I go through waves.  This is no more evident than in my music listening choices. Many of you will remember that a few months back all I listened to was this,

And those of you who remember that have also probably realized that I now listen almost exclusively to this,

Obsessive? Absolutely, but when I find something I like I listen to it until I know every word, every drum pattern, every chord progression. I know there are many of you within the Alliance that can name a song, the artist and the album by the intro. So I know that I am not alone.

This boils over into many things in my life, including my hobbies. Just a few months ago the only riding I did was on the singlespeed going as fast as I could for as long as possible. Why? Because it seemed like riding TrueGrit would be fun and it was a challenge. Before that it was the Enduro on the Goose, didn’t touch the hardtail for months at a time. And going back even further….

I think you get the point.

I’ve been accused of not riding any more. Truth is, I haven’t. I’ve been pulling my way up rock faces and just thinking about getting back out to do it again brings a smile to my face. Many of the things I love about riding are amplified when I climb. I love bombing down a rock garden as fast as I can because my mind shuts down and my body reacts, complete concentration. The same thing happens as I go up a wall, my mind shuts off and my body goes to town.

I’ve often said that trails are like puzzles, you gotta figure ‘em out. I love finding a section of trail and sessioning it until I figure out how to get through it, one move at a time. Well, you guessed it, climbing is the same. It’s just one big puzzle that makes my brain move in different ways to figure out how to get my body to do what I want it to.

I haven’t been riding, big deal. I will be riding today if anyone wants to join me…

P. L. and R.

It then took man about 40 billion years to figure out what to do with it. God in his infinite wisdom, could wait no longer and imposed upon Leonardo’s mind the vision of the bicycle. Unfortunately, God failed to recognize that the process of anodization and CNC machines had not yet been invented so the vision was left to flounder.

And then woman’s liberation came around and they were sick of being accused of using horses for their own means so they rode these new things called bicycles. Then man did everything he could to take away this freedom and thus the majority spent their time trying to destroy the two-wheeled love machines. Luckily, God intervened and let us keep the best invention of all time, with but one requirement, it be maintained as to keep the bicycle in its paradisaical state.

As God’s messenger, I am here to teach you the good news of bicycle maintenance. It is a high task but one that I cannot shirk lest I be cast down into the fiery pits of cardom.

Today’s lesson, How to exorcise the demons in Lake Bottom Bracket.

Mom, what’s a bee bee?

A BB, or bottom bracket is the piece that allows your cranks (the things pedals are attached to) to spin. This is done in conjunction with some bearings that are effectively attached, pressed or screwed into a bottom bracket shell (the part of the frame where the BB hides). This part of the bicycle experiences a high amount of load and as such should be given your attention. Unfortunately, it is hidden which gives you the ability to ignore the orange stuff growing around your balls.

Currently there are three major types of bb’s being used, at least by reputable manufacturers. There have and are many other types, but if you are reading this I assume you have a “real” bike.

Type 1 is the cup and cone bottom bracket. On this type of bb, the driveside cup is fixed meaning you screw it into the frame and tighten it down. The bearings, usually in a carrier but sometimes loose, are set inside this cup hopefully with grease appplied. The other cup, with bearings sitting inside, goes on the other side of the bike and uses a lock ring to fix the cup when proper adjustment on the bearings is achieved.

No, you shouldn't use peanut butter for grease.

The above blurry picture shows a non-driveside cup with the lock ring in place. These two cups are secured around a spindle and the cranks attached to the spindle. This type of bb has lost favor due to its love of coming loose and always needing to be serviced.

Its descendent is based on similar ideas but eliminates the need for adjustment. The cartridge bb was born. This type has a fixed cup on the driveside that includes the sealed cartridge bearings and the spindle. All of this is nicely enclosed in as one piece. The non-driveside cup, sometimes plastic, is fixed to the other side. There is no adjustment in this type of bottom bracket.

It's best to avoid the orange Kool-Aid

At this point, we’s gots to talk about spindles. As I mentioned above, the spindle is the piece to which the cranks are attached. In the above photo, it is a square taper spindle. As the name insinuates, the spindle is square and is tapered meaning it gets bigger as you go toward the bearings. The crank has a matching square hole that is pressed onto the spindle with the crank fixing bolt.

As mtbers started to destroy cranks with this type of bb, the manufacturers decided it best to create a new attachment system. This is where the splined cranks come into play. (yes, I realize this idea was not new, but it wasn’t until then that it was widely adopted) These eliminated and created issues. The crank was less likely to strip or round out. However, the first few generations tended to have the problem of coming loose and falling off. The spindle was also larger in size forcing the bearings to be much smaller. Smaller bearings wear out faster, that’s just life.

You can see the splines on the spindle and the bigger size. This particular one had a spindle failure.

After a few generations of this, the outboard bb was born of a virgin. This allowed for a larger size spindle and bigger bearings due to the fact that the balls were taken outside of the frame and attached outboard. This created a stiffer system that was also lighter (bet you’ve never heard that before). This also renewed the need for the art of bottom bracket chasing. Any misalignment of the bearings puts extra load on them and causes them to prematurely wear.

And then they went and screwed everything up by going bigger, and Satan tempted man to create the BB30 (ok I guess I can’t count, there are four types we are going to talk about, sue me!). This type took the spindle and enlarged it once again in the name of stiffness, all the way up to 30mm. This created the need of making the bottom bracket shell much larger and then put the bearings back into the gaping hole in the frame. The bearings are pressed into the frame in one way or another.

The gaping hole

As you can see from all the above pictures, there is an orange mold that tends to grow around your balls when they are left unattended in the bottom bracket shell. This mold grows faster if you use water to wash your bike. So it is best to avoid water and to take your balls out and play with them on occasion.

Exorcising the demons of Lake Bottom Bracket

The first thing to do is to take your bike to your LBS (no this doesn’t stand for lovers of bike shit it stands for Local Bike Shop) and have them chase and face your bottom bracket shell. This only applies to the first three types of bb’s, the gaping hole cannot be faced. Once this is done and done right you should be set for the life of the frame.

Next you will need a few tools to remove the cranks and the bottom bracket bearings. Each bb is different so consult your local lover of bike shit to ensure you get the right ones.

Once you are set with your awesome tools, remove the cranks and then take the bottom bracket out of the shell. It is easy to remember which way to turn the bb cups for removal and installation. For removal spin the cup toward the front of the bike and for installation spin them toward the back of the bike. Yup, on both sides. The lefty loosy, right tighty doesn’t work as the drive side is reverse threaded.

Once you have your balls in your hand, take a rag and clean the bb shell and then the bottom bracket itself. Check the bearings for wear or roughness. Then apply a nice coating of grease to the threads and put the bb back in. On outboard style bearings, be sure to use a torque wrench so you don’t overtighten the bearings and crush them. You will also want to grease the spindle as you slide it back through the bearings.

For that last type of bb, plan on servicing the stupid thing about every six months. If you have the pressfit type, you are going to need a good hammer and a punch and know full well that you will be replacing the cups/bearings about yearly.

If you grease the bb and keep things clean, Lake Bottom Bracket will not form and the orange mold will not grow. You will not get creaks and your bearings will run smoother and last longer making it easier for you to ride.

Now go forth and preach the gospel of bicycle maintenance to all those who will hear it.

Here’s the amazing photograph…

If you can read that last line, it says there is an incomplete web page. Holy shit, so I jumped on over that way so I could continue my amazing coverage of this breaking news. Guess what I found…

That’s right folks. BMC has taken it to the next level. They have “perfectly adapted” the saddle clamp to the frame concept. I wish every bike company would do that.

This news, so aptly brought to me by Bike Rumor, was so awesome I made the effort of reading the entire article. I smartly learned that they are currently working on a 29′r dirt styled riding device as well. Breaking news if I’ve ever read breaking news.

If you haven’t caught my sarcasm by now, I’m sorry. Next time I will try to lay it on a little thicker.

I personally think BMC bikes are sexy as hell. What I found humorous is the excitement stirred by a company releasing products that have realistically been around for a decade or more and then it being touted as cool or new. Bike Rumor isn’t the only bicycle related website that does this. I’m sure if you were to use the Google machines you would find plenty of sites with the same photos and basically the same article. And everyone was excited and prayed to the Swiss biking Gods to give thanks.

Bike news has become as boring as watching 24 hour news networks. There really isn’t enough real news to cover so the old news is recycled or they attempt to make news worthy stories out of mundane situations. I especially enjoy the news networks coverage of any damsel in distress. It just makes me laugh.

I guess when you try to improve on something that hasn’t significantly changed in over a century, you are bound to recycle some ideas. And then there will be people getting excited about companies doing things that others have already done. It may just be the way the cycling world works, it’s just one big cycle…

Out.

It was a long time ago. The glossy photos accompanied by the words of Ferrentino and Felton inspired me through many adolescent daydreams and were the motivation for staying in the cycling industry at the turn of the century. The style the magazine possessed  and these two writers embodied for me was part of what defined the sport. There was always adventure and good writing involved that kept me waiting for the next rag to show up in my mailbox.

But as all good things must come to an end, so did the quality of Bike. 

As one who must read on a regular basis, I fell in love with Dirt Rag. Their grass roots take on the industry and push for simplicity and all riding styles, even those considered to be fringe elements of the industry intrigued me for many years. There was always something fresh which had a lot to do with their use of constantly rotating contributors.

I stopped subscribing to any magazines a few years ago due to the lack of funds while attending college. It was either the rags or beer, I think I chose wisely. Of course, I would grab one on occasion and enjoy some glossy photos and inspiring words at the grocery store magazine rack.

This past 25 Hours in Frog Hollow saw me being given a “Gift Subscription” to Dirt Rag. I’m not gonna lie to you, I was ecstatic. A free year’s worth of reading material, for free. Yea, I’m in. Then I received my first issue. Things had changed a bit. Sure the general platform was the same, but the grammar and spelling errors were atrocious.

The last issue that popped mysteriously into my mailbox, had a review on “Tuner” bikes. When I read the giant letters scrawled across the page it caught me off guard as I was not aware of Tuner bikes. I proceeded to read the review only to realize after the first paragraph that this was not a new bike company but rather a typographical error. The review was for a Turner DHR.

After finishing the last issue, I was tempted to read it again with a red pen and then return it to Dirt Rag in hopes of helping them improve. (As a side note, I am about half way through the latest issue and things are much better. Even if the word handling doesn’t exist in the Dirt Rag lexicon.)

It was the National Bicycle Dealers Association’s newsletter where I read that it takes at least three years of wrenching for a bicycle mechanic to be efficient enough to break even on his wage and at least five years to make a profit. I think any service manager in the industry could nod their head in agreement to those numbers. However, if you look at many shop’s service staff, there is a traditional “Head Mechanic” who knows his shit and has been around the block a few times.

And then there is the rest of the staff, usually high school kids who are stoked on cycling but couldn’t tell you the difference between a freehub and a freewheel if their lives depended on it. Excitement and passion are only going to get you so far.

Within this under staff there is usually one or two highlights that get it and stick around long enough to procure the requisite experience to ensure they can fix a bike. About this time, they graduate from high school and move on. And the cycle begins again.

What’s my point? This industry needs some professionals. We can’t continue to expect people to pass up better paying jobs and better benefits simply because they love the sport. The mediocrity of much of the industry is a direct result of the shedding of professionals who just can’t continue to make peanuts. About the time that they are profitable, they will be offered something better and they move on.

Whether it be magazines, shops or bike brands, as an industry it is time to stop screwing around and time to start building a place where people who are passionate about the sport can continue to make a real wage. Where good writers and good wrenches aren’t forced to pick between being able to afford to live and doing what they love.

Yes, I think it is possible, but even more importantly, I believe it is a prerequisite for survival.

ProZac on his annual bicycle ride in SG

For those of you who don’t support the local fish rubber and missed the breaking news, Mooseknuckler Ally ProZac was in town (or is, he wasn’t specific on the exact time he was leaving today). As is now tradition, he wondered over to the shop on the dingled commuter he keeps at the parents’ house and made plans for a ride.

The ride took place yesterday afternoon as the clouds cleared and the wind died down a little bit. We rode my favoritest of trails. You guessed it, Paradise. The reasons, though completely unimportant, were two fold. First, we had little time, about an hour to get a ride in. And B, because I needed a GPS track and despite my best efforts at bribing someone else to get it for me, I had to do it myself.

As always, Paradise kind of sucked, but the ride was good as it was spent with one of the original Mooseknucklers along with a newer addition to the tribe.

Jumping to what right now will seem like a completely unrelated topic, the Mooseknuckler Cup happened this past weekend.

For those of you with short memories or complete lack of planning skills, the Mooseknuckler Cup happens the last Friday of every month. Seeing that the month ends today, that makes last Friday the Mooseknuckler Cup. This also means the next alley cat styled social event will occur on March 30th. I will wait while you mark your calendar.

February’s event was planned out by Fixie Dave who did a nice job of making us all ride a lot. We started at the Brook’s Nature Park and spent the next hour and a half searching out parks, a coin marked with the year 1980, a green dinosaur, a .01 stamp and our favorite snack.

You would be surprised at how many parks are within the SG city limits. It was like a trip down memory lane for myself as I grew up just off of Bluff Street and spent many summer days perusing different parks on my kick ass Murray bmx bike. Most of those parks are still there. KB and I made our way around the city snapping photos of each park and brainstorming on the route to be most efficient and hit the most playgrounds. Luckily it was night and the parks weren’t occupied by copious amounts of children or we may have been arrested for taking pictures of strangers’ children.

Anyway, we met back at the nature center and enjoyed story telling, shared our photos and snack food.

As we chatted, shivering in our boots and discreetly enjoying our adult beverages, I said, “At least there are five of us who enjoy bicycle culture.” This made perfect sense because there were five of us in attendance.

The Alliance was born in the winter of 2005 as a grass roots advocacy group. The name came from a group of us who all worked together and have become known as the original four and our scheme to find a way to get media passes to Interbike. Anyway, the Alliance had big goals; create a cycling friendly infrastructure and foment a cycling community (this can be found here).

Since that time the Alliance has taken on many different forms and has existed on two opposite ends of the state. I have written a dozen or so mission statements that have been wide ranging in orientation and objective. The only thing that has been constant has been the name and the idea of fomenting a cycling community. The current mission statement deals entirely with that idea.

Alley Cats, No Dabs Contests, Social Lounges, yea they all kind of fit nicely into that idea that I would like to live in a place that there are people who are excited about bikes and that ride them all the time. I can’t help but look to Portland or Minneapolis and wish that I resided there. Unfortunately both places lack the very things that keep me planted here in Southern Utah. So the other option is to create what we are lacking here because I have not yet figured out how to get the red rocks transplanted to Portland…

A lot has changed in SG in the past 7 years. Cyclists are everywhere. Some are locals, others come from far away places to ride that event commonly known as Torture (less commonly known as the Ironman).

That’s what it is all about. From the beginning when there were four (Sir Gurr, Prattipus, ProZac and myself) to now when there are five that show up for an Alley Cat. The Alliance is still there pushing, prodding and hoping that some day we might be the next best cycling friendly community, but with red rocks.

Ride more.

That doesn't go there.

KB and I sat down to breakfast, as we often do, at St. Helen’s. I had already had some coffee so I was in Jabber Jaws Pratt mode. KB on the other hand has been stuck in “obsessing over touring” mode for a couple of weeks. Since her birth month (yup she celebrates for a whole month), she has been nagging me about getting a touring bike or getting a bike set up for touring, or whatever. She even rode into the shop on Saturday to get a feel for her Trek she has kept around for the past 43 years just so she could tour on it. Oh and she bought some knickers. I love knickers.

Anyway, she was nagging me about getting a touring bike. Now, I’m a fan of having bikes. I love bikes. I don’t really care for riding said bikes as can be deduced by my riding habits, but I do love bikes and I love having my shed full of them. So her wanting another bike shouldn’t really be an issue. However, we recently ran into this,

We, for some odd non-logical reason, decided that the Mooseknuckler Cycling Alliance World Headquarters needed an actual guest room. This effected our bike storage situation negatively. Prior to said decision, the guest room was the gear room and road bikes were stored next to the drum kit and sleeping bags. Converting sleeping bag hanging space into bed space required some rethinking of the bike situation. Being the bicycle storage genius that I am, I simply moved them to the shed and hung them up. After which, I noticed the real problem.

You see at five bikes a piece, we are at capacity. We could in fact fit more bikes into the space, but this would hinder ever being able to ride them. It’s already hard enough to get a bike out of the shed for said activity without adding more bikes to move.

So we were having breakfast at St. Helen’s and KB was going on and on about how she “needed” a touring bike. Normally, I would immediately begin looking for how to go about procuring another bike but for some odd reason all I could think about was the space issue. Five bikes each, that is the capacity. Ergo, if she wants another bike we need to eliminate one to maintain our bike storage equilibrium. Maybe its my mathematically trained brain that says if 10 equals total space use, then 10 is max. Sure you can subtract one from ten and get 9 and then add one more to get back to ten, but if ten is capacity…

Before going to breakfast at St. Helen’s, I like to read Yehuda Moon. Half of the fun of reading the comic is reading the incessant comments by bicycle commuters and junkies like myself that love bikes. Often the subject of the perfect number of bikes has been covered. After exhaustive research it has been determined, by the commentors on Yehuda Moon not myself, that the perfect number of bikes is, X-1=Perfect. Where X is the number of bikes that would cause you to get a divorce. As long as you maintain one bike under this number (remember X-1) you will have the perfect amount.

In relation to this equation goes the following, if X is the amount of bikes that will cause you to get a divorce and X is equal to one there is no way around not getting a divorce. It’s in the math. You should just go ahead and get it over with.

Now I relate this all to you for your benefit. Remember we were eating breakfast at St. Helen’s, and I found myself in a conversation I’ve had many times. What is odd is that I was caught on the opposite side of the conversation. For the first time in my life, I was telling someone that they didn’t need any more bikes and if they wanted another bike they needed to eliminate one they already had.

At this point in time, my brain completely froze. This is the equivalent to the pinwheel of death for Mac users or the Blue Circle of death for Windows folk. My brain basically melted. The hard drive ceased to function and all data stored up to this point was about to be lost. Luckily I’m a Windows user so I Alt-Control-Deleted the context and everything went back to normal.

Now I’ve got to figure out how to get another bike in the shed…

The Alliance is all about people coming south to ride and we wished them all luck and then did our own thing. Our own thing was pretty hard core. We started our Camp Knuckler on Saturday night with the opening ceremonies. The Mooseknuckler Cycling Alliance Social Lounge was opened for the event. Seeing that we are not prejudice, we even let some Lynda Campers join us for the celebration.

Physics Brian told us all about how he had cheated. I couldn’t figure out how pedaling was cheating but apparently you were supposed to follow a certain route and he prefers singletrack.

Sunday came without warning. As in there was no memory of the transition from Saturday to Sunday and the morning was particularly brutal. I bid adieu from bed to the Lynda Campers as they headed out for some more “fun.” I slowly began preparing for what would be the highlight of mountain biking in Southern Utah for the month of February, the 3rd Mooseknuckler No Dabs Contest.

I had planned on being good and warmed up for the climb up to Zen, so had made plans to ride the Barrel Ride before hand. As morning switched to noon, I was having doubts if I could even turn a pedal (I have confidence issues). Shelby offered to drive which was a good thing. My head reattached itself about half way up the race course.

Seeing as we were simply “warming up” for the main event, we spent a lot of time watching other people riding back down the trail and saying, “Is that a cross bike?” Which the way I just framed it doesn’t seem like a valid question. However, in the light of following cross bike tracks up the trail we were sure Mitch was rocking around somewhere ahead of us. Plus it gave us a good reason to stop and wheeze for a bit before continuing.

Our “warm up” didn’t take as long as planned and so we cooled down waiting for the rest of the folks to show up. Mitch rolled up looking like he wanted to “warm up” as well but instead stood around with us waiting. We finally rolled out about 3:30 which happens to be the exact time that we had planned to start.

We decided to break the event down into two separate sections, Upper Zen and Lower Zen. Shelby showed us all up on Upper Zen with but one dab on ‘im. The rest of use were two or more and held our heads in shame. After watching Shelby run an almost perfect run on Upper Zen, I was convinced that we would be having another installment of the No Dabs Contest on Zen because I would like to be witness of a perfect ride. Lower Zen was a tie between Prattipus and myself with Shelby coming in second with one dab. He did get cocky so we were glad he came crashing back down.

And Fixie, before you ask, Yes I rode the singlespeed.

Judge Dame was also in the singlespeed category. He rode with us and as always we enjoyed his company. When we were all done and telling our big stories about riding over rocks and then turning left, Judge Dame asked what the Mooseknuckler was. I did my best to be coherent and attempted to tie in all of your answers. I think I did a pretty good job because I ended with, “The ironic thing is that none of us wear lycra.”

Good times were had by all. Those who weren’t there were missed. And those who were there, were not missed.

P. L. and R.

“A semi geo-political, outdoor, fantasy, riding and drinking organization.” – Fixie Dave

“Alternative riding styles.” – Prattipus

“The path to righteousness.” – Brian Mulligan

“The inertia of MTBing in SWUT.” – Scarf

“An alliance of cyclists united for sustained cycling freedom, consumption of alcoholic beverages, and ass kicking facial hair. Now someone said there would be lobster.” – Super D.

“A bunch of dudes with bikes.” – The Rod

“A Gander of Riders that Drink better then they can ride and enjoy seeing each others Mooseknucklers whether they will admit it or not.” – Sherm

P. L. and R.

When I was but a wee lad, I spent a lot of time thinking. Most of the ideas and thoughts that bounced around in my head went ahead and bounced right out. There were only a few that stuck and a few that I attempted to see if they could be. Most of these were purely philosophical bull shit type questions. One of these questions was the existence of silence.

I thought a lot about silence. I spent a lot of time alone tramping around wherever it was that I could in search of the absence of sound. I quickly found that the colder the weather, the deeper the void of sound was.

Anyone who has spent a winter night on top of mountain where cars are not aloud, where people do not tread (at least very often) and where the snow is high, are probably the closest they will ever be to truly experiencing silence. That void of noise where all is still and all is dead. There is no motion, no disturbing sound. The waves of the air are undisturbed. Peace.

Through this time of seeking for complete silence, it quickly became evident that man cannot experience it. The world can be completely at ease but man cannot. He may sit in the middle of a meadow where nothing stirs. But the fact that he is there, means there is noise for he can never be still. He must always breath. And the sound of breath is never louder than when one is seeking for it to not disturb the surrounding solitude. It bursts the deafening abyss of sound with little respect for those around it. Hold your breath? Sure, then the noise of your head about to explode begins. The pounding in your ears will overwhelm anything that has ever come from outside them. Man cannot be still.

Silence does not exist for us.

But that doesn’t really matter. I wasn’t searching so much for the silence as much as the solitude and peace that existed in the places that I searched. Many of my favorite activities are remnants of this search. Snowshoeing, night riding, backpacking… all contain an element of the silent and all are best done alone.

P. L. and R.