Not only does it have a pleasant smell and refreshing feeling, it opens the pores after a good, close shave to help moisturize and revitalize, leaving  your skin clean and smooth with no bumps or rash.  Just the other day, a neighbor remarked that my shave was magnificently smooth and close.  I couldn’t have done it without Baxter.

Oh, and before you start thinking I’m some kind of sissy, know this: I never use this shit on my face.  No sir, the good stuff is for the legs only.

The saviour of many a skinned knuckle

Every mechanic has encountered a tyre/rim combination that has just been a real pain in the ass to work with. Remembering back to my early days in the shop, struggling to wrangle a particularly stubborn wire bead tyre off a wheel, my lack of experience and no doubt ham-fisted approach saw me snapping the ends off all of the plastic levers in the workshop.  I can’t exactly remember the types or brands, but none of them were a match for me or the tyre.  Finally after all other options were exhausted, I grabbed the levers that came with a set of Mavic Cosmic Elite wheels that graced my bike at the time.  These levers didn’t shirk the task at hand, and had the rubber settled on the alloy in no time.

To look at them, you’d think they would be the most likely to snap, being long and fairly thin, but whatever material they are made from has nearly the strength of metal levers, but without the damaging properties of those bastards.  There is a cool little hook at the lever end, which always grabs the bead just right, and runs around the rim in a smooth, fluent action.  And at the other end, there are molded in pins so you can adjust the bearings on your Cosmics just so.

Luckily, even though there is always one bundled up with my spare tube, I haven’t had to use them many times in the ten years or so since discovering their magic qualities.  That was until today when the new Kenda rubber I’m trying put up a spirited fight against my Roval rims, but the little Mavic soon stamped its authority and spared my curses; at least until I get a flat and am struggling with frozen knuckles on the side of the road, where once again it will step up and save the day.

The clouds of a marine layer.

Summer has been really slow to come to Seattle this year.  I suppose that’s what comes with living in a coastal region, especially one with a convergence zone like Puget Sound has.

As summer approaches, so does the Marine layer.  Marine layers are actually a good thing for the world and serve an important purpose. Particularly if you happen to be a slug or worm or a hunk of moss.  The benefits are less pronounced for humans, especially those who hold themselves to strict weather conditions under which certain bikes are permitted to hit the streets.

Which brings me to my point.  Rule 12 states the following:

The minimum number of bikes one should own is three.  The correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned.  This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of bikes owned that would result in separation from your partner.

The part of the Rule around owning as many bikes as possible without suffering separation from your dearly beloved partner requires very little explanation – if any at all – and I’ll spare you the discussion on that topic.  What may be less obvious is why the minimum number of bikes is set precisely at three.  It comes down to having three steeds for the three most common weather conditions we find ourselves in during training: dry weather, mixed wet and dry, and wet.  Lets review in more detail, starting with Bike #3:

Bike #3: Rain Bike

Intended Purpose: Riding in the Rain

Justification: Riding any bike in the rain is tough on the bike for a number of reasons; risk of crashing is higher, brake pads wear more quickly, chains get gunked up, dirt gets in between the components and their bearings, nuts, washers, and hub flanges, which all increase wear and tear in addition to causing trouble with the Principle of Silence. In the long run, a bike that’s never seen rain will generally work better than one that has.  Also, riding in the rain may require the use of flasher lights and fenders, and we definitely don’t want to be adding fenders or flashers to our best bikes. Ideally, the Rain Bike would also be built up with affordable components such that when parts wear out, they can be replaced easily.

Bike #2: Mixed Weather Bike

Intended Purpose: Riding in Mixed Dry and Wet Weather

Justification: It’s not always wet (or dry) throughout a ride, which makes riding a bike that has fenders and lights affixed to them a nuisance.  But, if the weather is variable, you may also not want to ride your best bike.  Bike #2 is reserved for these conditions; it is generally built up with better kit than Bike #3, but not the top-notch stuff that graces our best bike.  Should it begin to rain, the additional wear is acceptable, but the bike is also good enough that the ride is thoroughly enjoyable should the roads stay dry and you don’t have to rue the choice to leave Bike #1 in the stable.

Bike #1: Good Weather Bike

Intended Purpose: Riding in Good, Dry Conditions

Justification: Number One Bike should be looked after more carefully than your first child and any pets you may have.  This is the one you spent 17 hours searching eBay for the out-of-production stem you wanted; the one you went into debt for to get the carbon-railed saddle instead of the lowly titanium model.  This is the one that gets rubbed down with a diaper after every ride.    Not only does this bike never see the rain, hopefully it does not come in contact with overly humid air.  It is not ridden on dirt roads, it is not ridden on gravel.   Try not to look at it sideways or speak near it with a raised voice.

Choosing the bike for the day can be a bit tricky. Personally, I rarely trust a weather forecast, especially here in the Pacific Northwest where even the meteorologist will admit something to the effect of, “Well, I don’t know what the weather will be, folks.  One of three things will happen: it will be sunny, or cloudy, or it might rain”.  That being less than helpful, I generally study the skies and make a best guess at what might happen over the course of the day in order to ascertain which bike I will choose for my ride.

Some cases are easier than others. For instance, say it’s pouring rain outside and the skies are rough and dark. Obviously, this is a case for Rain Bike.  Gray skies, no sun, air feels wet and out comes Bike #2.  Sun is out, birds are chirping and the kids down the street are making me crazy with their cheerful squeaks and screams,  and it’s a day for Bike #1.  But this Marine Layer we’ve been experiencing here is a tough nut to crack.  In the morning, I can’t tell if it’s overcast or if it’s all just going to burn off in a few hours to reveal a gorgeous blue sky.  I’ve been caught out twice already, and I’m not eager to make it a third.

Damn this Marine Layer.

A Velominatus' labor of love: working on a bike

Each of us remembers how they became a Velominatus. For me, it was at Grimpeur Wielersport, in Zevenaar, The Netherlands. Its the perfect place: a small shop, on a small street, in a small town, in a small country, run by a Giant of the Sport, Herman van Meegen. I haven’t been back in years, not since my mentor and original owner was forced to retire due to a nagging back injury.

Despite it’s diminutive appearance, inside this small shop existed a world vast beyond my wildest imagination. The owner spoke with the soft ‘G’ – typical of the Dutch dialect in the region.  Former head mechanic at Helvetia – La Suisse, and later for Team 7-Eleven, he had previously wielded a wrench at the world’s major events including Le Tour before opening this shop. He knew everyone. Pros strolled into his shop on a regular basis. Imagine the awe of a thirteen-year-old Velominatus Novus as Erik Breukink wandered into the shop and dallied about for a bit.

But it was the tales and experience from many years on the Pro circuit that made those visits to special to me.  He explained in detail the way Steve Bauer preferred to ride a smaller frame than his contemporaries or how Pascal Richard liked the tension of the spokes “just so” as he laced a set of wheels for my dad.  He showed me how he filed out the holes in the hub flange to cradle the spokes better and reduce the chance of breaking one.  He built wheels on a truing stand he built himself and to which he affixed a micrometer.  He told me that a perfectly true wheel will never go out of true, not even on the cobbles.  ”Maar het moet werkelijk perfect zijn.” But it has to be absolutely perfect. Sounds like something you need a custom truing stand and micrometer for.  (That bike is now something like 20 years old, and has never seen a spoke wrench; the wheels are still perfectly true.)

He was personal friends with Eddy Merckx and picked up a frame my dad had ordered after dinner with The Man at the factory in Belgium.  A prototype Campagnolo saddle with titanium rails and air bladder that never made it to production somehow found its way atop my dad’s seat post.  I can’t imagine how his insides churned as my dad insisted on having a set of Scott Drop-Ins installed on that bike.  He never uttered a word about it, opting instead to teach me how to seamlessly splice two rolls of bar tape together to accommodate the long bars – a skill he picked up wrapping the bars of riders who wanted double-wrapped bars on the tops but not the drops at Paris-Roubaix.  He taught me to cut my cables short and solder them before cutting for the perfect, sleek finishing touch.  He taught me how to “feel” a bolt to get it just the right amount of tight – where it holds but the soft aluminum doesn’t strip.  He taught me to trim soda cans and tuck them in between the bars and stem of a handlebar that persistently slips.  But most importantly, he showed me the intricate beauty of our machines.

He also stocked a backpack called the “Body Bag” which I always felt could have used a more sensible name and whose marketers perhaps missed a nuance in the language.

Apart from his poor choice in backpacks, this was a man who understood the finer things about bicycles, and I’m grateful he took the time to teach me even a tiny little bit of what he knew.

So, I leave you today with this question: if you could ask a pro bike mechanic – perhaps even one on the ProTour circuit – one, single question, what would it be?

What motivates a Velominatus?  It seems a simple question, but the answer is complicated and gets into various issues that are neither interesting nor compelling.

For me, cycling has been a life-long obsession.  I enjoy any kind of riding.  I enjoy technical, single-track mountain biking, I enjoy riding on dirt roads or wide trails.  I enjoy commuting by bike, and I enjoy riding my bike to the local markets. I love riding an old clunker bike around a city like Amsterdam.  But my heart has always belonged to road cycling.

When I was a kid, my dream was to start a frame-building business.  In my free time, I sketched bicycles – anything from standard road bikes to exotic time trial machines.  I even designed logos for my imagined company, humbly named Strack Cycles.  When not designing frames, the next priority was to dream up the names and kits for the teams Strack Cycles would invariably sponsor.

When time allowed during the Summer months, I would go for multiple training rides per day, some on the road, and some off. Officially a Nordic ski racer, I realized that I had become a cyclist when the shortening of the days as Fall approached was met with dread that the cycling season was coming to a close rather than excitement for the imminent ski season.

Long hours on the road bike were filled with fantasies of being in day-long solo breakaways at the Tour de France; motivation to climb aboard my bike in the rain was eased by imagining I was racing in a Belgian Spring classic.

Such are the motivations of this particular Velominatus.

Then came Velominati.  We’ve carried on long conversations.  We’ve established our own vernacular. Most of us are probably on some psychiatric “People of Interest” list.  And, we have our own kit. In addition to bearing the Velominati colors and logos, the kit bears various details that only those of us in the know will appreciate:  the “Obey the Rules” emblem appears in various places, and the right leg of the bibs bear three Rules, referred to only by number and oriented such that they are legible for the wearer.  We modestly believe it to be the most awesomest kit on the planet, ever.

A non-nondescript box greeted me upon my arrival home from work yesterday.  The box bore a simple, handwritten note: “Velominati – You Must Obey”, signalling the arrival of the first order of the Velominati Kit (which leads me to believe the folks at Castelli subscribe to Rules Holism).   My hands were shaking as I opened the box and gazed in at the oblique realization of a lifelong dream.

With that, I present the Velominati kit, made by Castelli and designed by KRX-10. We’ll be placing more orders throughout the year, so just drop us a line if you’d like to put the whole Rule 17 issue to bed and fly the Velominati colors.

UPDATE: I have updated the set of photos in the post to more accurately reflect the colors of the actual kit.  The kit is black, and in no way brownish or purple, as some of the photos appear to be.

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Frank Schleck sporting a set of round bars with a classic bend.

I almost look forward to riding in bad weather because it means I have a perfect excuse to climb aboard my old Bianchi XL EV2, which currently serves as my rain bike (see Rule 12 for more information on bike requirements). Some bikes just seem to fit, and you feel it with every turn of the pedals. Sure, the frame’s about as soft as George Hincapie at the sight of a cobble stone, but I love the way that bike feels – and I always have. That’s something I really love about hand-built bikes – they all have their unique personality; both my Bianchis are hand-built according to (fundamentally) the same geometry, but somehow the EV2 just fits me like a glove.

One of the things that struck me the last few weeks riding the EV2 is that I really like the feel of round bars. Several years ago, I made the switch to FSA K-Wings for my main bike, believing I would never look at round bars again.  Not only did I love the comfort of the wide, flat platform at the tops of the bars, but I loved the scalloped perch they make for the hands when riding on the hoods. Imagine my surprise, then, as it recently began to dawn on me that the round bars on EV2 felt bit better in my hands, especially when climbing – both on the tops and the hoods.

It got me wondering about the peculiar choices that Pros seem to make with regards to their handlebar choice. It’s no secret that many Pros are notoriously finicky about their gear and in some cases refuse to upgrade from trusted pieces equipment to a newer model, especially when it comes to the touch points on their bikes. Lance Armstrong famously refused to ride Shimano’s SPD-R line of pedals after pulling out of a pair during the finale of a World Championship Road Race and, to this day, rides an old model of saddle, the Rule-Breaking Concor Lite (which also happens to be the second-ugliest saddle ever made, with the Selle SMP taking the win on that one). Similarly, Damiano Cunego Tom Boonen both refused to upgrade to the Time RSX line of pedals from their Time Impacts because they preferred the feeling of the metal pedal body on the old Impacts (I have a pair of these and they do, oddly enough, feel quite different from the RSX.)

When it comes to handlebar choice, it seems the majority of riders prefer round bars, and many also prefer a classic drop – not to mention aluminum (*shudder*). You have to search pretty hard for a Pro who rides a K-Wing or Cinelli Ram, and it also seems a minority even use an anatomic bend; most claim that the classic drop provides more hand positions.  I am not sure I understand this argument;  it seems to me that the classic drop would really only offer more places to build up sore spots on your hands when riding in the drops.  Are the round drops better for concealing amphetamines?  What am I missing?

That aside, I love the look of the classic bar bend, and as I contemplate switching from my K-Wing to a round bar, I find my mind drifting slowly towards a classic bend as well.  After all, if it’s good enough for the Brothers Grimpeur, isn’t it good enough for me?

The Eurotrash Hublot Teammachine SLT01

If you’ve been paying close attention to my posts on other Keeper articles lately perhaps you’ve noticed my stable has been in a state of flux.  It all started when Frank texted me a pic of a pair of used demo 404′s at his LBS for sale.  Well no, that’s not true.  It really started 10 years ago when I lived in Bellingham, WA. and laid my eyes on the first Kona Jake the Snake I’d ever seen.  From then on I wanted a cyclocross bike.

The Kona is a distant memory, so fast forward to last spring.  My significant other and I were shopping for a new bike for her at a shop Frank and I used to work near.  The salesman working with us was a guy named Bob who actually used to work with Frank and me down the street.  Bob was an old friend who knows me as a gear junkie.  He’s also a damn good salesman.  As Sheri and I were paying for her new steed, Bob wheels out an ALAN Cross Carbon Excell from the back that had been special ordered and never picked up.  It’s a rare steed.  ALAN’s aren’t very common at all in the States but are very well known in cyclocross circles, especially European cyclocross circles.  It’s full carbon frame and fork with curvy lines immediately gave me carbone.  It’s also a large frame so it wouldn’t fit many people.  Being 6’2″ as I am, with a 34″ inseam, Bob thought I’d be just the guy for this beauty.  He was right. $2700 and an hour later I walked out of the shop with twice the cross bike I’d lusted over 10 years prior.  Last year I was so enamored with the ride quality of the ALAN I slapped road tires on it and used it as my sole machine.

Enter the the Zipps at Frank’s LBS.   They were to be used on the ALAN this year.  They would have worked well too but I never got the opportunity to try the combo out thanks to CompetitiveCyclist‘s rippin’ good deal on last year’s BMC SLT01 frameset, perfect for the Zipps.  The Team Machine is also the pro-level frame and fork I’ve wanted for quite some time.  I pulled the trigger.

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Anyway, to make a long story short, I’ve gotten my stable in order and am in compliance with Rule 12.  What’s more, I was able to live up to Rule 11 without a ruckus whatsoever.  Where’s the third you may be asking?  It’s around but I will not speak its name nor post a photo here for fear of losing my newly granted Keeper status.

The migration to electronic transmissions in cycling is inevitable. Cables have lots of inherent problems; they stretch, rust, break, and get clogged in their housings. Worse, they are part of an imprecise mechanical system that requires constant maintenance and adjustment, and one that can by design only work perfectly in one gear and gets progressively worse the further you get from that “perfect” gear. In short, cable shifting sucks, and it will eventually go the way of friction-shifting.

The obvious solution is the electronic drive-train; once adjusted, an electronic system should need little further adjustment or maintenance since there are no cables to stretch,  and it should work equally well in all gears because an electronic system should be able to set the chain perfectly regardless of the derailleur’s position with respect to the cog in the cassette.  The only problem with electronic shifting is that it takes human control out of the system, which makes it suck even more than cable shifting.

When Mavic released their Mektronic groupo, I jumped on it like a pothead jumps on a bag of Doritos.   Sadly, I very quickly became disenchanted with the system.  For starters, it would only shift the rear derailleur electronically; the front was operated by an enormous cast-iron lever that looked like it was forged in the middle ages by a monkey with one eye.   I felt like an executioner on the gallows pulling the lever every time I shifted from the big to little ring.

Unfortunately for Mavic, the front shifting was the best part of the system.  The Huangism “Press and Forget” was coined to describe the process for shifting.  This was supposed to mean that you didn’t have to think about shifting once you pressed the button to shift; the “reliable” system would deliver a perfect shift for you without you having to worry about it.  What it really meant was that it had a mind of it’s own. Every time I would press the little yellow button to shift, I sent myself on an emotional roller coaster ride as I waited to see what would happen.

On the good shifts, a second or two would go by and then it would shift.  On the averages shifts, it would not do anything for a little while and then shift at a surprising time, like right when you gave up and got out of the saddle to power over the hill you had intended to downshift shift for.  On the bad shifts, it would just never shift or shift without the button being pressed.

It got worse when riding close to a radio tower where radio frequencies were strong.  (Mektronic was wireless and functioned using radio frequencies.)  There was a television broad-cast tower on one of my routes, and on several occasions, riding by the tower would cause the whole system to reset and stop working at all.  It was like the Mavic version of the Blue Screen of Death.  That said, not shifting was much better than the cases where it would shift without input.  The worst experience I had was on a group ride out by the airport in Minneapolis when the derailleur shifted from the 12 to the 23 in a single instant because some guy in the control tower spilled his coffee on the switchboard or something, causing the chain to snap and me nearly crashing as the group sprinted for a yellow sign.

Another problem with Mektronic was it’s gargantuan size.  The levers were too long and  were banned by the UCI as they offered a non-regulation aerodynamic hand position (the unfortunate pro teams who were sponsored by Mavic raced an even uglier stubby version of these levers).  The derailleur was enormous, with a bulbous extension to accommodate the ratchet pushrod that provided the shifting mechanism and which was prone to snagging other items around the bunch like wheels and rider’s feet.  In a crash during a crit, I tore off my derailleur hanger when my bike hit the deck.

Eventually, I abandoned ship and moved back to a good old fashioned Dura-Ace 7701 drivetrain.  There’s something very comforting about knowing that a steel cable is running between my shifter and my derailleur; I don’t know about you but if I need to shift, I really can’t be bothered with waiting for a derailleur which was apparently programmed by a disgruntled software engineer from Microsoft to decide if it’s going to go ahead and shift or not.  But maybe that’s just me.

Electronic shifting faded into the background as Shimano and Campagnolo quietly worked on prototypes over the past decade.  Campagnolo and Shimano were both slated to release their fully electronic groupos last Fall, but Campy eventually decided against putting the expensive set into production due to the economic climate at the time.  Shimano, on the other hand, did release their version despite a whopping $3250.00 for the derailleurs, shifters, and batteries.  A complete groupo runs upwards of $4500-$5000.

On the plus side, it appears that Shimano has actually designed a good system.  Aside from it being a bit expensive, all reviews and stories point to this being a really reliable and effective system.  The system is wired, so outside interference is limited.  The front derailleur is electronic and, provided it is set up properly, will reportedly never drop your chain.  Shifts are lightening-quick and reliable.  The system self-feathers the chain, running silently in every gear.  Even ‘Cross racers are using it in the the mud and crud.

I’m anxiously awaiting my first opportunity to try it out.  Accepting donations now.

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Marco Pantani destroys the field on the Galibier of the 1998 Tour de France.

In 1998, Marco Pantani staged one of the most prestigious coups of cycling by winning the Giro-Tour double.  He made this run aboard what I believe to be the most beautiful bike in history, a Celeste steed with a yellow section of frame starting at the seat collar and spreading out down the tops of the seatstays, top tube, and seat tube.

Very little is actually known about this bike; it was a one-off creation made especially for Il Pirata by the Bianchi Reparto Corse division which makes all the top-end bikes for the company.   Some say the frame is aluminum, others claim it was boron.  The frame undeniably used a compact geometry (this is commonplace now, but it was unique in ’98), but whether the top tube sloped up or down seems to be a point of contention: did the top but slope up to give a longer head tube to bring his bars up to accommodate his unique in-the-drops climbing style or was the top tube sloped down towards the seat tube in order to reduce the weight of the frame and increase the stiffness of the rear triangle?

The bike has captured my imagination for a long time.  I love the way the saddle and tires match the portion of the frame where they intersect in what I call the “Yellow Cluster”; the vision of Pantani climbing out of the saddle on the Col du Galibier with those flashes of yellow swaying back and forth as he danced up the mountain remains one of the coolest images of cycling.  I studied his bike extensively when I was building my Bianchi XL EV2 and I mimicked it’s setup, choosing a yellow Flite saddle and solid yellow tires.  To this day I love the looks of that bike, and Pantani’s setup has even influenced one or two of The Rules.

I’ve searched the net over for information on his bike, hoping that at some point someone would find and catalog it for the world.  Occasionally, there will be an article posted somewhere that covers the bike, but each of these has ended up a disappointment as upon closer inspection, it is revealed that the bike is not in fact his tour-winning bike.

I did, however, find one article on Campy Only which appears to showcase the real deal.  It comes from an account by a fan at a post-tour criterium in 1998 where Pantani made an appearance:

Here you have the pictures of Pantani’s bike. Note that he is using tubulars on his Electron wheels, even for this small race. He seems to love this bike. In the Giro he used the normal team bike on the flat stages, but since the mountains he has not been apart from this ultralight “hillclimber” (except for time trials). I think the weight is about 7 kilos, but is is of course a very small bike.

The use of a downtube lever and the modified Ergo lever is a funny detail. It is very unusual these days to see homemade stuff like this on a pro’s bike, and he even won the two major tours on it–it’s a classic bike, this one!

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Recently on CyclingNews.com, they did a Retro Bike review of Pantani’s 1998 ride, reportedly stored at the Bianchi museum.  I was thrilled and dove into the photos, looking for answers to questions I probably didn’t know I had.  Unfortunately, closer inspection revealed a host of problems with the bike;  I am sad to report that this is not in fact Pantani’s bike, and in all likelihood did not even exist in 1998.  It appears to be nothing more than the Bianchi team replica frame clumsily loaded with a 1999 Campy Record 9-speed groupo.  The items that give this fact away are: non-compact geometry, carbon Ergo levers, no front down tube shifter (and accompanying left-side Ergo lever with guts removed), black and yellow tires (instead of his solid yellow tubulars), and silver Time mag pedals (he rode red ones in 1999).  This could possibly be a late-season racer or a 1999 trainer, but in any case, it is not his 1998 Giro-Tour winning magical steed.  Since it appears his real bike eludes even the Bianchi museum, my only hope is that he kept it for himself and it resides somewhere in the Pantani estate.

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But the truth is, what we’re witnessing here is the sapling of a future Keeper.