Appendix B - More on Presta Valve Locknuts, aka Valve Rings

Introduction 

Obviously, just about anyone would read an essay of almost any length about Presta valve locknuts, aka valve rings. Even so, I deferred last week to the presumed minority of souls who are intimidated by vast tracts of text, and I actually shortened (!) my post. I achieved this via two means: a) moving a tangential discussion of tubeless setup to an appendix, and b) saving a second digression for this week. So, as a counterpoint to last week’s post and its Appendix A, I herein provide Appendix B. I had originally intended to use this post to present my brother’s input on the topic and my response—and I will get to that. But first, I’ve already received lots of reactions to the first post and I’ll tackle those now.

Feedback on the first post

It goes without saying that my first essay on valve locknuts generated immediate and impassioned responses. First was this commentary (from Anonymous) below the post itself:

Deep analysis of an important topic. I have shared with all my friends. I expect to have fewer of them shortly.

Next came a written apology from M—, who started this whole thing 13 years ago when (as recalled in last week’s post) he called my use of valve locknuts “a sign of novice nerd-dom.” In an email last Thursday he announced that he’d read my last post in its entirety—something he almost never does, but in this case, as he explained, his wife “was watching some PBS program about British royals so I had some idle time.” He went on to say, “ I apologize for the stinging remark about your moronic use of stem nuts.  I can be frightfully insensitive at times.” (And as you have seen, I can be frightfully moronic.)

Subsequently another member of our bike club, K—, emailed the group, “Dana, thanks for sharing the valve rings / valve stem nuts article. We chatted about it at the Sibley stop on today’s ride, then lo and behold what should B— spot but a valve ring in the wild!

I replied to K— and the group, “I hope somebody grabbed it for his or her stash, or maybe even valve, or at least to clean up litter,” to which K responded, “I did not grab it Dana. One of my valve stems ( the wheel in the picture) was unthreaded and the other … had a valve stem ring on it already! Also, I think the group’s feeling was that this was now a ‘wild’ valve stem ring, and it was best to leave it to its hard-earned freedom.” Fair enough!

That same day, another teammate, D—, wrote, “After reading your post I added valve rings and caps on the short stems in the low profile Mavic MA40 wheels on my 1970s Frejus — in support of ultimate loser dorkitude — certified M-approved.”

Look at that! Actual valve caps! Seeing those certainly throws you for a loop, don’t it? Unlike valve locknuts, these caps are so universally eschewed that actually seeing one is as unexpected as seeing a dog washing itself, or viewing an AI-rendered drawing of a person with three arms, or encountering a schoolgirl with sideburns (though none of those exemplifies dorkitude, I hasten to add). The first photo of this post, of the capped crooked valve ... ugh. Just ugh.

The next response was from L—, who inquired, “OK, but what about a bling driven setup where I have the nut and the cap because they are from Hope and bronze anodized to match my hubs?” He included these two photos:

I think in the case of extreme bling, a special dispensation should be granted. Nothing wrong with a little flair. L— has mentioned that he used to mountain bike in Hope, a place in Derbyshire near Sheffield (though Hope is also, confusingly, a manufacturing company in Barnoldswick, Lancashire). I shall hereafter always think of L— as The Man From Hope. (Well, okay, the other man from Hope.) Now, I’ll bet I know just what you’re thinking: wouldn’t one of those amazing gold anodized valve caps make a fine addition to M—’s collection? L—, if by some chance you’re reading this: you have been warned.

And now, I shall move on to my original topic, the invaluable input on valve rings from my brother. (If more responses to my previous post come rolling in, I’ll have to address them in another appendix or two.)

Uncle Bryan weighs in

When I originally solicited opinions about valve locknuts via email, I really wanted my brother Geoff to chime in. After all, it was my impasse with him that got this whole debate going, 36 years ago. Plus, he’s one of the best bike mechanics I know; his nickname when he was the mechanic for the Cal Poly Wheelmen was “Dr. Shimano.” I was known, to the members of his team and mine, as his loyal sidekick, Tecnova, named after the really shitty Panaracer tires that tended to come on Japanese road bikes in those days.

A note on those tires: I spelled the name wrong in a previous post. I’d put “Technova” but just learned it’s actually spelled “Tecnova.” So sue me. Anyway, here is a photo. Just look at how shitty they are:

This  probably won’t surprise you, but I had ChatGPT help me chase that down that photo. Have you ever noticed how when the chatbot is done servicing your request it always suggests something else it could do? It just doesn’t want to let go. It should be called ClingGPT. In this case it asked if I wanted it to provide a “high-resolution, clean copy” of the tire photo for me. I said sure. Here’s what it created:

Look at that! It bears no resemblance to the real tire! John Keats would be turning in his grave. (He’s the one who wrote, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”) What’s kind of frightening is that ChatGPT could have corrected my spelling but instead reinforced it. It even claimed that there’s disagreement about “Technova” vs. “Tecnova” and cites this very blog as precedent for “Technova,” even though the GPT knows I’m albertnet’s author. When AI ultimately replaces human companionship, nobody will ever be kept honest again. But they’ll be so cozy and satisfied with their sycophantic digital pals!

OMG, where was I? Oh, yeah, I’d reached out to Dr. Shimano for input on valve rings. Alas, I couldn’t get his attention, but I did get a nice response from his evil twin, Uncle Bryan. (Is Bryan evil? No, of course not, he’s just Geoff’s twin. But “evil twin” has such a nice ring to it! In reality “evil” applies instead to Geoff, because he is known to all his nieces and nephews as “Evil Uncle Geoff,” just as I’m known as “Evil Uncle Dana.” And are Geoff and I evil? Yes, definitely. Now, moving on to the “Uncle” bit, it just seems to me that as my brothers and I age and try to embody the gravitas we’re expected to have as full-on mature adults, we should have some kind of honorific to extend and embellish our names. I would enjoy being called Captain Dana, or Master Dana, or even Lord Dana, but of course I haven’t earned any of these. In certain contexts I get to be Coach Dana, but that doesn’t transfer very well to my everyday life, so I generally have to settle for Uncle Dana. Somehow among my brothers and me this “easy honorific” has become completely standard, to where it’s actually rare to leave off the “Uncle,” even if we’re just talking to each other without a niece or nephew in earshot.)

With no further ado, here is Uncle Bryan’s commentary.

First, the against. Do they really work? It’s hard to say if they work or not without knowing what it is they are supposed to do. I’m not prepared to answer that question at the moment. So the answer is yes, I think they do work, so that’s not really an against, except that some believe that they don’t really work. I’ll address that conundrum later. 

The other against that I can think of: weight. They add weight to the bike. I don’t care about that. The weight is negligible and if I were concerned about weight, well... there are other areas where that could be addressed with orders of magnitude of difference. Didn’t you once thread many valve rings on an opponent’s bike to add weight and annoy? And also fill his frame tubes with ball bearings? And was this the kid who would stop what he was doing every few minutes just to walk over to his bike and heft it, just to remind himself how light it was? At the Joke on the Hill? 

There is one real problem with valve rings that I can think of, though, and that’s that they often come loose. It seems to me that they rattle and annoy, though now I’m so deaf that I can’t hear if they are rattling, so maybe they don’t ... but I remember that they used to, but then again can I really remember anything? Am I just imagining all this? It’s like Dad when his front derailleur would be rubbing and driving us all mad but we were too shy to mention it most of the time. I did see a front derailleur that was ground almost all the way through, leaving this knife edge in the metal... was that Dad’s? He couldn’t have ridden enough to do that, could he have? No, it was Dad’s! I can totally see it in my memory! But then there’s that memory problem again... No, I’m sure it was! Now the tables have turned, of course. I was riding with [his son] John, maybe even when we did the STP, and he pointed out that my bike was making a clicking or ticking or popping sound, mostly in first gear, or at least in the lower gears where the tension was high and the wind noise low. I know it does this but can’t figure out what it is, so I just pretend it’s not happening. If I do that I pretty much can’t hear it anyway. I’m just too tired to care, and what can I do? So maybe the valve rings do rattle, and maybe that’s a problem, but not for me. The other problem with their coming loose is that they’re probably not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, whatever that is, if they’re loose. 

So what are the benefits of valve rings? Let’s see, I know there are some benefits, some reason that I “like” them, or at least use them. Okay, firstly, they keep the stem from disappearing in the rim hole when you shove the pump head on it. That’s handy, but of course there’s the down side that if you don’t shove the stem into the tire body before inflation you might end up with the tube next to the stem lifting the tire beads and blowing the tire off the rim as you inflate, and it’s hard to shove the stem in there with a valve ring blocking the way. I seem to remember that happening like fifty years ago, but I don’t think it happens anymore, or maybe it was all in my imagination, or a theory as to why the 500 PSI air compressor at the gas station blew my tire up in two seconds and the explosion right next to my head ruined my hearing. Either way I’m going with the rings. 

The other thing it does that I can think of is that it keeps the stem perpendicular to the rim, which is of utmost importance. There’s nothing dorkier than a valve stem that’s all cockeyed. I’m sure we used to argue that it was a safety issue as well, but then we argued all sorts of stupid stuff. And if you’ve got the tube misaligned with the tire too much the valve ring just isn’t going to save you, it can only do so much. 

Now it seems that there’s more... oh yes, if you don’t have a valve ring it’s like the stem is naked and you can see past it into its more modest regions, that place where it’s not polite to look. If the rim has a big valve hole this problem is even worse, and it also exacerbates the issue with the stem’s angle to the rim. Maybe back in the day we’d use a valve ring to cover up the fact that the rim was made for Schrader valves (or worse, reamed out for Schrader, by you!) and by extension you were a loser. You may as well have steel rims. So yeah, a valve ring can do that. It also looks like it’s protecting the stem somehow, maybe from getting broken off if it got bent too far in one direction. I don’t know how it would do that, but that’s the feel it gives. It just looks better, okay? Like a fork crown with a Dura-Ace brake on it, not naked; clothed, armored, even. 

One more thing... it’s just more stuff, more intricate parts, more little things to make the bike cool. Like those caps we’d solder on the cables, or cable goodies, or the Shark fin, or the little sack for the Suntour... what was that, power cam? Yeah, the power cam brake. I actually feel the same way about presta valve caps, but I guess valve caps are another blog post—probably your next one, in fact! 

My responses

So, starting with Bryan’s first question—what are these locknuts even for?—I think it’s remarkable that he even asked. I will assert (at the risk of antagonizing some readers) that most people form opinions without really bothering with the step of wondering. Instead they quickly discern what position their tribe has taken, and unquestioningly align with it.

Bryan is right, of course: valve locknuts do indeed hold the valve straight, though any competent mechanic should be able to get this right, and the crooked valve problem is more with Schrader valves on low-pressure tires because these valves are common among cheap-ass commuting bikes that get very little maintenance. I am convinced—and I’m happy to argue with you about it—that riding your crappy commuting bike with underinflated tires causes the valves to gradually get pulled crooked. So if anything, more Schrader valves should have locknuts. (I have only seen one such tube.)

Bryan’s memory of my threading “many valve rings on an opponent’s bike” is accurate; as described here, I once stacked like ten of these locknuts on each of my opponent’s valves. My opponent was of course was our evil brother Geoff; this was part our valve locknut war. But filling a frame tube with ball bearings … that wasn’t me. That was this kind of annoying guy I worked with at The Spoke, or (as my brothers called it) The Joke. It wasn’t The Joke on the Hill, though; it was the lame Joke in the Table Mesa Center. The Hill was the college community and that was The Joke’s flagship shop. Not only was “my” shop the lesser one, but I wasn’t even an hourly employee … I was just a lowly assembler, paid by the bike. My brothers scorned me because the shop we admired (and that we eventually all worked at) was the High Wheeler, or Thigh Feeler as we called it. It didn’t matter that my brothers didn’t even work there at the time—they could still mock me for my lesser affiliation. (As you can see, these twisted parasocial relationships actually predate social media.)

I distinctly remember the guy at the Joke whom Bryan referred to. He looked exactly like Jahn, the creepy, developmentally arrested ringleader of eerie children in the 1966 “Star Trek” episode “Miri.” Jahn, as you’ll surely recall, led the kids in calling the Enterprise crew “grups” and in ultimately attacking them, chanting, “Bonk, bonk on the head!” So uncanny was this bike shop guy’s resemblance, I felt nervous working around him. (I don’t remember his name, not that I’d give it to you anyway.) Where my memory fails is that this guy was either the perp or the victim of the ball bearing prank and doggone it, I just can’t remember which.

Anyway, the story is, somebody at the Joke (possibly the Jahn lookalike) had a beautiful Mercian road bike made with Reynolds 753 tubing, which was a really big deal in those days (this being around 1982). The thinnest part of the tubing wall was just 0.4 mm thick, and a mechanic with strong hands could actually see the tube compress if he pushed hard enough on it with his thumbs (or so it was said). This frame was built up with the lightest stuff, even the actual Campagnolo Super Record pedals with the titanium spindles (as opposed to the cheaper steel-spindle Superleggeri most of us had). Despite belonging to the employee, this bike was always on prominent display on the showroom floor. Its owner, who wasn’t even much of a cyclist, was in the habit of walking over to pick it up end enjoy how light it was. He did this multiple times a day and it drove the rest of us nuts. So finally the perp (possibly the Jahn-lookalike) waited until the bike’s owner went to lunch and then pulled out the bike’s seatpost, and filled the entire seat tube with ball bearings. He put the post back in and then we all went back to our posts and waited for the owner to get back from lunch and lift his bike again. When he did, he just about had a heart attack, and the rest of us almost died laughing.

Moving on to Bryan’s memory of our dad’s front derailleur rubbing constantly to the point it was destroyed … is that accurate? 100%! I remember it very well, because I felt so lame about being too timid to bring it to our dad’s attention. That’s how little rapport we had with the guy. His reward for being so aloof and unapproachable is that not only did the chain eventually grind all the way through the derailleur cage, turning the remaining piece into practically a blade, but eventually when he went to shift, that scalpel-like protuberance peeled the side plate of his chain like a damn can opener, as though the front derailleur had taken revenge! No, I wasn’t there when this happened, but for some reason my dad loved telling people all about it. The way he regaled his friends, colleagues, and probably even complete strangers, it was like he thought it a heroic tale!

Regarding Bryan’s next observation, “if you don’t have a valve ring it’s like the stem is naked and you can see past it into its more modest regions, that place where it’s not polite to look,” this is beautiful, deathless prose and I have nothing to add.

“Like a fork crown with a Dura Ace brake on it, not naked, clothed, armored, even.” He’s referring to the modern fork of a bike with disc brakes, so the fork crown is totally naked, no cool-looking brake caliper like we’re used to seeing.

Now, the Power Cam brake he mentions was a total disaster invented by Suntour. It really should have been featured in road.cc magazine’s feature on Design Blunders. The brake had these little rollers and a specially shaped cam that was supposed to give you great braking power without tight pad/rim tolerances. There were three main problems with this. One: it was a pain in the ass to adjust properly given the variety in rim widths and the weirdly shaped cam. Two: as the pads wore down, the wrong part of the cam would engage, so the brake worked poorly. Three: the brake was mounted to the underside of the chainstays (supposedly because they flexed less than the seat stays), so it tended to get packed with mud, which would gum up the cam rollers and foul up the brake further. In response to this third issue, a company called Overland made an after-market ballistic nylon jacket for the entire assembly. This was pretty hokey, although arguably more important than a valve locknut and certainly more beneficial than a valve cap. Evidenly Bryan actually liked this little jacket; I guess he just had a weakness for all the little bits you could add to bikes.

Speaking of little bits, he misremembers soldering little caps on the end of cables. There were little caps, which fell into the category of accessory we called “cable goodies” at the bike shop (which category also included little rubber donuts that a brake cable gets threaded through to stop it from dinging on the frame tube). We did solder the ends of cables, with a little torch, which I will never forget because one day Bryan let a blob of molten solder drop right off the end of a cable onto the head mechanic’s bare toe, causing him to howl such a powerful stream of profanities to make a man’s blood run cold. But the caps Bryan is evidently recalling were these cool little cable caps that Shimano included that were actually made of solder, so all you had to do was hold a flame to them. Clever, huh? And then there were the little aluminum caps you could just crimp on there, still prevalent today, which we called cable titties.

And the Shank Fin? That was a chainstay protector that had a little fin on the front to keep your chain from getting sucked into the tire. I recall these fins working pretty well and I don’t know why they no longer exist, other than to say the chain is more prone to getting sucked up from the bottom. A skilled mountain biker can hear and/or feel when this is happening and quickly backpedal, just a quarter turn, to release the chain; with e-bikes there’s no such feedback and the chain ends up breaking, which is why you see e-bikers on the side of the trail peering into their smartphones to try (usually in vain) to learn how to fix a broken chain. O brave new world!

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this plunge into bike arcana. I know I strayed pretty far from the point here, but isn’t being beside the point kind of the point? (It is for me, anyway...)

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Presta Valve Locknuts, aka Valve Rings

Introduction

As you’ll surely agree, this post is long overdue. It stems from my post “10 Fascinating Facts About Inner Tubes” that I wrote over 13 years ago. Fact #4, “Valves can fuel sibling rivalry,” described the war I fought with my brother Geoff over Presta valve locknuts, aka valve rings:

We had an ongoing disagreement about the usefulness of valve rings. I argued that they helped you keep the valve straight, helped you get the pump chuck on there, and enabled you to ride a flat without the tube bunching up around the valve. He argued that … wait a second, this is my blog, I’m not going to bother giving his silly arguments! He can comment on this post if he wants his position articulated.

Geoff was forever stealing the rings from my bike’s valves to deprive me of them. I had to keep spare valve rings on me in case I discovered his treachery too late, like during a ride. In retaliation I was forever putting rings on his bike’s valves. There was a lot of cussing.

(There’s more to that story, which you can find here.)

In response to that post, M—, a guy on my road cycling club, who raced with Greg LeMond back in the day and who has always been our club’s Obi Wan Kenobi, replied, “Valve rings, as you call them, were always the sign of novice nerd-dom, like crank bolt dust caps. Your brother was right.” This really stung, since a) it came from our guru, and b) I never used crank bolt dust caps, because I knew better, but somehow I didn’t know better about these locknuts. (For more on crank bolts, click here.) From that day forward I mended my ways and stopped using valve locknuts. (I did keep one in my toolkit for roadside repairs.)

End of story, right? Well, not so fast. In cycling circles, widespread debate about Presta valve locknuts still bubbles up from time to time and has done so for decades. It’s the perfect hot button issue to tackle on albertnet because it gets people bickering good-naturedly without ruining friendships or landing me on either side of the currently raging culture war. So I decided to poll the members of my bike club on the topic, along with a couple other cycling pals and my brother, and describe in these pages the current Presta valve locknut zeitgeist.

The bike team weighs in

Curiously, more East Bay Velo Club members came out against valve locknuts than in favor, though I suspect more of my teammates use them than not, as I shall get into. I know with certainty that one of the “con” votes was from a guy I ride with all the time who does use them, as he told me himself … but that’s not what he put in writing.

Trigger warning: this is not a short post. If you have attention span issues, I recommend you either a) visit this page instead, b) request a vlog version of this post, or c) print it out and store it on your toilet tank to work through over time.

Okay, here’s what my bike club had to say:

1. I’m a nay on the ring. Need to reduce weight as much as possible. Plus, it just slows you down when having to change tubes—yes, I have still not gone tubeless. And last, if you have them on they loosen up and rattle...

2. Tubeless all day. Pro. [This is a tacit “for” vote … more on this later.]

3. I save them all for making bike bling bracelets, necklaces, etc. Still they continue to pile up. Need any? [He included these photos:]

4. Con. They work their way lose and rattle and it’s annoying.

5. Perhaps  we can add the little cap to the fray. That said, I once had to change a tube with a short stem in a deeper wheel, and it was impossible to insert the pump [chuck] as there was very little length left outside. I have since bought a screw on type, but still put in the nut unless it is a Michelin tube or TPU… [Not clear what “a screw on type” means here but I suspect either a screw-on pump chuck—more on this later—or a valve extender, which is a whole other topic. More to come on TPUs.]

6. I am very much on the pro side of piston rings, which sound like they should be mentioned in the same breath as valve rings, but which of course are entirely unrelated.

7. [From M—] Growing up riding on sew-ups (“tubulars” to youngsters) I never saw a stem nut. I don’t use them on clinchers either but could see how they’d be helpful for some people. The combination of unnecessarily long valve stems and ham-handed pump technique puts a lot of leverage on the stems, which I’ve seen damaged. This probably applies to pumps that attach directly to the stem vs. ones with a short, flexible hose. Both valve caps and stem nuts are largely useless. However, as collectors’ items, the former are vastly superior. [He included this photo of his prized valve cap collection.]

8. Since I’ve been a tubeless guy for 12 or more years, I can’t really see life without valve rings. That said, I recall also liking [pre-tubeless] to have them on tubes cause they frankly made it easier to get the pump chuck seated on to the valve before pumping the tire. So, for those guys who are against valve rings, tell them to SUCK IT!

9. I was talking about your forthcoming post on valve stem nuts on my ride today and someone pointed out that some of these modern TPU tubes don’t even have threads on the stem. No Nuts! 

My responses

There is so much to explain and respond to here, I feel like a kid in a candy shop, or more accurately an ectomorph with a pet tapeworm at an all-u-can-eat buffet.

First off, the locknuts do make it easier to get an old-school pump chuck on there because the valve doesn’t get shoved down into the tube. Is it the case that a valve that’s pulled out too much can interfere with seating the tire and cause it to blow off the rim? Yeah, that can happen. But it’s also the case that cramming a chuck on lockring-less valve can damage the tube, because the valve can get torqued around and, worse case, the tube rips at the valve. So there’s no free lunch, really, with traditional pump chucks.

That’s where M—’s input comes in, about the modern mini-pumps with the short, flexible hose. Not only do these not torque the valve around, but because the chuck isn’t shoved on there but instead just screws on (using the same valve threads that the locknut uses), there’s no need for the locknut. But the screw-on chucks have a downside, which is that they tend to unscrew an under-tightened valve core, so when you finish unscrewing the chuck and pull it off, the core comes with it and—WHOOSH!—all the air escapes. And unless you have a valve core tool in your kit, you’re pretty much screwed. I see this several times per season when coaching high schoolers. It also happened to me recently on El Toyonal, a road that is closed to cars. I’d have been stranded except I was able to screw the core in far enough with my fingers to make it (sort of) work. I couldn’t believe I managed that. It felt like an 80-yard Hail Mary pass (and as you can imagine I am useless at football).

Any argument about saving weight is a joke (perhaps literally). This is a case, I think, of the person supplying a merely ostensible reason because he doesn’t actually know why he does what he does. (Or she.) I don’t own a scale sensitive enough to weigh a valve locknut. I suppose I could gather up all the ones I own (probably at least twenty, spread out over several boxes, toolboxes, the little nipple holder on my truing stand, and elsewhere) and take the average, but I can’t be bothered. This tiny locknut couldn’t even weigh a gram. If you want to save that much weight, just blow your nose before you ride, or alter your diet. Or better yet, to M—’s point about unnecessarily long valve stems, get the ones that are only just long enough for your aero rims … I see a lot of “stem inflation” (pun intended, sorry) and I don’t like it. The valves look like they’re aroused.

Let’s proceed, then, to the most common criticism of valve locknuts: they come loose and rattle. This is sort of a legitimate complaint. Why only sort of? Because not only is it not always true, many cyclists will tell you that the opposite is true: that part of the purpose of the lockring is to prevent the valve itself from rattling. So which is it? I think this has everything to do with your specific setup. I used valve locknuts on the cheapy Araya rims that came with my Miyata 310; on the Super Champion Gentleman rims I had on my Mercian; on the Wolber 58s I use for my commuting bike; on the Mavic MA-40s I trained on for many years; on the 16-spoke Shimano aero wheels that I had briefly before they disintegrated; and on both pairs of my Mavic Ksyriums. In zero of these cases did the locknut rattle. And I didn’t tighten these locknuts with pliers like an idiot (though a friend of mine did this in junior high and thus couldn’t fix a flat out on the road once and had to call his mommy). Are my fingers possibly stronger than those of the people whose valve locknuts rattle? Possibly, due to all the years I worked in bike shops. (As we always liked to tell people, “Bicycle mechanic bleed on the inside.”)

So if you, gentle reader, were to install valve locknuts, would they rattle? I’m gonna say probably not. As I look back on all the hundreds, perhaps thousands of cyclists I’ve ridden with, I honestly cannot remember a single instance of valve lockrings rattling. This isn’t because I have a faulty memory; after all, I remember the kid in junior high I just mentioned who’d over-tightened his lockrings, and that was over forty years ago. Meanwhile, I distinctly remember the converse: a valve rattling, which bothered several of us on a ride 16 years ago. It couldn’t possibly have been a locknut because the valve was on a sew-up (tubular) tire. I have photographic proof. Look:

This was during the 2009 Sierra Century (details here). Mark got so frustrated with the rattling he stopped at a rest stop and accepted assistance from the staffer you see above, who was beyond stoked at being able to help, even if that only meant holding Mark’s bike. I’m pretty sure she’d fallen in love.

Okay, you’ve probably stumbled onto the theory that I’m just deaf and/or willing to ignore an annoying noise. I will concede that the latter may be true. I know I mentioned mere moments ago being bothered by Mark’s rattling valve, but to be more specific, it was his complaining of the rattling that actually bothered me. My own bikes have made various noises over the years and yes, I’ve managed to tune them out. Humans are harder to ignore. I was once accosted repeatedly during a ride by my pal T—, who complained incessantly about my pump rattling until I finally did something about it. And I’ve had people complain about my wheels making some kind of noise that I always took as a cry for help (the noise of the wheel, not my friends) but that I figured would take care of itself when the wheel inevitably died. My friend C— often apologizes for the noises his bike makes, and almost invariably I don’t even know what he’s talking about.

(There was one notable exception. One day back in 2007, his bike was making an awful creaking noise that seemed to get progressively worse, and he apologized repeatedly. I have to confess, I  really was getting annoyed, I mean the noise was that bad. Finally I turned off to head up Lomas Cantadas, just to get away from the din, but to my horror the noise persisted. It wasn’t C—’s bike after all, it was mine … my fricking frame was broken! The seat tube had cracked down near the front derailleur, and right about at the turnoff to South Park Drive it sheared completely in two. By the time I got home the noise had grown to the sound of Satan eating a steel garbage can.)

If you’re using a Presta tube in a rim drilled for Schrader, you need more than a locknut—you need a rim grommet, which looks like this:

I’ve used those and they absolutely require a locknut because more often than not, they pucker out like a hemorrhoid which is really gross to look at but is well hidden by the locknut.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, first off congratulations, and second, you’re probably wondering about my assertion that more of my teammates use valve locknuts than not, despite what a majority of them have indicated in my email survey. This is because I’d guess over half of my teammates are now running tubeless, which setup practically requires lockrings. (It’s not 100%—as I’ll get to—but they certainly help.) So shouldn’t the modern debate be about whether to run tubeless tires or not? Isn’t that where the rubber meets the road? (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) But the tubeless-or-not debate is actually pointless, for the simple reason that this matter is entirely cut-and-dried. There is an obvious right answer, and I have it, and I shall give it to you.

But first, I have just one other tidbit from the reader comments to address, which is piston rings. I found that aside so comical, I read it out loud to my wife. She is a curious sort (and a recovering journalist) and asked, “What are piston rings?” So I started to mansplain them to her, and about a minute in I paused and asked, “Are you actually interested in this?” She replied, “No, I’ve stopped listening. I was only wondering if they were part of a bicycle.” I assured her they weren’t but that they were absolutely integral to the function of a car engine. She asked, “Do all males know what piston rings do?” I said yes, of course. “Why?” she asked. I asserted that all males find such matters intrinsically fascinating. (If you are a male reader and disagree, please set me straight via a comment below.)

So, there is a lively debate, online and IRL, about tubeless vs. tubes, and many of my pals have weighed in during our rides over the last five or more years. Until recently I was a bystander in this because my wheels, though insanely cool, couldn’t accommodate tubeless tires anyway. Well, I finally came into some tubeless-ready wheels, contemplated the matter for about thirty seconds, decided to ignore all the horror stories about how hard road tubeless tires are to mount, pulled the tubes out, stuck the valves in, dumped some goo in the tires, reseated and inflated them, and ditched those inner tubes forever (unless I have a rude awakening ahead of me in which case I’ll blog all about that when the time comes).

Here is the point: if you’ve made it this far into this post, it’s almost a given you’ve spent thousands of dollars on a bicycle. So you want that bicycle to ride as beautifully as possible, right? Tubeless gets you there. Nothing else matters. So don’t give me any song and dance about maintenance, punctures, mess, ease of installation, whatever. What is your bike for: to ride, or to fix?

Here’s an analogy: suppose you’re a happily married man, with all the children you want (even if—or perhaps especially if—that number is zero), and you’ve just gotten a vasectomy. You’ve had the follow-up semen sample tested, it came back negative, and the doctor has just left you a voicemail saying, “You can have all the unprotected sex you want.” Now, would you continue using condoms? “Well, I’m used to them, and it’s less messy,” no sane husband would ever say. So it is with tubeless: you’ve gotten rid of a pesky bit of rubber that no longer has any place in your life. The road feel is better with tubeless, cornering is better, and rolling resistance is lower. (And to the weight weenies calling for skipping locknuts on your inner tube valves to save weight, get real: I knocked a quarter pound off the weight of my bike by ditching the tubes. I only put an ounce of sealant in each tire; when it dries up I’ll add more, no biggie.)

So what about TPUs? In case you haven’t heard of them (I myself hadn’t until recently), these are tubes made of thermoplastic polyurethane instead of rubber or latex. This brings the weight down by about 20-30 grams vs. traditional tubes, while also offering lower rolling resistance. They’re also easier to mount. All this being said, they’re $20-30 each, and the special patch kit required is $8 or $10—both way pricier than standard, and needless to say pricier than that ounce of sealant. And yet, at the end of the day, the TPU setup is still heavier than tubeless and still doesn’t ride as well. To continue my vasectomy metaphor, they’re like fancy lambskin condoms … better, sure, but more expensive, and still unnecessary. And why don’t TPU tubes accommodate locknuts? Because, as you saw above, the valves aren’t ribbed (i.e., threaded) for anyone’s pleasure!

If you persist in arguing for inner tubes based on less hassle, etc. you need to accept that the tubeless technology is not the problem: you are. If you are serious about riding an excellent bicycle jolly well, mounting tubeless tires is just something you need to get good at, like typing and being organized and knowing how to scramble an egg (or, for the vegans among you, properly prepare tofu). Setting up tubeless is not that hard. Suck it up. I even have step-by-step instructions for you, here.

Okay, fine, there’s one non-trivial argument against tubeless tires, particularly for road bikes, which is the idea—not without anecdotal evidence—that the tire can blow off the rim. So here’s what to do. First, choose the right tire for your rims: if you have hookless rims, you need hookless-type tires. Consult the manufacturer’s compatibility charts to be sure you have the right combo. Then, read the recommended PSI for the tires you’re using, and for the rims you’re using. Go with whatever is lower. Still nervous? Use a fatter tire and go down another 10 PSI or so. Thousands of professional riders use this technology … it’s mature, it’s commonplace, and it’s arguably as safe as any other aspect of road cycling. All this being said, note that I’m just a blogger, not an industry expert, a certified accountant, an Internet influencer, or a medical doctor. Caveat emptor (translation: don’t sue me).

Now: can you run tubeless without valve locknuts? The conventional wisdom is that you cannot, because the locknut holds the valve firmly in place so it can make an airtight seal with the rim. In fact, ENVE claims that if you don’t use their special Pressure Relief Valve Stem Nut (PRVSN), your rim could actually explode. I doubt you need $5 PRSVNs, but I do recommend valve locknuts based on my own experience. (If you’re curious about what happens without them, see Appendix A. If you’re curious about other stuff, see Appendix B.)

This made me wonder: if tubeless basically requires locknuts, why didn’t my tubeless-ready valves come with them? Answer: they did, but the locknuts were just floating around loose in the box of accessories (reflectors, etc.) that my bike came with. Check it out: the locknuts are black to match my wheels. How cool is that?! I’d never seen (non-plastic) black valve locknuts in my life!

Synthesis

So what’s my ultimate verdict on valve locknuts? As follows:

• If you have a commuter bike with Presta valves, use the locknuts or not, at your whim
• If you have a backup “rain bike” that you mainly ride on the indoor trainer, you better be using noise-canceling headphones, in which case you can use locknuts or not, because who cares if they (or your valves) rattle?
• For your flagship road or mountain bike, run tubeless with locknuts, and if anybody makes fun of you, send them this blog post.

One more thing: do I ever hear valve locknuts rattling on wheels with tubeless tires? I’ll give you a hint: no. Still stumped? Here’s another hint: I don’t.

Appendix A

Tubeless-ready wheels came with my new bike, but the tires were mounted with tubes since it’s impossible to know how long a bike might sit around in a warehouse, its tires going flat (which could break the seal and cause sealant to ooze everywhere). So I dug through the bag of accessories (reflectors, a bell, owner’s manuals, etc.) and found the valves that came with the wheels. They didn’t have locknuts in the little bag, so I assumed locknuts weren’t necessary. (Obviously I could have installed some from my stash, but M—’s admonition about “novice nerd-dom” was still ringing in my ears, 13 years later.) Despite all the mythology I’d heard about setting up tubeless tires, I not only managed to get the tires to seal without lockrings, but did it with ease. My assumption, that the pressure inside the tire would hold the valves in place, seemed to pan out.

The problem is, not all seals are created equal, and tubeless-style valves (at least mine) do not have a round base. The rubber part that butts up against the rim is rectangular, as it’s designed to sit in the rim in a specific way, and if it gets twisted the seal is slightly compromised. I learned this on my fifth or sixth tubeless ride: before heading out, I topped up the air pressure, and when I removed the screw-on pump chuck from the valve, it put up a fight (as it often does) and must have twisted the valve. About 90 minutes into my ride the tire pressure had dropped to about 40 PSI, maybe less. I thought I could pump it up and get home, but as I mentioned before, halfway up El Toyonal the tire was again almost flat, and that’s when I had my mishap with the valve core.

So yeah, use locknuts with tubeless, to make sure the valve stays straight. The locknut also helps when you tighten down that valve core good and snug. (If you use a screw-on chuck and don’t have a valve core wrench, buy one immediately.)

Appendix B

I’m still working on Appendix B. Check back next week. For information about giraffes, click here.

UPDATE: I have now posted Appendix B here. Enjoy please enjoy.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Old Yarn - The Day I Learned Bicycle Gear Shifting

Introduction

Here is the fifth “old yarn” on albertnet (following in the footsteps of “The Cinelli Jumpsuit,” “Bike Crash on Golden Gate Bridge,” “The Enemy Coach,” and most recently “The Brash Newb”). This is the kind of story that would normally be a “From the Archives” item, except I’ve never before written it down.

Trigger warning: this post is long. It is a rambling tale that doesn’t skimp on any details. And no, it won’t teach you this weird little secret your doctor doesn’t want you to know. It won’t give you the social currency you’d get from talking with colleagues about the last episode of America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Season 2.* So if you’re cool with bike lore of no particular interest to your social network, then read on. But if you’re impatient and/or won’t read anything you can’t summarize in a tweet (I refuse to say “X”), go somewhere else.

(*As much as it sounds like I made up this TV show, I didn’t. It’s the fifth most popular show on Netflix right now. The center cannot hold.)

Learning to shift – late summer 1978

As I mentioned last week, one of the cooler things my dad ever did was to buy my brothers and me 10-speed bikes long before any other kids had them. In fact, these were the first bikes we ever owned. This yarn is about the day—in fact, the very moment—I learned how to shift gears. If that sounds really boring, don’t worry: I’m here to entertain, not to edify. This post describes, among other things, three bike crashes and one near-death experience. (Why isn’t this post mainly about the near-death experience? Because that didn’t change my life. It just put it briefly in jeopardy.) (Full disclosure—if I can be permitted to directly follow a parenthetical with another parenthetical—this post doesn’t feature any really gory crashes. For that, click here or here.)

The peculiar thing about getting this ten-speed for my ninth birthday was that my dad forbade me to touch the gear-shift levers. I asked why my bike even had them if I wasn’t supposed to touch them. “Don’t worry about that,” was all he said in reply. This was pretty typical of my dad. He didn’t really like dialogue. He absolutely loved a good monologue, so long as he was delivering it and on a topic of his choosing (for example, the design of an interferometer he was building), but had little patience for pushback or even pointed questions, which could seem like insubordination. So I just kept my mouth shut and, in the ensuing days and weeks, even months, rode the bike around in first gear all the time. Yes, I was that well-behaved and craven.

I don’t know exactly why my dad prohibited gear shifting, but it’s not hard to guess. His opinion of his four sons wasn’t exactly rosy. It’s probably Geoff and Bryan’s fault. They’re twins and the oldest. Family lore (passed down from our mom) has it that our dad originally had high hopes for his kids, figuring we’d all be the genius offspring he richly deserved, but these hopes were dashed early. When the twins were still babies, he caught them trying—and failing—to throw all their blocks out of their crib. They weren’t clever enough to align the blocks properly to fit through the slats. These dumb babies were just banging the blocks against the slats, perpendicular to them. Disgusted, Dad brought our mom over to witness this atrocious stupidity. Did she wonder if jettisoning the blocks was even the goal of these babies, vs. enjoying the chock-chock-chock sound they were making? Or was she tempted to explain to her husband about realistic infant development milestones? Apparently not. It seems nobody ever corrected my dad, and from that day forward he had to live with the sad “truth” that his kids just weren’t up to snuff. (Other family lore has it that he said to me once, “You’re not very bright, are you.” It’s tempting to dismiss this anecdote except there were five witnesses. Could we all be wrong? Well, actually, yeah, but not necessarily.)

Where bicycles were concerned, our dad was particularly pessimistic about our capabilities. As described here, all three of my brothers and I distinctly recall our dad’s reaction when Max (who’d drawn the short straw) asked if we could register for the Red Zinger Mini Classic bike race. “You boys are too stupid to race bicycles,” he declared. “You’d get yourselves killed.”

So why did he even buy us cool ten-speeds, if he had such a low opinion of our cycling prospects? I put this question to my brother Max. His reply was along the lines of, “Typical one-speed kid’s bikes disgusted Dad. No son of his would ride anything so vulgar. We had to be on proper ten-speeds whether we deserved them or not.”

Now, I realize I should be careful not to drag my brothers too far into my own story as regards the gear-shifting prohibition. I don’t specifically recall them being included in this, so I asked Bryan about it. “I think we were allowed to shift,” he said. “We probably ruined that for you with our own screw-ups.” He proceeded to recall how he tried to fix one of the brakes on his bike. He loosened the cable-fixing bolt, perhaps for diagnostic purposes, and pulled the cable out. Back then the cable would feed through a very narrow cylindrical aperture before being bolted down. Since this is the same dumb kid who as a baby couldn’t even throw a block out of his crib, you won’t be surprised to learn what happened next: he couldn’t get the cable back in. In fact, when he tried, the individual steel strands broke free from one another, fraying hopelessly. Bryan broke down in despair, convinced that he’d entirely wrecked his bike. Not only would he not have it to ride anymore, but he’d be in big trouble with Dad.

If getting in trouble for bike problems strikes you as preposterous, you obviously never met our dad. He was so devoted to his career, any extra parenting demands that pulled him away from his work during an evening or weekend was like a crisis. Nothing, it seemed, peeved him more than extra child-rearing tasks. We would actually be in trouble for getting a flat tire on our bikes. This was construed as an act of moral turpitude, like we were trying to throw our dad’s world into a tailspin by running over something sharp. It’s like nothing was an accident … every mishap was an act of treachery. All this being said, there was a positive side to our dad’s oppressive reign, which is that we learned how to fix our bikes ourselves, so that our “crimes” could be kept secret.

But of course, this frayed cable incident occurred long before Bryan developed any proficiency as a mechanic. At the time he bemoaned his plight to our babysitter, H—, who took pity on the boy and intervened, calling our dad at work to soften the blow. The upshot was that Dad didn’t get angry with Bryan (or at least kept it to himself), but he also didn’t get around to fixing the bike for what felt to Bryan like a year. Needless to say, until the bike was fixed, Bryan was forbidden to ride it. Our bikes always had to have two working brakes.

I told this story to my younger daughter, who incredulously asked, “Why wasn’t Uncle Bryan allowed to ride with just one brake? One is plenty!” Now, before you decide that her attitude marks me as an incompetent parent, let me just say I keep a pretty close eye on the family fleet and proactively make any repairs necessary. The only time my daughter has ridden with only one brake is when she was off at college and burned through a set of brake pads on her Breezer while I wasn’t looking. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true because she sometimes borrows my mid-‘60s Triumph 3-speed, whose coaster brake occasionally fails for reasons I cannot fathom (much less fix). But that’s pretty rare. In general I am a stickler for bicycles having two working brakes.

(Here is a drawing, by my daughter, of her Breezer. It’s not pertinent to the story, but when your kid pays such a loving tribute to her bicycle, you kind of want to share it.)

Now, being committed to truth in these pages, I must disclose something: my dad’s strict rules notwithstanding, I myself became quite reckless about the two-brake rule, a mere three or four years after having so obediently followed the no-shifting protocol. Perhaps something about an over-strict parent encourages a wholesale abandonment of that parent’s policies. I was around twelve when I bought a 3-speed bike, a basic Sears model, used. Yes, Sears made bicycles. Don’t believe the Google AI Summary on this. In fact, here is a photo of a Sears bike that is the spitting image of the one I had.

Just as in the photo above, my Sears had two handbrakes (and I don’t know what this says about its age as compared to my Triumph). The rear brake stopped working (probably a broken cable) and I don’t think I even considered fixing it. By this point I knew how, but it just didn’t seem important when I still had a perfectly good front brake. (I also didn’t bother replacing the broken gear cable connecting the Speed Switch shifter to the Sturmey-Archer internal 3-speed hub, so this bike was always in third gear, which was the highest. For this reason its nickname was the Third Speed. Why do I mention the brand of hub? Well, so I could include some eye candy here.)

Uh, where was I? Oh, yeah, so, I didn’t bother to fix that rear brake. Nor did I consider riding more carefully. Quite the opposite, in fact. Exhibit A: my bike ride to Mr. Tomato’s Pizza to meet some friends. Mr. Tomato’s was at the bottom of the gently down-sloping parking lot of the Basemar shopping center. It had a huge picture window, and from a distance I recognized my friends sitting right in front of it. I decided to give them a good scare, and started sprinting toward them as fast as I could. My plan was to slam on the brakes (er, brake) just in time to keep from crashing through the window. Two things failed to occur to me. One was the possibility of a pedestrian walking along the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. There was an overhang above this sidewalk, supported at intervals by big pillars that could easily obscure a shopper from view. The other thing I didn’t consider was the possibility of my one brake suddenly failing. This is what actually happened. Just as I hammered the brake, the cable snapped. There was absolutely no way to stop and I was less than ten feet from that giant window, carrying great speed.

It seemed as though all was lost, but just before impact I spied one of the pillars, which fortunately had a round cross-section and a smooth finish. I wrapped that pillar in a bear hug to at least keep myself from crashing through the window. Amazingly, as my momentum spun me and my bike around the pillar, the bike ended up pointed along the sidewalk at the moment it escaped my legs. It went shooting off forward, straight down that sidewalk, still at great speed.

So wonderful is the design of a bicycle, it can travel a great distance with no rider, as my brothers and I had learned to our delight earlier that summer. Not wanting to damage our ten-speeds, we’d conjured up a beach cruiser whose sole purpose was rider-less travel. (Its Ashtabula one-piece crankset assembly had fallen out so we couldn’t pedal it around anyway.) That bike was called Ghost Rider, or Ghostie for short, and we spent many an afternoon getting it up to speed, one guy riding it and several others pushing, and when we couldn’t get it going any faster, the rider would jump off the back and send the bike flying down the street. It could go for several hundred feet before either tipping over or drifting into a parked car. Well, in front of Mr. Tomato’s my 3-speed surely set a new record, since its speed was at least double that of a kid running. It was amazing to behold it flying down the sidewalk along the storefronts. Fortunately it was a slow business day for that mall, with no foot traffic. Equally astonishing was that I was completely unscathed other than perhaps slight damage to my hands and arms, similar to rope burn. My friends regarded me through the window with complete bewilderment, slack-jawed and disbelieving. I guess the point of this story is that my dad’s lack of faith in my intelligence wasn’t entirely unwarranted.

Of course my dad never know about my near-death experience at Mr. Tomato’s, or indeed of most of the crashes my brothers and I had. But the very first days of owning our bicycles were not promising. The problem was, we suddenly had this new hardware but lacked the know-how to use it. As weird as this may seem, our dad made zero effort to teach us how to ride, and in fact I am deeply puzzled as to how he even expected us to learn before being presented with these sophisticated ten-speeds. Did he just think people are born knowing how to ride a bike?

Which brings me to how my brother Max and I did learn, or at least were given one lesson apiece, on how to ride. No parents were involved, of course. Max went first. It had come to pass that Geoff and Bryan realized Max lacked this important skill, and talked their friend R— into loaning out his bike for the lesson. It was a typical kid’s bike in that it was a one-speed with high-rise handlebars and a banana seat. (We had a whole saying around this, that we would chant in mockery of these inferior bikes: “High-rise handlebar with a roll bar, banana seat, small wheel in front, big wheel in back, cool-dual frame, rusty old chain, with a slick, streamers from the grips and flower pedals.” I fact-checked this with Bryan and he remembered like half of it, and I added a couple details, and Max knew the rest. “Cool-dual frame” probably pertained to the two extra top-tubes of the Schwinn Sting-Ray, a popular model in those days. A “slick,” as Max eloquently put it, is “a rear tire with no tread for monster skids.” “Flower pedals” refers to “dust caps on the pedals that looked like daisies.”)

Actually, R—’s bike was somewhat unique in that it was an official licensed Boy Scout bike. But that’s neither here nor there. The more important detail is the single instruction that Geoff and Bryan gave to Max as they put him on the bike at the top of Howard Place, a long downhill: “Whatever you do, don’t turn!” Max and I remember it like it was yesterday. So ridiculous. I mean, what was the guy supposed to do? They didn’t tell him how to brake. They just figured that his future would work itself out somehow, after he’d built up all that speed! They set him off, gave him a good push. Now, I just did some research with Google Maps, and this street ran about 450 feet at an average grade of 5.5%. With help from ChatGPT (because I’m lazy, not because I needed it) I just calculated that by the time Max crossed Ithaca Drive (which Howard Place T’s into), he had to have been going at least 20 mph. He dutifully followed the instruction not to turn, so it’s a good thing there was no traffic on Ithaca to run him over. Instead he crashed over a curb, with so much velocity the bike kept going, and then hit a low fence that stopped him so he tipped over into the grass, remarkably unhurt. He leapt to his feet, delighted, and cried, “I can ride a bike, I can ride a bike!”

Alas, that was Max’s only lesson before receiving his ten-speed, months later, on his birthday. I guess he just assumed his skill was still there. He jumped on the bike and managed to pedal it not only to the end of our street, Hillsdale Way, but to negotiate the right-hand turn onto Howard Place (the same street I mentioned earlier), which is a cul-de-sac. He rode to the top, managed to turn the bike around, and then came barreling back down. In trying to make the left-hand turn back on to Hillsdale, with my dad and my brothers and me watching, he clipped a pedal and crashed. He got up, winced at his road rash, and checked over the bike. A big divot of foam rubber had been ripped out of the brand-new saddle. Regarding this, he thought to himself (as he related to me yesterday), “Well, I guess now this bike is really mine.”

Did I do any better? Alas, no. My lesson was a year or so later. Perhaps having been spooked a bit by Max’s disastrous first effort, Geoff and Bryan didn’t start me down Howard Place. Instead, they put me on my friend P—’s bike, another lowly one-speed, at the top of a steep driveway facing Hillsdale. They gave me a big push and I flew down the driveway, absolutely frozen in terror, went straight across the street, and crashed into the curb on the other side. I hadn’t built up nearly as much speed as Max had, so the curb stopped the front wheel cold and I flipped over the bars. I didn’t quite clear the sidewalk and landed roughly on it, but was no more hurt than on any other day, what with all the various skirmishes kids faced during that era of free-reign bullying. But I can’t say I’d learned any biking technique at all.

So when, about six months and zero follow-up lessons later, I got the Fuji Junior, I really didn’t know how to ride. But there was no way I could just stand there and look at the bike, with my dad seeming so expectant (apparently notwithstanding Max’s fiery wreck on his bike’s maiden voyage). So I just winged it, riding down the sidewalk, pedaling furiously because the one thing my brothers had managed to get across was that speed was the key to balance. I made it about two houses down before veering off course, heading straight for a mailbox. I managed not to run into it, but raked my back across it rather painfully. Somehow I kept the bike upright, and I guess by that point I had the hang of it. But this first ride on the Fuji Junior couldn’t have impressed my dad, and may have reminded him of Max’s similar misadventure, and this is perhaps why my dad decided to declare my bike’s shifters off-limits. Maybe he felt I had my hands full just learning how to steer the bike. Fortunately, I did figure out the brakes.

Well, once my fear abated, I fell madly in love with the bike. As I’ve mentioned before in these pages (in the notes to my “Corn Cob” poem), my Fuji had Suntour shifters and derailleurs, which I noticed when with great delectation I examined every last feature of the bike. Suntour seemed like a really cool word. I didn’t grasp at the time that it was brand of component; I thought Suntour was a sub-brand of the bike, as though Fuji was the make and Junior was the model and Suntour was the sub-model, like they do with cars now (e.g., Subaru Outback Expert Sport-Trac, L.L. Bean Edition). I remember riding up and down the block joyously singing “Sun-TOO-or BYE-sick-UL!”

One day when the bike was still new, I rode all morning, from my house up to the end of Howard Place and back down, then all the way down Hillsdale and back up, then back up Howard and back, over and over again, whistling the whole while because I was so happy. I happened to notice Mr. S—, who lived on the corner of Hillsdale and Howard, looking at me funny. He was out working in his yard and every time I went by he glared at me. What was his problem? I just shrugged it off. Well, later that day, another neighbor, Mr. D—, confronted me, asking if I’d vandalized Mr. S—’s house and yard. I was like “WHAT?!” It happens that Mr. S— had described at length to Mr. D— how I’d vandalized his place, and then rubbed it in by riding by again and again, whistling merrily to showcase my Schadenfreude as I watched him clean it up. I was mortified at this totally false accusation, and declared my innocence to Mr. D—. He advised that I’d simply have to go over there and knock on Mr. S—’s door and explain that I wasn’t the vandal. This I did, despite being a very shy kid, and I was so upset I was crying throughout my denial speech. My river of tears, it seemed, was mistaken for remorse and contrition by Mr. S—, who clearly didn’t believe my story of riding by again and again just because I liked to ride. At least my blubbery speech mollified him sufficiently that he didn’t see fit to involve my parents. This was a big break, because my parents never seemed to believe in my innocence, either. My mom once made me go apologize to yet another neighbor for being part of a cruel pack of kids that relentlessly teased her dog, even though I told my mom over and over that I wasn’t involved. Can you imagine how soul-crushing it is to apologize for an act of animal cruelty you are entirely innocent of?

Okay, time to move on. It was the toward the end of the summer when, on a day I now see as momentous, Max taught me how to shift my bike’s gears. We’d pedaled up Table Mesa Drive and were about to descend Vassar Drive, which is a 5.5% grade. Max, surely tired of waiting for me as I coasted down such hills (first gear being way too low to be of use), pointed at my stem-mounted shifters and told me, “Grab those two levers and push them all the way forward.”

Now, you probably think we’ve finally reached the crux of this story, after so very many diversions, and will now get to the really important, life-changing bit, and that’s almost true, but first I need to pause yet again to explain about these shifters. If you’re old enough to have used old-school stem- or down-tube-mounted shift levers, and remember how they worked, you may have raised an eyebrow just now when reading about Max’s instruction to push both levers forward. On almost any ten-speed-type bike, pushing the right lever forward would put the chain on the smallest cog in back (making for a higher gear, exactly as intended), but pushing the left lever forward would put the chain on the smaller chainring up front (making for a lower gear, at odds with the rest of the shift). You’d also wonder why, since I always rode in my bike’s lowest gear, both levers would have been down at the moment Max issued his instruction. On almost any bike, this would have meant my chain was on the big chainring, corresponding to the higher gear range. The only way you might have thought, “Oh yeah, of course, this makes sense” is if you’re the kind of bizarrely knowledgeable bike maven who would recall that the Suntour derailleur line-up of 1978 included the Spirt model, which worked backwards from most other derailleurs. As it happened, Max’s instructions were perfectly accurate for putting my bike in its highest gear.

And this begs the question: if my front derailleur (and thus left shifter) were essentially backwards from most others, how is it that Max’s instructions were correct? Wouldn’t he have assumed my bike worked the same as his? When I started this post, that question wouldn’t stop nagging at me. Now, if you’re wondering if I’m just remembering it wrong, think again … after all, this was a life-changing moment, forever seared into my memory. The highly specific action gave me, even before the gear shift actually took effect, a very powerful feeling. I knew that these gears were the key to somehow going faster, though I didn’t have any idea how (because when you think about it, the behavior of a bike’s gearing only makes sense after the fact, when you know empirically how gearing works; before that, the notion of differently sized cogs and chainrings affecting a bike’s speed is highly, highly abstract). The idea that I was somehow about to unleash great speed was tantalizing, and to achieve this by taking one hand, applying it to two levers, and pushing them both all the way forward in one go … it’s like pushing the throttle control forward on a fighter plane, or, better yet, remember the opening scene in “Risky Business,” when Tom Cruise’s character pushes all the levers on his dad’s stereo’s graphic equalizer all the way up, so he can totally rock out? It was just like that.

Determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, I had to find out if it was possible the front derailleurs on my brothers’ bikes, meaning Simplex derailleurs (these being Motobécane Nomades), might have also been backwards. This could have been a convention, after all, because this arrangement just makes sense. You have one consistent rule—pushing lever forward = higher gear—instead of the conflicting rule of pulling the left lever down = higher gear while pushing the right lever forward = higher gear. This conflicting behavior stymies cycling newcomers. On my wife’s road bike, I actually put “H” and “L” stickers on the down tube near the shifters to show which way to move them. It’s one of the more confusing things about pre-pushbutton shifting.

I couldn’t reach my brothers right away so I consulted ChatGPT. It assured me that, in fact, Simplex derailleurs were also backwards (vs. more modern shifters), just like the Suntour Spirt. GPT confidently declared, “The circa 1975 Simplex shift lever was pushed forward (toward the front wheel) to move the chain to the big ring. As a result, the lever would end up in a vertical or forward-leaning position when in the big ring.” Had it stopped there, I might have been fooled by a classic AI hallucination. But GPT went on to say, “This action corresponded to pushing the shift lever forward (since the shift lever pulls cable as it rotates forward).” Of course this is wrong. The shift lever pulls cable when you pull it down. So I asked it to furnish photos and diagrams. It provided a photo of a mid-‘80s Shimano Dura-Ace front derailleur (useless); a drawing of a Simplex rear derailleur (also useless); a photo looking from the left at a ‘90s-era triple crankset (ditto); and a photo of a bottom bracket with chainwheels in the background (noticing any trend here, i.e., useless?). Then it described these visual aids in exhaustive, needless, and useless detail.

I pointed out its error, challenging the notion that pushing a shift lever forward would ever tension the cable, whereupon GPT completely backpedaled (pun intended, couldn’t resist) and recanted everything it had said earlier, saying, “You nailed it!” and providing a totally new answer to my original question: “No, Simplex front derailleurs (like the Prestige models used on Motobécanes in the mid-1970s) were not reverse-spring designs like the SunTour Spirt.”

But wait, I’m not done. Disgusted by ChatGPT’s blithe ineptitude, I asked it to furnish a diagram and a photo to illustrate its revised explanation of Simplex’s shifting. Look what it came up with:

Can you believe that? For all its detailed description (running over 1,600 words in all), ChatGPT apparently had no concept of the cable actuation. Look at the arrow pointing from the “Cable” label … it has no head, goes nowhere! No cable is shown! And look at the arrow showing the motion of the lever: it’s 90 degrees off of the actual motion. And since when is the lever mounted directly to the derailleur? Where would the cable even be?

Actually, in fairness, I know of at least one front derailleur that was actuated by a handle instead of a cable. It was on an ancient Schwinn Collegiate that I bought from a police auction. The rear derailleur had a normal shifter and cable setup, but that front derailleur had a handle. At least it did, for a while, until my pant leg caught it one day during hard pedaling and ripped it clean off the bike. But this wasn’t a Simplex derailleur; I’m pretty sure it was a Huret (though it was labeled “Schwinn Approved” in keeping with the fiction that this was an all-American bike). That derailleur looked something like this:

Getting back to ChatGPT, its drawing wasn’t even the worst of its crimes. Look at this fake photo it generated of what it imagined that Simplex front shifting system looked like:

I thought for a second this was an actual photo of some bizarre ill-fated real-life setup, but look at the ersatz brand stamped into the shift lever, in a nonexistent alphabet. The entire rendering is just grotesque. In fact, for me, and I suppose anyone else who has great familiarity with bicycle components, this mock photo is deep into uncanny valley territory, to the extent it’s almost nauseating. Also note how the derailleur cage doesn’t clear the chainring teeth. Artificial intelligence my ass!

Suffice to say, Simplex derailleurs of that era weren’t backwards and nothing can explain Max’s spot-on instructions. When I asked him he simply admitted, “I don’t have an answer for you. Geoff and Bryan probably made the observation so it must have been common knowledge. I know I didn’t discover that on my own.” Bryan theorized that Max had taken my bike out for a few joy rides and discovered it that way; Max could neither confirm nor deny this. The perfect accuracy of his instruction shall have to remain a mystery.

But oh, when I pushed those levers forward, and that bike went from first to tenth gear … it was breathtaking. I mashed the pedals with everything I had, working hard to get on top of that 52x14 top gear, until I was just flying down Vassar. I’d had no idea just how effective pedaling in “the big meat” (as a bike’s highest gear is known by racers) could be. It’s like if you had what you thought was a Fred Flintstone car, propelled by your feet paddling the ground, and then one day you discovered that this car had an engine. What a game-changer. It was like I went from patsy to made man in the span of a minute.

Not only did this sudden knowledge change my cycling, but it forever changed how I regarded my dad’s authority. Not only would I use all my gears from that day forward, but I’d have this secret I’d be keeping from him. It was impossible for me to revert to the lowly, gutless, quaking obeyer of rules; I was like, fuck that guy! He kept this gearing magic from me! He kept me down! I felt like Toecutter in Mad Max: “The bronze, they keep you from being proud.”

As it turned out, I never did get in trouble for defying my dad. An absentminded fellow, he evidently forgot he’d ever issued that prohibition. Or who knows, maybe on some level he wanted me to take some initiative. But most likely he’d intended to one day teach me all about shifting, but just forgot. Maybe he’d have thought a little harder about this if he’d had any inkling that his silly rule, coupled with Max’s intervention, would turn me into a lifelong rebel…

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.