The project is located about 45 miles from home, so cycling to the site was out of the question, at least on a daily basis, so I did more driving than I have for years.  Fortunately, I only needed be at the site two or three days a week and I mostly worked out of my downtown office.  I eventually got access to an assigned car, and the ride to pick it up was an opportunity to add a few commuting miles.

Somehow this change in routine, along with the mental exercise of tackling work that I was not all that familiar with, took much of my mental energy.  Blogging frequency suffered, as did other volunteer commitments. Even though I spent much of my transportation time thinking about writing, it seldom made it on the page.

The cleanup project was a great professional experience.  I learned a lot and worked with some great folks.  However, I was not that passionate about the work, and it was a temporary assignment.  At its close, I would have to find a new niche and develop new skills to match.

This was not to be, as it turned out, because a new employer offered me a job with significantly increased responsibilities and an opportunity to work on issues that I really care about, and even to have significant impact on those issues locally.  I started the new job just last week.

This job will consume my mental energy to a much greater extent than the last job change.  I have lots of stuff to write about, including a frame building project and a bike camping trip, along with the new challenge of bike commuting to a coat-and-tie kind of job.  But I suspect that the demands of the job will make me scarce in the blogosphere.

One of the original excuses for starting this blog was to pass on the experience of heart valve replacement and recovery.  Almost two years out, I feel fully recovered, although my sternum still feels less than whole sometimes.  Because of injuries and illness, I have not had a good season of training (to the extent that you can call what I do “training”) since the surgery, so I do not yet have a complete before-and-after comparison of speed and endurance.  The best comparison I have so far is the fall century that I completed this year right at seven hours, about six weeks after the orthopedist let me back on the bike.  The last time I did the ride before surgery, I did it in 7 1/2 hours.  The surgery did not make me 25 again as I secretly hoped (I could have done it in five hours or so back then), but there is a definite improvement in performance and energy level.

The broken arm is not yet completely healed.  I have full mobility and good strength, but the latest x-rays show that the bone is not entirely fused.  I need to be somewhat careful with it, so the mountain bike is still off limits, even though there has been an incredible growth in  trails available with connections only about a mile away from my house.  A piece of advice here: don’t break your arm

I bought it off Ebay in 2003 or so. I converted it to a 7-speed internal hub and added fenders and lights and other utilitarian stuff. It has averaged more than 1500 miles per year since then, commuting to work and running errands.

The bike has a few faults. One is that a 35mm tire is a tight fit laterally in the fork – the sides of the tires tend to rub on the fender and/or fork blades if everything is not set just so.

The second fault is that it rides harshly over bumps, even with 35 mm tires. I would ascribe this to the relatively stout straight-gauge tubing used in the frame. My sportier bike,  with steeper angles, shorter chain stays, and narrower tires but built with standard-gauge butted tubing, is much more forgiving. It is unclear from the information out there whether the Schwinn fork is chromo, but the rear triangle is reportedly plain carbon steel.

And the third problem is that the bike cannot be ridden no-hands at any speed because of a serious shimmy.  This shimmy damps out even with light hand contact on the bars, but it is a significant annoyance.

My theory (at least I have not found anybody who states it exactly this way) is that shimmy in bikes, at least in many cases, is a harmonic phenomenon something like a torsion pendulum, with the trail of the fork, which tends to make the bike go in a straight line, acting as the spring. In a torsion pendulum, the frequency of oscillation is determined by the stiffness of the torsion spring and the moment of inertia of the system.

Bikes are a little more complex than the simple torsion pendulum example, because there are two mass/moment of inertia systems influencing the oscillation. The first is the obvious one: front wheel, tire, any luggage on the front — everything that pivots around the steering axis. The second mass and moment of inertia system is not so obvious. Because the head tube moves side to side as the as the fork is turned, all of the mass of the bike that does not pivot around the steering axis pivots instead around the contact point of the rear tire. This means that the frame, rider, rear luggage, back wheel, and any other paraphernalia influence any oscillation, with mass closer to the front of the bike or extending behind the back wheel (and thus farther from the pivot point) having greater moment than weight directly over the back wheel.

In this conceptual model, shimmy occurs when the front (pivoting around the steering axis) moment of inertia/trail system has a similar natural frequency of oscillation as the back (pivoting around the rear tire contact point) moment of inertia/trail system. Since these two systems are so different, it may also be that oscillation will occur when harmonics are similar.

I don’t know a definitive way to test this theory, but if it is a good model, changing weight distribution should affect a shimmy, as should changing fork trail without changing weight distribution. I have had experiences when changing weight distribution seemed to cause or eliminate shimmy, though other times the shimmy seemed to be insensitive to changes. The Schwinn does not have racks or baskets on the front, so I can’t change loads there, but the shimmy does not respond much to a wide range of loads on the back. I have tried added damping by adjusting the headset too tight with no change. The shimmy persists with tires from 28mm to 35mm and different front hubs.

I decided what I needed was a new fork. The fork crown would be wide enough that there would be no problem with the 35mm tires. The blades would be mid-weight chromo to see if the over-bumps-ride ride would improve over the unknown material of the original fork. And I would try a low-trail design, as championed by Jan Heine of Bicycle Quarterly (here, for example).

Here are the results.

Problem 1: Solved. There is now plenty of clearance.

Problem 2: With the new fork, the bike rides only marginally better over bumps (based on subjective observation), even with the greater offset. Maybe a fork built with lighter fork blades would have enough more give to make a difference, but I think that would be inappropriate for a bike that gets this much abuse. Then again, maybe I will try it someday just to see how much difference it does make. Anyway, the bike got a new sprung Brooks saddle to handle some of the jarring, but that does not help my hands.

Problem 3: The finished fork results in about 25mm of trail, which is at the low end of accepted practice. Somewhat to my surprise, the handling did not change all that much. It feels quick and maneuverable at low speeds and it feels a little twitchy at downhill speeds, but it still in the range of what I would call normal.

The bike now has much less tendency to shimmy – reducing the trail seems to have worked in that regard. If the above theory is correct, increasing the trail should have also worked.

And for a bonus, I discovered that brazed-on centerpulls do indeed have a nice solid feel. But this mounting did not make enough difference in braking to make up for the trouble of making the mounting studs.

It’s also one of the best cities for mass transit (link), and includes real trolleys (with real steel rails) in the transit mix.

There is a little bit of a potential conflict here, as I discovered on a recent visit.

My wife and I visited Portland recently, arriving May 19 for a two week visit to various Oregon destinations. I grew up Oregon, and some of my old friends have ended up in Portland, so I was planning to do some visiting, in addition to getting reacquainted with the city.

The first full day there, my wife was suffering from the remnants of a sinus infection and jet lag, so I left her at the hotel (recommended) and took the trolley to walking distance from the nearest bike rental shop . They set me up with a serviceable hybrid, and I took to the streets.

It was a short ride to the river. After rolling along at the riverfront MUP for a while, I got onto the street again. I made a left turn onto a one-way street, looked over my right shoulder to check traffic before getting into the right lane, and Crunch! I was down hard. I failed to notice that there was a trolley track in the street that I just turned onto. I somehow made it to the sidewalk and called 911. It was clear that my left arm was broken.

Surgery to install plates and screws and two nights in Good Samaritan (also recommended if you have the misfortune of needing their services) later, I was back on the street. The rest of the Oregon visit was less active than originally intended, but visits with family and friends (through the pain-med fog) meant that it was far from disappointing.

The hard cast came off July 11, the eighth week after the incident, and I wore a brace and did physical therapy for few weeks. I got permission to get back on the bike after eleven weeks (August 5). I am now in the 16th week of recovery, and things are getting back to normal. The arm still ain’t quite right, but it’s getting there.

I love Portland, and I even love the trolleys.  The bike/trolley conflict is an open issue. For a first step, a little more warning would be nice.  A few more signs like this might have saved me some pain and suffering.  If you visit (or if you live there) just be real aware of where the tracks are.

First, let me opine that the great majority of cyclists do not need gears as high as what comes stock on bikes these days.  In fact, most don’t need more than 100” ( the old-school 52×14, or with modern hardware, 41×11 ).   A 100” gear allows 27 mph at 90 rpm (27” nominal diameter wheel); most of us only hit this speed going downhill, and if the descent is too steep to pedal with this gear, it is more efficient to tuck.  This even goes for low-level competition cyclists.  As a category 3 rider, I once wore myself out pushing a 108” gear on a long downhill in a race, only to be passed and dropped by some of my team mates who had tucked on the descent and were relatively fresh for the subsequent long climb.  As for top speed and sprinting, a little practice gets a rider’s maximum cadence well about the 90 rpm that is sustainable for long periods — Charles Murphy set his paced record of 60 mph in 1899 on a 104” gear (at 198 rpm).  The 130” gear (52×11; 35 mph at 90 rpm) that comes stock on high-end racing bikes is good only for downhill sprints and for developing bad pedaling habits, unless you can keep up with Mark Cavendish.  For touring and town bikes, a high gear of 85” is not unreasonable, though most of will probably want to stick with 95” to 100” on the touring bike.

So here are my criteria for an all-purpose gearing system:

1)  As explained at length in the last post, with my topography, fitness level, and purposes, I like to have a low gear in the low 20’s or even lower.  People who live in flat places or who are strong climbers (and plan to stay that way) can adjust accordingly.

2) A high gear of 100” or a little lower works for me on the road

3) Gear ratios should be spaced closely enough to allow the rider to maintain a cadence within his/her comfort range throughout the gear range (or at least the most-frequently used portion of the gear range).  As a reference, 5% steps are real tight, allowing a cadence that stays between 90 and 95 rpm.  Most of us are happy with steps of 10-15%. 

4) There should be a logical shift sequence that is easily executed.  It used to be common for people to have a gear chart taped to their stems so they knew how to get to the next gear.  While it is not a bad idea to give some thought to how your gears are laid out, they should not require a map.

Figure 1. Hayduke diagram of 3-speed internally-geared hub with 44-tooth chainring and 19-tooth cog. 25% steps between gears; 178% total gear range.

Internally-geared hubs and single-chainring derailleur systems have the simplest  shift sequence.  Three speed hubs have a relatively narrow range and large steps between gears, which is okay for flat areas, and IMO a lot better than single speeds.  I was happy with a 3-speed commuter bike when I lived in flatter places and had a higher level of fitness than I do now. 

Seven speeds have smaller steps and enough range for short trips in hillier areas.  I currently use a Shimano Nexus 7-speed on my commuter/utility bike geared down for the local hills.  High gear is 80″; low gear is 33″.

Figure 2. Hayduke diagram of my Nexus 7-speed internally-geared hub with a 42-tooth chainring and 22-tooth cog. Average 14% steps between gears. 244% total gear range.

The wide-range double “compact” crank seems to be dominating the market.  This setup has a good range for many situations, though it does not go low enough for my purposes.  For me, the fatal flaw with this approach is the shift sequence.  The shift between front rings is big (30% or so), so usually when the rider make this shift,  it is necessary to correct 2 or even 3 cogs on back to get a reasonable-size step.  This shift is right in the meat of the riding range (50” to 80”) so the clumsy big front shift and rear correction happens frequently.  When I tried a similar arrangement, I hated it because the gear I wanted to shift into always seemed to require this awkward sequence of shifts.

Figure 3. Hayduke diagram of typical compact double with 48- and 34-tooth chainrings and 12-27 tooth 9-speed cassette. Gear range 108" to 34" (318%). Three pairs of near-duplicate gears; 13 usable unique gears. 7.8% average step between gears (neglecting duplicates).

The best way I have found to meet the criteria I laid out above is the step-and-a-half triple with granny.  In this arrangement, the step between the big and middle chainrings is about 1.5 times bigger (in percent) than the steps on the freewheel.  For example, a 9-speed 12-27 cassette averages 10% steps between the cogs; 39 and 46 tooth chainrings are about 15% apart (note that since we are confined to integer number of teeth, this frequently needs some trial-and error to find a combination that works best).

Figure 4. Hayduke chart for step-and-a-half-plus-granny gearing system. 20-36-45 chainrings and 12-36 nine-speed cassette. 15" low gear to 101" high gear (675% range). 7.4% average step between gears on middle and large chainrings; 14% maximum step. 24 usable non-duplicate gears.

Of course most riders are not likely to shift sequentially through the gears.  Usually, one would still use the chainrings as high-range low-range (with a double) or high-medium-low ranges (triple).  However, the  shift between chainrings is not as big as in a compact system, so you don’t need to correct as often on the cassette when you change chainrings; when you want the next sequential gear, you only need to correct by one cog.  The shift from the middle to small rings is still a big step, but this shift does not happen as often as the similarly large step between rings on a compact, because it is at the extreme of the gear range.

I am not as young (or as fit) as I used to be.   I don’t alway ride with the express purpose of causing myself cardio-vascular distress in an effort to recapture my lost youth.  I am formerly (I hope) handicapped by a bad heart valve, and occasionally get injured (the knee is healing up nicely, thanks for asking).

I like long rides.  Jamming up hills out of the saddle works for short trips around town or even relatively short rides in the country, but I don’t have the fitness (or probably the potential, much less the motivation, to develop enough fitness) to use this tactic for rides longer than 25 miles or so.

I like to be comfortable and reasonably safe on my rides, so my bikes will never be as light as a stripped-down racing machine. And on tour, I carry appropriate loads, including camping gear. I also like unpaved roads, though there is a lot more rolling resistance on them than on smooth pavement.

I am a spinner.  I tend to stay around 90 rpm on the flats (such as they are) and I feel best when I also maintain this cadence on climbs.  If I go much under 70 rpm it  feels like a grind, beats up my knees, and tires me quickly.

All of this has led me to install very low gears on my bikes and use them frequently.

 I consider myself a 100 watt cyclist (see this previous post) though I probably average closer to 125 watts these days.  Of course I can push it up higher for short periods or for training rides.  But I might also slow down and enjoy the scenery.  Pacing is important on day-long rides, and on a tour, you have to leave enough energy to set up camp, cook dinner, and do it all again tomorrow, and  35 watts gets you down the road.

So how low is low enough?  This table gives speed and gear as a function of slope and rider power output for a 175 lb. rider on a 25 lb. bike.

The lowest commonly-available low gear is 19 inches (24 tooth front, 34 tooth rear, 27 inch [nominal] wheel).  A fellow 100 watt cyclist runs out of gear (or has to reduce cadence) on a paltry 5% slope even with this gearing that is extremely low by current convention.    Even the 200-watt sportster who wants to maintain a good cadence on a long hill might find the usual 39×27 (39 gear inches)  or “compact” 34×27 (34 gear inches) too high for a mountain ride.   And this chart does not take into account  camping loads or rough surfaces. 

 The lack of low gears in hilly terrain can turn a pleasant rural ramble into a gruelling test of strength and endurance.  While I enjoy a little gruel now and then, it is nice to have options.  It would be difficult to have gears that were too low.

In addition to the cold rides to work in the morning, weekend rides have seen water bottles icing up.  None of this is a big deal farther north, but this is not something we are used to here.

The Fourth Annual Tour de Lights took place last night, and a good time was had by all.

More photos (some from me) and more details on the Bike Program blog.

Have you ever wondered how the hills you ride compare to those in the Tour de France?   Watching the Tour on television go me thinking about this question, and the Tour’s system of categorizing climbs could provide some basis of comparison.

Over the years, I have heard it said many times that the difficulty of climbs in the US just doesn’t compare to those in Europe.  US infrastructure is newer and designed for keeping cars and trucks moving at the speed limit, and allowing travel in bad weather including ice and snow.  In contrast, European roads evolved from trails.  Furthermore, with the higher population density, it may be necessary to connect centers of population through terrain that could be avoided in the US.  Most of the people I have heard this from have had a western US perspective.  I am not so sure that it is true in the East.  Mountain passes are not as high, but slopes are frequently steeper, and the road infrastructure is often older than in the West.

Climbs in the Tour are divided into five categories.  Categories 1 through 4 (category 1 is the most difficult) plus the paradoxically-named category referred to as Beyond Category (“hors catégorie”), which is more difficult than category 1.

The primary purpose of categorizing climbs in the Tour is to assign points in the King of the Mountain competition, with more points awarded for climbs in more difficult categories.   Categorizing climbs also presumably provides the teams competing in the Tour important information to help develop their day-to-day race strategies, and it gives fans a way to set expectations about the kind of action that will take place in a stage, and a way to compare the level of difficulty of different stages.

The primary criteria used to determine the categories for the TDF are average steepness (expressed in percent) and total length of the climb.  A secondary factor is the location of the climb within the stage.  The categorization process is reportedly subjective, and other factors, such as maximum slope and road surface, may factor in. 

For my analysis, I copied the slope and length of climb information from the TDF website for all the categorized climbs in the 2005 Tour and put this information on a graph.  The only information I used is average slope and length of climb.  This limited amount of information seems to explain most of the variation, with each category grouping together, though category 3 and 4 climbs do seem to overlap some.

I used computer maps and GIS software, information from web sites, and a few on-the-ground measurements to pull together slope and length information from some regional climbs.  I then used this information to place climbs on the graph and decide which line or points it is closest to.  My methods are not very exact, but they are close enough to provide a valid comparison.

Here in the southern Appalachians, a 6% climb is routine, but many of the climbs that we struggle up are not long enough to make the category 4 cutoff (for convenience, let’s call it 0.6 miles).  French Road between Kimberlin Heights and Governor John Sevier Parkway is plenty steep at about 6.6%, but not quite long enough.  The climb on Ray Gap Road from Union Valley averages about 9.6%, but is only 0.4 miles long.  I can’t say for sure that a climb like this would not be included as a category 4, but there was nothing this short that was rated this year.

But you don’t have to look too far to find climbs that would rate as 4’s.  Neubert Springs Road over Brown Mountain (between Colonial Village and Tipton Station Road) is about 0.8 mile at 5.3%.  Martin Mill Pike over Red Mountain (north from Tarklin Road) is about 1.1 miles at 3.9%.  Big Ridge in Anderson County is 1 mile at 6.2% (maybe even a category 3).

Comparing some of our bigger regional climbs to the Tour rating system is interesting, but not necessarily straightforward.  Riding the Foothills Parkway up to Look Rock from the highway 321 (Townsend) side, the climb is interrupted by a downhill section about 1.4 miles long.  The first portion of the climb before the downhill section is 3 miles at 6.1%, and would rate as a tough category 3, similar to a couple of TDF climbs.  The second segment of the climb is longer (4.9 miles), but in spite of long section of 6%, it averages out at 3.5%, and would rate as a long category 4.  Considering this entire section of road as one climb (9.1 miles at 3.4%) would probably put it in category 3 because of the length.

There is another way up Chilhowee Mountain near Look Rock, with the ironic name of Happy Valley Road.  At 1.9 miles and 10.1%, it would rate as a category 2, and matches the steepest, shortest category 2 climb in this year’s Tour (Côte de la Croix Neuve, also known as montée Laurent Jalabert).

Some of our regional century rides seek out hard climbs to make them more challenging.  The Three State Three Mountain ride out of Chattanooga, as its name suggests, has three significant climbs.  Suck Creek (Signal Mountain/Walden Ridge) (5.6 miles at 4.8%) is closest to the category 2 line; Sand Mountain (2.9 miles at 5.7%) looks like a category 3; and Lookout Mountain (2.5 miles at 8.7%) is a solid category 2.  Pitts Gap on the Sequatchie century (3.6 miles at 6.4%) is closest to the category 2 line, but is similar to two category 3 climbs.

The Mount Mitchell climb, at 20 miles, is longer than any in the Tour this year, but the slope (4.5%) is relatively gentle for the big climbs.  It is not obvious where this would fall in the Tour system, but is closer to the category 1 line than to the category 2 line, at least the way I have done the analysis. Newfound Gap (12.8 miles at 5.1%) might be a little easier, but not much, at least by this measure; it is also closest to the category 1 line.

The Cherohala century has two notable climbs.  First is the two-headed climb up The Dragon.  The first head is Shaw Grave Gap (4.3 miles at 4%), which plots right on the category 3 line.  Deals Gap is 3.7 miles at 3%, and a long category 4.  The climb up the Cherohala Skyway from where the road leaves the Santeetlah River near Rattler Ford to the top of Art Stewart Ridge is 6.4 miles at a slope of 9.1%.  This is as long as the shortest Beyond Category climb in this year’s Tour (Plat d’Adet), and significantly steeper.

There are three ways to climb Grandfather Mountain.  I would call two of them category 2 climbs (2.2 miles at 7.8%, and 8.4 miles at 5%). The third, 6.5 miles at 6.7%, is a category 1, plotting between La Ballon d’Alsace and the Col du Télégraphe.  Another category 1 climb is Hogpen Gap in north Georgia (7 miles at 7%).

This discussion might give the reader who has ridden some of these climbs a better idea of what the Tour riders are going through and the climbing riches of our region.  Generally, the Ridge and Valley and Cumberland Plateau areas have plentiful category 4 and 3 climbs with a few category 2’s, though they generally run out of mountain before attaining category 1 status.  The category 1 climbs are mostly confined to the Blue Ridge, the tall spine of the Appalachians.  Even there, there are not many honest Beyond Category climbs, and the Cherohala may be the only century around that contains one.

I think this is backwards.  The minority paradigm, and the one that I would like to see become dominant, is that a bike is a tool for transportation that can also be used for sport, recreation, and adventure.  The default should be a bike with safety and comfort features similar to other serious transportation, e.g. lights, fenders, and some means for carrying stuff.  Any decrease in functionality from removing these features should be outside the norm, just as it is to remove these from a car.   This would not eliminate fast or sporty bikes, and in fact, the performance difference between a stripped-down bike and a fully equipped bike can be small.  It is much easier to ride fast on a complete bike than it is to haul groceries on a single-purpose sport bike, and the conditions suitable for recreation and adventure expand dramatically with adequate equipment.  Even the tiny fraction of cyclists who actually race are safer and more comfortable with these features while training, and can get in more miles if they integrate routine transportation on a practical bike into their training.

Fenders are an integral part of the transportation bike primarily because they make it practical to ride in less-than-perfect weather.  Riding in rain does not necessarily become pleasant, but the rider need only worry about, and dress for, what comes from the sky.  There is a wider range of  rainfall rate and temperature in which the wool jersey is all that is needed to keep you comfortable.  Both the rider and the moving parts of the bike are shielded from water and grit from the road.  Fenders keep the bike and drive chain cleaner even under dry conditions.  This comes at a modest cost.  Aerodynamics suffer little, if any, according to wind tunnel tests (Bicycle Quarterly, Volume 6 number1).  Weight reduction, if the fenders were removed, is around a pound, or about 0.5% of a 200 lb bike and rider combination.

In a marketplace ruled by the transportation-bike paradigm, most bikes would come from the factory with fenders installed.  In the real world, we are stuck with aftermarket afterthought fenders; the only exceptions are city bikes and custom rando bikes.  I worked my bike shop days (1977-1987) in towns that took transportation cycling pretty seriously and I installed a lot of those retrofit fenders.  In those days, the basic fender was the British-made plastic Bluemels, with German ESGE fenders as the premium choice.  Bluemels were mostly white or black but were sporadically available in other colors.  ESGE fenders consisted of a layer of aluminum foil sandwiched between layers of clear plastic, so they were silver colored (thus the name Chromoplastic).  Nearly all bikes in those days were designed with enough clearance for fenders, and the hardware was designed so that installation was pretty easy for most situations.

Plastic fenders have a finite life.  Bluemels did not seem to be as tough as ESGEs, and the Bluemels also tended to oxidize and get more brittle with age.  The metallic-colored Bluemels were brittle and fragile out of the box, but an appropriate color did look sharp. My last set of ESGE/SKS fenders was purchased in about 1987 and lasted 10 or 12 years, and on the order of 10,000 to 20,000 miles.  Their life was extended a couple of years with judicious hole-drilling at the ends of cracks and the deployment of zip ties.

Plastic fenders are still the most common aftermarket option.  According to their web site, the German company SKS bought out Bluemels in 1983 and ESGE about 1988.  Bluemels are gone, but SKS still makes Chromoplastics very similar to the old ESGEs, and they are readily available at bike shops and on the web.

Planet Bike fenders are also easy to find.  I have no personal experience with them, but at least some people have found them to be very durable, and I have heard good things on the boards.  There are a few other brands of plastic fenders available, but I have not seen them in shops.  I would like to check out the Somas.

Metal fenders, either stainless steel or aluminum, are much more readily available now than they were in the past. They should last longer than plastic fenders (though everybody does not agree with that assessment ). Metal fenders can be noisier than plastic fenders, picking up road vibrations and clanking with object thrown off by the tires, and metal fenders are more prone to rattling.  They can look really good, in a traditional art deco French-bike way.  The bike shops I frequent do not stock them, but they are happy to order them, or they can be ordered several places on the web.

The big players in the small field of metal fenders are Honjo (aluminum) and Berthoud (stainless steel).  Both brands are intended for installation on a bike with threaded attachment points at the brake bridge, chainstay bridge, and fork crown, as well as eyelets on the dropouts.  Even with these frame features, drilling holes in the fenders and careful fitting is required; if any of these features are not included on your frame, you may have to fabricate or purchase additional hardware.  This can be challenging. Recently, Velo Orange has stepped in with both aluminum and stainless fenders in a variety of sizes and styles, along with helpful mounting hardware. 

I have 2 bikes with Berthoud stainless fenders.  On the commuter bike (a ’74 Schwinn Sports Tourer), I bolted the front of the rear fender to the tab on the chainstay bridge/kickstand bracket.  Initially, the bike ran a roller brake on the 7-speed internal-gear hub, so the brake bridge was not being used for a brake and I drilled a vertical hole through the bridge to mount the fender.  Dissatisfaction with the roller brake prompted me to mount a caliper brake, at which point I bolted a bracket to the fender scrounged from the old front Chromoplastic.  The front fender used a “silent block bolt”, which consists of a bolt with a long head with a hole that the front brake mounting bolt goes through; the threaded part of the bolt extends downward through the fender and is secured by a nut on the bottom of the fender.  There is a rubber washer to prevent rattles.  This worked fine with a 32 mm tire, but the bolt and nut extended far enough that it rubbed on a 35 mm tire.  I removed the sbb and installed a VO sliding brake bridge bracket (normally used on the back), and that worked fine.  These fenders have held up well for 7 years and almost 12K miles of daily commuter and utility abuse.  I have some occasional tire-rub issues, but that is because I am running the biggest tire that will sort of fit.  Not surprisingly, the fenders do look a little battered.

The touring bike has threaded mounts on both back bridges.  This bike has cantilever brakes, and the front rack mounts through the fork crown.  Installation of the fenders on this bike was pretty easy, and the silent block bolt attaches to the front rack and leaves plenty of clearance.  I also mounted the front of the fender to the rack so that it could not flap around.  I have ridden 5K miles or so since installing these fenders, with no rattles or rubs.

The Early has VO anodized aluminum fenders.  These fenders come with some of the holes pre-drilled, a bracket mounted on the front fender, and a sliding bracket to connect the rear fender to the brake.  The frame had a threaded mount on the chainstay bridge.  For the pre-paint mock-up installation, I used the sliding bracket, but I could not get it tight enough to stop rattling.  The front fender uses the pre-installed bracket, though I had to cut it down a little to get it to fit.  Before the re-paint, I brazed a water bottle mount to the bottom of the brake bridge, which eliminated the sliding bracket (and it works fine on the front fender of the commuting bike).  These VO fenders have an anodized finish, which has a somewhat rough/porous surface that is impossible to keep clean and difficult to clean once it gets dirty.  However, it is a great surface for painting.

These fenders make a lot of noise when the tire throws off debris.  I have also had a lot of problems with rattles, even with liberal use of leather washers.  I tried everything I could think of to quiet one particularly loud rattle, and finally discovered that there was a crack halfway across the fender.  I do not know if this is common with this particular model – maybe the anodizing makes them brittle – or if aluminum fenders in general are this fragile.  I probably contributed to problem with an extra hole drilled for the brake bridge (I did not line it up right the first time).  In addition, the brake spring made contact with the fender, putting some additional stress on that area and probably causing or contributing to the rattle.  Perhaps coincidentally, the anodized fenders are no longer listed on the VO web site.  

The crack

I did not want to try to return them or toss them since they were painted to match the frame, so I patched the crack with strips of sheet metal, pop rivets, and a little epoxy for good measure.  I also replaced the rear brake with a Weinnmann center pull which has significantly more clearance for the fender (and by the way, it stops as well as the Galli sidepull).  This fixed the big rattle, at least for now, but there are still small rattles that I have failed to cure.  This bike does not currently have a rear rack, and I am thinking about adding one that I can connect to the fender for some more reinforcement.

The fix

Part of the cause of the crack may be the single mounting point between the stays and fenders for the VOs, which allows the fender to pivot around this point and flop around; the Honjos use two eyebolts.  This issue is discussed in this post in the Fuji Otaku blog.  I think a better solution is the two-bolt flat connection on the Berthoud, which has the rigidity of the two-bolt Honjo-style mount and does not stick out as far.

Finished product

In summary, plastic fenders still have some things going for them, including availability and easier installation.  In my experience, stainless steel is probably more durable, but plastic can last long enough that the difference may be moot.  I am not yet convinced that aluminum is a good choice.

By the way, whichever fenders you end up with, buy them wide enough — at least 10 mm wider than the widest tire you will ever put on your bike.

VO Front stay/fender connection

Stay/fender connection on Berthoud fender

But of course I zoomed in on that bike commute column.  It is interesting to see that Southern cities (TP saw them as “sprawling” cities, but they all happen to be Southern) saw increased auto share and small or negative transit and biking growth; this includes Memphis (no surprise).  Nashville saw an increase in transit use (new commuter rail) but I am surprised to see a decrease in biking with the visible bike activism there.

This makes Knoxville that much more remarkable.  I pulled up the same data for us, and biking increased 325% (if I calculated it the same as they did– percent increase of percent share) in the same period.  That beats everybody on TP’s list!   (I suspect that some of these results are statistical noise from small numbers and small sample size.  I look forward to seeing better numbers for the full 2010 census.)  The Knox TPO Bike Program has seen count increases that support the scale of this increase.

Personal note:  After an MRI, the orthopedist sayst that the knee issue is a nasty bone bruise.  That means no surgery and no long-term problems, but it also means that it will heal slowly.  I don’t know how long I will be off the bike, but I am taking the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the local bus system.