2020 : Our Rides in Words, Photos & Videos

[JRA]

JRA, can you tell us about your front suspension. Looks intriguing!
David

The fork was manufactured in the early 90's by Fournales in France. They licensed the design to LOOK who distributed them as part of their bicycle channel. While looking for fork options for 29" wheels back in 99' we came upon them as a possibility because all that would have to be done was to make the legs 35mm longer. While contact was made with LOOK in the spring of 2001 finally after 9/11 they go real snotty about working with us due to the whole "freedom fries" fiasco.

Fast forward a number of years and they started showing up on eBay as Fournales had ceased production at some point and the NOS was sold off in batches it appears and a gentleman in the Netherlands had a bunch of them. The fork was head tube specific meaning that different length head tubes required a specific size so they had produced small, med and large models. Due to the fact that the 26" wheel bikes they were made for mostly had med/larger head tubes BITD there were alot of smalls leftover. As luck would have it the shorter headtubes of 29"ers fit those just fine and I bought like 10 of them for under $200/, they were about a grand retail.

A friend in Michigan CNC'd a new set of dropouts for them and pulled the old ones out and inserted the new 35mm longer ones back in 2005 and I have been using them ever since on this bike and others. Nice and light and I had become used to the parallelogram type fork using the AMP type fork that was on my Ti FS 29"er that had a similar 80mm travel as seen here.

Less brake dive and change of head angle while compressed worked for my style of riding at least.

My only issue with them was that while climbing they were pretty twitchy due to lack of rake as can be seen here,

Quite by accident really while servicing the shock, a quite simple matter involving some ATF, upon reassembly I put the lower pivot on the bottom of the head tube on backwards and the result was it set the rake out quite a bit and slackened the head tube angle so that the twitchyness went away and I have used it like that since.

To this day my familiarity of the bike itself, which I had ridden since 2006, and my requirements for mid motor characteristics having torque assist and a throttle I have just kept riding it with no regrets.

 

[steve mercier]

I've planned the Easter route:
View attachment 49568

The objective has been to avoid principal roads (less chances to be interrogated by the police about good reasons for riding). The forecast temperature would be 9 - 19 C, so the clothes have to be changed en route. The ride would be into 4 m/s wind until the point #5. I have prepared a lot of beverages and snacks as @Readytoride had taught me. Riding out the Vado with two batteries and the Eco level set to 40%.

Contingency plans:
Plan B: In case of range anxiety, shorten the loop.
Plan C: In case of bonking, come back by train from Skierniewice.

Wish me luck!

P.S. Some cartoon about riding in the covid times:
View attachment 49570
1. Son to his Mum: "I've a toothache, Mom!" Mom: O, Saint Boniface of Acadria!
2. Mom: "Go to the countryside; dentists still work there. Wear dustcoats. Go by scooter, not by coach. Take a shopping bag. (And a dog!)
3. (Police siren) - Pull over! (A curse)
4. -- We're going for grocery shopping! We've got a shopping bag! And a dog to be walked! -- You rode with no lights on. You're fined 200 PLN and get 3 penalty points!

My Wife broke a tooth eating popcorn and the dentist would only give her a prescription over the phone. She has had pain for over a week. I have no idea how long she may have to wait so the moral is do not bite into anything hard folks!

 

[Cowlitz]

My Wife broke a tooth eating popcorn and the dentist would only give her a prescription over the phone. She has had pain for over a week. I have no idea how long she may have to wait so the moral is do not bite into anything hard folks!

I squeaked by. Had tooth problems and got it fixed, and the pain, just before the virus hit here. Think I will forego the popcorn for a while. Hope you can find a dentist soon.

 

[FlatSix911]

The fork was manufactured in the early 90's by Fournales in France. They licensed the design to LOOK who distributed them as part of their bicycle channel. While looking for fork options for 29" wheels back in 99' we came upon them as a possibility because all that would have to be done was to make the legs 35mm longer. While contact was made with LOOK in the spring of 2001 finally after 9/11 they go real snotty about working with us due to the whole "freedom fries" fiasco. Fast forward a number of years and they started showing up on eBay as Fournales had ceased production at some point and the NOS was sold off in batches it appears and a gentleman in the Netherlands had a bunch of them. The fork was head tube specific meaning that different length head tubes required a specific size so they had produced small, med and large models. Due to the fact that the 26" wheel bikes they were made for mostly had med/larger head tubes BITD there were alot of smalls leftover. As luck would have it the shorter headtubes of 29"ers fit those just fine and I bought like 10 of them for under $200/, they were about a grand retail. A friend in Michigan CNC'd a new set of dropouts for them and pulled the old ones out and inserted the new 35mm longer ones back in 2005 and I have been using them ever since on this bike and others. Nice and light and I had become used to the parallelogram type fork using the AMP type fork that was on my Ti FS 29"er that had a similar 80mm travel as seen here.

View attachment 49636

Less brake dive and change of head angle while compressed worked for my style of riding at least.

My only issue with them was that while climbing they were pretty twitchy due to lack of rake as can be seen here,

View attachment 49635

Quite by accident really while servicing the shock, a quite simple matter involving some ATF, upon reassembly I put the lower pivot on the bottom of the head tube on backwards and the result was it set the rake out quite a bit and slackened the head tube angle so that the twitchyness went away and I have used it like that since.

View attachment 49637

To this day my familiarity of the bike itself, which I had ridden since 2006, and my requirements for mid-motor characteristics having torque assist and throttle I have just kept riding it with no regrets.

A very cool collection of bikes... tell us more about the FS Titanium frame.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

50 Miles Instead Of 120 Kilometres, Or, The Easter Sunday Ride (Skierniewice)

1. Ride out at 9:30 a.m. to discover you've mysteriously attached the most wrong pedals to your cranks;
2. Realise you put too warm clothes on at the same moment;
3. Go back home to replace the pedals and change the clothes;
4. Ride out at 10:00 a.m. to find out the wind is rather cruel and you need a little bit warmer clothes
5. Ride only gravel and concrete-slab roads for the first 20 km because you don't want to see any police on the trip.

No single policeman seen (not that I looked for one). A single runner, perhaps five bikes altogether (including a dad and her daughter on a longer ride), a single big truck, two motorcycles, few cars. Several families walking in Budy Grabskie in the Bolimów Forest. Apart from that, the silence was so deep you could hear a cockcrow and birds singing. Or, an amplified singing of the "A Merry Day For All Of Us Happened" hymn at a church in Radziejowice; given only 5 people can attend the Holy Mass and the Easter procession now, I wonder how many believers were there.

The sight of a living person was so rare that people vigorously (and smiling) greeted one another. Very very nice. The Poles were not such a nation before the pandemia.

My ride description could be made very short:

1. Ride for 60 km against a 35 km/h headwind in the Eco mode and get very very tired;
2. Discover your first battery dried up after 59 km (the target for two batteries was 120 km) and before you reached the midpoint (2 km before);
3. Get an attack of "range panic";
4. Mistrust the GPS navigation (very wrong attitude!);
5. Find your own way (you have just committed a suicide);
6. Find yourself past the point of no return: Your second battery is good for 40 km and 50 km are left to reach home;
7. Consult your smartphone and race in Turbo mode to the nearest train station (Trains departing hourly).

Going bananas at the Skierniewice-Rawka train stop, 4:19 p.m.

A memorial for German soldiers killed in the WWI, 1914-1915 in Kamion. The inscription reads "Unsere Helden" ("To Our Heroes").

Kamion, 8 km to reach my midpoint in Skierniewice. "My" Hwy 719 ends here. I could have returned home via the 719 but: 1. It was too short ride (just 40 km); 2. It is boring; 3. Too high probability to meet the police over there

Almost at the planned midpoint, 59.5 km from home. The battery went flat 500 m before. I got the range panic, didn't ride to the city centre to spare 2 km and to avoid seeing the police, of course. I turned right and then began quarrelling with the GPS navigation...

Past the point of no return, among the Bolimów Landscape Park. Here I found out there was no way to return home on the battery, consulted the smartphone and raced back for the train stop.

On the return Mazovian Railways train. I bought the ticket in a smartphone app and the return trip took just 30 minutes plus 3 km of extra pedalling.

How to measure the wind speed

Ride downwind. Speed up until you can hear the silence That is, until you hear no wind. Then look at the speedometer. I determined the speed of today's breeze to be 35 km/h (21.8 mph). Go away, Miss Fake Spring! A cheater! A liar!

True ride stats.

 

[steve mercier]

50 Miles Instead Of 120 Kilometres, Or, The Easter Sunday On The Ride (Skierniewice)

1. Ride out at 9:30 a.m. to discover you've mysteriously attached the most wrong pedals to your cranks;
2. Realise you put too warm clothes on at the same moment;
3. Go back home to replace the pedals and change the clothes;
4. Ride out at 10:00 a.m. to find out the wind is rather cruel and you need a little bit warmer clothes
5. Ride only gravel and concrete-slab roads for the first 20 km because you don't want to see any police on the trip.

No single policeman seen (not that I looked for one). A single runner, perhaps five bikes altogether (including a dad and her daughter on a longer ride), a single big truck, two motorcycles, few cars. Several families walking in Budy Grabskie in the Bolimów Forest. Apart of that, the silence was so deep you could hear a cockcrow and birds singing. Or, an amplified singing of the "A Merry Day For All Of Us Happened" hymn at a church in Radziejowice; given only 5 people can attend the Holy Mass and the Easter procession now, I wonder how many believers were there.

The sight of a living person was so rare that people vigorously (and smiling) greeted one another. Very very nice. The Poles were not such a nation before the pandemia.

My ride description could be made very short:

1. Ride for 60 km against a 35 km/h headwind in the Eco mode and get very very tired;
2. Discover your first battery dried up after 59 km (the target for two batteries was 120 km) and before you reached the midpoint (2 km before);
3. Get an attack of "range panic";
4. Mistrust the GPS navigation (very wrong attitude!);
5. Find your own way (you have just committed a suicide);
6. Find yourself in the point of no return: Your second battery is good for 40 km and 50 km are left to reach home;
7. Consult your smartphone and race in Turbo mode to the nearest train station (Trains departing hourly).

View attachment 49670
Going bananas at the Skierniewice-Rawka train stop, 4:19 p.m.

View attachment 49671
A memorial for German soldiers killed in the WWI, 1914-1915 in Kamion. The inscription reads "Unsere Helden" ("To Our Heroes").

View attachment 49672
Kamion, 8 km to reach my midpoint in Skierniewice. "My" Hwy 719 ends here. I could have returned home via the 719 but: 1. It was too short ride (just 40 km); 2. It is boring; 3. Too high probability to meet the police over there

View attachment 49673
Almost at the planned midpoint, 59.5 km from home. The battery went flat 500 m before. I got the range panic, didn't ride to the city centre to spare 2 km and to avoid seeing the police, of course. I turned right and then began quarrelling with the GPS navigation...

View attachment 49674
At the point of no return, among the Bolimów Landscape Park. Here I found out there was no way to return home on the battery, consulted the smartphone and raced back for the train stop.

View attachment 49675
On the return Mazovian Railways train. I bough the ticket in a smartphone app and the return trip took just 30 minutes plus 3 km of extra pedalling.

How to measure the wind speed

Ride downwind. Speed up until you can hear the silence That is, until you wear no wind. I determined the speed of today's breeze to be 35 km/h (21.8 mph). Go away, Miss Fake Spring! A cheater! A liar!

View attachment 49676
True ride stats.

In the pre- Covid 19 days you could have brought your charger along and stopped for lunch while charging up at the cafe...sigh

 

[Stefan Mikes]

In the pre- Covid 19 days you could have brought your charger along and stopped for lunch while charging up at the cafe...sigh

Not in Poland, Steve. The Poles don't understand it is normal to let a paying customer use the electrical socket yet.

 

[steve mercier]

Not in Poland, Steve. The Poles don't understand it is normal to let a paying customer use the electrical socket yet.

Oh ...no Starbucks there then I presume?

 

[JRA]

A very cool collection of bikes... tell us more about the FS Titanium frame.

The yellow one isn't mine but was just an example of the difference between the two pivot settings.

The Ti bike was built by Willits and completed as shown in the fall of 99' and the first FS 29"er. At the time the 29" tire became available FS was just coming into its own and so I decided to prop Wes up by ordering one from him to show its possibilities. The AMP design at that time was highly regarded and their fork was adaptable so that is the template he used. It was a super fun bike to ride and I did so for 6yrs. and then in a moment of monetary weakness and a fairly persistent Ti collector I let the frame go but kept the fork which now resides at Absolute Bikes in Salida, CO.. the B-29 as it was designated never rolled again unfortunately and sits with alot of other Ti exotica while the collector plays disc golf....

I had other bikes to ride but at Interbike in 2000 Bob Girvin of Off Road/ProFlex/MTBHOF stopped by Willits booth and I knew him from back east so as he was looking at a bike I asked him when he was going to come up with an FS design for the new wheel size, which at that point I think Fisher had just come out with the Super Cal? Still not many FS bikes for sure. The next spring I went to my mailbox and there was a package that held hand drawn prints that he had done.

Although I had the B-29 still I thought it would be cool to have some made. Too long a story of the first attempt to get the bike built that also involves 9/11 oddly enough and an actual bike didn't exist until 05' when my friend in MI took the prints and ran with them along with modifying the Fournales as both required CNC work done. He ended up making only this one but his company Quiring Cycles continues to this day to make excellent bikes.

While not as supple as the Ti bike it still is a pretty nice ride. At this time it is sidelined with a broken custom derailleur hanger that he hasn't made for a long time but promises to some day. It also illustrates the original pivot position and how tucked in the front end is, especially in comparison to the slack head angle "modern geo" of today. When I get it back together when the der. hanger finally shows up I'll make it right.

I am eyeing the Revel kit for it because, well, eBikes.....

 

[FlatSix911]

Very cool and interesting... love the high chainstays and full-suspension design details. Thanks for sharing!

 

[FlatSix911]

Time to explore some new backcountry trails with a view of the Bay... the weather was 65'F and perfect for mountain biking.

(Link Removed - No Longer Exists)

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Oh ...no Starbucks there then I presume?

There are some in big cities but certainly not in the countryside

 

[steve mercier]

not yet then...Post Covid

 

[pmcdonald]

Local tracks are very busy during the days now with the lockdown in full swing and exercise one of the few valid reasons to be out, so I took a lovely but eerie night ride down the Fernleigh Track.

In 40 km I saw:
2 walkers
1 cyclist
1 possum
3 tawny frogmouths
4 frogs
2 rabbits
1 fox (or foxlike cat)
1 juvenile tree snake

 

[Readytoride]

LOVED the second shot of the backlit tunnel.

I have noticed the baby snakes are out and about on the warm weather days that are becoming more and more frequent as Spring settles in to stay in Virginia. The snake spawn "Darwin Award" candidates have all be sunbathing on the local roads, tempting fate.

Our county's confirmed case rate has risen to 300. Less than the neighboring county which is over 1,000. Still under a "Safer at Home" mandate with no enforced lockdown. Hope it doesn't come to that.

 

[Cowlitz]

Question for Stefan: I do not understand the logic. You would get in trouble for bike riding, but not train riding?

What do I know. I live in an area where I'd have to drive two hours to hopefully ride on a train.

We've had some very windy weather. 50 mph gusts on Saturday, 20Ish mph yesterday. I hope to get out today.

Keep on!

 

[Alaskan]

Nancy and I got a some great rides in this past week. Spring has definitely sprung with fruit trees blooming and yellow tree pollens falling like so much fine yellow snow to the point where it is visible on pavement and turning all the cracks in the pavement bright yellow. Even without Covid 19 a dust mask of some sort is good for riding.

 

[Mulezen]

What a beautiful bike you have Alaskan

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Question for Stefan: I do not understand the logic. You would get in trouble for bike riding, but not train riding?

Don't ask me to explain the logic of our Government, @Cowlitz If I try to rationalise the Minister of Health orders and subsequent actions of the law enforcement, it goes like that:

People who need recreation tend to gather in masses at the same places: bike paths, public parks, popular forests, on the river embankments. The Minister would be happy if everybody stayed at home and he's trying to enforce it. You are allowed to be outdoor for grocery shopping (senior citizens are exclusive customers in stores & drugstores between 10 a.m and the noon), to see a doctor, to walk a dog and "to satisfy your vital needs". (Of course, there is a broad category of people who have to leave their homes for work or duty and those are exempted). If one cyclist has ridden out for recreation, then there will be tens of thousand of them outdoor in the cities soon -- the Minister seems to think so. The Police occasionally stops and interrogates runners, cyclists, drivers for good reasons to be outdoor. Although technically the police cannot give you a ticket, they can send a report to the General Sanitary Inspectorate asking the GIS to give the person a hefty penalty. You cannot appeal at court for that! The most of penalties has been given because of the lack of respect towards the officers (and the law); in other cases the policemen look for a pretext to give you a ticket. Yes, all of that is against democracy and the citizen rights.

No-one uses trains without a good reason; a train-ride (or bus or tram or coach ride) is not recreation. The passengers have to take every second seat and no ride standing is allowed. In case there are too many passengers, the vehicle will not leave the stop or the station before excess people get off. There are no policemen patrolling the mass transportation.

We indeed live in interesting times.

P.S. I believe I'm pretty safe on my bike rides as I meet no-one, ride empty areas, don't touch things. Getting on the train increases the risk significantly. Good that the train was almost empty.
P.S.2. Europe has a dense network of railways. Very different from North America. The Mazovian Railways let you transport your bike free. The Warsaw Commuter Train offers free bike transportation on weekends. Very handy indeed.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

What a beautiful bike you have Alaskan

What a beautiful wife he has!