I need some content today.

But I have been working a ton. I basically took Monday off to wait on the effing cable guy, and it has thrown my whole week out of whack.

I have a couple of posts lined up, so I thought I'd put up a teaser picture to keep you checking back.

He was excited to meet a famous blogger. 

Yes, I found my NAHBS pictures. I'll write a couple of posts about the show when I get caught up.

A Bike That Isn't Mine - Seriously.

As someone who does "bike stuff", I'm the guy that people ask to help them fix their old bikes. I generally don't mind doing it, as I can't always buy new bikes just to work on them, and I love to get people back on two wheels. The only bikes I generally won't work on are NEXT bikes from Wal-Mart. I've had a couple brought to me; the bolts are so soft that they strip out immediately, and that keeps me from enjoying the work. I love a challenge, but working on cheap bikes is like challenging Butterbean to a bare knuckle bout.

A friend of mine recently decided that he was too fat and asked me to overhaul his old Raleigh Rambler MX cruiser. I don't know that he is going to ride it once I've finished it, but it looks much better than it did when I got it. I'm not really a cruiser guy, and I despise coaster brakes, but this is a cruiser with coaster brakes that has piqued my interest.

  

Raleigh Rambler MX

The Rambler MX is just a tarted up cruiser really, with some Motocross and BMX influenced styling. It works, and the gold anodized wheels, fork, and handlebars really make it stand out from other cruisers I've seen. It is a Taiwan made Raleigh, probably a 1981 because the headbadge doesn't say "Raleigh USA" on it. Raleigh USA was bought by Huffy in 1982 and changed the headbadge to reflect the new ownership. All I had to do to this bike was put new tires and tubes on it - I do have a new chain for it, but it wasn't installed when I took the photos, so you will have to picture it in your mind. 

Gold Wheels

The Rambler is a good looking bike, and I hope that it gets ridden - I was told by the owner that when he bought it, he took it around White Rock lake once, then pretty much parked it and forgot it for twenty years. I assume that the same thing will happen this time, though I hope not. At least when it rots away, it will have those sharp red tires on it. 

Chainguard

I did this post and photos sort of as a public service; the only place that I found any photos or information about the Rambler MX was on The Headbadge in the catalog archive. I assume that at some point, someone will put an ad for one of these on Craigslist without a photo, and then someone will google up this blog and be able to see what they are considering buying. This is a good, solid (if simple) bike, and if you are looking for a cruiser, you could do much worse in my opinion. The flash of the gold rims and bits give it some extra bling that a Huffy Monterrey doesn't have. 

Working on the Chain, Gang.

I don't just ride bikes, I actually collect them as well. I'll never admit it to my wife, but I am collecting; that means I have certain acquisition goals in mind, and that certain bikes are "keepers" more than others, and that upgrading is always on the table. I'm actually very close to completing my collection, at least what I consider the core part - someday I'll do another tour of  the entire collection, including the whats and the whys, but not today. From this point on, collection wise, I will be searching for a couple of 19th century bikes, though probably not very seriously for a couple of years. Even though I have a large collection I haven't put too much of my "own" money in as it has been funded mostly by reselling other bikes. I'm a pretty handy mechanic and I enjoy working on bikes nearly as much as I like riding them, so it's easy for me to turn a $50 bike into $150-$200, and that helps me pay for the parts and to score more $50 bikes - keeping the good ones in the process. In "curating" my collection, I have learned much about what makes a good bike worth keeping more than another, what components are worthwhile, and how to put them all together and make them work together for a profit (mine). I would guess that because of this I have maybe $200 of my own money invested in all ten of my current bikes. I recently aquired another possible keeper and plan to do a little refurb on it, so I thought I'd share a little info about it today, and bring you along on the refurb process as it happens over the next week or so.

The new guy

The bike I recently aquired and am considering adding to my permanent collection (shhh) is an eighties Ross Mt. Whitney. Ross made some really nice mountain bikes before they went under, and this is one of them. If you are not familiar with Ross, I'll give you a little background so you don't just shrug and stare at me with polite disinterest. Ross was the "other" big American bike company, founded in the 1940's, and had it's greatest successes from the 1960's into the bike boom of the seventies. Based in Pennsylvania, the company made a more pedestrian bike than Schwinn; they didn't have their own dealerships, as Schwinn did, and in fact sold most of their bikes through department stores. Ross produced more than a million bikes a year in the seventies, but by 1989 the company had gone out of business - Ross made mostly lower end bikes and it was cheaper to import than to buy American, and it took the owner too long to figure it out  A little more gossipy word on the streets is that the owner's luxurious lifestyle rendered him unable to tighten the company's belt  and drove them into bankruptcy.  Before they went out of business, however, Ross produced some great early mountain bike models ahead of the growing trend, but too late to save the company.

This is not the first Ross bicycle I've owned, but I like this one much better than the other, which I sold not too long after completing it.

Downtube Decal

I believe this bike is a 1984 Ross Mt Whitney model, which would be the top end model in that year - it could be a year earlier or later, because the information available on the internet about Ross bicycles is anecdotal and very spotty, at best. I assume it's mostly original, as the tires are rare Ross "snakeskin" models with knobby tread on the outside and a smooth line in the middle for pavement riding. Like the SUV's we see on the road, most mountain bikes are destined to the same fate, so Ross gave their buyers dual purpose tires. The frame has forged dropouts with adjusters and a built in derailleur hanger. These details are what lead me to believe it is the top of the line mountain bike for Ross - which is the interesting part of the company's history. In 1984 Trek had one model mountain bike, the Stumpjumper was just three years old, and Ross was already offering several different models at different pricepoints and even sponsoring one of the early MTB teams. Despite embracing the emerging mountain bike trend, it was too little too late for Ross, and they closed their doors just five years after this bike was built.

Bullmose bars in the cockpit. Cut short, of course.

I have wanted a chrome framed bike for quite some time, as I have said here before. I had hoped it would be a road bike like a Paramount, but I think that this Ross is significant enough that it will fill that hole in my permanent collection, so you will certainly see more of this bike soon.

Sexy cranks

In addition to sharing the refurb of this bike with you, I will be sharing how I raise the money to do so. Some of you may recognize this frame from long ago articles on a little blog called "Seen On The Train".

Suteki carcass

While that blog is long gone, the frame still remains. I last used this bike as my fixed gear, but when I switched that stuff over to my Falcon frame, I found myself without a use for the Suteki. I will admit there was some sentimental attachment to my first adult road bike frame, and I've hung onto it for a while, but I have much finer bikes in my collection now, and feel that I have to send this one on down the road. I'll be building it up into a 6 speed flat bar bike to sell on CL, and I'll document that process here.

The best thing about this bike

In addition, I have been contacted about putting together one of the Missoni for Target bicycles. My other blog wants to review the bike, so in order  to secure him the time to do so, I volunteered some of mine to put it together. I'll document the build here as an EXCLUSIVE for my readers and share some of my insights about the bicycle with you. Finally, I have been contacted by Robert from Bicycle Novelties who I met at the NAHBS in Austin (you know - the one I never wrote about?). He lives not too far from me in Plano, and he has invited me over to see how he makes his very sweet looking cycle paperweights. I'm way into garage machine hobbyists (and he has offered up some free stuff for me to come over) so I'm going to do so during Cyclesomatic Dallas so he can get some free publicity for his things. And I get free stuff.

A Special Offer For All Who Donated.

As some of you may know, I worked very hard begging for money from people to participate in the Tour De BBQ 2011. I ended up raising over $1200 for the University of Kansas Cancer Center, and am very pleased with my results - and just as pleased to know that I know enough charitably mided people that I can raise so much for such a good cause. I wrote a review of the ride here - and some of you may have noticed the stunning picture of me crossing the finish line. That photo was taken by the official ride photographer, and I purchased a high resolution download of the file so that I could have at least one high resolution photo of myself. (Most mughsots are generally very low resolution.)

Even though I signed this in MS paint, it's still better than my real handwriting.

As a special thank you to everyone who donated to my cause, I would like to offer you copies of the photo. You can see that I signed the copy above with a general "thanks" that can apply to everyone, so if that works for you, please feel free to download that copy and order a print - I am assured you can print a poster with that photo if you so choose, because it is so highly resolute.

If you feel like you would like a more personalized signed photo, I'm going to offer one to everyone who donated. Let me know in the comments or by contacting me via email that you would like a personalized photo - I'll mail you a hand signed, 4 X 6 copy of the photo above, at no cost to you. I would ask that you refrain from trying to resell it on eBay and make a profit, unless you will donate 50% of all profits generated to a charity of your choice.

If you want one of these photos and didn't donate, please feel free to do so - then let me know what your photo should say.

Changing Times, Changing Names.

Some of you may have noticed the name has changed on the top tube above - I feel I owe you an explanation before you start overwhelming me with mail. The last time I made a change and added the photo in the header, my mailman ended up with a hernia. After a long and contentious meeting with the Board of Directors of this blog, wherein there was lots of table pounding and many words I cannot type on the internet due to propriety, a motion was made and a vote taken to change the name of this blog from "Seen On The Train" to the much more mellifluous "The Plano Cyclist". One vote made the difference, friends. Democracy at work.

This decision was undertaken because I rarely ride the train anymore; the current name probably doesn't make sense to anyone other than my longtime reader. (Hi Mom!). I feel that "The Plano Cyclist" imparts some idea of where I come from, and exactly what I am (plain 'ol).

When I was meeting with the board I insisted that nothing else be changed - and they agreed that the content, while mediocre, was certainly up to snuff for their purposes and didn't need to change. You may notice a few more commercial plugs slipped subtly in (or shoehorned, if you will) to the body of the posts themselves.Capitalism, she is a harsh mistress.

I have also agreed to start referring to myself in the third person, and you had better believe that The Plano Cyclist was open to that part of the negotiations.

So update your bookmarks, if you have them, to www.planocyclist.com and prepare for the future of tomorrow, today.


                                                                                                    ---- The Plano Cyclist

Plano, TX 

Tour De BBQ Ride report 2011.

I am returning from a great birthday weekend in Kansas City and an even better ride; though not quite what I expected.

First, I want to give props to the $34.99 Allen Bike Rack. It carried my GT from Dallas to Kansas City at very high speeds and was as solid as a rock the entire way. Kudos to you, cheap bike rack. 

I spent the afternoon before the Tour riding around with Dad in his cool little sportscar, trying to pre-ride the route. However, whoever wrote the directions (cough) filled them full of crazy pre-directions - things like "Head straight towards Buena Vista Street" - Buena Vista street would have nothing to do with the next direction, which might be "Turn Left on W 192nd Terrace", or might have been "Turn Left" and nothing more. Needless to say, we ended up doing lots of U Turns in the car. We made it most of the route and decided that maybe our time could be better spent drinking beer on the patio, and we were right. 

The morning of the Tour De BBQ dawned cold - like 40 degrees. For those of you (maybe one) who live in Kansas City and read this blog, this is not cold. For me, it's pretty chilly. Dad and I loaded the bike up and away we went to the Power and Light district for the start. I unloaded my bike, hopped on, and realized that I had left my phone on the endtable in my room. I went ahead and borrowed Dad's phone so I would have a camera. However, it is a Blackberry and the photos it takes are pretty bad. Sorry, dear readers. 

Blurry me at 6:45 am. It's blurry because I am shivering. 

So there I was, freezing my ass off at the start of the tour, and since I was early, I went ahead and rode off with the VIP's at 7am - there wasn't much separation of the VIP's, so a bunch of us NIP's started at the same  time. I ended up in a slower group of the 60 milers, and in fact there was a guy on a mountain bike in our group with us. While I have admiration for a guy that can keep up with a bunch of road bikes while riding a mountain bike, he did lag on the uphills. This became a problem, as we would ride down the hills (which were plentiful) as a group, but he would lose his momentum going back up much earlier than those of us on road bikes. Inevitably he would have worked himself to the middle of the pack and we would all have to slow down in order to go around him. As with all traffic though, someone always gets stuck behind the slower guy while everyone else passed. That happened to me a couple of times, and let me tell you, it was an energy killer on the hills. We all made it to the first rest stop/bbq joint across the street from Smokestack BBQ where they were serving us wings and beans. I am not a big chicken wing fan, but I love some beans, so I got my little plate of beans (at 7:45 in the AM) and sat and waited for the mountain bike to leave. When I thought he had, I hopped on the bike and headed out again - only to encounter him on the next hill. Cursing to myself, I powered my way past him, and got stuck at a light, where he caught up to me again. 

The Tour De BBQ is an "urban" type ride, so at this point we were rolling through lots of residential very shaded streets, and I was just not warming up, despite being 11 or 12 miles in. I spent the next two hills trying to fight my way around the weavingest mountain bike rider in the world, shivering like a chihuahua. I decided that since it was my birthday anyway I was going to give myself the gift of turning at the 35 mile separation point; strangely enough, as I crested the hill behind my mountain biking albatross and had that thought, the sign appeared. Normally I would have fought through my thoughts of doing the shorter route, but since the sign appeared at just that moment, I assumed it was meant to be and  I took the turn. Suddenly, the ride (while still cold) was fun again. I was one of three of us who turned off early, so I rapidly became a solo rider, as I greatly prefer. However, prior to the next stop I fell in with a couple of other riders, one of whom was wearing a Tomahawk Cycling jersey. Tomahawk was Reed's club, and I had hoped I'd run into some of his friends on the ride, so obviously I was meant to do the 35. I chatted with the guy about my brother in law for a few minutes, and he reminisced about hanging out with teenaged Reed and throwing snowballs at the cars in the neighborhood with him. It was nice to talk about him, but bittersweet - I'd have much rather been riding with him and listening to the story from the other side than reminiscing. 

We split up and it was on to the next stop - who weren't ready for us. There was no food out except granola, so I took a "natural", chatted with the volunteers, and moved on after a relatively quick stop. I rode to the next stop, about 8 miles away. RJ's Bob-BQue weren't quite ready for me either, but the smell of sauce was in the air so I thought I'd wait. I poked my head in the restaurant and asked if it was too early to have a beer - and the answer was "Absolutely not - that's between you and God". 

Now this is a ride. 

Having a good relationship with the Lord, I sipped my Boulevard Wheat and watched the volunteers cut apples, oranges and granola bars for the riders that would be coming though eventually. I had them take another photo of me, ate my open faced pork sandwich (delicious) and moved on. 

Mercifully for you, I am in the shadows. 

I hopped on the bike and rode to the next stop - Johnny's Hickory House BBQ. Johnny's wasn't ready for me either, but there was already a another rider waiting on the grass. Becca told me that she had left with the first wave of 60 milers as well, and had been sitting at Johnny's waiting for food for 10 minutes already. Being a man of action, I found the manager and asked him a food ETA. He said that the organizers had told him that he didn't have to be ready until 11 am, and that he was scrambling to get ready because where there were two of us, there would soon be more. In order to calm someone down I asked him for two Boulevards and brought one to Becca to make the wait more bearable. She looked at me like I was crazy and stated that she had never had a beer at 9:30 in the morning before. I raised my glass and told her that if that were the case then she had never lived. She agreed, and we chatted about bikes and riding while we waited for the food to be prepared. They called us over to eat, we ate, and went to finish the ride. There was only one more stop for us, at Woodyard BBQ. To get to that stop, however, required a ride down a giant hill and I set my personal top speed record - 38 MPH.

Woodyard BBQ

Becca took my picture at the Woodyard, and once again we had time to kill while the food was made ready. I offered her another beer, but she politely declined after the hair raising ride. She said that when we started down the hill she had a little buzz - but by the time we hit bottom it had been replaced by terror.

Luckily one of the volunteers noticed us waiting around with nothing to do and offered to get us a little something. We agreed, and ended up with a giant plate with wings piled 6 inches high and a bowl of BBQ sauce to dip in - and these were without question the biggest wings I've ever eaten, and the best (remember - I'm not a wing guy). Soon other riders started drifting in, and gave us some bewildered looks when they picked up their little half sausages. There we sat, piles of bones on napkins in front of us, greasy faced and eating our fill. 

Becca and remains. 

After our feast it was on to the finish - roughly another 5 miles or so. Becca didn't keep up with me and I ended up at the finish line solo.

Official Finish Line Photo - suitable for framing. 

 I was one of the first people across the line, so I took everyone by surprise; there wasn't much cheering as I crossed, but I didn't ride for cheers. I rode to raise money to fight cancer, eat BBQ, and have a great time. I accomplished all of those things. I would have enjoyed the longer ride, I'm sure, but I'm hoping that if I train hard next year I can get in a faster group and stay away from the mountain bikers.

Once I hung my bike up on the racks provided, I went into the Power and Light square and had my free Boulevard beer and final BBQ sandwich of the day (provided by Famous Dave's). Dad joined me after a while and we had yet another beer (or two), talked bicycles, Grandma, and other Father/Son stuff, and eventually headed back to his house where I took a nap and just hung out with my parents and my daughter for the rest of my birthday. 

I had a great time, raised over $1200 for the University of Kansas Cancer center, and met some really nice people. I want to thank all of you that donated from the bottom of my heart. I'm very grateful for all of the generosity you all showed by supporting my cause. 

The ride itself was great, if a bit cold. I will certainly do it next year (though I will wear a jacket), and would encourage you to sign up if you are reading this blog because you googled "Tour De BBQ review" and came here. The ride was beautiful, the cause was worthy, and I know it will continue to get better as the years go on; for a third year ride it is fantastic. 

Once again, thanks to everyone for your support. I appreciate it greatly. 

Just a teaser - Tour de BBQ 2011

Not the best photo of me ever. I must be standing weird, because my gut is not that big.