We feature our customers bicycling experience, friends of the shop, new bicycles and quality gear, local events and news, what is new in the bicycle industry and in our shops.
The words lightweight and Brooks England aren't often synonymous, until now. Check out the new Cambium with carbon rails! A smart looking saddle that will be at home on any bike.
As the weather gets warmer and the days longer, minds start to wander. Wander to the outdoors, the sunshine and blooming trees beckoning us to come outside and play. After a winter filled with dreary, snow filled days, there is nothing quite like those first few days of spring, where you just know that spring is finally here to stay. There is no better time to grab your bike and head out for ride, or even an adventure. And there is no place better than your own backyard.
The C&O Canal is a gateway to adventure. Starting in Georgetown and running up to Cumberland and beyond, it is a great place to try out touring or go for an 3-5 day tour. You can even get onto some decent singletrack for those looking for something a little more challenging. And you can easily ride to the start from home. I decided to do just that, taking my Krampus, loaded up with gear, and connected to my newly handbuilt dynamo wheel out for a sub 24 hour adventure that ended up being a little more adventurous than I'd planned.
I didn't leave my house until 5 pm, prime time for warmth and sunshine. An easy roll out onto the canal, turned into an impromptu photo shoot, and before I knew it, the sun was down. A few more miles of riding, lit up easily by my dynamo saw me get to Pennylock, and the start of the Muddy Branch Trail, which winds it's way up through Potomac and forms a portion of the MoCo Epic mountain bike route.
I continued riding, on and on through the night. What is normally a fairly mundane trail took on a new aura in the dark. It basically travels through people's backyards, and I could see as more and more people turned off the lights for the night, as I was just getting started. I was tired, but excited. Although I'd done this trail and ride before, the fact that it was at night, on a school night, made it seem different. It felt epic. I ended up riding until 2 in the morning and sleeping directly on the ground at mile 26 of the C&O. I had to work the next day, so got up only 3 hours later to ride back into town, drafting and passing commuters on my 80 pound steel bike with 3" tires. I covered almost 100 miles in about 17 hours and was exhausted for 2 days. But it was worth it. I'd made a decision to get outside and experience something close to home in a whole new light (or lack thereof), and it was worth it. It was so worth it.
Thanks everyone for joining us for Bike Trekking night at the shop. We hope you are inspired to start planning some adventures of your own (or to plan less and do more). For those wondering about Big Ron's next adventure, check out his post on his latest challenge, 3 epic single speed rides over 3 weekends. First up this weekend, is the entirety of the Massanutten Trail, a 72 mile feast of rocks and mountains, in one day. Inspired by a friend who left too soon, BR's rides will benefit the National Alliance on Mental Illness. If you would like to donate, you can do so here.
5 REASONS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER A CUSTOM WHEEL BUILD
We’re sure you’ve heard before that hand built wheels are “better” than machine built wheels. But what does this even mean, and why should you care? Wheels may be the most important component on your bicycle, making a huge impact on ride quality. Wheels with better hubs are going to roll smoother, creating less friction and drag, stronger wheels will hold their true longer, and lighter wheels will spin up to speed faster, making your ride more enjoyable over all. Thus, it is worth considering your options. Here are 5 reasons that might make you consider a hand built wheelset.
1). PROPER, EVENLY TENSIONED SPOKES
In theory, a rim is perfectly round, and hubs are perfectly machined, matching their measurements exactly. In practice, this is not the case. Most, if not all rims, are going to be less than perfectly round, and hubs will be less than perfectly machined. A machine cannot necessarily recognize these inconsistencies. An experienced wheel builder knows how to properly balance spoke tension across the wheel to provide not only a perfectly true wheel, but one with consistent tension, leading to a longer lasting, more durable wheel.
2). SPOKES STRESSED DURING THE BUILDING PROCESS
If you’ve ever ridden on a wheel right out of the box, you’ve surely heard a frightening array of pops and pings. Those noises are the spokes “settling” or de-tensioning. There is naturally a small amount of “wind up” in the spokes during the building process, meaning that the spokes actually twist, rather than turn in the nipple. When the spokes unwind, the tension in the wheel changes, bringing the wheel out of true. If the first time you ride a bike is the first time the wheel has been de-tensioned, it will be out of true from the get go. A reputable wheel builder will stress the spokes as he/she builds the wheel, meaning that the there will be no unwinding when you start riding, keeping your wheel true from the get go! (Note: We at BicycleSPACE check the true, tension, and stress the spokes of all machine built wheels, as well as grease and adjust the hubs.)
3). SPOKE PREP ON THREADS
Many machine built wheels come with nothing on the spoke threads. This presents a few problems. For one, there is nothing to prevent rust or corrosion on the threads, which can cause the nipples to become seized to the spokes, making it very difficult or even impossible to true the wheel. The second issue is that there is nothing to keep the spoke from unwinding while riding, causing your wheel to lose tension and become more prone to failure. All hand built wheels at BicycleSPACE use either high quality, waterproof grease or specifically designed spoke thread to prevent both of these issues from occurring.
4). HUB/RIM COMBINATIONS NOT AVAILABLE
With a handbuilt wheel, you can get any combination of rim/hub your heart desires. Say you want a certain dynamo hub, laced to your favorite rim for your commuter. It is highly likely that this combination is not available pre-built, so your only option is a handbuilt wheel. (Check out our post of why you should consider using a dynamo on your commuter.) There are a lot of rims that are available only as a rim, and vice versa for hubs. If you consider the option of a handbuilt wheel, there are no limits to the wheels you can create. And then it is one of a kind!
5). STRONGER, LONGER LASTING WHEEL
The sum total of all these advantages is going to result in a custom wheel that will be both stronger and last longer than machine built wheels. You will end up with exactly the wheel you want, with properly balanced spoke tension, and threads that are prepped to prevent unwinding and binding. While many machine built wheels are excellent, in terms of convenience, price, and quality, a wheel hand built by a reputable builder is going to far surpass a machine built wheel in nearly every aspect.
Here are a few of our favorite, tried and true wheels for various disciplines.
Commuting- It’s hard to beat the affordable, yet extremely durable combination of an LX or XT hub laced to Velocity Dyads. The mountain biking hubs are burly, and are more than up to the task of commuting in all weather. The Dyads are a wide, double walled rim, meaning you can toss on some large rubber for comfort, and not worry about your wheels going out of true.
Mountain Biking- For rims, it is hard to beat the value and technology contained in Stan’s rims, either the Arch or Crest. Their tubeless technology is some of the best out there, and the rims are tough and stand up to the abuse and rigors of mountain biking. For hubs, Hope’s are incredible, light and smooth, as are I9 hubs.
All our rides this weekend will be seeking out blossoms on and off the beaten path. Join us and share your #biketheblossoms photos @bicyclespace
Nice-n-Easy Ride
Saturdays and Sundays 10 AM Downtown and Adams Morgan
Cupcake Ramble
Saturdays 11:30 AM Downtown
Hills of Anacostia
Saturdays 8:30 AM Downtown
Hills of Rock Creek
Sundays 9:30 AM Adams Morgan
Handsome Cycles, She Devil, a steel mixte with a 1x8 is one of our favorite bikes for getting around the city. Photographed at the beautiful cooridor of lanterns at City Center.
Greenscape Cooridor Ride 2015 - stay tuned for a full season of new rides this year
Mon: 8am-7pm
Tues: 10am-7pm
Wed: 10am-7pm
Thurs: 10am-9pm
Fri: 10am-7pm
Sat: 10am-6pm
Sun: 11am-6pm
Traveling by bike, in your backyard and around the world. Join, Scott (Big Ron) of BicycleSPACE, and the family of Laurie and Chad, as they share their bike touring tips and experiences, on March 18th 7:00pm at BicycleSPACE Adams Morgan
Free event:
Laurie Ashley and Chad Dear are enthusiastic explorers of places and things near and far including Rock Creek trails, backcountry skiing Central Asia and parenting. In 2014 they quite their jobs and embarked on a three-month bike tour across Europe with their then 2.5 year old daughter Zoe. Previously, they wrote the book "Ski Afghanistan: A Backcountry Guide to Bamyan &. Band-e-Amir.” They love mountains, work in international development and can often be found searching for lost socks and hats belonging to one of their two daughters.
Scott (Big Ron) has been camping and cycling his entire life. His transformation from Scott to Big Ron began in 2006 when he completed a southbound thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, in a year when less than 30 people completed the trail southbound. In 2009, he rode the Trans-America Trail rather than become a slave to the man and get a job. Last summer, he completed possibly the first, solo, unsupported thru ride of the Virginia Mountain Bike Trail, a 450-500 mile route through the GW and Jefferson National Forests. Big Ron generally prefers to travel light, rarely prepares properly, and generally forgets some vital piece of equipment.
From All City Cycles: "Meet the Pony Express. An $1150 flatbar Space Horse. Coming this June."
We've long been a fan of flat bar bikes for the city. Here's one of our favorite Space Horse builds, complete with Velocity Dyad rim laced to a Shimano Alfine 8 speed hub and the front is a Dyad laced to a Surly New Hub, both handbuilt by our wheelmaster, Jerry. Brooks England B17 Special in Antique Brown atop a silver Thomson setback seatpost. As for some of the smaller details, we got a beautiful Sugino single-speed crank in silver, Continental Gatorskin 28s, Dimension Arc Bar with nifty GripRings in a corresponding colorway, Tektro cantis, and some sweet matching fyxation Pedals.
How have you customized your Space Horse? Let us know in the comments.
Testing out the camp coffee set up on the C&O. Stay tuned for upcoming bike trekking workshop this month.
Elly Blue is a big part of why I'm a bike activist.
I mean, there are other big parts as well. Falling in with a crowd of friendly cyclists near my home in College Park at a weeknight potluck, for instance, or towing a cantankerous trailer with pro-cycling messages around every part of DC have to be on the list too.
But, if I had to explain the economic, political, and above all ethical importance of my bike work, I could only do it with reference to her.
Riding a bike is powerful. It liberates people from so many of the stupid, useless limitations that have been imposed on them by their gender, location, class, status, or other stupid and useless reason. The humble bicycle is a tool for social change, for building communities, for creating and using the power that justly belongs to all human beings but has been crushed by systematic and unjust structures in our society.
Her Everyday Bicycling may be the best introduction to riding a bike for transportation, along with a patient and cheerful friend—a short and joyful contrast to previous ponderous, technical, and intimidating guides, which came with a healthy helping of patriarchal elitism. Less focused on how to overhaul your hubs than awesome ways to improve your life, Everyday Bicycling captures the power and joy of living life on two wheels.
In Bikenomics, she makes this case for communities. For anyone interested in transportation advocacy or activism, Bikenomics is the essential handbook. Yes, as its subtitle claims, it's about "how bicycling can save the economy," but it's about more than just our narrow late capitalist conception of "the economy;" it's about creating community, fighting back against every inhuman force that would separate us from our world, our neighbors, and ourselves, and creating a more equitable, inclusive, and just society in the process. It's a DIY guide to improvising with the two wheels you have at hand engines of opportunity, entrepreneurship, and engagement.
And, of course, there's the many articles and blog posts, the Taking the Lane 'zine series and Journal of Bicycle Feminism that evolved from it, theBikes in Space anthologies of feminist bicycling science fiction, the Our Bodies, Our Bikes anthology, the records of personal lived experience with speculative fiction, practical advice with flights of fancy, the heartache, love, pain, and joy of riding a bike captured as best language can—yes, all of that.
This is why we're excited—I'm excited—to host Elly Blue at our downtown shop (440 K NW) on 9 March to talk about the bicycle as a tool for social change.
By Phill Melton
Wednesday March 9th 7:30pm | 440 K Street NW
Elly Blue and Joe Biel present Groundswell, an interactive program of short documentaries and discussion about people who are use bicycles as innovative tools to make their lives and communities better. We'll show how Reading, PA came to be 13th on the East Coast for bike commuting without any advocacy or government spending, a film about former gang members riding bikes to raise awareness about gang violence, Mexico City’s superhero of the streets, Peatonito, the story of the League of American Bicyclists’ equity council, how the City of Portland’s Sunday Parkways worked as a response to gentrification, and more ways that cyclists are representing themselves and creating their own voices all over the world.
Cutting to the chase: the Fredward is kinda like Jackie Chan's Drunken Master. You know, the funky hero, overlooked, underestimated, indestructible, never too serious...and busting out the moves when nobody expects it. Yeah, the Fredward's a great coffeeshop cruiser, or a barhopping beat 'em up bruiser bike, but it cuts corners, pops outta stops, and kills hills with the best.
So, Backstory Part the First: I loaned out my fun-as-phosphorus 'cross bike to Ana for MonsterCross. Cool, that bike lives for the races, ya know? Of course, he had to pick it up somehow—so his Fredward got to stay with me while Ellie the Private Jake went home with him. Eh, no big deal, might take it for a spin around the block or something if I get the chance...
That's when the snowstorm hit.
Cruuuuuuuud. Gotta get to Adams Morgan in a couple inches of slushy, snowy schmutz, and I don't have my go-to Snowmonster with me anymore. Guess I'll have to sit this one...wait, this bike Ana ditched with me has 'cross tires. This might just work.
Okay, so I didn't go straight in to work—you know, when it's completely crazy outside, the completely crazy College Park cyclists meet for coffee—but, as I was heading in, plowing through snow-covered trails, I had a bit of a realization.
Which brings us to Backstory Part the Second: Phaedrus.
Phaed was my first DC bike. Like, I grew up riding bikes, but spent college mostly walking everywhere. Wore out a lot of Keen hiking boots that way. A year and a half into living in DC, I'd had enough—I wanted a bike. So I played craigslist roulette, found a Bridgestone XO-4 hybrid (wait, like the tire company?) for pretty cheap, and bought it. No, it didn't really fit me, but whatever; that bike cut corners like nothin' else. I felt like I was flying. Well, okay, for the two days before Snowmageddon hit. I wasn't crazy enough to ride in that.
Now, a few things: Bridgestone (yes, the tire company) XO bikes are kinda cult bikes. Their designer was this crazed genius named Grant Peterson, who'd go on to found Rivendell, his own bike company where he could built his own bikes and write his own rants, in '94, about the same time Phaed was built.* If you talk to bike geeks about Bridgestones, you see eyes light up. The folks at All-City—about the biggest bunch of bike geeks out there—make no secret of their love of Bridgestone. Handsome even made a bike called the XOXO, a direct homage to/clone of the XO-1. So yeah. Nice bike.
Of course, there was that whole "too small" thing. I looked like I was riding a clown bike, and sometimes felt like I was about to pitch forward over the bars. Once I got my Schwinn (which is completely too big for me, but that's another story), I stopped riding Phaed, but couldn't quite bring myself to sell such a beloved bike. I mean, he was the first bike I ever paid for, the one that got me into riding in DC, the one that...so many memories with that bike.
So when a shorter friend of mine needed a bike, I gave him to her. The ol' Bridgestone's currently sporting red tires, brand new fenders, and leading a happy life running around College Park and beyond.
All this is a long way of saying that, when I hopped on Ana's Fredward and headed off into the snow, I felt just like I was back on my old bike. My first bike. The one I loved so dearly, but still gave away.
This time, though, the snow that came two days later didn't stop me (and the bike fit!). I'd done this. I got this. Do crazy, or go crazy. It's my new normal.
The folks I was meeting for coffee? One of them was Phaed's current owner. We dropped by her house on my way to work—and there was my old Bridgestone, in from the snow.
It was a long trek in after I left, through fresh snow, fellow crazies, grey slush, and General Gross; the change to freezing rain (yes, I took the Metro back between Petworth and CP—I draw the line at ice!) didn't make things better. Of course, I don't live at the Metro station; I rode through the night, face covered in layers of wool, glasses fogging, the ice-covered snow not crunching under tires but unzipping, ripping, tearing, following ruts and holding tight in turns, finding the odd, smooth margin at the edge of the pavement...
Yes, but what about the bike? Isn't this supposed to be a review? Where are the component specs? What's with the geometry? Why does it climb so well? What about the gearing? Was the only point of that Jackie Chan reference at the beginning an excuse to watch kung fu fight scenes and call it "work related research?" Give us details! Tell us! Tell us!
Okay, here are your component specs: it's a bike. It has two wheels, two pedals, a saddle and a handlebar. There's a chain that connects the crank to the back. It's a great invention. It goes when you pedal, stops when you work the brakes. There's a version with three speeds, another with just one; keep things simple, you can't break what you don't have. Oh, and you get your choice of three colors.
There you go. That about covers it.
Look, things can be complicated. If you want complicated, I can do complicated. Heck, I'm a recovering philosopher—I can make things complicated!
This here, it ain't complicated. Ain't fancy. It's an antidote to buzzworditus and techgeekery. I mean, it's well thought out, but you're not supposed to notice that, but rather, ride it, live it. There's lots of cool stuff you can do, lots of ways you could trick it out, things you could swap, approaches you could take—but, you know what, it's just fine the way it comes. You do you. Ride your ride.
What you are supposed to notice is how crisply you can snap through a tight turn, take the secret shortcut, hop a curb, climb a hill, feel the flow, stop overthinking, start riding, start flying, start grooving. That's cool. That's what matters. That's what's awesome.
It's a connection to old memories and new stories, to places and people, to making the everyday into just a little bit of an adventure.
*Some of the things on Riv's website are the bikeworld's answer to Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap labels. I mean, there are a few good nuggets in there, don't get me wrong, but there's a reason the part of me that loves a good left-field whacko idea is still cackling with glee over my hard copy Riv catalog.
(Okay, photos. The one by the bridge also features Rod Smith on his Kona ["make sure you get me in the picture" I hear him yell as he rolls up]; the one of me with my face covered was taken by Millie T., who's on the right—and, cool thing about it, the gal in the middle is the person I gave Phaedrus. That's a borrowed Felt she's riding in the photo, though. The bike among the snowpiles, though? That's Phaed)
Ivy City 1512 Okie St., N.E. Washington, DC 20002 202-853-9390
Please come visit us at our expansive Ivy City location- there’s a bike lane connected to downtown just around the block (and lots of on-street & longer term garage parking next door if you really must drive…)- our great people, bikes, and service are waiting for you!
contact@bicyclespacedc.com
