Finally, after about a year, the Ride Studio Cafe is now serving cold brew in bottles. This is on my favorites list. Ice cold, ready to drink, and well caffeinated.
Mmmmm.
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Nearly two years ago when I was working on the first Diverged Project Ride I tried to put together a cue sheet for the ride. It was destine for failure because so much of that route was off road. It’s challenging to create a text based cue sheet when street names don’t exist. “Take a left at the tree that does not look like the others” is not a very useful cue.
I tried to do this again for the Coffee Cross mixed terrain ride a few weeks ago. And, again, I ran out of time – but I did make a draft that I think could have worked.
For the upcoming HONKM, I think I’ve got a way to make a visual cue sheet work. It’s nothing radical; fairly obvious. It’s a lot of work to make it work well. This visual cue sheet has to work for about 65 miles of some of the most varied terrain.
We’re about to find out how it goes for the Honey One Hundred ride. I can’t wait!
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This is a big ride project. Probably the most complex, for me, to date. We’ve put together about 65 miles of mostly off-road riding. Not too technical, for the most part. All within reasonable distance to Ride Studio Cafe.
Register here.
More details to come. In the meantime, here are a few images from the route. It’ll be worth doing.
More after the jump.
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We’re making commemorative cue sheets for the Ride Studio Cafe’s Highpoint ride. This is a bit of a project because we’ve got eight rides that require cue sheets. The longest ride is just over 160 miles.
These cue sheets are a bit different from the average cue sheet in a number of ways:
- We’re requiring each rider doing the Highpoint top have a gps unit. So, the cue sheets are really just for emergency back up. Therefore I designed the sheets to stay in your pocket.
- In order to make the sheets commemorative, we’re laminating them.
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Sunday location: Studio | 7:45 am – 7:35 pm
It’s starting to feel like spring. A flowery gift at the Studio.
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Saturday location: Seven | Studio || 6:40 am – 7:20 pm
“[Al] Fritz was Schwinn’s vice president for engineering, research and development in 1962 when he flew to Southern California to investigate a new fad: children were buying used 20-inch bicycle frames and refitting them with long handlebars and banana seats. Recognizing the design’s mass-market potential, he built a prototype and came up with the name Sting-Ray because the curved handlebars reminded him of the upswept pectoral fins of a swimming stingray.
“Many Schwinn employees were skeptical, but Mr. Fritz prevailed, and the first run of Sting-Rays was produced in 1963. Schwinn eventually sold more than two million […] Vintage models now sell for thousands of dollars.”
Mr. Fritz died on May 7 at 88 in Barrington, Ill.
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Juxtaposition: Dirty lathe under a blue sky
Friday location: Seven | Studio || 7:10 am – 9:40 pm
- Product Development: Honey Bikes’ CiB Project goes public today. 20 bikes will be gone very quickly, some predict.
- Product Review: The deadline is fast approaching for the Honey magazine test bike. The deadline is actually here. As Douglas Adams said, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
- Time Marker: A new-old lathe arrived at Seven Cycles today. Skip backed it in on a small trailer and used the frame of the building to help pull the lathe off the trailer bed. I wish I had video of it; then again it’s probably good that there’s no evidence of what happened today.
Post title: African Proverb
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Thursday location: Seven | Studio | Seven | Studio || 6:20 am – 9:40 pm
Yesterday someone asked me what I do all day; here’s what today looked like:
Time Work
6:20 am Customer Service: Arrive at Seven Cycles - very foggy-brained - and try to figure out how to salvage a bike build that's gone sideways. Entirely my fault. Very patient rider: P.B.
6:55 am Arrive at Ride Studio Cafe; opened and got the shop started for the day. This is a bit unusual; I wouldn't typically do this. Had a macchiato.
7:05 am Bike Fitting: Making a bike that's too big fit someone cannot afford a new bike yet. And solving some issues with a previous fitting by someone - that sold the rider a bike that's much too big. Rider: D.M.
8:10 am Bike Session: Setting up a bike for a press test on a Honey 29er that'll be in print soon. Rider: C.B. Had a pourover coffee.
8:30 am Bike Session: Working with rider on details for a special Ragbrai bike. Rider: J.C.
11:20 am Arrive Seven; organize builders and help build the above mentioned "sideways" bike.
11:40 am Work: Get through 40+ emails; only 140 to go.
Noon Business Development: Meeting: Recruiting, while eating lunch - and breakfast
Life: Took a moment to pet Eddie the dog.
1:30 pm Work: Helping assemble a special bike that's shipping this afternoon. We're shorthanded at Seven so I'm trying to help solve some challenges.
2:20 Work: Review and edit three sets of customer bike designs.
2:50 R&D: Redesigned a dropout part and worked with Skip to get it machined asap for a deadline prototyping project.
3:20 Work: Emails: About 35. Down to about 100 behind.
3:45 Consulting: Worked on a special side project for a music event that's happening this fall. Seven is involved tangentially.
3:55 Customer Service: Worked with Karl on a bike service issue related to high-speed wobble. As always, it's not the frame stiffness that's the problem. We're tracking it down through poor component choices and half-way maintenance.
4:20 Business Development: Five year plan meeting preparation for Seven Cycles.
4:45 Product Development: Honey cross bike project. We've just about got this completed. Wrapping up final details and sponsoring partners.
5:10 Product Development: Seven Cycles' tapered road fork design iterate.
5:35 Work: Review and edit five sets of customer bike designs.
7:20 pm Ride Development: Meeting about Highpoint Project. Working on 1,000 logistic details. Everything from what material to wrap the handmade rice cakes in, to how to manage the entire lodge where people are staying. This is going to be the ride of the year - for me.
9:40 pm Life: Head home.
10:30 pm Write this post, among other writings.
Post title: A day in my life: this day.
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Wednesday location: Seven | Studio || 5:55 am – 9:20 pm
- Event: Evaluating the Philly Bike Expo for Honey Bikes. It might just be worth going for Honey this year. Some interesting opportunities and evolution. Bina is helping make is much easier for Honey to participate.
- Note: I thought evolution as supposed to be survival of the fittest. Not so true with bottom bracket standards.
- Product Development: Just received an agreement from Rapha to work with Honey on a jersey for the Cross is Boss project. Rapha is awesome! Details to follow – about the jersey – not why Rapha is awesome, everyone already knows that.
- Product Testing: Proving, yet again, that tubeset stiffness doesn’t usually matter in high-speed wobble issues. Components, mechanical aptitude, and rider position are the vast portion of cause.
Post title: Natt Freedberg, The Titanics. One of my favorite Boston bands from the mid-eighties.
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Tuesday location: Seven | 8:20 am – 9:35 pm
- Business Development: Had a long five year planning meeting today. Working on some cool presumptions about the future and how we’re going to beat the future to it’s destination. I rarely get to use the word counterfactual but I did today!
- Schooled: I thought I knew what endurance riding was, and then I recalled the bike that Seven Cycles built for Lon Haldeman. We’ve been working with Lon recently on something but he’s had his Seven for a while. Lon’s list of accomplishments is hard to comprehend; they include the Double Transcontinental Record of 24-days and 2-hours; this was eventually broken by Bob Breedlove by only 1-day and about 13-hours; that record still stands. Lon holds the record for the fastest transcontinental tandem ride – with Pete Penseyres for 7-days and 15-hours. Lon still rides thousands of miles a month.
- Words: The Book project in which Seven is involved is moving along, slowly but surely. Publishing date is up in the air.
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