Happenings. how tos.

Christmas morning cabin. Diablo in the distance. Nick got some nice pics of this ride.

 Then two days later, I became a dad! Probably fewer awesome bike trips over the next year, but hopefully fun things to report in the shop.

 Found this tire on the road. This kind of branding stuff cracks me up. I was wondering why all my tires were no good, but now I realize that they just didn't analize the vectors.

 For whatever reason I've been working on a bunch of single speed or 1X bikes recently and I keep needing short stack chainring bolts. You can buy these things but I recently just tried to hack some from the normal ones. Turns out it's easy. Here's a little how-to. Below: the normal nut is too long.

 Thread the bolt though the back side.

 Once the bolt is in, clamp it in a vise. The bolt keeps the nut from getting squashed.

 Then file it down to fit.

 You can test the fit as you go. Once it's just shy of the crank you're golden.

 Done.

 And done. Total time probably a minute each, and a nice way to save 15 bucks.

I'll end with these shots from the glossary of an early MTB book. I always find it funny to see slang so earnestly translated.