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Tacoma Wheelmen's Bicycle Club N e w s l e t t e r April 2001 |
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Tacoma Wheelmen's Bicycle Club N e w s l e t t e r April 2001 |
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This month:
• Spring and summer trips • Wantads • From the President's handlebars • Government Report • Technical Bike Stuff • April is Daffodil time • When Bikes Were Beautiful • Bicycles from Heaven • New and renewing members Other bicycle information
• Rideline: • Free want ads |
The deadline for the Daffodil Classic — one of the most popular organized rides in Washington — is fast approaching.
The cutoff date for pre-registration is April 11 when single riders can sign up for $15 and families for $35. After April 11 and up to the day of the ride, the cost will increase to $18 for singles and $40 for families.
For 26 years , the ride has been the biggest annual event sponsored by the Tacoma Wheelmen. Staged from downtown Orting, there will be several familiar features including the pancake breakfast at the elementary school and barbeque hamburgers at the finish line.
But that doesn’t mean the ride has remained the same for more than a quarter century. Last year the club added a free 15-mile family route on the new bike/pedestrian pathway that runs along the river. And the finish line party — which was inaugurated last year — will return with music and free dishes of strawberry shortcake.
The Daffodil is eagerly awaited by more than 1,000 cyclists each year because of the routes that travel — 20, 50, 70 or 100 miles — over beautiful rural, country roads in the foothills of the Cascades.
A registration form is available on the Wheelmen’s website at http://www.twbc.org/dafforms.htm. Or you can order on-line (for a small fee) at: http://www.active.com/register/index.cfm?event_id=952672
The event is the work of more than 60 Tacoma Wheelmen volunteers who handle dozens of tasks from parking cars to preparing food. There are always spots to be filled. Anyone interested in volunteering can contact Jan Brame 253-759-6984 if you are interested.
The Kiwanis Club of Clover Park started the Bicycles from Heaven Project about 10 years ago and it has grown from very humble beginnings to a substantial project. We distributed over 850 bikes and helmets to kids (and a few adults) who would not otherwise be able to afford a bike.
The bikes that we “recycle” come to us from a variety of sources. Some are donated by individuals whose kids are no longer using them or are just cleaning out garages, some come from Good Will Industries in downtown Tacoma, some are from the Puyallup Police Department and others from surprising sources. The latest large donation came from a family in Rainier whose son was going to fix up bikes for fun and profit. He then got so busy with school activities that he didn’t have time so they called us. They had gotten the bikes from the Lacey Police Department—all 80+ of them. Needless to say, they were a welcome sight.
The next step in the process is to send the “unwanted” bikes to McNeil Island where a crew of 4-6 inmates work miracles and refurbish them completely so that we have almost new bikes to give to kids at our regular give aways. Until recently, officer Mike Thomas supervised the crew but, after major knee surgery and 4 months off work, he was reassigned upon his return to the island. The administration of the institution is committed to keeping the project going and is currently looking at options. Meanwhile, the crew is still hard at work and we have a good supply of bikes to give to kids this month. (March 24th at the Puget Sound Pet Pavillion)
We work with a variety of agencies to identify kids who need bikes; Boys & Girls Clubs of Pierce County, Associated Ministries, churches and schools to name a few. We also work with the Caring for Kids Project providing bikes to kids at the Ready to Learn Fair in August and the Pre-Holiday Fair in December. Either we provide helmets or have either the Fire Department or Mary Bridge staff available to sell and fit the helmets. This is an area for which we are always seeking financial assistance and the Tacoma Wheelmen’s Bicycle Club has been a source of support for our project over the past three years or so. We appreciate the club’s involvement and continued support.
We look forward to continuing the Bicycles from Heaven Project for many years to come and to a closer relationship with the Wheelmen’s Club, as well.
Anne Heller
Spring is here and experienced and novice riders are anxious to try out that new bike or new jacket or new tire. Where to begin? If you haven’t gone out on any rides yet, let me give you a few hints.
When I joined the Wheelmen six years ago at Bike Expo, I was reluctant (afraid) to go out on rides. What if everyone was faster than me? What if I had a flat tire? What if I didn’t know anyone? What if, what if, what if.
The only way to begin is to begin. When I joined the Wheelmen I was too afraid of the “what ifs” to do anything with the club for a full year after joining. Once I did begin I found that the people who led and went on club rides were very understanding and accommodating to the newcomer who wasn’t sure of all of the things an experienced cyclist seems to know instinctively.
So, where to begin? First of all, make sure your bike is in good order. If it is fresh from the shop, it probably is. If it has been in the garage for the past ten years, you should check it out before going out on your first organized ride. Are the tires properly inflated? Do the brakes actually stop all forward motion? Do you have a pump, a patch kit and a spare tube for the flat tire that is somewhere in your future? If your answers to these questions is “Yes,” you are ready for your first club ride.
Now the hard part. How to choose the correct ride for you? If you have not ridden your bike since the Nixon Administration, do not choose a 3D ride. You will not be happy. Rides are coded to indicate expected speed and elevation gain. Check the ride calendar or ride line for a 1A or 2B ride. This will give you a chance to find a pace and a terrain that are suited to you. After trying out a few leaders and routes, you will have a better idea of the type of riding and leader you are comfortable with.
Once you have checked out your bike and selected a ride, what to do next? A little planning and thought will ensure a pleasant experience. Check out the weather forecast. Do you need rain gear? Does your helmet fit snugly? Do you have a water bottle? Extra food? While club rides often include a lunch or bakery break, keep the Mountaineer adage in mind, “drink before you are thirsty and eat before you are hungry.”
On the ride, enjoy yourself, get to know your fellow riders and obey all traffic laws.
Trail Group,
At last night’s city council meeting, Milton Mayor, John Williams, advised that Puget Sound Energy (PSE) had finally responded to the City’s request for terms and conditions for purchasing the King County portion of the Interurban right of way. Attempts to acquire this section of the trail go back many years and include efforts by Pierce County Parks and previous mayor, Leonard Sanderson.
Essentially, PSE has agreed to sell the King County portion of the trail to the City of Milton for its current appraised value. Starting from the eastern side, this section runs from the King/Pierce line a few hundred feet east of Military Road, across Military, across Enchanted Parkway, across 28th Ave. So., across 380th Street, to the King/Pierce line at Alder Street on the City of Milton street grid. The length is about 1.4 miles.
The City of Milton is required to pay for a current appraisal. The City intends to use the appraiser who did the previous appraisal, now about 6 years old (?). That value was about $180K. Once the appraisal is obtained, the City shall pay PSE 60% of the value as a cash payment. PSE will contribute the remaining 40% value as goodwill, and PSE shall retain an underlying easment for utility purposes.
The Council voted unanimously to authorize the Mayor to obtain an appraisal. The City believes it has lined up Conservation Futures and other purchase grants which can be used, totalling about $130K. So if the appraised value has not skyrocketed out of sight, the City may be close to having the necessary funds available. This does not include the IAC grant now pending before the legislature.
I shall keep you posted.
Over the past couple of months there have been numerous new and renewing members of TWBC. The Tacoma Wheelmen would like to welcome all of our new members. Additionally, we would like to thank the renewing members for choosing TWBC as an important organization in your life. Hope to see you on a ride or club activity this spring and summer.
New Members
Patrick Adams, Larry Johnson, Joseph M. Taylor, Brenda Geyer, Marie and Delbert Reed, John Vipond, Pam Kaperick, Kevin Warren, Dave Tullis, Donna Prausa, Hal Bell and Randy Gray
Renewing Members
Bud and Fran Schoeder, Karla Maynard, Joy C. Roelefsz, Mike and Nancy Henderson, Peggy and Ray Fjetland, Jocko and Ruth Burks Arbogast, Stan and Helen Engle, James F. Henroit, Jim DeYoung, Michael J. Wood, Duncan Parks, Steve Mauer, Susan Hardie, Franklyn George, Mike Hassur, Janice Sack-Ory, Richard Ory, Reba Jean Cain, Peg Winczewski, Darlene Moore, Jack Lieman, Noel Hagens, Robert A. Warfield, Chuck, Glenda and Taylor Husher, Paul Casadevall, Jim Dddavis, Virginia Stratton, David Tyson and Lori Wollen.
FOR SALE 2 Vision VR 40 recumbents. $750 each obo. Both bikes are short wheelbase, above seat steering. Call Pat Donovan at 253-770-0871 for details, or pndonovan @worldnet.att.net. 2/01
FOR SALE Yakima Rooftop Rack (parts) 48” round bars (2) - $25, QTR-Towers (4) - $75, Q-clip #69 - $7, Q-clip #70 - $7, Q-Stretch Kit - $60. Used for one trip. Rich/Vickie Kim, 840-9103 or rkim461@ecy.wa.gov. 3/00
FOR SALE Chrome Bianca racing ten speed, Campi components, very good shape. Will accept best offer. Donna Prausa, dlprausa@yahoo.com. 3/01
FOR SALE Ziegler-Lam Mountain Bike. Mega 2000. Full suspension bike. Scram 9.0 components throughout. Like new. Rear rack included. Too much bike for me. $1400 value. Will let go for $1100. Must see. Call Nancy Block-Olexick at 360-893-6649. 04/01
FOR SALE 58 cm Torelli Countach OS, less than 650 miles, Full daytona drivetrain 9 speed. Absolute mint. $1500.00 call Brad Hill 756-8861 or Bradleyhill@msn.com for details. 04/01
STOLEN The bikes were a Red Cannondale RT3000 Tandem. (2000) Serial # DART 0125, and Blue Cannondale Cross Trainer (1991) Serial # 51807916842. Like new aprox. 1000 miles. They were stolen from our garage in North End of Tacoma in the early morning of Thursday, March 1. 253.752.8433 or dougjackman1@home.com. 04/01
For Sale Tamdem, 26” wheels, many extras, 18 1/2 x 16 bottom brackets and top two, low miles. Call Mike. 564-6544. 04/01
Riders Wanted Self contained tour from Anacortes WA to Denver via North Cascades, Missoula, MT, Yellowstone and Rawlins, WY. Will average about 50-60 miles a day and both camp and stay in motels in 60/40 ratio. Trip will take 5-6 weeks. Prefer to leave around May 15th. Alternate is a fall trip leaving around August 27th. I am a 61 year old married man. I would like to travel with some good natured people of similar levels of interest in seeing the country and meeting the people on this old west adventure. jonran1039@aol.com or call Jack Sisco at 360 866 0240. 04/01
For Sale San Marcos ergonomic saddle used 4 timees, $90 for sale for $20. Burt Dionne 253-862-6527. 04/01
Daffodil is just around the corner, April 22nd. Everything is in it’s place. Jan has done a wonderful job organizing this event, once again. She has the “Dream Team” backing her. A last minute meeting is set for April 18th at the Audobon Society in University Place. We are requesting a nice sunny day for April 22nd and we might actually have a shot at that!
Also, please don’t forget when Daffodil is paid and done we still have the Peninsula Metric Century and Headwaters Century just around the bend. We want all our rides to be successful and it takes everyone’s help to ensure that!
Please see Dianne (Peninsula Mectric Century) or Ralph (Headwaters Century) and offer your assistance. I know it will be greatly appreciated.
For 26 years, the ride has been the biggest annual event sponsored by the Tacoma Wheelmen. Staged from downtown Orting, there will be several familiar features including the pancake breakfast at the Orting Cooperative Elementary School and barbeque hamburgers at the finish line. The breakfast will be served 6-11:30 a.m. The price is $4 adults and $2 for kids (12 and under). The menu includes Kiddy Griddle pancakes with applesauce, fruit, whipped cream and syrup toppings; juicy ham slices; fluffy scrambled eggs; fresh fruit; pastries; and a variety of beverages including steaming hot coffee & juice.
Indexed shifting (I call it “click clunk”) has been around for many years and has become standard equipment on virtually every bike sold in the U.S. Experience is no longer required to grab the “perfect shift”. Ramps, pins and specially shaped gear teeth enable cyclists to flick a lever and snap into a gear, even under load. Indexed shifting has been refined to a foolproof system and makes changing gears a thoughtless motion, until.....
You’ve crested the top of Washington Pass and after working your guts out, climbing for hours, you’re ready for the pay off. You’re on the big ring now, tucked into the drops and ready to break the sound barrier. Every few seconds you snap your chain into a bigger gear, spinning your ride toward a lens blurring decent. One gear left and you’re ready to make the jump to light speed.
The last shift, all you’ve got left. Your legs are churning so fast, your butt wants to fly off that saddle. One little finger reaches up and snaps the lever. Clackety, clackety, clackety goes your chain. What the .... you exclaim in your brain. You’ve lost your after burner. You shift back and try again, no good. You reach back with your foot and kick your derailleur with your heal. Clunk, you’re in. Well, you’ve already lost your rhythm and after all that work, a lousy $3 part has robbed you of the rush.
On an indexed system, the cables are the weak link. The correct cable tension is so important for smooth shifting, especially if your front derailleur is also indexed. Modern cables do not stretch as readily as the old days, but it didn’t matter with friction shifting. A smooth shift was accomplished by the rider, not the bike.
Like all things on this earth, cables wear out. And, like all moving parts, cables need lubrication. If you replace your own cables, grease them up before inserting them into the housing. I like to add a few drops of Tri-Flow into the housing also. I also like to replace the housing when I replace cables (unless you’re using that Gore stuff which costs as much as 15 cables).
The housing becomes grooved on the inside after a time and can hamper smooth shifts. Once you’ve installed everything and you attach the cable to the rear derailleur, leave a tiny bit of slack in the cable, don’t pull it tight. It’s hard to describe the correct tension, it comes with experience and it changes with the component manufacturer.
When you start testing it out by running up and down the gears, use this rule of thumb. If your chain hesitates or is noisy on an up shift (bigger cog), turn the adjusting barrel on the derailleur toward the direction of the shift, ( toward the wheel) a quarter turn at a time, until the noise stops or the shift works.
If you can’t shift to the smallest cog, turn the barrel away from the wheel (decreasing tension). If the barrel is maxed out in either direction and you still can’t get into every gear smoothly, you must disconnect the cable and re-adjust the initial tension.
Generally speaking, if you can’t shift up, the cable is too loose, if you can’t shift down, it’s too tight. If you get the tension right when you first install the cable, you should not have to touch the adjusting barrel, providing that you screwed it all the way in before you secured your cable to the derailleur.
Eddy (eddyj@galaxy-7.net)
Some bikes should be seen as well as ridden. Occasionally an intricately assembled bicycle invites you to get up close and personal to appreciate its intrinsic beauty. These classic bicycles are handcrafted by artisans who work with gear clusters rather than clay, metal tubing rather than oils.
Unfortunately, even though 10 million bikes are sold in the U.S. every year, there is no recognized bicycle museum that comprehensively traces bicycle evolution and artistry. A few small collections are maintained by lovers of bicycles who lovingly polish frames and cranks to a sheen. Kingston Classic Bicycles in Kitsap County displays a notable collection of turn-of-the-century velocipedes.
Another small collection is on display on two racks just inside Spoke and Sprocket store in University Place.
The eight classic bicycles includes a Schwinn Paramount P-13, a Bianchi single speed track bike, a Pinarello fitted with 50th anniversary Campagnola group components and a late ’70s Gios Turino with pantographed engravings.
All these bikes represent state-of-the-art for their period,” said the bike shop’s owner Jim Crouch. These classic bikes were hand-crafted in the ’60s and ’70s. Some were the first to be fitted with new features, such as the aerodynamic Delta front brake on another Bianchi. Other features are functional but augmented for looks, such as the ornate chrome-polished Nervex lugs on the Paramount.
At one time lugs were the state-of-the-art method for forming the joints of a bike frame. Most bikes today are built with efficient Tig-welded frames, which Jim describes as “quick, smooth and ugly.”
In the past two decades manufacturing has made leaps in mass-producing lightweight, easy-to-shift bicycles. But at a cost of aesthetics. ”Bicycles have been enhanced through the technology, but we are losing some of the art,” Jim said. “ We’ve lost the sense of beauty. They are not as pretty.”
The classic bikes represented the top of the line for their manufacturers. ”People who built them were craftsmen. Their attitude was if we make them good let’s make them look nice.”
A few fabric wall hangings also are part of the bike store’s classic collection, including a jersey signed by Greg LeMond and 7-11 team jersey signed by Andy Hampsten, the only American to win the Giro d’Italia. And protected in a glassed frame is a distinctive yellow jersey. It was worn by Bjarne Riis with Deutsch Telekom team after he won one of the grueling legs from a bygone Tour de France.
The classic bike collection has been displayed at Spoke and Sprocket for the past two years. Occasionally, they are rotated when Jim acquires a model or a customer offers one for the classic rack. Jim said that he might listen to offers, but most are not for sale.
They are priceless now. In a sense they were priceless when new.
”For a lot of us these are the bikes that we dreamed about but couldn’t afford,” Jim said.
The morning of March 10 started out a little misty and I was worried that people would stay inside where it was dry and warm. I was pleasantly surprised that about 18 people turned out for the first Bicycling 101. We were able to provide helmets with a custom fit to three of the participants. Chuck Morrison , with his mobile bike shop in the back of his van, checked several bikes and I pumped up the tires of four of the riders. The age of the riders ranged from 5 - 70 years.
It was a little nippy that morning. Because we are starting in the middle of the trail there was an option for less mileage if you felt that 6 miles was all you could do that day. That was an option for a couple of riders that were a little chilled when we returned to the Bell Tower. The rest went towards South Prairie and stopped to view the buffalo that were out in force that morning. When we rode back towards Orting, a couple of us left the trail and did some off road riding along the river. There was something for everyone that morning.
After a wonderful lunch at the Park Bench Café, a small group of volunteers walked towards McMillin to pickup litter along the Trail. This section of trail was adopted by TWBC several years ago and we have done several work party to help maintain the trail. Along the side the trail was some litter but the majority of the litter was along the road. I made the mistake of walking in the ditch along the highway picking beer bottles, card and other items. Thanks to Peggy Fjetland, Steve Brown, Pat Wingerter, Karen Forbush and her grandsons; Skyler and Stephan who were able to help that afternoon. We finished just before it started pouring.
Chuck Morrison has agreed to help with another Bicycling 101. It will be on April 29 - starting at 1:30 PM. We hope that more people will dust off their bikes and join us. See you on the Trail. Children’s Safety Fair April 28 9 am - 3 PM
How often do you get chance to safe someone life or prevent a permanent injury? You have that chance by volunteering at the Annual Children’s Safety Fair on April 28 at the Tacoma Dome.
For the last several years we have been providing a nice helmet for the low cost of $5.00. Included in that price is a custom fit. We need volunteers to help with the custom fit.
If you have never fit a helmet we will provide the training on April 26 at the Roundtable Pizza in Westgate, N. 26th and Pearl. Meet at 6:30 PM for pizza and the training will start at 7:00 PM. Feel free to attend even if you have been through the training before. We have a new video and you may learn some new tips.
The Children’s Safety Fair is an opportunity to help provide 1000 helmets to families in Pierce County. Your help is needed to help provide these helmets. Many of us know the benefits of a helmet and proper fit. Please take the time to help for a couple of hours or all day if possible.
On May 10, in Orting is another opportunity to provide low cost helmets to the community. We will set up a table at the Safety Fair in Orting. The time will be from 4:30 - 8:30 PM. Orting has a new skate board park and the Foothills Trail. Providing helmets to this community will help to increase helmet usage at these facilities. Call Carla at (253) 752 - 4038 to volunteer.