Tour de Brew

The day after the moonlit ride Joe, Forrest, and I decided to set off on the Tour de Nash route found on mapmyride.com





After checking the route Forrest suggested that we swing by Yazoo brewery on the way for some tasty imports ;) I looked at the route and it ran within a few blocks of the brewery. Upon further inspection I realized that the route ran within a few blocks of ALL of Nashville's four brew pubs (defined as pubs that brew their own beer on site): Big River, Yazoo, Blackstone, and Boscos. You know what we had to do...
Outside of Big River Grille downtown. A rather touristy place, with surprisingly delicious beer.
Number One! Joe had an Irish Red, Forrest a pale or something (I forget), and I had the brown ale. All very tasty.

From downtown we headed north to the Metro Center greenway. I had never ridden this route before, so I was excited.




Very nice and relaxing.
For some reason, I can alway end up breaking down and pissing within a mile of a port-a-john.

The greenway loops around and meets up with DB Todd Blvd, which means...
We got to ride by my old Alma Mater.
Oh the good old days of Martin Luther King Jr. Academic Magnet for Health Sciences and Engineering at Pearl High School.


The PJs got a lot nicer. My junior year they allowed seniors to go off campus for lunch, which was canceled shortly after a kid got mugged at gunpoint in broad daylight. Considering our lunches started at 10 AM, those Ganstas had to wake up pretty early...
Yazoo brewery just a few blocks away.
Number Two! I had to go for the Hop Project, Forrest had the Nitro Stout, and Joe the Sly Rye Porter.
I really wanted to steal one of these for the homebrew, but I don't think it would fit on my bike.
Yazoo is the only place in town that has what could actually be qualified as a beer garten.
Outside of Blackstone.
Here we decided to get some lunch, and while we were at it, a flyte. The summer Maibock is wonderful, and the St. Charle's Porter is my favorite beer in town. Dave Miller, the former brew master and father of my dear friend Cathy, has left a great legacy for this restaurant. He also writes brilliant home brewing books.
Number Three! (and four for Joe and I)
If anyone is thinking of replicating this route, a piece of advice. Take your time. Do as much of the Tour de Nash route as you can (we had to cut it short because it was getting dark) and ride carefully. Leaving Blackstone I almost ran right into a car waiting at the light. Luckily I looked up right in time.

My other Alma Mater. The blurriness of the picture is a metaphor for my college experience at Vandy. Also its a reflection of my declining steadiness after four beers.
Outside of Boscos. The little blue bike to the left, is a Schwinn cruiser similar to one I rebuilt. This one had a Halcyon decal. I'm not surprised.

Number Five, and room for dessert. After I drove home questionably under the limit, I slept like a baby. Great ride, I will certainly reminisce over this one.

The Trace

I am a perennial optimist. I like to see the silver lining to every cloud (including the rain cloud that drenched Tim and I on our way to Charlottesville). As a result, the disappointing fact of having to move back with my parents earlier than expected turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for me as a cyclist. Just a stone's throw away from their house is the tail end of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444 mile designated bike route that stretches from the Mississippi in Arkansas and ends in central Tennessee. Near Nashville, its a rather challenging series of rolling hills and beautiful scenes. Here are some pics:












This little dude was hanging out with me at the end of the ride. Gotta love a litle bit of nature just a mile or so from suburbia.
Speaking of which...

Joe, Forrest, and I decided to do some moonlit riding on the Trace as per advice of one of the Halcyon mechanics. It was a gorgeous full moon night, and Joe and I had ridden our bikes in from Vandy area to Bellevue earlier in the evening. We just rode to the bridge and back, about an hour. No pics are available, for obvious reasons. We decided to have some dinner and meet up with Forrest at the suburban clusterfuck that popped up close to my parents' house in the past few years (ours was the third house built on our street and deer would frequent our backyard almost daily). We ate at Corner Pub in the Woods. Check out their "import" section. :) I wonder how much the import tariff for Yazoo was :) I can't wait for Oregon...

Hiatus

I probably should have updated this site a while back with what's going down these days after our abrupt termination of our cyclastic voyage. I blame the delay on a number of things. At first I barely wanted to acknowledge our temporary defeat (more on why temporary soon) by commenting on it in such a widely distributed medium as the internet. I've had plenty of private conversations in the course of the last month about how and why we were taken off the road, so I didn't feel the need to elaborate in the blogosphere. Then I started working in anticipation of future travels and my eventual move to Eugene, OR so I didn't really have the time. And lastly, I started some fun new projects and adventures in Nashville which made me hesitant about looking backward and more excited for the future. That last theme will be the theme of this blog for the next few weeks while Tim and I are on hiatus planning for our next grand adventure.

That being said, here's a quick rundown on what's going on:

Tim and I agreed while staying at Severed Deer Foot Cabins (aka Royal Oaks Cabins) that if we had to stop our journey, it would be merely a temporary delay of our plan to do some exhaustive bicycle touring this summer. We had our first taste of bicycle adventure and we were hooked! The freedom of carbon neutral travel and exploration was exhilarating, and was not something we would give up on easily. The TransAm plan was out for several reasons. The main reason was time: with a concrete deadline corresponding to the start of our academic adventures we likely had 5-6 weeks of travel available to us (as opposed to the 10 we were planning on taking). As fun as it would be to bike across Kansas and Missouri, we felt something more exciting would be more ideal. Also biking across Utah and Nevada in July and August seemed like a death wish, especially for this melanin-challenged blogger. A few other ideas came to mind. Naturally we thought about touring in the South if Tim's injury was going to be prohibitive in a longer journey, but the sweltering summers are way more daunting than the thought of biking in a desert. One idea that persisted through all our discussions was touring down the Pacific Coast of the US. At first the thought of getting all our shit out there seemed a bit challenging, but it occurred to me that, considering we are both moving to the West Coast, it's likely that we would have to fly out there sometime this summer anyway for apartment hunting and the like. It doesn't seem like it would be all that more expensive to get our bikes sent out there. Furthermore the idea of biking down the West Coast seems so much nicer than biking in Bumfuck(or Bumpass), USA. A summer of breweries, wineries, and other intoxicating aspects of Western life awaits!

Until then, Tim is recovering, slowly strengthening his legs, and identifying problems that could have led to his injury. I am biking around Nashville as much as possible, and will be bringing you pictures of my local touring if I remember to bring my camera on my trips. Also I have started several bike projects (see next post) which allow me to keep doing stuff bike related even if I can't bike all the time due to my work schedule.

If you're wondering what my job is, I'm essentially a glorified data entry assitant in a Lab. I analyze podosome formation (look it up) in rat vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). Once or twice a week, however, I get to make movies of podosome dynamics on a TIRF (look it up, seriously wikipedia is really good about laymans description of shit like this) microscope, which is pretty damn cool. I get paid as much as I did in my last job, and I am gaining valuable experience with mammalian cell culture and advanced microscopy! Yay skills for paying bills.

-sf

Schwinn Traveller rebuild (tail end)

Like I stated previously, I really want to spend this summer doing bike related stuff. Since I work 9-5, and live with my parents about a half hour commute (45-hr if you're counting getting to parking lot, swinging by grocery, etc) away from work, I don't really get to ride all that often during the work week. Instead I decided to undertake a few bike projects. I've alluded to my other bike frames (too big and too small), which will definitely get some TLC this summer. First, however, there was a bit of Tzedakah (low "level" to be sure) to perform...

A friend of mine, who may or may not read this blog, really wanted a vintage looking bike to ride around town, 5 mile trips at most, and didn't want to spend all that much on it. Before I left for the cyclastic voyage, I advised her on what kind of a bike would be ideal for her, and advised her to keep me intimately involved in any bike purchase she would make. She ended up getting a bike for her birthday that was a small mountian bike, and it would take quite a bit of an investment to turn that around to a cruiser, and it would never look quite right anyway. When I came back to Nashville, I had about a week before starting work, so I took it upon myself to fix this problem for her. I scoured craigslist for an appropriate bike and found a beauty of a vintage Schwinn Traveler. The ad posted that the Bendix Automatic hub was broken, and I felt confident that I would be able to fix it. My job started soon after, and thus went my free time. Luckily Nashville has Halcyon Bike shop, a new and uniquely awesome bike shop that specializes in older bikes, with some thoroughly competent and creative mechanics. They felt confident in fixing the bike, bu it was with great disappointment to both of us that my friend was told the bike was unrideable.

I couldn't believe it. The bike seemed fine! Apparently there was an egregious bend in the seat stay that would invariably perturb the motion of the rear wheel. Because of their liability, they couldn't bend the steel back into shape, but luckily for me, I had no such moral or legal impediments. Unrideable?Ha! Ruskiye ne zdayutsa! (Russians don't surrender). Armed with online resources, and the combined weight of my dad and I, I bent that shit back, and rebuilt the bike! Here are some pics:
It would have been more impressive if I had taken more "before" pics, but I was less concerned with documentation, and more concerned with getting this damn thing fixed. In order to bend the frame, I had to take apart the fork (rebuild the headset), the bottom bracket and crankset, and everything else on the bike. It was fun for sure, and amusing to compare the weight of just the frame to my two fully built bikes which I always considered "heavy." Steel strong enough to resist all of my weight is pretty damn heavy!The broken hub is a very interesting piece of machinery made in the 50s and early 60s (this bike is older than my parents who are celebrating their 50th birthdays this year!) As such it has some quircks including a locknut that requires a special tool to remove it. Since that shit probably runs a $100 on ebay, I had to make one out of two 3/8" pipe nipples, an appropriately sized angle, some lock-tite thread glue stuff, and a shit ton of hack sawing.
The hub is a "two speed automatic hub" and works as follows: all gearing is internal and consists, form left to right, of disc brakes that are compressed on back pedaling, two sets of clutches, driving screws (internal) and sun and planetary gears. The speeds are changed by "kick-back" which either compresses or releases the clutches so that they engage with the different speed driving screws. Notice the difference in the spacing between the top and bottom pics. Pay attention to the part of the hub pictured above that is in front of the tube of grease.

The low speed (i think) driving screw is the one sticking out and has "planetary" and "sun" gears. Cool stuff. Consider this: the hub design is cool and relatively simple, but because of all of the internal parts there is an immense amount of internal friction. The hub has FOUR sets of bearings: two large rings on both ends of the hub, loose bearings between the low and high speed driving screws, and a small set that goes on top of the low speed driving screw.
Final product...

She's really a beauty, and rides quite well, if I don't say so myself. White chain is a nice touch too...

This is my next project. A combination of selfish and charitable bike work. The bike in the rear is my trusty old Takara Deluxe Touring bike. This bike first got me hooked on biking. I bought it for $15 at a yard sale. It was priced at $70, but I really wanted to pay $30. My friend (for whom the Traveler was built) said, "If you're going pay $30, just ask for $15 and haggle up." She deserves the Traveler! Although a great deal, the bike is quite outdated, and the only original components left on it after many Tim-advised improvements are the stem, seatpost, wheels, and BB/crankset. I want to bring it with me to OR, but the rear wheel is totally fucked by now, and I kind of want a fixie for flatter Eugene (plus I could shave some pounds off it by ridding myself of drivetrain components). The plan is as follows: I will take the Fuji frame, in front, and build it into a sweet road bike capable of conquering Nashville hills in Nashville for my dad to ride around at his leisure and for me to ride whenever I come to Nashville. The drive train (except for BB/cranks) will be moved from Takara to Fuji. The wheels I got from Tim for cheap, and I have some bars and stuff that I can put on it to finish it off. I will then buy a sweet flip flop fixie/single speed wheel for the Takara (I think I'll keep the front) and turn it into a pimp ass city bike (I'm considering a chainguard and front rack simply for the aesthetic of a Amsterdam style city bike). Look for that soon.

-sf