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Reinventing the Wheel
When I was a student, likely after finishing my first season with the muckity-much title of pro, a friend and quite accomplished bike racer, as well as a graduate student at the same university, figured I would race for a few years then move on to something else. His rationale? He thought bike racing wouldn't be mentally engaging enough. I'd grow bored and move-on.
It seems he underestimated my tolerance for "boredom" by a decade, but in that time, I reconnected with an even older friend (both in age and how long I'd known him), and equally a thinker, who, I believe, had figured me far more right. His view was that I'd been able to keep reinventing the sport for myself, which not only kept in new and interesting, but engaged me mentally, thinking up novel reinventions and then figuring out how to make them work.
I can't say it was those words that then inspired me to race a completely rigid bike with one chainring five to ten years before the industry decided to market that second simplicity and twenty years after it had given up on the first, but rather, those exploits probably gave good evidence to my friend's surmise. I will however give somewhat rare credit to the industry's inventiveness: wide/narrow chainrings are a far more graceful solution than the wood blocks and then later idler pullies I created as (yes, effective) chain keepers. I did say reinvention helped keep me mentally involved!
I did eventually stop racing bikes, aside from my pre-accident relapse for two events last year (complete with the reinvention of riding to the race), but instead of retiring off the bike, I actually rode more. Without the intensity of racing, more miles were relatively easy, and my body didn't need as much time to recover. Little or no racing but a bit more riding, so yes, new ways to reinvent the sport kept finding me. And yes, I did first write that sentence with reinvention and myself switching subject/object roles, but this order feels more right.
Reinvention helps explain the degree to which I'm enjoying the little Schwinndling, and really, come on, you must have known I'd loop there sooner, not later. I like bikes. I like bikes a lot. And, there are a lot of bikes I like, not just spiffy, high zoot ones, so for me it's no surprise to like the challenge of making a cheap (or free) bike not merely passible, but truly fun. Granted, I consider any bike that's faster than walking to serve its passible purpose.
Yesterday I took that latest reinvention for what I consider its first true ride in the general purpose I intend: banging around on a bike. To do that, I mounted a rear rack which helps tremendously with schlepping the object into which I bump when out, and also I replaced the saddle with a more austere one. "Replaced" largely because the stock one is in far to good condition to strip bare as I usually do.
Mount a rack and swap saddles, that's easy, right? It could be, but where's the reinvention in that? First, the frame happily has a chainstay mounted disc, so no caliper interference with a traditional narrow rack mounting, (Aside: why are modern "caliper clearance" racks wide on both sides where there's nothing extra to clear on the drivetrain side? Oh right, silly bike industry with a silly fascination for symmetry!) but the designer failed to include any upper seatstay mounting point. Yes, there are solutions sold for this lack, and I even have a couple, but I opted for the solution that took three or four times longer to impliment, but enjoyed the grace of fewer strappy bits. My seat collar bolt is now a bit longer, wears extra spacers and a nut, and effectively (so far) serves double duty of upper rack mount.
Now a saddle swap, no invention there, right? Wrong. To coopt a pun from Douglas Adams, I'm not very hip, so with those narrow sit bones, my knees hurt on fat bikes, most people aside from my pa (genetics work) hate following my narrow cross country ski tracks, the insides of my calves finish runs with dirt streaks from the other passing foot, I shall never give birth to a child, and my all time favorite saddle was designed by Keith Bontrager for San Marco in the days before another bike company bought his name. It's narrow. So narrow, the sides don't exist.
That saddle also hasn't been produced in about two and a half decades. I have a small stockpile of them, which is one smaller after breaking a pair of rails a couple years ago. Yup, titanium rails have a life span, even supporting only my petite bumm. I do know about eBay, but even more accessible, hey, I have a chop saw! No sides, I can probably do that. I won't ask, "What's the worst that could happen?" because I'm hope to continue being rather attached to my fingers.
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