Ring Resizing – Bike Snob NYC

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, but so far it’s been like some sort of lamb-lion mutant hybrid genetic experiment gone wrong in which the poor tortured creature just tries to eat itself.

Oh, here’s how the AI renders a “lamb-lion mutant hybrid genetic experiment gone wrong,” and I apologize in advance to any trypophobia sufferers:

Creepy, especially when you consider we’re probably three to five years out from being able to have the AI make us actual lamb-lion mutant hybrids.

But yes, March brought us delightfully spring-like conditions on Saturday followed by bitter cold on Sunday, and one bicycle carried me swiftly through all this atmospheric schizophrenia in comfort and style:

As I continue to fine-tune the Roadini my attention is now turning to the drivetrain. So far I’ve been quite pleased with the gearing as well as the performance–with one exception, that being shifts into the so-called “granny” gear, which can be inconsistent:

I currently have three other bicycles sporting triple drivetrains, all of which downshift into the little ring smoothly and reliably, so after throwing the entirety of my ineptitude at it my theory is that what’s going on here is that this particular derailleur is shaped specifically to work with a 50/39/30 crank:

Looking back at it, it’s no wonder the road triple died out. A 30-tooth ring isn’t a “granny;” it’s more of a soccer mom who spends a lot of time at the gym. As such, the gear range is easily replicated with a simpler compact crank and a slightly larger cassette. Eventually the cycling industry figured this out, and so they re-invented the 110bcd crank, deleted the third ring, and called it a “compact.”

As for the crank on the Roaduno, the rings are 50/34/26. This was not a careful selection on my part. Basically, I had the original crank from the Roaduno:

Plus a pair of 50/34 rings I’d purchased for another crank but hadn’t gotten around to using. This makes for a much wider range than the road triples of the late-20th-to-early-21st, century, and since I already had a triple front derailleur it seemed like setting the Roadini up as a triple was the best way of getting all the gears I could possibly need without having to, you know, buy anything.

Of course, the soccer-mom triple for which my front derailleur is designed is also designed to work with STI shifting, and as such the inner plate has all sorts of shaping to make the shifts work–but with a 34-tooth middle ring instead of a 39, the shaping that helps push the chain onto the granny is in the wrong place. Since I’m using friction shifters I can overcome this to a degree, but the derailleur still needs to move more than it should in order to get the chain off the middle ring, and so I’m now switching the middle back to the original 38 in the hope that it solves the problem:

Hopefully the additional diameter does the trick:

It seems to work in the “stand” (I don’t actually use a stand), though I have yet try it out on an actual ride. The larger ring will mean I’ll have to shift into the granny sooner, but if those shifts are easy and reliable that’s a trade I’m happy to make.

Moving on, imagine being this out of it:

Setting aside the ridiculous idea that old mountain bikes are “terrible,” have they not noticed the gazillions of them still in regular service?

What kind of bubble to MTB Bros live in? Do they not see all the people commuting on them? Did they somehow miss the Vintage-Mountain-To-Gravel-Bike Conversion Craze? I guess when the entirety of your cycling consists of driving back and forth to small parks you don’t get much of a cross-section of cycling and you really do think everyone really is just riding motocross bikes with pedals.

And yes, I know, they’re just being deliberately provocative–and speaking of which, here is an absolute clickbait tour de force:

We’re all familiar with those stories the mainstream media regularly runs about how your saddle will make you impotent or unable to make babies or whatever, but how about every single panic-inducing genital-related cycling “What if?” in one place?

And no, according to the article, cycling does not increase testosterone:

Yeah, no shit. Have you ever seen these people fight?

More alarmingly, apparently cycling can aggravate your gonorrhea:

Wait, I thought STI stood for “Shimano Total Integration.” Either way, this would go a long way towards explaining Mario Cipollini’s famous irascibility:

Especially when you also factor in the pernicious effects of the manscaping:

It’s all starting to make sense now.