainring teeth):

But the spindle being pitted doesn’t really matter,  because it cannot be used with non-Dyna-Drive cups anyway.  Recalling that incompatibility has been less than enjoyable.  My 1986 Team Miyata broke (well, the fork broke) during the 1990 Collegiate National Championship road race, and after a brief stint on an Orbit (painted orange with a spray can) I bought the steel Guerciotti, Bomb Pop, that was my favorite steel frame ever.  As Bomb Pop was Italian, I had to figure out a new Dyna-Drive-compatible BB and went through half a dozen different combinations of spindles and cups, getting most of my parts from Peter Rich over at Velo-Sport, who was cool enough to let me return one part after another when it didn’t work out, which was every time.  I was working down the street at Square Wheel and one day I looked through the (non-online, paper-bound) Euro-Asia wholesale catalog and discovered you could still order a new-old-stock Dyna-Drive BB, which I did.  I have no idea what happened to my old English-thread Dyna-Drive BB.  Could still be in the Orbit.  I will never know, because I managed to actually lose that Orbit (or did I sell it to Max?) along with the 1986 Team Miyata which really only needed a new fork, but which is definitely lost forever (possibly in my ex-stepfather’s attic).

But wait, you’re asking, what’s that other BB spindle in the photo?  That’s a ’99 Dura-Ace Octalink spindle, probably left over from the Italian-thread BB I bought for Bomb Pop, which I later installed on Full Slab, and eventually had to cut up with a Dremel tool.  But what’s important here is that the Octalink spindle is no wider than that old Dyna-Drive spindle.  This suggests that, modern Q-factors being what they are, you could probably find a low-profile BB for your Team Miyata that would work a lot better than that goofy sealed sumbitch you got in there now. 

Which is good, because I had a long, fun chat with Bryan and have determined that he never did have a Dyna-Drive BB for his Team Miyata, so he got away with a Campy, though his chain line wasn’t perfect.  You could make him an offer for that Campy BB, but you’d either rip him off or pay dearly because those were sweet.  They had these so-called “labyrinth seals”—not a rubber seal, but just a carving into the aluminum rim of the hole in the cup where the spindle went through.  It always seemed to me that such a design would do nothing to keep water out, but it really did work.  After the Steamboat Springs road race in 1983, which was a miserably rainy affair, I actually took my bike (an ’83 Pro Miyata) into the shower with me, and didn’t even need to overhaul the BB afterward.  Smooth as glass, those Campys.  Damn it, maybe I’ll make Bryan an offer myself.  I’ll conjure up a bike to go with it!

By the way, see that grubby red Cinelli handlebar plug in the photo?  That’s the last part I have left from the Mercian I wrote about recently, my second-favorite steel bike ever.  Those were cool plugs because they were squishy, so at high altitudes (e.g., Mount Evans at over 14,000 feet), they popped out slightly.  I dreamed of going down to sea level and reinstalling them to increase this effect.  It’s kind of sad that the bar plug is all I have left of that Mercian.  I mean, a pair at least would have been nice.

Okay, so the last thing:  you’re probably wondering what those Superbe Pro brake levers are doing in the photo.  They have nothing to do with your Team Miyata!  True, but as we’ve discussed, neither do the more modern Superbe Pro brakes you’ve got on your bike now.  And these levers are the right era, and are beautifully made, and let’s face it, aero levers have no place on your ’84 Team.  They just don’t.  Look at that catalog photo:  the brake cables come straight out of the top of the lever, like they should for that vintage.  Sure, aero levers existed back then, but the Team Miyata was a no-nonsense racing bike and aero levers hadn’t earned their place on it yet.  (Miyata was a pretty cool company:  starting in 1982, they finally acknowledged that no Japanese company could produce a good rim, and switched to Mavic GP4s.  On the other hand, that aero water bottle in the photo is pure nonsense and is painful to look at, especially against the backdrop of such a sweet bike.  It’s like if Natalie Portman had tattoos on her face, or those plug-style earrings.)

Of course, the problem with these Superbe Pro levers is that the hoods are gone.  Isn’t it strange how even rubber is higher-tech than it used to be?  Back in the ‘80s we had to replace our brake hoods somewhat often.  Everybody stocked replacement hoods.  You could even put Modolo hoods on your Campy levers and many did.  Or there were the A‘me  ones that came in every different color.  I even remember Armor-All’ing the Dia-Compe hoods on my Miyata 310, to extend their lifespan.  

And now?  Nobody ever needs new hoods.  Ever.  My 1999-issue Dura-Ace STI levers not only have the original hoods, but they’re in mint condition.  (Just the hoods, though ... the levers are beat to hell, the decorative caps busted off, big Phillips-screw exposed, and I even had to file them down after a crash because the scraped-up plastic—plastic!—was so barbed it could have cut my lily-white fingers, though those barbs would never present a risk to a professional bike mechanic, who it is said bleeds on the inside.)  Anyway, you can still find replacement hoods, as these take the same ones as old Campy levers.  (Click here, for example.)

So, this stuff is yours for the asking:  the Dyna-Drive era chainrings; the 42-tooth chainring; the awesome old Dyna-Drive pedals; the non-aero brake levers.  I’ve even got a couple rolls of brand-new Benotto tape in white (with albeit yellowed plugs) you can use if you like.  But I’m keeping the spindles and the Cinelli bar plug.

Epilogue

I got a great reply to this letter from Kevin, which proves that it is humanly possible to make it through a long, dense spew of text like this.  There is much of his reply that I’d like to include here, but of course I have to draw the line somewhere.  I particularly enjoy and appreciate the perspective he finds for all this lore:

The curse of a passion like this is the almost impenetrable gulf it puts between you and outsiders who have no idea what you are talking about and hardly see anything of value in a decades-old box of copulating bike parts.... That Cinelli bar-end plug doesn't speak for itself, it needs an interpreter. Wherever its mate ended up, we can be pretty confident that it is not the crowning centerpiece of a memorial shrine to the long-gone days of Mercian-riding bliss. It’s probably floating in one of those swirls of trash in the Southern oceans. It’s the human component that makes objects into what they are, if that isn’t too obvious to state.