chris@canootervalve.com

The First Sign

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Oct 112012

Everything else was prologue. Today’s the day the seven went away.

Quick story, then I’m back to suspension design.

A few years back, my company took a strange phone call. We were an ecommerce bike shop, so every phone call was strange, but this one came from a friend of Floyd Landis. This friend knew my head of sales and customer service and felt compelled to call him up and inform him that Lance was fucked and that shit was about to get real. Evidence was going to surface by the pound. Game over.

Any friend of Floyd around this time must have been living a pretty strange life. This was around the time Landis was starting to get pretty fucking weird, so after the phone call and some sharing of its theme, we all just shook our heads.

Poor crazy Floyd, was the general consensus. I don’t think a single person in the room believed Armstrong was innocent; we just believed Floyd’s already messy existence was about to get a lot messier if he tangled with Lance.

And then today, this. It took a village, including Dave Zabriskie, quoted in the New York Times as “serenading Johan Bruyneel, the longtime team manager, with a song about EPO, to the tune of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze.'”

EPO all in my veins; Lately things just don’t seem the same; Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why; ’Scuse me while I pass this guy.

Is “goofy” one of the eight stages of grief? If so, I think it comes right before “acceptance.”

As yet unresolved, from what I can tell, is some serious house cleaning at the UCI.

High Axle Blues

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Oct 102012

Back in Danzig mode with a vengeance. Or a small grudge. Or just some constipation and a headache. Either way, all free time diverts to some design work I have to be doing right now. As in “at this moment, instead of doing this.”

But this round of design revisions has me remembering the original reasoning behind the placement of the lower pivots, and there’s a brief, half-assed kind of story around that.

I’d dissected the work Steve Domahidy and company had done on Niner’s CVA suspension. See, a 29er has an axle that sits above the center of the bottom bracket, unlike a 26-inch wheel bike–those have axles that are almost in line with the bottom bracket center. From a full-suspension standpoint, a 29er is basically a 26-inch wheel bike that’s already halfway through its travel. Makes it tough to get any real travel out of them, as all early 29ers FS designs realized.

By dropping the lower link below the bottom bracket shell, Niner was able to drastically reposition the center of curvature of their rear axle path. The whole arc has to be mellower with a 29er, in order to leave you room for any actual travel. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons single-pivot 29ers have their pivots further forward–often in front of the bottom bracket.

It was trying to figure out how to accommodate the bottom bracket drop (higher axles) that got me thinking about a lower link that sat in line but tracked along the chain’s path, moving with it. That position, a little radical compared to everything else that’s been done, allows for a lot of axle path options for bikes with bigger wheels while still keeping the whole system very tight and compact.

It’ll be interesting to see what tracking along the chainline even as the suspension moves will do for the ride of the bike, though. Smart people have suggested this is a very good thing, and it certainly looks that way to me, too. Tape a laser pointer to the lower rocker on Danzig and it’ll stay pointing to the place your chain makes contact with our cassette all the way through the first two-thirds of travel. Sure, it’s affected by which exact gear combination you’re in, but much less so than a lot of other systems out there.

Back to work.

Heirloomed

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Oct 092012

At some point, I have to come to terms with the fact that it’s October, I ride a bike to work in Portland, and I have no fenders. Or particularly warm clothing. This morning was cold, but still mostly dry. Wet plus cold is right around the corner, though, and will manhandle me outright.

While I’m at it, probably best to realize I’ve been using a Parlee Z3 as a daily driver. Somewhere in there I stepped from “owner of badass hot rod bike shop” to “dude with three kids” and that step is approximately three stories high. Now I’m that guy who won a Ferrari in some obscure Italian pasta company sweepstakes and drives it around town with bald tires and a grinding transmission.

I need a practical bike.

Like that $70,000 steam bent wooden Thonet up there.

It isn’t so much the bike I need, though, as the Photoshop work associated with it. Here, for instance, found right there in the FastCompany article about the bike, is what it would look like if piloted by an imaginary commuter.

And here’s what it would look like if a tiny Alejandro Valverde were to try to ride it with only a few parts of his shifters left.

The point is, instead of all this nasty business of freezing nards off riding the thirteen or so miles in to work every morning, why not just Photoshop myself doing it and make it easy?

As first seen on the Facebook page for Cyclocross.com then, here’s an image of me commuting to work this January.

Or I buy fenders.

Cross Crusade Dustup at Alpenrose Dairy

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Oct 082012

Last Friday was about as out of control Renaissance man ninja as I get. Hit the ground running with a mad scramble through marketing processes for three ecomm sites, still have development quotes for another project running through my head, and then straight into a meeting about customer service and some new management duties. Somewhere in there, I curated the shit out of some social media or something. Then it’s a manufacturing meeting about Danzig (hell yeah!) and then off to meet with the ownership of a new gym (sort of an understatement, if you could see the place) here in Portland regarding possible partnerships. From typing to talking top-swing versus bottom-swing derailleur placement to watching somebody work out on a giant spring-loaded contraption while talking merchandising: made for a long day.

Pulling in a million directions doesn’t begin to describe the current situation, but it sure felt good to go watch a ‘cross race on Sunday. Turns out it wasn’t just any old race, either.

The first race of the Cross Crusade series here in Portland is nothing short of mammoth–like “1,500 people participating” mammoth–not counting about 250,000 riders in the kids’ race. Biggest ‘cross race in the country kind of big.

It was also dusty as hell.

Even as a recent transplant and thus outside observer, studying the difference between ‘cross racing in the Pacific Northwest and the same thing back in the Mid-Atlantic states, I could tell something was amiss. This is not what ‘cross tends to look like in Portland in October.

The sudden influx of Southern California didn’t do the riders any favors, though. If anything, the sketchier sections were just a whole different kind of slippery.

Here an official patiently explains proper course direction, cracking up a rider who was already having a tough enough time keeping her bike upright. Get too far to the outside of this off camber descent and you were surfing.

This was the climb of the course. Few made it. Those who were able to stay on their bikes earned a hell of a lot of noise from the crowd.

Cross Crusade definitely lives up to the hype. What an incredible event.

Danzig in Daylight

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Oct 052012

As you read this, I’m hopefully talking about Project Danzig with some engineers. Frankly, it’ll be weird as hell to be talking about this project while the sun’s up. It’s been an underground thing for so long now that I never really envisioned actual discussions and stuff taking place during “normal people hours.” But those discussions are happening today. Here’s hoping the thing can actually be fabricated. Might take a while to sort out all the details, but I’m pretty sure it can.

Yesterday was about thirty days long, but I made some time to finish offsetting Danzig’s lower pivot housing and swingarm last night, just to make sure I didn’t run into any total roadblocks. From what I can tell, the design should be able to shift over toward the non-drive side of the bike to make a good bit of room around the chainring(s). Really just a matter of how much tire clearance you’d prefer, versus how broad gearing options you’d like. But I think the design will lend itself to really good clearance.

So we’ll see.

Timely as it’d be, what with Halloween fast approaching, I can’t quite go with “It’s alive!” just yet. More like, “It’s being analyzed by engineers to determine fabrication feasibility.” Mwooohooohaahaa!

Here’s hoping everybody has a great weekend.

Tweens

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Oct 042012

Can’t help but spend a few paragraphs taking issue with a reprehensible letter Specialized sent to their dealers, urging them to keep drinking the red (I believe that’s trademarked?) Kool-aid–oh, and just happening to mention that Cannondale sells their bikes at Costco.

Yes, as independently reported by yours truly, Cannondale bikes did make an appearance in Costcos. But the actions of a rogue distributor selling bikes against the company’s policy–a distributor Cannondale has since reportedly shut down–is clearly not the same as Cannondale selling bikes in Costco. For Mike Sinyard to attempt to kick Cannondale in the nuts while they were already hurting would come off as shockingly poor taste, if we hadn’t come to expect it.

Specialized clearly wants to boot all other brands out of brick and mortar shops, and constantly issues the mantra-like refrain that these companies don’t have the best interest of independent dealers in mind. They’re very straightforward about wanting to take over the majority of brick and mortar stores. I suppose that’s why there so many Specialized dealers in the city of Portland. (Why, they’re do dedicated to the LBS that they just have to open up the guy down the street from you, too.)

But the lengths to which they’ll go seem strained lately, as in this Cannondale thing. Really, guys? Did you really feel good about writing that letter? Yes, Cannondale has supply chain issues, and, hey, I guess they deserve them. That’s what you get for making your bikes overseas, whereas Specialized, they, um, well . . . .

To accuse Cannondale of selling in Costco based on an unauthorized incident might be tactically opportunistic, but it’s also just cheesy. Following the criteria Sinyard applied to Cannondale, Specialized is selling their frames direct to dealers on-line. Sure, they’re counterfeit knockoffs, but–following Sinyard’s reasoning in attacking Cannondale–a bike brand is always responsible for the actions of others, regardless of whether those others are selling product to big box stores back into the U.S. without your knowledge, or selling knock-offs on the internet.

Anyway: cheesy. Believe it or not, I think more of Sinyard and Specialized than I let on, but they continue to do things that just strike me as beneath them. I’d be cool to see Specialized apologize for that letter, but I don’t think that’ll happen.

In other news, I’ve avoiding discussion of 650b bikes lately–for no apparent reason, other than I’m just waiting for them to catch on. Like everyone else.

I’d’ve thought I’d come back from Interbike bearing tales of 650b domination. Hoardes of 27.5-inch-wheeled bikes descending on Las Vegas and 26-inch-wheeled bikes on life support. Thing is, it didn’t happen this year.

Sure, there were 27.5 bikes around–some quite nice, but it was also pretty clear that this wasn’t the year. Next year could be a whole different story.

The challenge, of course, is figuring out where we’re going with all these wheel sizes. Given the amount of full-suspension bikes capable of fitting a 27.5-inch wheel into their current molds and geometries, it’s inevitable that they’ll have a much bigger presence soon.

We’ll know they’ve arrived once we see them in Costco.

Proto-atypical

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Oct 032012

A tentative meeting to discuss creating Danzig prototypes has been scheduled for this Friday.

What’s that mean? Tough to say. This whole process is largely new to me, and happening at a particularly busy time. All kinds of projects have pulled me away from Danzig over the last six months, but I keep hanging on. The bottom line is that I’ve wanted to see this thing get made since early 2007, and I’m as close as I’ve ever been.

Might end up with some radio silence on Canootervalve while this deal goes down, as it’s only even remotely possible if done while still putting in big hours at two other projects. The ones with paychecks.

A big part of starting this blog was chronicling the development of the suspension system, so I’ll be back with an update as soon as I have more news. Assuming even I can figure out what’s going on.

Going to be one hell of a week.

Good People and Bad Brakes

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Oct 022012

First things first. Last Friday night we held a benefit for friend and co-worker, Mat Barton. Mat was paralyzed from the chest down following a bicycle accident. There have been some impressive efforts to help Mat and his wife through this really challenging time. Our company donated the $7550 Focus TT bike you see above and raffled it to raise money for Mat. That was pretty cool.

The Lumberyard here in Portland hosted us–great indoor mountain bike park built by the same team who created Ray’s back East. That was also great. Lots of people showed up to support Mat, too.

Even cooler, though, was that a friend of Mat’s bought as many raffle tickets as he could, won the bike, and is selling it to give the proceeds to Mat.

I never thought I’d say this, but please buy this TT bike.

Seriously, if you know of anyone interested in a time trial or tri bike, please let them know about this bike. It’s the exact medium Focus Izalco Chrono 1.0 shown above, and the eventual owner is going to get it for a phenomenal price, but the karma coming along with this bike will be serious, too. Good for some tailwinds.

So Interbike. I’d left that somewhere back there, but still have a pile of photos that still correspond to half-formed ideas in my head. Here’re some more.

I like Magura’s hydraulic rim brake for road bikes. There, I wrote that. The timing is bound to make this far more wind-pissing than the luck Magura had with the original HS-33 (which I’m proud to say I used to really like–except below 20-degrees), but good for Magura for trying anyway. If you’re old enough to remember how you could never exactly explain why you put up with all the crap you did just to be able to run HS-33s back in the day, you’ll know that these could have a hell of a lot of feel and control to them. Five years ago, maybe they would’ve earned a following. Not going to happen today.

No, Salsa’s Colossal and Warbird look a lot more like the future of road bikes. Shiny little rotors and all.

HED was showing off some pretty cool disc-ready tubulars that included Shimano Centerlock rotor mounts. Not nearly as common as the six bolt standard, Centerlock is definitely lighter and almost always easier to use. They certainly look more at home on road wheels than large six-bolt flanges.

One thing’s certain: the next three years are going to be pretty interesting for road bikes. Thing is, I rode some mechanical disc brakes out at Dirt Demo that felt worse than cantilevers. In fact, descending some of the roller coaster descents on ‘cross bikes caused my brain to automatically revert to “canti” mode, adjusting everything about lever pull and causing me to recall songs from the mid-90s. All of that’s painful stuff. Avid’s BB7 Road brakes felt consistently good, and I suspect setup was to blame, but suffice to say, there are still opportunities for someone to come along and make a kickass mechanical disc brake.

How nice would it be to see the likes of Paul Components or even Chris King producing a mechanical disc brake caliper? Wonder who owns the Grafton name these days?

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on Danzig, too. Hope to have more news on that this week.

Full Transparency

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Oct 012012

Yes, that’s a photo of Mr. Lance Armstrong winning the Superfrog Triathalon in California while wearing (if not, as the kids say, “rocking”) a speedo and sporting a requested “7” race number. You’re welcome. Happy Monday.

Still have some of my “insights” from Interbike I need to post this week, but one of the best parts of this year’s show was running into engineers–some I knew, some I’d never met. It was pretty ~~humbling~~ terrifying to discover the caliber of those you who are out there tolerating this blog. Does no one watch TV any more?

Interest in Project Danzig was higher than I’d expected, too. Given that I’d expected interest to be “virtually non-existent,” that wasn’t a tough expectation to exceed, but still. Thanks to everybody who wished me well with the project.

I know it’s been a while since we’ve seen or heard anything about Danzig, so today seemed right as ever for a quick update. While I’ve been babbling about launching new e-comm sites and wheelsets and my job collection, Danzig has continued, albeit slowly. Initial prototype discussions suggested we’d have to make some room on Danzig’s driveside to accommodate a triple.

Sorting all of that out is largely why I’m working with a great company on the prototypes in the first place, but still, being me, I took it upon myself to figure out just how much clearance I could come up with there, how it would look, and how it would affect everything else.

So I’ve been building new mainframes and swingarms, focusing on a more extreme asymmetrical design that’ll offer enough room to run a triple, even though I hate triples, personally.

It’s been really interesting to experiment with different asymmetrical orientations for the chainstays and that part I’ve always referred to as the “crankcase” that houses the lower link. Turns out I can move that off pretty far to the non-drive side, which should really improve clearances in general.

That’s what I’m working on these days.

Nano Nanu

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Sep 282012

Would you buy carbon fiber from this man?

I’ve been thinking about nanotubes again–those mysterious tiny strong things Easton starting mixing into the resin between carbon fibers.

Partially, I’m thinking about them because I had a meeting with a development company a while back and the sales guy kept referring to Stan’s NoTubes as “Stan’s Nanotubes.” We didn’t go with that developer.

But I’ve also been thinking about them because I had a chance to hang out with Larry Carlson at Interbike this year. Larry was they guy largely responsible for bringing Easton into the bicycle industry, and he’s the guy behind nanotubes.

These days, he’s still working with them (and doing some really amazing-sounding things).

What’s odd, though, is that Larry knew exactly where I’d lived in Pennsylvania. Nobody knows that place. Larry’s older than I am–by how much I can’t say, but there’s a generation gap there. Turns out, though, he and his friends (also at the table with us) grew up not just around Pittsburgh, but really close to the Ligonier area I used to call home. As a child, Larry lost his first ski down Lower Wildcat (it shattered after hitting a tree), and Lower Wildcat was about two miles from my front door.

It gets weirder.

They’d also ridden at Mingo Creek Park–an hour and some change from my old PA house, and very near my parents’ house. I’d also ridden at Mingo a lot. I didn’t know anyone outside 20-30 guys in Pittsburgh had ever ridden there.

We talked patents and bizarre bike industry stuff–things he’d planned to do for Easton but that never saw the light of day.

It was one of the most amazing conversations I’ve ever had at Interbike–and there have been some good ones.

It struck me that one hardly ever hears an engineer’s voice in the marketing dreck that makes it to print and into all of our ears at Interbike.

What we get instead is gibberish.

I really prefer listening to materials engineers any chance I get. They just make me happy.

Oh, and though it’s decidedly not nanotube technology, have you seen the Levi’s bike?

You know the barrier of entry into bicycle manufacturing is low when Levi’s decides they might as well make a bike. Have to admit, though, they did a nice job of making it goof-proof. Generally a sharp-looking little scooter with all that newly necessary pedigree stuff courtesy of Cherubim whose street cred includes points for being hip and the gets that total doubled for being based in Japan.

I won’t type anything bad about it. Except to mention the cable routing. There.

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