My ugly blog

I am pleased to note the brown and yellow colour scheme for this blog.  Seems appropriate that this story of an ugly bike should share colours with the Cleveland Browns and UPS, plus various donut and muffler shops.  But I didn't pick these colours - they were the default.

Really, Google?  Really?

My old bike(s)

Before NORCO I had two bikes (well actually a whole string of bikes going back to a rust-red Mustang I used to ride off the pier in Qualicum, but two current bikes).  

There was Marin, a mountain bike I bought used in about 1988.  I logged a lot of miles, totally rebuilt her and repainted the frame in the 90s sometime, and gave her to Lucas when he was living with me.  When the 2nd headset began to die, I put her out to pasture at the local Goodwill.

Goodbye old friend

I think this old school hardtail rigid fork style mountain bike is THE most practical bike on the planet.  Simple, tough and efficient.  You can do anything on one.  Nowadays you cannot buy a mountain bike like this it seems; the closest will be a "hybrid", probably with thinner slicker tires (which are fine).

My second old bike is Dynasty, a 70s style ten speed.  She is a Free Spirit which was the Sears house brand.

I also aspire to be a Free Spirit

Dynasty is beat up, heavy and she never was top quality even in her youth but I love her.  I bought this bike for $2 at a garage sale and reluctantly spent $40 more for new tires.  I left the $2 sticker on the handlebars for years to dissuade thieves.

Notice the stem mounted shift levers and the suicide brakes (those lever extensions that you can kind of use from the top hand position).  That's some fine 70s cheese.  The brakes squeal like a banshee.  Someday I will put new brake pads on and toe them in correctly.  Some day.

I have ridden this bike everywhere.  The 70s "ten speed" is the second most practical bike design ever, I think.  The ten speed is a road bike with sensible geometry that favours strength over weight or speed.  The front end, with a slack head tube and forks that put the front wheel an inch or two farther forward than a twitch performance bike, is stable and comfy.  Dynasty is the best no hands bike I have ever had.  I could eat cereal out of a bowl on this bike.

I should put fenders on her to complete her utilitarian perfection but that would break my "no fussing with this bike ever" approach.  I did finally rebuild the bottom bracket when it began to feel like a cement mixer.  It was the simplest thing I have ever done on a bike.  One nut unscrewed and the one piece cranks stayed in the frame when I popped the bearings out.  There wasn't a trace of grease left, as if it had never been lubed in the 30+ year lifetime of the bike.  The races were badly pitted but I couldn't find new ones right away so I packed the bearings and it feels just fine.  I'll ride it for another 30 years and we'll see.

Red Deer birthday ride

For my 50th birthday we decided to really blow out the stops and go camping outside of Innisfail so we could visit a local cherry orchard.  </irony>  Only the crappy little campground was full up when we arrived there at 1 PM on a non-long-weekend Friday.  Well screw you too, Red Lodge Provincial Park.

Our back up plan (unplanned) was to go to Tolman Bridge campground about 100 KM to the east.  We actually really like that campground but we didn't have anything to do in the area so we just stayed one night.  (Also, the neighbors were loud.)  Saturday we drove home and stopped in Red Deer for a little ride.

From the tourist info / Sports Hall of Fame on highway 2 we rode the river path pretty much to the end, then came back on a country road (30th Ave).  Very nice ride.  The river valley is densely forested and varied and pretty.  The country road back would have been excellent if it wasn't being repaved.  We walked several kilometres beside giant bulldozers etc. feeling like we shouldn't have been there.

Fenders

After riding in the rain in Mill Woods, I was reminded how much I love fenders on a bike.  They have zero effect on road performance (they weigh about as much as a bagel) and they add huge comfort.  Not just in the rain,  but any time there is damp or shmutz on the road surface.  I LOVE 'EM!, as NORCO would say.

I wanted SKS chromoplastic fenders in silver and black as I thought this would go [as] well [as possible] with NORCO's black paint and [garish] white trim.  I ordered the fenders and was surprised when they came from England, of all places.  Good old inter webs.

The SKS's are quality kit with stainless steel HW but the stays (wire mounting thingies) have to be cut to size to look good.  I decided to bend them first, to trap the mounting nut onto the stay.  I also put a dab of Loctite on the bolts to make sure vibration doesn't rattle them off.

One cut and one uncut stay.

Cutting the bent bracket

Finished installation.  Don't forget to round off the cut end.

The final result.

A fun ride to Fort Saskatchewan

I haven't mentioned that part of my new bike purchase was a new bike for my wife.  She has a nice old school Raleigh mountain bike with a rigid fork that she was perfectly satisfied with, but I had a hunch we could do much longer rides if she had a road steed.  I was correct.

So she picked out a really nice Kona Jake cyclecross.  About $300 "nicer" than mine, in fact.  D'oh!  Actually, I am very pleased as this takes any residual heat or guilt off of me.

As fits her personality, she has no regrets or second thoughts but the road bike is a big change for her.  She says it is like riding a horse that always wants to gallop.  Also, it turns out she has not been using the gears on her old bike.  Not ever.  This is a woman who has been riding 30 or 40 K at a time.  She is an impressive athlete.

Also obsessive about hydration


ANYWAY, in my quest for new bike rides I thought I found a back route from Sherwood Park to Fort Saskatchewan, along the river.  So we set out north on Sherwood Drive and indeed managed to punch through to Fort Sask.

NORCO in the park by the river valley, Fort Sask

We had lunch in the Fort and caught a matinee at the excellent movie theatre.  I smuggled in and ate an entire box of Klondike ice cream bars.  Yum, urp, urgh.

We rode home on a county road, into the wind.  It was difficult and AWESOME!  I love a challenging ride.  M did great.  

I highly recommend the by-the-river route, even though there is a gate at one point and it therefore isn't driveable and Google Maps won't recommend it.  You go north on range road 232, jog east on Township Road 540 at the Legends golf course, go past Bremner Field (a model airplane area) on Township Road 541, around the aforementioned gate, then north on Range Road 231 to the Dow Ball Fields and Fort Sask.

My new shorter stem was great, very comfy.  My new seat is better than the S&M sex toy that was on there before, but several consecutive days riding left me soooore.

I almost forgot, my bike is ugly.  Look at the ugly logo on the headtube.  It's some kind of lopsided shield.

New stem, new logo

After my first ride, I wanted to try a shorter handlebar stem to get off the bars a bit and cut some of the road shock to my hands.  (Plus, as mentioned before I am old and fat and I need to sit upright.)  Mountain Equipment Co-op had a nice stubby stem for $18.

It is kind of ugly, with an obnoxious MEC logo on it, but at least it's a change from the NORCO logo that is plastered on every other fricking component.

I did manage to de-logo the wheels.  They had obnoxious stickers that probably weren't supposed to come off, but they did.  I managed to get the sticker glue off one side of one wheel after scrubbing with gasoline for ten minutes, but the other three sides are going to have to wait.  Probably forever.

I've been thinking about those NORCO logos.  They are as tacky as an all-caps email, but their dorkishness goes deeper than that.  They have a bottom-rung, department store feel about them, like plastering a brand name, any brand name, on every part of the bike reassures you that it hasn't been made of wood.  "Oh, the seatpost has NORCO written on it - that must be good.  I guess.  Front forks written on too? I suppose they must also be real."

And I suppose all caps italic seems strong and fast to the aesthetically challenged.  Not convinced?  I said ALL CAPS ITALICS SEEMS STRONG AND FAST.  Surely now you believe me!

Somehow the branding on this bike looks French-Canadian to me, in the worse possible way.  (Sorry Quebec.)

South Edmonton ride

Our usual path into Edmonton is the excellent Strathcona-Science-Park-to-Rundle-Park-to-Ada-Blvd-etc route.  However, sometimes you want a change.  So we tried using the little used 34th Ave bridge across the Henday freeway, into Mill Woods.

The bridge is nice and quiet and the route is satisfyingly clever but Mill Woods is not my favorite riding neighborhood.  It is quite suburban and drivers stop to give the right of way too much.  It's very friendly but it makes me feel like some anomaly.

We returned over the 34th St bridge and Ellerslie Road.  That is some pretty country.  It started raining and we were wet and cold for quite a few miles.  It was hard but I enjoyed it in that masochistic way.

I wasn't enjoying that harsh front fork though.  It's really my only complaint with my bike to date (aside from the ugliness).

NORCO SEARCH NORCO NORCO SEARCH NORCO

So I got my new bike home and shortly thereafter went for a ride.  M and I did our usual route from Sherwood Park to Edmonton, a route which I highly recommend by the way.  A tunnel under the freeway takes you to a footbridge across the river and before you know it, you are downtown.

Ze new bike, she is fast ...

Really fast.

Other observations: the front end is a little harsh.  You feel bumps on this bike.  Granted I've been riding a 1970s ten speed, but I don't remember my Lemond being this harsh.  I can live with it but one small stupidity irritates me: the front fork is straight in that inelegant mountain bike style -

And yet the rear seatstays have that newfangled curve to them, supposedly to add flex and comfort.

Which raises the question: if a curve is good on the back, why not on the front?
Why did they get rid of the old style curved front forks and add a curve to the rear seatstays?

It proves a theory of mine, which is that the marketplace sucks and what passes as innovation is usually just change for change's sake.

And finally: cleaning the mud off the bike, I start to become aware that there is a lot of all-caps italic text on this bike.

My bike is yelling.

NORCO

So I trucked on down to the hockey store and test rode a Norco Search.  Or perhaps I should say a NORCO SEARCH, as that's how the name is printed on the frame (more about that later) .  It was very nice.  It rode great and it fit me well.  It was steel, my preferred frame material.  And it was on sale.  So I bought it.

And I don't regret doing so, because functionally it has been a great bike.  But I became aware of something, an aesthetic flaw that I had unthinkingly compromised on.  It is the thing that I will build this whole blog around.

My new bike, I realized-

Go on, admit it-

It's kind of, well-

Ugly.

Found One

As the summer went on I started to get reeaal motivated.  I wanted my new bike. I went to multiple bike shops and looked at the three or four cyclocross/gravel/adventure bikes they typically had.  Always the wrong size, or $2000, or otherwise wrong.

I was seriously considering a Jamis Nova Sport even though I didn't really want aluminum.  There was an intriguing bike on the web I could get shipped in pieces from England.  Then one day I called a local hockey shop that also carried bikes and asked if they had a Norco Search in stock.  Yes, they replied.  In my size.

Norco Search S3

New Bike Fever

"New bike"!  What a seductive siren call.  The phrase can only be matched in my heart by "used boat cheap" or "free u-pick fruit".

What to get?  I ride mostly on the road but I do a bit of off-road too.  Nothing too gnarly but the occasional dirt road or walking trail.  I didn't want front suspension and I preferred drop bars.  But I didn't want a delicate road bike with no space for fenders, an aggressive riding position, etc.

Really I wanted a nice new version of my ten speed.  I love that bike with its slack geometry and 30 mm tires.  There are some retro bikes like that ( e.g. Rivendells) but they typically ain't cheap.  I didn't want to spend much more than a grand.  I'm middle aged with shrinking dreams and growing equity but spending more wasn't  aesthetically pleasing.

So it had to be a non-custom off the shelf bike. Fortunately there are a some bike categories on the market that seemed promising.  Touring bikes are comfy and stable but my friend's Trek 520 was a little too train like.  Cyclocross bikes are good on the dirt but they can be as twitchy and fender-hostile as any road bike.  The new "gravel", "adventure" and "endurance" bikes seemed most promising.  They are like the love child of a cycle cross mama and a tour bike papa.

I tried this bike, a Specialized AWOL and I loved it.  Old School mountain bike geometry, road bars, tons of wheel clearance and a tough looking matte charcoal paint job.  It was $1500 and there were none available in Edmonton.

Sorry Senhor, you can't get there from heere.  

Sigh.

The Beginning

So I've been riding two bikes for the last few years - a Marin mountain bike I bought used about twenty five years ago and a Free Spirit ten-speed I found at a garage sale for $2.

(I had a really nice Lemond road bike too but I became too old and fat for the trademark stretched-out Lemond riding position so I gave it to my tall thin son.)

The Marin started to feel strange in the headset and the Free Spirit bottom bracket started to grind so I felt the urge for a new bike.  Especially since my wife and I are riding a lot these days.

Number One Son with Lemond