Silver Case

I’m shagged. Got up with Luke at 6:30 AM, and after he dressed himself and played, I made Osso Bucco (it tastes better if it cooks, cools off, and reheats). The more languid the braising is, the better veal tastes. Then spent the rest of the day on bicycle matters.

In designing Matt’s Fourth Protocol, I was considering the results of Le Chacal. This led me to I spend a fair bit of the day doing measurements on Le Chacal trying to figure out why it handled squirrely on my bike tour in Taiwan. I started out thinking it was due to some fine measurements, but my working theory now is simply a matter of bad weight distribution. (I had too much weight on the back, and the front wasn’t loaded)

Then I finished assembling the Le Chacal. I was being quite anal about tuning the transmission system. Last week I screwed around for an hour perfecting the Z/L (smallest back and smallest front cogs) shift combo. The shifting is in good shape now.

Wish I could say the same thing about the brakes. The Braking system is still driving me up the wall, but that’s not the brakes’ fault. It’s the stupid wide rims I have on the bike. I need to get those replaced with narrower, lighter wheels pronto. There is barely clearance, and if I hit any mud, it jams the faces of the brake pads.

Headsets are a touch loose on both Le Chacal and my Dahon. I need to tighten them. Need to study how in my Barnett’s Guide.

I installed a set of “trekking” handlebars. This will give me more riding positions on long rides, hopefully avoiding wrist numbess and sore back. The old mountain bar was 250g, this is about 500g, but I think it’s an ok tradeoff. Plus, I’ll save more than that much when I replace those damn rims. I need to screw with the stem. Lower it a bit, or farther forward, or something. My friend is a professional Pilates instructor and bike racer. I’ll get recuit him to fix my positioning.

Ling even got in on things and started refurbishing her Paul Frank single-speed cruiser. The chroming was really, really cheap and blistered and rusted. So we took off those bits of hardware. Ling sanded things and I ran other things on the wire wheel. Next week we’ll repaint those parts with some rust-retardant, install the side-view mirrors she’s so insistent on, and then she’ll have a local errand bike.

Dropped the heavy Kenda tires and put a Schwalbe Marathon Racer on the back and a Continental Contact on the front, just for something different. I went out on a testing and calibration ride. I hit a field that was basically grass and lumpy, very wet clay. I managed to spin my way through without spilling over. So although there isn’t much tread on these things, I got the minimum traction I needed. (being able to stand up and crank w/ the trekking bars was also helpful)

I discovered the wooden workbench I dragged home yesterday was termite-ridden, so I beat it apart with a ball-peen hammer and crowbar then tossed the bits in the garbage.

Now I’m basking in my downstairs workshop, sipping a beer, and waiting for my osso bucco to heat up. It was so nice this morning having that massive Le Crusset dutch oven. I could brown all four veal pieces simultaneously, then sweat out the vegetables, plug it up with a cartouche, and let it braise for 2.5 hours. It’s nice having the right things at times. In an undersized pan, I could have never browned the meat nicely. (or at least concurrently)

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 7:16 pm and is filed under Bike, Food, Le Chacal.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.