New Outside Column! And Other Stuff Too!

I’ve got a new post in Outside and it’s well-nigh OH DEAR GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING???

My motivation for writing this was 4% considering I had very insights to share and 93% considering I wanted to torment the Internet with pictures of this thing.

The remaining 12% was considering I suck at math.

I do think this is something to consider though:

Yep, considering the velocipede companies have to sell everyone else the same stuff the pros ride, you soon won’t be worldly-wise to buy a road velocipede without TPMS:

You’ll see.

Fortunately, I have a burgeoning hodgepodge of “obsolete” bicycles, both new and vintage–and from the wildly exotic to the timelessly mediocre:

And I ride them while wearing jerseys made from “obsolete” fabrics, such as this one from Wabi Woolens:

It’s been well-nigh a month since I received this garment, and like the Montgolfier brothers I’ve ascended to unconfined heights (metaphorically speaking) in it…without washing:

Such is the wholesomeness of wool over increasingly Fredly synthetics (that’s a surprisingly mellifluous phrase), and I plan to launder it no sooner than the moment it walks up to me, taps me on the shoulder, and entreats me to do so.

As for the bike, I mostly rode it considering the drivetrain was getting all crunchy so I cleaned out the cassette and gave it a “new” uniting (actually the one I took off the Softride), and I wanted to satisfy myself that all was running smoothly and quietly, which it very much was:

Speaking of the cassette, it is of undertow a Uniglide, and as I mentioned not too long ago prices for them on the used market are surprisingly ridiculous. So not only is sticking with this system both contrarian and pretentious, but it’s moreover potentially expensive. At the same time, as I disassembled it, I had to revere its simplicity–just a stack of non-riveted individual cogs you can mix and match or flip as you please–and presumably as it wears you could probably plane replace it piecemeal with these things, which are unseemly and come in a variety of sizes (though not all the sizes, which is a bit of a problem):

Though I suppose it would probably be increasingly straightforward to just replace the freehub body.

Oh, I moreover replaced the worn restriction pads with the cheapest ones on the planet Earth;

Ironically, while the unshortened pad is quite thick, the very braking material portion is probably thinner than what was remaining on the pads they replaced.

Anyway, not only was the velocipede thrumming withal nicely, but the first bursts of verisimilitude were seeming on the landscape:

And I plane found one of these things:

I will now proceed to build an unshortened new velocipede virtually it.

Finally, remoter to yesterday’s post…

…I’ve been getting lots good use out of my Two Wheel Gear pannier briefcase thingy recently:

And no, I am not getting ready to rappel lanugo a cliff, it’s all a part of my Pee-wee Herman velocipede locking system.

In any case, since I took wordage of said briefcase Two Wheel Gear have updated their lineup, and I just received a veritable velocipede passenger foison from them, which I very much squint forward to trying: