Special K ver 3.0 (?)

I think it was wishful thinking that we would have enjoyed more sunny Spring days lately. We had a few days of nice weather a couple of weeks ago, but it's been mostly coludy rainy days since. It's my third Spring here in Portland, but I guess I'm still not used to having so many cold rainy days in the Spring.

I thought I would have done some rides to places I haven't been to and written about them, but with the uninspiring weather, I haven't ridden as much as I would have liked.

Instead of writing about rides I haven't done, I thought I would write about modifications I made to my bike. So, this is going to be a bit tech oriented post. I sort of feel unsure about what this blog should be with posts that only may interest "avid cyclists" though. Recently, Copenhagenize blogged that "avid cyclists" are unnecessary for advocating cycling. I can understand that, but it doesn't mean that I can be less of an "avid cyclist" or be less interested in bicycles. I'm neither here nor there. I'm not a full on racer nor a cycle chic utility rider, but in between. It's not like this blog has so many readers and there's a clear mission, so for now I'll just write about things that interest me.

Anyway, so I have made a couple of modifications to Special K. Can you tell what they are in the picture above?

I replaced the stem and the pedals.

This is what the stem looked like before.


I felt a bit stretched out with this stem and recently, I've moved the saddle back a bit which made the reach even longer, so I wanted to get a shorter stem to get a more comfortable position. I looked around a bit for a new stem and my first thought was to get something more understated without the graphics. I looked at velo orange, but they didn't have any stems that could accommodate my bars. I also wanted to get a stem that could be adjusted to find the right position. There are stems that have pivots, but they were quite expensive and I wasn't sure about their reliability. Then I looked at Specialized stems because I knew they were adjustable with a inner sleeve. I am not loyal to the Specialized brand at all, but it seemed like the most adjustable and reasonably priced of all the ones I saw, so I decided to get it. I got the 90mm Comp-Set stem.


It has 10 possible angles or something like that, so you can fine tune your position as you see fit.


So, this is how it looks after I made the switch. It still has some graphics unfortunately, but it's slightly more subtle. I can definitely do without the "Innovate or Die" copy though. I don't know why the faceplate isn't black like the main body of the stem, but it does now cover the Specialized logo on the bar, so I would say the overall look is a slight improvement. Now if I could get rid of the red lines on the bars...

The other change is the pedals.


I (think I) first saw these Time Z pedals on Bike Hugger's modal bike (can't seem to find the link) and they looked like just what I wanted which were clipless pedals which could be ridden with regular shoes. It's been an ongoing search for me to find pedals that are perfect. My last pair which were the Crank Brothers Candy C pedals were great clipless pedals, but not at all good to ride with regular shoes. These Time Z pedals did look very promising as it has a wide platform and the binding mechanism didn't seem to protrude as much as other pedals did. The only way to find out was to get them and ride them. So, I did that.

I had high expectations for these and they are more accommodating than any other clipless pedals I've ridden with regular shoes, but still they are not like platform pedals. So, I think it was a slight improvement, but I'm not sure if it was worth the price.

I thought if I had regular shoes that are specific for these pedals, maybe they would fit better. I didn't want to buy new shoes just for this purpose, so I looked for used shoes at thrift stores and got these.


What I've done here is to cut off a couple of lugs of the sole to accommodate the protrusion of the pedals. This was also just a slight improvement, but it doesn't achieve anything near the feel of regular shoes on platform pedals. It's a very simple thing, how your feet feel on pedals, but I can't say that I'm satisfied with these.

For now though, I can't think of anything else I might try with these pedals and I can't justify buying another set of pedals, so I will just get used to these. I have been riding with this set up for short rides around town and I'm starting to get used to them although they still feel a bit funny.

So, that's what's happened with Special K. I'm not sure if this is interesting reading to anyone though. One thing I have been thinking is that though this bike isn't particularly special in any way, it's becoming more special for me personally with little modifications and some TLC. There's all kinds of beautiful bikes to be seen online (like at the recent NAHBS), but I think almost any bike can be special if you want it to be.

Hanami & Mt. Tabor

Cherry blossoms are in full bloom now (or at least a few days ago) here in Portland. Maybe they are just another flower tree for most Americans, but cherry trees may be the most obsessed about flower trees in Japan. I don't know how they got to be so popular, but maybe it has something to do with their fleeting beauty and the timing of the blossoming coincides with the end/beginning of the academic year when lots of people are experiencing major changes in their lives. There is also the tradition of "Hanami" (literally translated as flower watching in which people gather in mass outdoor around cherry trees and watch the cherry blossoms. At least that's what it's supposed to be, but for the most part, it turns into a drinking party. I can't remember the last time I was in Japan this time of the year, but I have done my own Hanami here and there. This year's hanami happened this past mid week. I had some errands to run downtown and on my way back, I rode through the Waterfront park knowing that I will probably see cherry blossoms. I actually fully expected to see it and packed a thermos of coffee and sweets in my pannier bag.



Cherry blossoms were in full bloom and I enjoyed my Hanami with coffee instead of sake.

Today (Sunday) I rode to Mt. Tabor Park. It's a park located in South East Portland. I'm not sure if it's tall enough to be called a mountain, but it is a hill and it's covered with tall trees. It's definitely one of my favorite places in Portland and I have ridden there many times, but this was my first ride there since last year. It's not quite far or high enough for a serious training ride, but it is a nice destination and at least for me at this time of the year, it's plenty.


View Larger Map

I am not one to dress in full cycling gear with no luggage even when I go for recreational rides. I like to dress in normal clothes and do normal things along the route. Today, there were 3 things I wanted to do during my ride; ride, buy grocery, and eat lunch. I think most people will do these things separately, but I'm too lazy to do separate outings, so I just do it all during my ride. The map above shows my route from Trader Joe's (where I shopped) to Mt Tabor Park.(the Bicycling layer couldn't be embedded. I hope they are working on that.) I got some lunch food there as well as some other food items. I kind of have mixed feelings about Trader Joe's. It's sort of fun to shop there and they seem to have pretty good quality stuff at reasonable prices, but a lot of their merchandise comes from very far places. I won't go into the whole "eat local" thing here, but the dried apricots I wanted to get was from Turkey, so I got prunes from California instead. (I like prunes too.)

Before the ride, I was looking at Google Map with the new "Bicycling" feature (isn't it so awesome?) and I found that there is a pedestrian/bike bridge over the freeway just South of Trader Joe's. I had no idea that was there and I would've ridden over the 39th Avenue overpass (where it's full of cars with no bike lane) if I didn't check out the map with the new feature, so thanks to Google, I had a much more "tranquilo" ride. There are so many ways you can go to the park from there. The Google directions will show you a much different, but way more complicated way, but I like my ride simple and without too many turns, so I think my way is much easier. My way takes you South to Belmont St and then East. You can also take Glisan or Burnside, but I found that, going that way, you will run into a series of short but very steep hills. On Belmont, it's not as steep, but it's a long and gradual climb all the way to the entrance of Mt Tabor Park. I'm actually not sure which part is harder, the climb to the park or the climb of Mt. Tabor. Anyway, it's best to take it easy or you will be cooked by the time you get to the park.



Once inside the park, you are surrounded with big tall trees and roads inside have less car traffic, so it's much more relaxing. I think when you are climbing under effort, it's definitely better to do it on roads with little or no car traffic. If you have cars going by you, I think it makes it more stressful as you need to concentrate to hold a straight line while you are already hard at work just trying to go forward. I think once I'm in better shape, I would "attack" the climb more, but today I just spun up to the top. I think the gradient there must not be as steep as the climb to Rocky Butte because there I couldn't even spin if I wanted to.



Time for lunch! Just a simple cheese sandwich, prunes and coffee.

I think most people that go on recreational or training rides go ride and then eat when they get home, but I like to bring food and have a little snack at my destination. It's like a little reward for having made it there or something. It started raining though as I was sitting there enjoying my coffee, so I got back on my bike and rode down half way where there is like a big picnic area with a roof and took shelter.



I took this picture there. I made a couple of modifications to this bike since I last showed this bike here. Can you guess what they are? I will write about that here soon.

Before I rode home, I decided to ride around the park. This is where they held the Mt. Tabor criterium which was part of the Mt. Hood Classic a couple of years ago. Last year, the race had finance issues and didn't include this stage, but I hope they will have it this year. I had a great time watching it 2 years ago. Here's a slideshow of pictures I took there.



So, there is this loop you can ride. For a good part of last year though, a part of it was under construction and you couldn't ride through, so I was curious if they had fixed it. I rode there and indeed they had finished whatever they were doing. I rode the loop once. There's always people riding there doing multiple loops, but I didn't want to overdo it this time. I think maybe once I'm in lighter clothing with less baggage (I think my pannier with the grocery weighed like 10 lbs), I might try doing laps. I can't imagine racing like 40 laps of it though. It's hard to imagine now that I was once fit enough to do similar kind of races albeit at the lower end of amateurs.

Anyway, it's a nice place to ride to. If it was a bit further from town and the climb more substantial, it would be even more a popular destination to ride to I think.

Pictures by Kao

Me and Kao both have accounts at flickr. Mine is quite a mess with everything from daily snaps to artworks. Though I have taken classes in photography, I must admit that I am a poor photographer. Kao on the other hand is a much better photographer and so, I have often thought this blog can benefit more with her photography than mine. I've used her pictures in the past in my posts, but it was a bit of a hassle as I had to ask her to give me the html code each time. We noticed recently that now flickr has a "share this" feature for each picture, and with that I can grab the code myself without having to bother Kao about it.

Anyway, I thought I'd do a post with some of her recent pictures.


This is me on my Dahon riding along Tsurumi river.


Me again riding a mamachari on the path around Kitaura lake near Kao's parents house in Ibaraki prefecture.


A tin bike toy Kao found in a window in Nezu (old Tokyo neighborhood).


Me sitting and flipping through a bike magazine at the old Cycle Square Kitasando.


We stopped by F.I.G Bike after our visit to the Cycle Square. It not only has road bikes and fixies like so many other biks shops, but more utilitarian bikes and a whole section of causal bike clothing by brands like the Rin Project. The staff was very vocal about the merits of regular looking clothing that you can bike in.


Nice card on the wall!


Close-up of the entrance. The two bikes on the right, I think are a Globe and maybe a Velorbis. Not sure.

Also some of you readers who are fellow bloggers are also welcome to use our photos from our flickr pages; Mine and Kao's. You don't need to tell us beforehand, but drop us a line afterward if you can. I doubt that any of you will do so, but please don't use it in a negative way like being negative about bikes.

We may not have a lot of exciting things to write about in the near future as we have to deal with real life things and also it's not warm enough yet to really ride a lot, but we'll try and update regularly anyway.

Revisiting Tsurumi River

The last 4 posts about the Tokyo Cycle Mode have focused on the product side of the bicycle quite a bit. I do like looking at bikes and accessories, but I think that's just one part of the experience of riding a bike. Other things like the environment you ride in and the weather might actually contribute more to the overall experience. Of course, how the bike feels is very important, but it doesn't matter so much if that bike is a high tech race bike or a mamachari. Any bike that's in decent working condition can be a joy to ride depending on the occasion. I guess what I'm trying to say is that at Cycle Mumbreeze, we are not that obsessive about the gear. For us, just enjoying riding the bicycle is more important. Even riding a mamachari barely faster than walking along the river is an enjoyable experience.



Last weekend, we rode to the nearby Tsurumi River. Tsurumi river runs parallel on the West side of the more famous Tama River. Beyond Tsurumi River is Tsurumi, the Eastern ward of Yokohama, where I grew up as a child before my family moved to the US when I was 13. So, Tsurumi River is the first river I probably came in contact with. The name Tsurumi translates as something like "Crane watching". I've always wondered if there was a time when you could go to the river and see cranes there. But, Tsurumi River as far as I can recall had never been known for its beauty or cleanliness. I think especially when I was growing up, it was in poor shape from industrial sewage. It has been a while since I'd been there because from where we reside now, it's much easier to get to the Tama River. To go directly to the Tsurumi River seemed complicated, so we decided to first go to the Yagami River which is a small river that runs into Tsurumi River.


View Larger Map

The above map sort of shows the route that we took although I couldn't get the route to be exactly the way we went. We rode mostly directly along the river.

The top photo is where the Yagami River meets Tsurumi River.


Kao looking at Tsurumi River.

It was a nice Sunny day and there were plenty of people out walking, running and riding bikes.



We ran into this family in the above photo. They were going rather quickly. Kao wanted to get a photo, but couldn't catch up with them, so I followed them instead and took this picture. You may not be able to tell, but there is a man running in front of the woman on the bike. The woman is carrying her child on her back which is quite unusual to see with so many options for carrying a child on a bike being available in Japan. It seemed the man who was probably the husband of the woman was training and the mother and child was following him closely behind.





There were many parts of the river front that were under construction.




"Tsurumi river basin area is in the shape of a baku(tapir)" this post says.



We crossed and went underneath a few railroads. This one might be right under the Shinkansen (bullet train).



We went to the Otsunabashi near the Tsunashima station and then headed back. Overall, the Tsurumi river didn't seem to be quite as well maintained or fashionable as the Tama river, but it seemed cleaner than I remembered from my childhood days and the local people there seemed to be enjoying the area.

Anyway, it was nice to revisit a place from my childhood and not be disappointed.

CYCLE MODE 2009 [ more pictures ]

Here are some more pictures Kao took at Cycle Mode.




Armstrong / Contador display




Colorful Fuji Bikes




Rapha display with an Independent Fabrication bike


I will probably never ever ride the Cervelo P4


Fumiyuki Beppu display






This Specialized bike weighs less than 6kg!

CYCLE MODE 2009 [ test-ride ]

Kinya looks very glad because the bicycle which he rides is "cervelo".
but he finished a test ride and did not look so happy.The reason is written in his post.



It was the first time that I participated in such an event.
You can tell from the photo that it's very crowded. There was a line for each brand and the waiting time was long, but it was very windy and raining, so it was probably still less crowded than usual.



The test ride start!



He noticed the saddle was too low at this moment...



And then he tested a Bianchi. It's very light!





He's testing the Dura-Ace electronic shifting.



He's testing the cycle computer.

Cycle Mode

Yesterday we went to this event called Cycle Mode which is sort of like Interbike, but is also open to the general public. It was held in the convention center called Makuhari Messe in the city of Makuhari which is about half way between central Tokyo and the Narita airport in the Chiba prefecture. It was a weekday and a very rainy day, so it wasn't too crowded. They also offered free entrance for women on this day. I was in line to buy me a ticket when a man approached me and offered a free ticket. I was suspicious at first, but it turned out he had free entry already and had extra tickets. So, it was our luck that both of us got in for free.

The thing I wanted to do there the most was to test ride bikes, especially the high end road bikes. I've been looking at them in magazines, on the internet and in bike shops, but I haven't really ridden the more recent road bikes mostly made of carbon fiber. I'm not really in the market to buy one, but I thought I would like to ride them and see what they are about.

It was a huge show, so there was so much to see. We looked at so much stuff and took lots of pictures, so I will try and recount our day the best I can.



Right after the entrance awaited the booths of Eddy Merckx and De Rosa bikes. I've always liked De Rosa for their style and being one of the few Italian bike makers to still offer steel frames. They were definitely one of the bikes I wanted to test ride, but unfortunately the registration for test riding had already closed until 2 hours later.



We walked by the Pinarello booth which had a long line of people waiting to test ride, so we decided to come back to it and then we went to the Bianchi booth. Bianchi is one of the few bike brands that Kao knew of and wanted to test ride and the registration line was still open, so we got in line. It turned out that they closed the line right after us, so we just managed to get in. We waited a while (maybe little less than half hour) and then we signed up to test ride and they told us a time which was about an hour and a half later(!) to come back. So, even after waiting in line, we had more than an hour before we could test ride a bike. I thought I was going to test ride bikes one after another, but it looked like it wasn't going to be that easy.



So, we decided to walk around and just look at stuff and see if there was a bike we could test ride without too much wait. We spotted this cool classic Pashley in a booth nearby.



There was cycling class for children too.

Then we came to the Cervelo booth.



Cervelo is really the cutting edge of race bikes. Like this P4 time trial bike above. I thought their bikes are things that belong in the elite road racing world, so I didn't even think I could ride one, but it turned out that their bikes were available to ride and the line didn't seem that long. We waited about 5 minutes to sign up and it was available half an hour later.



Kao opted to test ride a Masi entry level road bike which was available immediately.



Kao on the test course.



Kao's impression was that it wasn't actually all that different from her old steel road bike other than that the components worked much better.



This is the Cervelo RS that I rode. Kao took pictures of me riding it, so she will probably put them in a post soon. I was pretty thrilled to ride it so that I didn't really check the seat height before I took off, but as soon as I started, I immediately knew that the saddle was way too low. Being on the course for the first time with other people was also distracting. There was too much traffic to really pedal with any effort until the long straightaway at the end of the short loop. Officially, you're supposed to ride just one lap, but it seemed most people were riding multiple laps. I didn't really get enough of a feel with just a lap, so I kept going. The backside of the loop goes out of the building for a bit. It's shielded from rain with a roof, but there were little pools of water on the course. Enough water got onto the tires and onto the course inside the building and there was a sharp turn right after we go back into the building where the water on the building floor made it super slippery. I felt my rear wheel slip even though I wasn't going all that fast. I didn't fall, but I saw a guy fall right in front of me. Kao said she saw 3 poeple crash just during the time I was riding. I did try and ride with a bit of effort on the front straightaway, but it was way too short to really get a good feel. I ended up doing 3 laps. The bike was light and responsive and the carbon frame felt solid, but really the course seemed inadequate to really gauge the ride. The Cervelo RS is a climber's bike, so I would've liked to have gone up a short hill with it.



After that, it was time to go for our Bianchi test ride. Kao rode this Bianchi carbon road bike. She had never ridden a carbon bike and said it was much more impressive than the Masi aluminum bike. For my Bianchi test ride, I made sure to have the saddle raised this time. I also rode a carbon road bike. The saddle height was much better, but the handle bar/brakes set up seemed a bit awkward. I couldn't tell too much of a difference between the Bianchi with the Cervelo on this short course though. I felt the wheel slip a couple more times again and after the ride, I didn't feel too much more like doing more test rides. I also thought maybe riding other carbon road bikes might feel about the same with these conditions. As a fan of road racing, I like looking at the bikes that the pros ride, but I think having ridden these bikes, I'm slightly more over the mystique of high end road bikes. I thought these bikes were way too expensive for me to consider before, but I think now I would much prefer a custom steel bike even if I could afford a carbon race bike.



After that we just wandered around the big event space.
One thing that really brought out the bike-nerd in me was the Dura-Ace di2 shifting system at the Shimano booth. The picture above is not the bike I rode, but the bike next to it was equipped with the di2. The di2 is Shimano's electric shifting system. Instead of pulling on the shifters, you only need to press buttons and then motors inside the derailleurs will shift the gears for you. It was pretty neat although you can only get so much out of shifting gears on a stationery bike.



I think the most impressive display I saw was this Fuji display of track bikes.



I think these are actual track bikes and not street single speeds. I am not a huge fan of the whole fixie culture, but I like looking at track bikes used in real competition.



We found what I think was the most interesting booth after that. It was a booth made up of a whole bunch of makers of clothing and accessories. Yakkay helmet was one of them. I tried one out and it seems to look OK as far as I can tell in this photo.



There was also a maker of leather accessories called Maware. We actually spotted Mr. Fisher in this booth as we walked in, but he was just leaving so I didn't get to meet him, but later I found he also took pictures of these accessories and put them up on Twitter.


There were like 4 or 5 clothing makers that made clothing that were like regular clothes except they were made for riding the bike. I didn't get pictures of the clothing this time, but we got a lot of brochures and shop cards, so I think I want to look them up and do a separate post about them. Maybe we'll visit some shops as well.



Anyway, it was a fun event. We saw a lot of other stuff which I didn't write about like seeing Japanese pseudo celebrities speak at the talk show stage and various booths of bikes and gear and it would be impossible to recount everything, but you can check out more of the pictures I took in the slide show above or check out the flickr set here. I am not sure I will attend it again next year, but it was really fun and I think it's worth checking out if you're into bikes and you've never been to such an event.