Who needs cars?

In addition to being a great bike route for heading across town, the Greenway has been a pretty popular destination unto itself this summer. Several bike-related events have taken place outside our front door here at the Shockspital/Midtown Bike Center the past couple weeks. Here's a shot from the Tour de Cure, where we had a roadside service tent set up:

...you can't appreciate from that photo the number of riders that were out there, but trying to cross the Greenway on foot was like a real-life Frogger experience. Here's a shot from the New Belgium Brewing Urban Assault Ride that better conveys numbers:

...in the foreground you can see the obstacle course that participants had to navigate at this stop. And check out that line! Here's a shot from the other direction:

Seems to me some of those folks should have saved this stop for later. It was supposedly a race. But what do I know?

The point is, I don't think I've ever seen more bikes on the road (and path) than I have the last couple weeks. Good job, people!

Give blood: ice racing!

Despite the fact that we're having the wimpiest Minnesota "winter" I've ever seen, 2012 turned out to be another good year for the growing trend of ice bike racing. I first tried my hand at homemade studded tires two years ago for the City of Lakes Loppet and decided to give it another try this year. I learned some valuable lessons last time, namely don't skimp on studs. So this time around I had to visit several local hardware stores to come up with enough #8 x 3/8" and #8 x 1/2" pan-head sheet metal screws to get the job done. The pile you see in the top photo is nowhere near the final total I wound up using (I lost count, but I think I had 350-400 studs in the front tire alone).

I also improved my construction process this time, using a 2x4 on end to support the tire while predrilling the lugs from the outside. This serves two purposes: it makes it easier to find the lug from the inside of the tire when installing screws (they're installed with the points facing out) and (this one is conjectural) it reduces the chance of a lug splitting when a screw is installed.

By the time I was done both ends of the 2x4 looked like they had a bad case of termites. And of course the tool end of the screws isn't as pointy as the business end, but you still have to line the tire with something to protect the inner tube. This year I cut up some old inner tubes and held them in place on the inside of the tire with duct tape.

And after several hours of very tedious work, I finally had a bristling set of race tires. Here's a close-up of the front...

...and here's the rear. And yes, my race bike is equipped with V-brakes. Anyone remember those? Something about V-brakes on an old, beat-up Surly 1x1 makes me smile.

The other fun part of this project was rigging up my Bikes at Work trailer to haul my race bike. Not like it was terribly involved--most of the work is done by a Saris fork mount which does a great job of holding the bike in place. I have to wrap the front wheel in a towel (not shown) to keep it from chewing the heck out of everything else while I'm towing. Which brings me to my safety message: it's a rare interaction with ice-racing tires that doesn't involve bloodshed; those babies are sharp!

Which is, of course, the point. With the number of studs I had in these tires, I had incredible grab even on pure ice-rink conditions. I could come screaming into a sharp corner, stick out my inside foot and get off the saddle towards the inside, and pretty much lay the bike down to horizontal without losing control. Though that technique requires building up a good head of steam into every corner, which would require that I be in a little better race fitness than I actually am, but even with both feet on the pedals I could lean the bike over pretty well. I was able to make plenty of outside-of-the-corner passes around riders who were tiptoeing around the track on their factory studded tires.

Altogether it was another fun project, and I highly recommend giving it a shot. Just be prepared to set aside a couple weekend afternoons and have your work gloves handy!

[Edit, Feb 14, 2012--Here are a couple shots of me trying to lean it over on a frozen lake in northern Minnesota on a subzero day. The ice was so hard because of the low temps that I couldn't really pitch it in, but you get the idea...]

Does falling down make you faster?

A handful of folks from the shop took part in the Loppet ice bike race on Saturday, which is in its second year as part of the City of Lakes Loppet weekend. After considering several options for bike setup, I decided to try my hand at homemade studded tires.

Most if the intel I was receiving suggested that, for pure ice conditions (as opposed to icy pavement or icy singletrack), homemade tires were the way to go. My Nokians are great for commuting and last forever, but longevity is less of a concern in racing, where performance is paramount. And, as this was my first attempt at ice racing, I was interested in keeping costs down.

Since I already had a big pile of old MTB tires in my basement, I had some opportunity to experiment. A quick trip to my local hardware store yielded a couple boxes of 3/8" sheet metal screws, and after a couple hours of drilling, screwdrivering and duct-taping, I had a pair of serviceable ice racing tires. Or so I hoped.

I took them for a quick test ride on a skating rink near my house just to see if they worked at all, and after a couple laps I decided they were worth a shot. Besides, at that point the race was two days away and I was scheduled to work all day in between. That's what I get for procrastinating.

But in the end they worked pretty damn well. And the gearing on my Surly 1x1 (I had it at 36x17) was perfect for the race. If I had it to do over again I'd probably add another row of studs to each tire--the guys standing at the top of the podium were able to lean over a bit more than I could. In any case, it was a fun midwinter project.

p.s. I found this photo the day after the race, and now I can't remember where--apologies to the photographer.