45 minutes was enough today, the next 15 minutes and the increase in pace will come but today that’ll do. I could have opted for the hour with the fast guys or really paid the due and doubled up on the races like the truly dedicated but its been the first week back at trying to ride with anything longer term than the trip to work in mind and lucky #13, a cross frame that i’d built with an overabundance of experimentation after hours in the old theatrical lighting fabrication job had a surprise in store for me 2 days before the race. It shouldn’t have been a surprise really that the quick repair I’d done testing out the new welder last october didn’t hold through the retarted stunts I do to entertain myself or through the off road miles I like to put on the cross bike but it did make for a quick change of plans for Saturday that no longer optimized pre-race rest and preparation. It was 8:00 Friday when I got back from an excellent mostly off road ride following the white dots of the Bay Circuit Trail with a well cracked top tube suffered in a bunny hop abortion and plans for a visitor that I didn’t want to break for the evening so I wouldn’t have a opportunity to start fixing it till after work Saturdy, no worries, I should get out early as I was due in at 4:45 in the AM at the moving co.
So the new plan for the weekend would be
-4hours of sleep after my beloved badger departs Friday
-4:20AM Wake up to get the bills paid
-3:00PM Back home and a 4hr nap
-7:00PM Wake up Breakfast / Dinner to get started re-fixing #13 by 8:00 to have it ready for the Sucker Brook Cross Race Sunday
-For the next 9.5 hours I’d be stripping all the parts off the busted frame and getting it fit up into the frame jig, measuring up the tube to be replaced, marking out the new true temper S3 top tube I happened to have in stock, cutting the old tube out of the bike and getting the remaining tubes filed smooth and prepped to take the replacement, use nothing but the hand tools I have get the replacement tube perfectly mitered and fit up, tack weld the tube-check the alignment and finish weld the new top tube, get the cable guides in place and welded on, and finally getting the parts back on to have it tuned up before the race
-5:30 AM to 6:30 Nap before loading up Ben’s station wagon to get him to the venue in time for his 9am race, his 2nd in two weeks on his BBW
At that point finding out that the Category 2 upgrade I thought I’d gotten last year didn’t go through and that I could race in the Cat 3 race at noon was a relief. The race went well enough for the first of the year and given the hours sleep I had the night before but there is a lot of room for improvement in my speed and endurance.
I Stole this pic of me hiding how badly I wanted to go to sleep during the race in the no man’s land of 11th place.
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Building frames for myself and riding them like a complete A-hole lets me try out ideas and test them pretty thoroughly to find out what works and what will last, having to do a repair on one from my own stable is an oppurtunity to keep the design of the bikes evolving . It just isn’t really cross season till I’ve had to race on warm welds. I’d been tempted during the build to try to nab my housemates camera to chronicle the work I was doing but chose to keep my head down at it. The last 3 frames i’ve built have top tubes that I ovalize horizontally coming in to the rear end which lets the tube wrap all the way around the seat tube juncture and tie into the rear monostay. Using the aircraft shears and a file to make the miter is flexible enough that I was able to drill small relief holes in the sides of the extended ears of the miter and cut them into flaps that wrap around the rear monostay on the repair. I’d wanted to use the cable routing I have been using on the majority of my cross bikes with individual stops arranged into opposing chevrons on the top tube cause it is pretty and it lessens the severity of the cable angles after they turn around the head and seat tube but the extra time of tig brazing them individually and the fact that I’d then have to re-cut cables necessitated that I just used a couple of triple cable stops instead. A good idea for the time since they were what I had used initially on number 13 (and due to a mistake on my part by placing a weld across the front of them were the initial cause of the old top tubes crack addiction) -by matching the distance between them from the cracked old tube to the replacement I was able to reassemble the bike to race ready condition by just slapping the cables back into place and not even have to re-adjust the finicky 9spd STI shifting.
