1950 Schwinn Spitfie Rehab

Finished the Schwinn off today and delivered it to its owner. She was happy with the work and told me that she would dig up a photo of her and the bike when she first got it 61 years ago - that'll make for a sweet before and after.

 Here it is in its restored state with a market basket and all.

 My son's girlfriend takes it for a spin.

A happy customer!

Spitfire update 3

 Okay - as expected I have hit the hurry up and wait stage - have seat-post, new handlebars and a market basket that I am waiting  delivery on to finish up this re-build. But it is coming along pretty nicely. I've brought it back to my house after doing the frame work over at my dad's and have it pretty much back together - the wheels and tires are on and trued the crank has had it's bearing cleaned and repacked - a new set of pedals - a couple broken bolts drilled out and then re-tapped. I even took it for a seat-less ride last night. 

 Putting the first of many coats of blue - masked off head tube has already been painted white.

 Fenders blue as well - notice how dull the paint is. That is because it is a base coat clear coat process. First you shoot the color in three or four coats - then you shoot a second clear paint that adds the shine and deepens the basecoat color.

Here are the parts after clear coating.

And here is the state of things in my basement today.

And a before pic to see how far we've come.

Spitfire update 2

 Gravity feed spray gun.

 sanded and cleaned ready for a coat of primer

 

 just hangin' 'round my dad's garage

 Primed

  

Okay - all primed now and ready for some base coat color. I was able to shoot back over to my dad's garage (he is the guy with all the top notch paint and air tools that make my metal shaping and painting pipe dreams possible) and get a  coat of white highlight on so barring flooding I should be painting the blue tomorrow and maybe even clear-coating in the evening. Still waiting on some parts to arrive - so I could be soon entering the hurry up and wait stage of this build.

Scwinn Spitfire Update

Steadily getting things done on the Spitfire rebuild. Receiving parts at regular intervals from UPS. While I am going to try and keep this thing looking as stock as possible I am more worried about making it a safe and dependable ride - so I am upgrading some components and refurbishing others.

The bearings, while dirty, are good quality and need only to be cleaned and repacked with some nice pristine blue goo but things like pedals and tires are being replaced with new but contemporary looking parts.

 Here's a some nasty looking wheel bearings before and after.

 This is probably the original grease - it looks like grasshopper chewing tabacco and is just as sticky.

 All stripped down.

 Some jobs have got to be done by hand and I've got a couple blisters to attest to this.

 

 With a little luck I'll be shooting primer on this thing in the next day or two.

November 17, 1950

Picked up a bike to restore today from a friend of mine’s mom. It has been hers all her life and we’re gonna see about getting it back on the road again. It’s an old Schwinn Spitfire. According to the serial number stamped on the bottom bracket (the place where the pedals go through) the little blue demon’s birth date was November 17, 1950 - a Scorpio. Still four more years until it would qualify for Medicare – and who knows what kind of shape that’ll be in by then – so we're gonna go ahead and treat it now.

Here's some before pics:

And here's the state of affairs this evening:

That’s all I Canberra

What the Aussies lack in pronouncing of syllables in their words – they make up with over the top down under hospitality. After our charmed respite in Sydney I figured things couldn’t get much better and I was wrong. People went out of their way to be hospitable to us at every turn during our stay in the capital city Canberra.

Sara and I got in on a Sunday and weren’t slated to start working for real at Radford College until Thursday (we did visit a few classes on Monday to introduce ourselves to the staff and visited a couple classes to get the lay of the land) so we had a few days to explore the sprawling park like city. Where Sydney piled up tall against its harbor – Canberra spreads out in a radius from the parliamentary building, embassies intermixed with residences and forested parkland. The place is a biker or runners paradise and I took full advantage of the fact borrowing our friend and host, teacher and former NPR commentary star – Daniel Ferri’s mountain bike. Dan’s a re-planted Yankee (Chicagoan really) who now teaches at Radford (this all fits together eventually – trust me.)

 

Anyway – Canberra is nothing like Sydney – in fact it is for the birds. Birds like I’ve never seen in the wild before – parrots – cockatoos – magpies – ravens – swans – crazy looking pigeons with hats on, not to mention the bushy tailed possum that stared us down from a tree during an evening walk or the giant fruit bats with three foot wingspans who darted out from the shrubbery during that same constitutional. Add the kangaroos and rabbits I saw while biking and you’d have thought we were in a wildlife refuge – not the capital city of a whole country the size of the United States.

As for hospitality – on day one we went to the National Museum – the equivalent of our Smithsonian where we wandered about for an enjoyable couple of hours. The walk there was about an hour and a half and we were a bit tuckered out so we asked the lady at the info booth if she could help us obtain a taxi. She said she’s be more than happy to call but as she picked up the phone an older woman behind us poked her head out and said – never mind – I’ll drop them by. So our new friend Marjorie drove us home from the museum – giving us an impromptu tour of the embassies and a view of the gate to the prime minister’s house. In fact everywhere we went – museums – memorials – just walking on the streets – folks couldn’t have gone out of their way enough for us. This was certainly southern hospitality to the nth degree! Oh yeah – did mention that the bus drivers were just as likely to tell you to skip the fare as not?

So what’s up with the dropping of syllables in their words though? Canberra is pronounced Can-bra, Melbourne is Melb’n etc etc. Nobody could give me any explanations other than – that’s the way we do it mate. Of course this ruins the pun in my title but, keep on treating your visitors like you treated us and that’s good enough for me.

If at first you don’t succeed…

Ran my final tri of the season yesterday. The swim went a little better but I still panicked a bit – I was able to calm myself down and actually finished with a good time out of the water. I’m thinking it’s going to take a couple more times in open water with a crowd to get my composure back. That feeling of drowning (see my Lorain tri post) is a hard one to get over.

But – I didn’t want to end my season on the downer that the Lorain tri turned into so I found another race – this one down in Akron which I figured would be a nice little event to finish the year off.

Well, when we got there we found out that this race was the culminating event of a championship series that had been going on all summer. This was the biggest triathlon I have ever competed in. The swim was the longest that I had done this year in a race – the bike course was the hilliest as was the run.

In the end though – I did manage to grab third place in my division – so still no first place finishes, but as any Cleveland sports fan knows – there’s always next year!

Look at all the egg heads!

The water temp in the low seventies was higher than the air’s which was somewhere in the 60s

Smiling for the camera - (sara’s taking the pics)

Passing someone ten years younger than me right at the finish (ages are magic markered on the backs of our calves)

Suzi met a fox terrier who looked just like her minus the fur coat.

Tour De France wrap up – I couldn’t have said it better.

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Tri Tri Again

“Why would people want to get up so early and do this?”

Completed my first triathlon of the season yesterday morning. I managed to post a personal best time of 1:17 and a little change. The weather was perfect – low seventies – the lake as still as coffee in cup – the bike course was a bit windy but I wedged in with a group traveling along at a decent clip (technically there is no drafting allowed in a tri – but that’s a dumb rule anyways) and the run ended with a downhill slope for almost the the whole second half of the course.

Early on in my triathlon participation I would edge myself to the front of the pack before the start of the swim and would find myself being crawled over by the guys behind me once we got underway – slamming my face underwater just as I was coming up for air – brushing against my legs as if I were being chased by the creature from the black lagoon. This would send me into panic – get my heart racing – I switched strategies last year during the Cleveland Tri – moved to the back and I became the person climbing up the backs of folks in front of me. Made it out of the water in the top five or so today – even catching up to the group of younger guys whose wave started five minutes earlier before us geriatrics.

The first half of the bike leg I was pretty much on my own – I could see some riders in front of me but there was no way I was catching them anytime soon and the riders behind weren’t gaining on me so I spent those six and a half miles pedaling away trying to find the silver lining related to having thighs that felt like they were going to split open. I kept grinding along around 21+ mph which is a good clip for me so I figured I had a wind at my back and wasn’t really looking forward to the turn around. Then right at the turn around a pack of eight riders came up on me and passed – i slid into their slipstream and we pulled each other along into the headwind way quicker than any of us could have managed on our own. Like I said – technically not kosher but I still think it’s a stupid rule – what’s more sportsmanlike than a crew of competitors working together? In any case I finished the leg in (for me) record time.

In order to keep up with the crew on the second part of the bike ride I had to push near my limit spending a lot of time down in aero bars – those are those things added to handlebars so that your elbows rest on the crossbar keeping your riding stance extra low and more wind resistant. It also does a number on your back – so when I got off the bike I found it pretty tricky straightening up to do the run. My two thousand year old man impersonation wasn't wasted on my fans who included my parents Sara, Max, Frank, Scotty baby Sara and Isaac a friend of Frank’s responsible for the quote that opened this blog.

Fortunately after about an eight of a mile my joints self lubricated and i finished the race with a smile on my face. I told Frank - afterwards as he helped me gather my gear that it has taken three years – but running these things have gone from a test of survival to fun.

So I guess that’s why people get up so early in the morning to do this – for fun.

Spinning wheel got to go round...

I’ve been enjoying

the coverage of the Tour de France this year the VS cable channel has been broadcasting the race live and repeating the installment a couple times a day. The return of Lance Armstrong to the race was my initial impetus to take a look at the event again. A guy pushing forty with nothing to prove jumps back into the game - a feat attempted by an old man which the rest of us long toothed athletes can vicariously live through.

Years past I would occasionally check in to see how the race was progressing – but this year I am watching each stage in its entirety - usually during the last re-broadcast of the of the day. I remember my grandmother watching professional golf – a game she never played – like it was a soap opera and that is how I am enjoying the Tour.

I’ve acquired a new vocabulary – peloton, domestique, attack. chase, break away, drop, yellow – green – white – polka dot jerseys. I’m getting into the strategy of the races – the rivalries between Team Columbia (the sporting goods company not the country) and Lance’s Team Astana (a Kazakhstan based team.) Then there are the rivalries amongst members of the same teams – just yesterday Armstrong’s whippersnapper of a teammate - Alberto Contador (his Spanish name conjuring the image of a bullfighter) broke from the pack – and the team manager’s plan – with less than two kilometers left rocketing himself in front of Lance in the standings into second place.

Now this is a long race – 21 stages, most over a hundred kilometers long and this was only the seventh stage – there is a lot of racing left. So, Armstrong let the kid go without bothering to chase finishing two seconds behind Contador. So, is this a wily veteran move? In the post race interview the senior’s face said pissed off, while his words were more cordial. Or, is this the beginning of the end for the old man? What about the rest of the Team Astana – who will they rally behind now? Bicycling is much more a team sport than one would initially imagine – it takes all nine members working together to put one of their complement on the winner’s podium.

Like I’ve told my sons – never get in a fight with an old man if you can avoid it ‘cause while they may not have the stamina to go a real long time they know this too. So they’ll try to take you out as quickly as possible.

I’d love to eavesdrop on the team meeting before the start of today’s stage.

Please Don't Kill Me

Okay,

I signed up for a trio of triathlons this year (with a fourth in Connecticut possible depending on what funds look like at the end of the summer.) My big race this year is going to be the Cleveland Triathlon again. I liked the race last year. It’s fun being downtown with so many folks, over a thousand participants are expected. I’m also running the Fairport Tri – it’s close to home and affordable and then I’ll be doing the Lorain Tri where I placed second in my division last year (my division being that of Clydesdale – competitors weighing over 200 pounds.)

All the running I did in order to run the Cleveland Half Marathon has laid a pretty good base endurance-wise now I need to get my bicycle legs and swim back up to speed. Frankie and I chopped down a tree for my parent’s yesterday and on the way home we passed a half dozen or so cyclist. The number of people on bikes on the side of the road seems to be increasing each year. I’m sure some of this phenomenon can be attributed to the fact that I ride and am more aware of others out there on two wheels – but I’d be willing to bet that the number of folks out there pounding pedals has increased.

So people – please remember to share the road. By law that spandex wearing cyclist has every bit of right to be on the road as those behind their two tons of glass and steel. In fact it is illegal for a cyclist to ride o the sidewalk in most instances. A little common sense comes into play here – when on my townie bike going to the grocery or something I will take to the sidewalk since I am going to be travelling under ten miles an hour for the most part and can make adjustments for pedestrians – on the other hand if I am on my racer pushing twenty five mph – I would be a menace to walkers.

Like any subset of humanity there are idiot cyclists out there but for the most part we have a vested interest in staying alive. To whit I would like to offer a few tips to drivers out there. Firstly, relax. The extra fifteen to thirty seconds your trip will take you to safely pass the guy or gal on the bicycle up there is not going to alter the trajectory of your life a whole hell of a lot. As soon as it is safe to do so pass safely and quickly – prolonging your time behind the rider only prolongs the time that something could go wrong.

Let’s see - you don’t need to beep your horn – we know you’re back there, shouting out your window trying to scare a rider is just stupid – especially when I just might be catching up to you at the next light – fair warning I WILL squirt you with my water bottle. . Oh, this is important, watch your right hand turns – that cyclist you just passed didn’t disappear into the ether because you overtook them – they’re still back there moving forward. I’ve been run off the road a half dozen times in the last three years by people making right hand turns. Every time, I was in a designated bike lane.

So that’s it – keep your eyes open. Even if you raise your awareness to bicyclist by five percent it’ll make a difference ‘cause any of us out there two wheeling it with any sense are spending one hundred percent of our time watching out for you.

Two wheels are better than one...

The woman next door

is walking down her drive wearing flannel red and black checked pj bottoms and a big grey t-shirt to pick up the Sunday paper. Outside everything is greening – the grass needs cutting – the maples that straddle our street seem to have sprouted leaves overnight. Hector – the rat terrier mix - is sitting on the arm of the red chair by one of the two front windows of the house. He takes it as a personal insult if anyone has the audacity to walk across our front lawn – if they do so with a dog on a leash – well that’s just beyond the pale. We’ve already put a fair sized portion of our garden in – betting against frost – so far so good.

I’m thinking about going on my first real bike ride of the season – I’ve logged a couple fifteen milers but today I think I’ll attempt something along the lines of a forty mile or so ride. Since I have been preparing to run the half marathon I have been putting in a whole lot more running time than usual. Have I told you how much I hate running? I was hoping to finish my thirteen miles at a pace around nine and a half minutes per mile. Well it seems I could keep that up for maybe five miles – it’s looking much more pragmatic to shoot for just an under eleven minute pace for the whole race.

Biking - on the other hand – allows me to move out at a much quicker clip. While twenty to twenty five miles an hour may seem like crawling from within the confines of three thousand pounds of rubber plastic and glass – on a bicycle it feels like you’re being sling-shotted over a canyon. I’ve hit near fifty miles an hour on some very serious downhills – this is quite nerve fraying. I don’t know if my over two hundred pounds helps me accelerate downhill or not – any physicists out there? I do know one realizes one false move, one unseen chunk of asphalt, one slip onto a soft berm or an inattentive automobile pilot backing from a drive could end up hurting a whole bunch.

I’ve become more scientific in choosing my routes. I check wind direction and elevation trying to insure that most of my climbing and riding into the wind is at the beginning of my route – downhill and wind at my back if possible on the way back. A ten mile an hour wind in one’s face while perched atop a bicycle makes a whole lot more difference than one would reasonably imagine and of course, it is way easier to finish up heading downhill.

The service I use to figure these things out is called running map dot com. This free online program not only lets you set and save different routes it also will show you elevation – take this info swing by weather dot com and scope out the wind’s direction and you’re good to go. This site has also allowed me to stay on track (no pun intended) with my training for the marathon by allowing me to set courses while I am out of town. Scope it out – ain’t the internets amazing?