Sean’s Blog

I finally took the plunge and attended the United Bicycle Institute bicycle framebuilding course in Portland, Oregon. It’s something I have wanted to do for several years and I was long overdue for a vacation. It’s been about a year and a half years since I took a framebuilding course with Tim Sanner when he was located in Palo Alto, California. (I wrote about it here.)

The time since, I had purchased an oxy-acetylene setup, taken a welding course and a couple of machine shop courses at Marin College. I wasn’t sure whether or not I would attend UBI during this time, but I figured that if I wanted to pursue bicycle framebuilding as a lifetime hobby that these courses would really help me along the way.

The last course that I had taken with Tim Sanner was lugged bicycle construction. With the rising price of silver and the expense and geometry restrictions of lugs, I thought learning how to fillet braze and potentially building a fork to match would be a good reason to take another framebuilding course. Both of these methods were something I would want to learn eventually.

Compared to Tim Sanner’s course, UBI was way more stocked when it comes to tools. Many people build really high quality frames without as many machine shop tools, fixtures, jigs, etc. than what UBI carries, but having access to the tools does speed up the process when they are used properly. And it was nice to get some hands on time with a wide variety of the industry standard tools to get a sense of what I would eventually be interested in purchasing and which tools are not absolutely necessary. Given bicycle framebuilding tools are for a very specific purpose, they are typically built in small quantities and are very expensive.

Another thing I should mention is that most every tool that’s out there still requires a good “framebuilder’s eye” to use properly. Because of the complexity of circular and ovalized tubing and and some of the complex joints, precision can be gained from taking concrete measurements, but some things still have to be eyed to see if it looks right.

This course has been taught many times over the past decades by UBI’s owner Ron and more recently by guest instructors that are very established in the handmade bicycle world, so the curriculum was very dialed in. We were given a course handout on the very first day and it pretty much established what we would be doing every single day for the two week duration of the course. Just so I don’t have to get into it into too much detail, I took a couple photos of the curriculum.

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The instructor for my course was Joseph Ahearne. I think the biggest benefit of taking this course was gaining the insight of someone that has been building bicycles as a profession for quite some time as well as watching him work. During the two week course, Joseph was always a step or two ahead of us building a demonstration bike so we could see his exact methodology. Watching someone of Joseph’s skill level work is something that you can honestly only experience in person to benefit from. His subtle torch movements and precise yet aggressive file strokes really helped me understand what I have and have not been doing properly in the past. But there are still some things that only come from years of experience.

One of the biggest benefits of taking this two week course as opposed to the one week course that I took in the past was obviously the extra week. This allowed extra time for general discussions and demonstrations. It also gave us a day or two of practice for hand mitering, brazing joints, and cutting them apart to see which techniques worked and which did not.

At the end of the course, I had built a fillet brazed frame with a randonneuring geometry I had based off of Curt Goodrich’s bicycle featured in Bicycle Quarterly. I chose to build a fork (time usually doesn’t allow for this when building a fillet brazed frame) with 64mm of rake making the trail exceptionally low. I figured this would be a little bit on the experimental side and that if the handling is absolutely horrible I can build another fork with more moderate rake.

I have been back in the routine of work and riding or socializing during my free time, so the frame has gone a little neglected in the past few weeks. The frame is essentially structurally finished, but I would like to add a couple more braze-ons as well as finish the filing of the fillets so I can send the frame out to powder coat or paint. I plan to ride the bike for a while unfinished to make sure that everything is dialed in.

I will post more as the frame progresses.

Flickr set from Portland

This past weekend, I rode the Davis Double for the second time. So far, it is still the longest ride I have completed. I attempted the San Francisco Randonneurs 400k last month, but fell short at the 135 mile mark. I had hoped to do my first Super Randonneur series this year, but there is always next year.

I met up with a couple of people along the ride, but my main goal this time around was to ride at my own pace the entire time. This entailed not waiting for anyone else at rest stops and not having people wait for me either. I kept my rest stops brief (some of them under a few minutes) just long enough to fill my water bottles, eat a couple of banana halves, and grab a PB&J sandwich for the roll out.

This turned out to be a great approach for me. I met a lot of people along the way and ended up leap frogging a lot of riders throughout the course of the day.

I ended up completing the course about an hour and a half faster than last year. I brought the bicycle that I typically ride on brevets with 30c tires, fenders, and a front bag. I expected the set up to slow me down slightly, but I think the combination of stopping for as little as possible along with riding a lot this year so far helped. It was also a bit funny to hear people’s reactions as I passed them. One young UC Davis alum kept racing me up a climb not wanting to be overcome by my heavy setup and he openly told me so. Another older gentleman commented that I brought out my commuter for this ride.

Not a ton more to report other than this ride went really well. The new 2011 goal is a California Triple Crown, so I’ll be planning to do at least two more double centuries this year.

Strava Upload

Today was the first time I turned in a DNF (did not finish). I feared that some day it would happen, but it wasn’t quite as disappointing as I would have imagined. Almost all of the brevets I have ridden up to this point have been with my good buddy Tom the Dane. I’ve been slowly building up my tolerance for longer and longer rides over the past few years and for me it’s very comforting having a friend that will slow down and wait for me if I bonk or keep me company when it’s dark, cold, and wet or talk about nothing while he’s waiting for me to change a flat.

Leading up to this ride, I never quite felt prepared. I had ordered a generator hub and light specifically for this ride. (During the Santa Rosa Randonneurs 300k my battery powered light had unexpectedly died five miles from the finish leaving me with only a headlamp. This was hours before I had anticipated I would run out of battery.) Tony over at A Bicycle Odyssey built me an amazing all black Schmidt generator wheel, but because I ordered on such short notice it was ready just days before the 400k. Life’s been a little hectic feeling lately, so long story short, I ended up not packing anything for the ride until the night before. I usually pack for a ride at least two days in advance giving me the night before to double check that I’m not missing anything.

Rolling out of the apartment this morning, I ended up riding down the block just to turn around to grab something I forgot…twice: once for another layer since it was colder out than I thought it would be and a second time to grab my helmet. I finally arrived at the start just at 6AM as everyone was rolling out to start the ride. I checked in quickly and as I was doing the light and reflector check…yeah, I forgot the reflectors too. Tom’s girlfriend, Lauren, rushed me back to the apartment to get the reflectors and I was ready again to roll out.

I picked up where I left off on the 300k. “Tom. Two miles down. 248 to go.”

We kept a good pace for most of the day. Despite the early setbacks, we were not far off of the usual 10 hours per 200k pace we usually set. I had thought to myself earlier in the week that if all goes well, we would finish the ride by 3 or 4AM. The course was hillier in parts than I had anticipated, but we still kept it steady and on pace. By the way, who’s the twisted person behind the name Joy Road? Obviously not a cyclist.

As we closed in on the halfway point we approached a hill that felt like it would never end. We just kept climbing and climbing only to find more climbing around the bend. Then finally we would reach what felt like the top and begin a descent…only to climb back up the elevation we had just dropped. Then finally again we began to descend and this time it felt real.

Tom began to separate on the descent. I kept my speed in check and around each turn I would see Tom further ahead until I no longer saw him as I rounded each turn. It was a long, fast descent.

As I came around the last bend at the bottom, I saw something really bizarre. Tom was sitting next to his bike on the shoulder of the road with another randonneur standing next to him. I rolled up and casually asked if he had flatted and he responded that his front tube blew out and that he crashed. And to add insult to injury, he crashed in a patch of blackberry bushes.

I swapped out his tube and straightened his fork and asked him to sit for a while just to make sure that nothing was injured severely. Fellow randonneurs passed by each kindly offering assistance. One even stopped to pick the blackberry thorns out of Tom’s face. The front wheel, although still rideable, looked far from ideal. It had collided with a street marker and bent part of the braking surface and went out of true about a millimeter or two. A blowout in the sidewall required two tubes and a spent Clif Bar Shot wrapper to fix.

After a little while we got back on the road…and began to climb a final time. No use waiting there since Hopland, our turn around point, was only five miles away.

We had discussed that there would be no shame in turning in a DNF, and honestly, I was thinking that sitting down to a hamburger and pint of beer would make me really happy since I had been running a little low on energy at that point. We decided in Hopland, the absolute furthest point that we could call for a ride and also the furthest Tom and I have ridden from San Francisco, that we would call for a ride. (By the way, thanks Lauren for dropping everything to come and rescue us!)

Strava Upload

…because I love process videos so much.