An Interview with Charlie Cunningham
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$3.50, unless you subscribe T H E R I V E N D E L L R E A D E R Issue No. Issue No. 27 Summer 2002 Summer 2002 27 A QUARTERLY FOR BICYCLERS In This Issue How to repair a bad sidewall cut and make your tire stronger than new, almost. Luka the Wire-Haired Fox Terrier bicy- cle tourist from South America. An interview with Charlie Cunningham. How to Press in a Headset at Home. Fixing Lousy Knees. Many other fine sections. When Kids Chewed Tar and Chased the Bug Truck OU’D NEVER BUY A PAIR OF SHOES TOO SMALL, even if they The difference between shoes and bikes is that a bad-fitting pair were knocked down from $20 to $9.99, but people buy of shoes is more obvious a week or two later. With bikes, you give thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand and four- yourself time to adjust, and your body is remarkably hinged and Y thousand dollar bicycles too small all the time. By “all more flexible than your foot is, and it does adjust somewhat, so it the time,” I don’t mean 100 percent of the time, just seems to bear out the salesperson’s claim that the size is right, even mean it’s common; but still, it doesn’t happen with shoes. when it’s wrong. Too-small shoes are obvious. You can’t wiggle your toes, or your Another difference is that fitting shoes is easier than fitting bikes, heel lifts as you walk. You know that because you wear shoes every and shoe fitters have lots more experience with it. Twenty-seven day. Imagine that you get a guy from the jungles of New Guinea and years ago I learned to fit shoes at REI. We learned this on other bring him to a shoe store. Assuming he has been primed to want employees before we were allowed to help customers. Here’s how to shoes, and he can’t wait to get some, it’s pretty likely he’ll be thrilled do it. (1) You determine the proper style for the intended use. (2) You with the first pair of fancy ones he tries on, so long as he can fit his make sure the guy’s wearing the right sox. (3) You loosen the shoe, EEEE feet into them. He hasn’t had a proper fit before, and may think make sure his heel is above or forward of his ankle, and have him (or be told) that the novel feeling of toes being slightly scrunched, or push his toes all the way forward ’til his toes are touching the end. the shoe wanting to come off when he runs, will go away, or he’ll get Then you feel the clearance at the heel, and when it’s enough to stick used to it. So he pulls out his wampum and gets them. your finger in there and wiggle it just slightly and no more, it’s good. …continued on page 3 RR 27 Summer 2002 In This Issue TABLE OF CONTENTS . 2 MAIL . .4 INSTALLING A NORMAL HEADSET . .6 ED & FRED TALK ABOUT KNEES . 8 FREEWHEELS AND CASSETTES . .10 THE RIVENDELL READER CHARLIE CUNNINGHAM INTERVIEW . 13 VISION THOROUGHBRED . 25 Box 5289 A NEW CRANK, CALLED BIKE DRIVE, FROM AUSTRIA . .28 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 Phone: (925) 933-7304 CHUCK’S BIKES: MERCIAN SUPERLIGHT . 29 Fax: (925) 933-7305 BOOTING A GASH . 32 www.rivendellbicycles.com TRAVELS WITH A WIRE-HAIRED FOX TERRIER . 34 ROBYN’S 49.5CM RIVENDELL . .42 CONTACT US UPGRADE THIS . 43 TO ORDER QUICKBEAM . 44 By phone: (925) 933-7304 HOW TO BEAT THE SUN . 46 By fax: (925) 933-7305 or Toll-Free in FORCE, HORSPOWER, SPEED, MATH AND CLIMBING . 48 the U.S.: 1 (877) 269-5847 POP QUIZ . 49 Off the web: rivendellbicycles.com NOTES & DISJOINTED RAMBLINGS ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON INSIDE HERE 50 For general Rivendell or Atlantis A LOOK AT LUGS, PART 10 . 52 frame questions, or technical: FAX: (925) 933-7305 or 1 (877) UPS COW-LUGS QUESTIONS FOR MARK ABOUT YOUR FRAME ORDER: mail, or fax: 1 (877) 269-5847 email: [email protected] Editor: Grant Petersen Layout: Grant, who still has a long way to go Published four times in a good year. U.S. subs are $15 per year, $25 for 2 years, $35 for 3 years. foreign, $22 per year, $40 for 2 years, $55 for 3 years. A 99-year U.S. subscription costs $200. © 2002, Rivendell Bicycle Works page 2 RR 27 Summer 2002 (4) Then you have him reset his heel back where it’s supposed to be, perfect as it can be. You’re never more than one stem change away and lace up the shoe/boot. (5) Is there room to wiggle toes? Does it feel from Just Right, and stem changes don’t cost much. But our method is fine at this stage? (6) The walking test: Does the heel stay down when tailored to the idiosyncracies of our bikes, and doesn’t work as well for he pushes off? If it’s a hiking boot, does the heel stay down when he bikes that don’t have the same features. simulates uphill hiking on the portable slope the store ought to have ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- if it’s selling hiking boots? (7) Does his foot stay with the sole as he Technology (the word) gets batted around a lot. How do you stands sideways on the slope? define it? Change, improvement, complication? One definition I buy is There is a proper way to lace boots to make the heel stay put (to that technology is a better way to do something, like laser-blasting prevent rubbing and blisters). If the boot has 3 hooks up top, you lace away cancerous lesions inside your guts through a tube and using a over the top of the lower hooks, then cinch tight with an overhand television camera to make the pin-head sized cancer look at big as a knot. That keeps the heel in place, provided the heel more or less fits nickel. It’s being able to resize digital images and obliterate distracting the boot, and some heels are too skinny and some boots are too wide backgrounds. Or, it’s containing oil spills and sucking up the oil before for their heel, so there’s that to determine, too. People with narrow it wrecks things even worse. heels usually know it. Women are famous for narrow heels. Bicycles have been around for more than 130 years, and have After you’ve cinched the overhand knot tight at the bottom hook, evolved along the way to the beautiful, spare, and efficient form they you can lace the upper two hooks normally or even loosely, without are today. Bicycle technology can be stronger metals, more reliable affecting the snugged-down heel. Usually new boots are stiff up at the and better performing suspension forks, tubeless tires, disc brakes, top, and a snug lacing there won’t feel good. But if you lace loosely up and a few other things that may not be up our alley here, but for what top without using the heel-snug trick, the heel will come up and you’ll they are, they’re good. For instance, downhill-specific mountain bikes get blisters. aren’t our deal, but it’s only right to call them technological advances One difference between shoes and bikes is that everybody who in their own new arena. works fitting shoes in any respectable store gets trained. The store Sunken (internal) headsets, on the other hand, are not technol- owner doesn’t just get untrained hikers in there, people they assume ogy, just a change masquerading as technology, hoping to be mis- know how to fit shoes just because they can hike fast and long, or taken for an advancement just because they’re different. Many of the because they like hiking. companies making and using them must do so out of fear of being Another difference is that shoes cost a lot less than bikes do, and accused of not keeping up with technology, and losing sales. That has most adults don’t have any qualms about returning a pair of shoes that to be the reason, because it can’t be because external headsets lack didn’t work out after a few days or a week. And, if you’re rich or the anything. When most or all of your competitors are going one way— shoes were cheap, and especially if you’re rich and the shoes were for whatever reason—it is safer to do the same. If it all craps out, you cheap, you might figure big deal, try again, I’ve got other shoes, so I don’t look any worse than anybody else. It happened with Biopace don’t need to bother returning. This assumes you aren’t a born returner, rings and U-brakes, and it’s happening now with sunken headsets. and some people are. Sunken headsets will take over, but offer no advantages. “Stiffer” With bikes, a lot more money’s at stake, and it may be a month is not an advantage, because stiffness isn’t an issue with headsets. or several months before you’ve given it a good trial, especially if you “Lighter” isn’t either, because headsets are light enough, and there’s only get out on weekends, and not even every day of every weekend. not much difference between a heavy one and a light one.