If it hadn’t been for the terminology that was decidedly too post-modern for 1980, I wouldn’t have spooted to spoof. If you want some extra fun, turn on Google’s automatic subtitles. Via Carlton Reid

I don’t really have a good excuse for doing this, but I’ve built a new front wheel for Gunnar. As you might remember, currently he’s running Wolfgang’s old Alex-DA16-on-Deore 36 spoke wheel. While this works just fine, the internal rim width of the DA16 is 16.3 mm (at least according to their website) and thus technically a teeny tiny bit to small for my 700x23 tires. But I admit: this is a lame excuse for my urge to build a new wheel. An additional boost to this urge actually came from a gift from my friend Löby, who gave me an old but functional dial indicator. The idea is to mount it to my truing stand, theoretically allowing me to true wheels down to 0.01mm. Well, I’m still working on the attachment to the stand which turns out to be a bit tricky. But I’ve built up the wheel anyway. It’s a 32 spoke Mavic Open Pro with DT Swiss Comp 2.0/1.8 spokes on an Shimano Ultegra HB-6600 front hub. After lacing the wheel the wrong way twice, three times was the charm and now it’s all trued and tensioned. Figuring out the correct spoke tension was a little tricky because my Wheelsmith tensiometer’s calibration table only gives values for their own double-butted spokes which are 2.0/1.7 and not 2.0/1.8. But since the absolute value for spoke tension is not that crucial anyway (Mavic recommends 1050-1100 N) it shouldn’t matter too much. One final note about the wheel: the Open Pros don’t come with a wear indicator. Therefore I’ve measured the thickness of the rim’s sidewall. A trick to do this: attach a little magnetic ball to your caliper in order to get around the flange of the rim. My measurements came to almost exactly 1.5mm. This should give me a good point of reference for judging rim wear. ...

After our somewhat sucky experience with last week’s FLCC Sunday Ride, I thought I’d give it another shot, this time not with the accomplice, but with my German riding buddy Tim. We met downtown at 9:45 and rode up the hill to the East Hill Plaza meeting place. There were about 8 people there already, once again all in Spandex and on road bikes. Well, this time I was prepared and had brought Gunnar (no spandex, though). We got going just a bit after ten and the pace was fairly fast, but not too fast for my (or Tim’s) taste. We dropped a few people during the first part of the ride but re-congregated at the Warren Rd post office where we met another rider. From the airport on, we had to struggle with a fierce wind from the North and at some point I was feeling a little bonked. Well, fortunately the Clif Bar consumed during the stop at the post office kicked in quickly and I was feeling fine again. So fine that I actually did quite a bit of pulling and ended up in a breakaway group of three people. Our only other stop was at the gas station at the intersection of NY 90 and 34, where we waited for most of the other riders. From there on, the riding-into-the-wind was mostly over and we zoomed down Salmon Creek valley into Ludlowville, up the hill to Lansing and back to campus on Warren Road. After about 3.5 hours we were back at the East Hill Plaza parking lot. Verdict: great ride, awesome route! But don’t come to a Sunday Ride if you’re not well trained and want a truly relaxing ride on your non-road bike. Unless you don’t mind being dropped quickly. ...

The FLCC’s Sunday Rides started this weekend and given the lovely weather and the announcement that the first ride would be taken “as a social occasion more than a serious ride” the accomplice and I decided to join the party. When we arrived at the meeting point, however, basically everyone on the parking lot looked pretty serious to us—lycra clad, road bike-equipped guys. Well, we joined the ride anyway but it became clear pretty quickly that we couldn’t/wouldn’t want to keep up with their pace. Thus we decided to let the other guys do their thing while we’d be doing our own. At a pace comfortable to us, we rode out on NY-89 to lovely Taughannock State Park, up to Trumansburg with a pastry stop at Gimme!, and back to Ithaca on nice, quiet back roads. It was a really nice ride, except for the fact that we had forgotten to put on sunscreen and the accomplice got burned quite a bit. We might give the Sunday Ride another try, hoping that there will be more like-minded (and like-speeded) cyclists. ...

The weather is lovely outside and tomorrow we’ll be going on the first FLCC Sunday Ride of the year. Today (and a good deal of yesterday), however, I did a lot of work on Wolfgang. I installed a new granny gear, a new front derailleur, I checked and repacked the rear hub bearings; switched from Ritchey Cross Tires to the Conti Gatorskin slicks; and I wired my accomplice’s BUMM Toplight Line Plus rear light. Switching from double to triple clearly was the most laborious process and actually I wasn’t able to complete it successfully. I had bought a Shimano XT FD-M773 front derailleur, a Salsa 26t chainring and a 118mm bottom bracket to adjust the chainline. Using the fabulous Park Tool instructions, the cranks came off, the bottom bracket was removed (required several attempts and a bunch of WD40), threads cleaned and regreased, and the new bottom bracket installed. As I had to take off the chain anyway and the current chain had reached the .75 mark, I also switched the chain back to the old chain. What I immediately noticed was the difference in corrosion between the two. The old one was an Sram PC 971, the more current one to be switched out a PC 951. Despite mostly fenderless use during the 2008/2009 winter, the 971 was completely corrosion free; whereas the last winter had left significant traces on the 951. The difference between the two chains is just a couple of dollars–and the fact that the 971 is nickel-plated. I’ll definitely keep this in mind when buying another chain. Finally, I put on the third chainring and the new derailleur and started adjusting. This is where the trouble began. I couldn’t get the derailleur to clear the small chainring, even when the L limit screw was set to the max. I initially thought I had done something wrong, maybe with the height adjustment. But after extensive consultation with my online friends, I’ve come to the conclusion that derailleur and bottom bracket just don’t go together, even though the specifications and Glenn’s expertise implied otherwise. What I’ll try next is to re-install the old Tiagra derailleur and see if it’s going to work – apparently double front derailleurs often also work for triple. Odo Wolfgang 3954 km Odo Gunnar 1048 km ...

March has been the first month with a whole bunch of days of good weather. What does that translate into in terms of stats? Wolfgang rolled in at 305 km and Gunnar made 94 km in his first month of outdoor riding. In addition, I also rode about 60 km on my Dad’s MTB in Germany. This leads to a total of 449 km (Feb: 398 km). March had 31 days, so the daily average was 14.5 km, just slightly more than February (14.2 km/day). Total annual kilometrage is 1176 km. Odo Wolfgang: 3954 km Odo Gunnar: 1048 km ...

Okay, so I’m on a short visit to Germany and what happens: I get hit by a car. The most important thing first: I’m fine, not even a scratch. The bad news: My Peugeot is in rather bad shape. I was riding through a traffic circle near Welzheim when a person in a Mercedes ignored my right-of-way, entered the circle, and hit me on my rear wheel. Because speed were relatively low, I somehow managed to not fall and hurt myself. But the rear wheel of my bike is definitely gone, as you can see on the picture. As I’m typing, the LBS is checking if anything else was damaged, but I think that’s not very likely. ...

Finally the weather has been nice enough for me to take out Gunnar for a couple of rides. After a short loop through the city and a ride to the FLCC spring seminar two Sundays ago, yesterday I took Gunnar on a real test ride, out to Taughannock and back on Route 89. And Gunnar rides like a charm. I pushed it pretty hard and averaged at 30.7 km/h for the out-of-town portion of the ride. I think the geometry works pretty well for me, but I will keep tinkering with it: saddle height is maybe still a bit too low, but the current seat post is already at its max. And if I have to get a new seat post anyway, I might get one with a different set-back. Currently my KOPS (knee over pedal spindle) position is about 6 cm behind the spindle and my saddle is as far forward as possible. I’m well aware that several cycling gurus are rather skeptical of the KOPS method and their arguments are making a lot of sense to me. But given that my saddle is at the margin of adjustability, a zero-setback post would give me more options to tinker with my position. Probably I should just ask Glenn for advice. Handlebar height might get readjusted downwards, too. At the moment my posture is fairly aggressive, but I think I could drop a spacer or two and still be comfortable. I’ll go for another ride with another German guy today and we’ll see how Gunnar feels after 2 or 2.5 hours. I definitely expect my behind to hurt, as the Selle Italia Flite Gel Flow (I have the one without titanium rails) saddle is just too tiny. My knees might also be a trouble spot, as I messed them up a bit yesterday, courtesy of a downward sliding seat post… I also shot some outside pictures of Gunnar. I hope you’ll enjoy: Odo Wolfgang: 3924 km Odo Gunnar: 991 km (point zero is at 954 km) ...

What’s a good indicator of the coming spring? That my kilometrage is up and my blog-postage is down. Just a quick maps-con-pics from last week’s lovely ride to Taughannock Falls. If you want more details: I think the accomplice might blog about the ride soon. Oh, and I've done the first couple short rides on Gunnar. Verdict: nice ride, but still needs some adjustments. More detailed account to follow sometime.

March is here, and hopefully that means that spring will arrive sometime soon, too. Well, in any case it’s time for a February summary. Total kilometrage for the month was was 398 km, up from 329 km in January. This makes a total of 727 km for 2010 so far. Not bad, given the weather conditions and the fact that the month only had 28 days (average in Feb: 14.21 km/d vs. 10.61 km/d in January). Longest ride was the 58 km to Genoa and back – anything longer was made impossible mostly by the weather conditions and one weekend lost to a conference. I guess I’ll hit the first 1000 km sometime in March, but because I’ll spend a third of the month in Germany, I might miss matching this month’s mark. We’’ll see. I hope that March will at least bring a couple of days that will be appropriate for Gunnar’s maiden voyage. Odo Wolfgang: 3659 km ...