Plus one more

Earlier this year I did a post called "Plus One".  Not a meaningful post, more a riff on how garages tend to fill up with bikes, boats, skis, golf clubs or whatever "because they do".
Nature abhors a vacuum, and since I am not coaching high school Nordic, I seem to have time on my hands to look at some other opportunities.  More to come on a couple of those later, but I'm also busily dreaming my way into another bike.  It has to be a 'plus zero' this time - sell one (or two) before building a new one.  I've decided to build a fat bike next year.  I'm still not sure what it will be - single speed, 1x11, internal or just what, but that's part of the fun of doing a build.  All I can say at this point is it won't be some pipe steel clunker with 42 bottle mounts.  I know there are lots of folks who love steel bikes, but I'm not one of them.  I don't miss the BB flex, don't miss the noodle-like response, and don't miss the weight.
To pay for this little exercise, I need to sell a couple of bikes that just aren't getting used.  My favorite road bike, 2nd favorite of all time behind my 1985 Raleigh 531 (long gone), is my Ridley Noah.  Actually, it's not my favorite any more.  My single speed OPAAT CX bike and my Auger Plus have both surpassed it in terms of utility, miles ridden, and likelihood of being pulled out for a club ride.  It's a great bike - fast, non-twitchy, climbs and sprints like a dream, but it's not a bike my well-seasoned butt wants to be on for a long day.  Time to move it along to some young buck who wants a screaming fast ride.  Seriously for sale, make realistic offer!

So follow along over the winter as I agonize over hubs, rims, components, frames and such.  My bike lust can be your opportunity for a little schadenfreude, and in the end we might all learn something.

In any case, it'll be fun.

A few words about klister...

Klister is nasty, messy, evil stuff - my competitors should fear it. On the other hand, I live for wet, icy tracks at 32 degrees!  
I wrote that as part of a Twitter experiment last year, but it bears repeating and expounding upon.  I really do love klister skiing.  Classic in general has a mystique around waxing which definitely appeals to the geek in me, but klister takes that to another level.  Trying to find something that will kick and not immediately ice up on soggy, wet snow when it's 35 or 40 degrees outside approaches art.  Putting it on without wearing it on every item of clothing, upholstery, boots, tops of skis, glide zone, parts of your body you didn't even touch, and insuring transference of any stray pet hair or oak leaves is closer to black magic!  
Several of my coaching colleagues would rather try just about anything rather than drag out the klister box.  Warm wax, warmer wax, still warmer wax, "maybe we should drag out the fishscales", a different warmer wax... And by the time they get around to grudgingly deciding to try klister, they are short on time and have 20 pair of skis to wax.  Hardly seems fair to have guessed the conditions were building to a 'perfect storm' for using the evil stuff, put it on the night before, and just before the race topped it with a thin coat of hard wax!

So how to learn to love it?  Well, it starts by admitting that you might need it, and you might as well get your hands a bit messy.  

• Know your kick zone.  Klister *is* a bit thicker application, and may occupy a shorter kick zone than hard wax.  Lots of classic skiers have a dedicated pair(s) of 'klister skis' that are a little softer and higher pocket than their hard wax skis.
• Pick a line and stick with it.  I'm partial to Rex, but I'm not zealous about it. I have learned over time when to use several of the Rex line, especially blue, red, silver and gold. 
• Ski in the conditions that need klister.  Get messy, make mistakes. Scrape it off and do it again.  The best way to try klister is to park so that your car (and the torch) are close by.  You can try 3 or 4 different wax jobs without having to snowshoe kilometers back to the trailhead when your skis totally cake up!
• Learn to be consistent.  As a rule, I start with 12 chevrons of klister on each side of the ski, starting from my front klister mark and working backwards.  Practice applying it until you can deliver 24 consistent lines of goo without having gobs and strings of the junk on every surface in the room.
• When presented with a choice of waxing at home or at the trailhead, choose home!  Nice warm skis, hands and irons are easy to work with. Klister turns to a non-malleable solid at about 30 degrees, and no amount of work will make it smooth.
• Given a choice, use a wax iron turned down low as opposed to a torch.  Worried about getting klister on your glide wax iron? Have a second iron.  Seriously - if you goop up your iron's base, just wipe it with a bit of base prep wax. Make sure you cover all the hot parts of the iron, and then wipe off with a paper towel while it's still hot.  Clean as can be...
• If you have to use a torch, get an old steam iron from the thrift store.  Cut off the cord and heat it with the torch, then heat the wax with the iron.  Much more difficult to screw up a perfectly good ski that way!
• And if you are stuck putting on klister without iron or torch, have no fear - there's still a way!  
• 
• Put the tube in your armpit to warm it up.  Hopefully you are a clean freak and keep the outside of your klister tubes reasonably clean, otherwise, it'll stick to everything it touches (can be moderately painful/embarrassing). 
• Lay down your chevrons on both skis. Do it rapidly, but without mess.
• Now (and this is the secret) rapidly rub your hands together to heat up the palm of your hand like Mr Miyagi did in Karate Kid.  In one smooth motion, push the klister from front to back on each side of the base using *lots* of pressure.  If you do a lot of skis, you may get a blister (right), but for one pair you should be fine.  
• And you are done.  Don't get out the cork - it'll only make it lumpy again. 
• Now to clean your hands: put on your gloves.  Really.  It may take a moment to get them on, but within a few minutes, the heat of your hand will make the wax absorb and just, well, disappear.
• Oh yeah, always carry some wax paper or plastic sheet to wrap your skis in for the ride home - otherwise, klister will migrate onto everything!
• Initial cleanup should be done by laying toilet paper over the kick zone - the best stuff comes from the National Forest toilets, but any standard 2 ply TP will do fine. Now heat it with your iron until the wax is soaking into the TP.  While it's still hot, scrape it off with one firm pass. Repeat if necessary, or move to cleaning with wax remover.

And that about wraps up my short course in klister.  I love the stuff - it's my secret weapon, and can be yours as well.

Some links:
Rex 
Rode
Swix
Finn Sisu - great Monday night wax clinic if you are in Minnesota.

Wheel building for geeks, nerds and compleat idiots

I've been dinking around with wheelbuiding and wheel repair since Kevin King and Sally Hildt tried to teach me a little bit about building back during my bike racing days in Seattle.  I still regard them as masters of the craft, and I'm just a piker.  But I do know how to lace up wheels, properly tension them, and they rarely blow up.  
In the last few months though, I've started working on upping my technology, adding to my existing Park Pro truing stand.  I've found several resources like wheelfanatyks, plus pretty good reference sites like Sapim's website, spoke calculators from Sapim, Wheelpro, and Pro Wheelbuilder. I also like Eric's blog, from whom I have unabashedly stolen some great ideas.

Roger Musson's Wheelpro site does a great job of discussing how to build, so I won't repeat that and Eric has a pretty detailed analysis of how to take measurements, what to measure, and a bit on why it's important.  I didn't want to analyze this too heavily, just get to the point that I could build a wheel that is 'dead on'.  

Modern rims, like the HED Belgium C2, make this pretty easy compared to the old (and flexible) 19mm x 15mm road rims of the 80s.  Let's face it - 36 spokes was de rigueur for any sort of wheel that you wanted to rely upon.  Now, the options are plentiful - if a tad more expensive and heavier.  

I'm still getting my wheel stand workspace dialed in, and there are a couple of 'gotta gets' left to make it like I want, starting with a solid steel plate base.  Two reasons for this. First, a half inch plate of steel isn't going to move unless I want it to. Second, it's magnetic, which provides a place to affix the dial indicator in a little more stable manner than my current 'on the stand leg' position.
Next is better lighting.  My building workspace is in a 'crawl space' in the basement. 5'11" clearance, not great light, but it's warm, dry and spider free. A task light and some side light would be nice.

So anyway, there are a couple of new tools that I've added to the kit.  A Hozan spoke tension meter, which I've always coveted, and sniped on ebay for a pretty good price (but had to wait 30 days for USPS and Italie Poste to deliver); and a Spokey spoke wrench.  Inexpensive, easy on the fingers, and spot on placement.  I also picked up the dial indicator and base from a local 2nd hand tool store.  It's accurate to .001", which is plenty for me.  I've always built good wheels, but the geek in me has always looked for repeatability and metrics.

After all that, here's what I wound up with for the wheel I just rebuilt. I reused the spokes (Sapim CX-Ray) because they were in pretty good shape, and the things are bloody expensive to go get new ones.  I used to buy DT straight gauge by the box for what a handful of these would cost!  I was shooting for a drive side tension of around 160, so this should be pretty good.  I guess I'll find out on the road.