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Hello (again) from an old timer!
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Wayne Lim
Joined: 18 Jan 2004
Posts: 87

11/27/17 1:47 AM

Hello (again) from an old timer!

Hey, everyone! Don't know how many still remember me - I was with this forum way back in the last millennium, and had an aborted attempt at getting back into cycling several years ago. When my account was reactivated, it said the last time I logged in was in 2010. This time - no excuses - I'm intending my return to cycling to be permanent.

I still see a lot of names that I recognize and it feels like a high school reunion almost! I dusted off my Strong frame, spun up my Powertap hub and tried to revive my little yellow computer. No luck there at all, but worse is that my chain had rusted stuck. I have zero idea where the industry is nowadays but a lot of upgrading is in my future. Each time I've looked at my sad bike in the garage, I've thought back to times when I was cycling and had such good memories of the people on this forum.

So let me know what's been happening with each of you over these past years!

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

11/27/17 4:20 AM

Blast from the past. Welcome back...

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dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6884
Location: Maine

11/27/17 5:08 AM

Wayne!

Great to hear from you. Death Ride Y2k seems just yesterday, eh?

I've been riding along pretty well, though I've had health issues this year I'm working my way through. Looking forward to a good year coming up.

I had dinner with Don Ferris and his wife in Denver a few years ago - his fixture business has really taken off.

Notable bike acquisitions are a Richard Sachs and a Domane Race Shop Limited (with wifi shifting).

Long forward to hearing of your adventures in returning to riding.


Dan

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April
Joined: 13 Dec 2003
Posts: 6593
Location: Westchester/NYC

11/27/17 7:07 AM

Wow! That should spur some activity into the doldrum!

Welcome back, Waynn.

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dfcas
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 2815
Location: hillbilly heaven

11/27/17 7:32 AM

Good to see the 'Liminator back. Bike technology has dropped me but I'm chasing. A lot of us are on smart trainers for the winter.

Can't wait to read about the broken parts.:)

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PLee
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 3712
Location: Brooklyn, NY

11/27/17 8:02 AM

I fear for those parts soon to be acquired . . .

Was it a Look bike of yours that I rode with just a quarter inch of seat post gripped by the seat tube?

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daddy-o
Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 3307
Location: Springfield

11/27/17 8:10 AM

Great to see you're back. December first is Eddy B's New Year so you're just in time.

Quite an impact for 83 posts!

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greglepore
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 1724
Location: SE Pa, USA

11/27/17 8:38 AM

Howdy! Ready to bust some stuff?

We're still here, as if we're proud of it. Its a geezer paradise.

Next thing you know, we'll here from JP and Nate.

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

11/27/17 11:18 AM

Yeah, some perusing threads over the 2017 period will show some new tech and bike procured by some of us.

Lots of Domanes, Lots of Di2 and even some wireless SRAM.

I had Carl make me a Disc CX Adventure frame. I moved from TN to Oregon in 2011 and started procuring some old and new, but nothing blue bikes and frames. ;) Got busier riding again myself since here, and got one especially notable bucket ride here. Well twice, Crater Lake.

You obviously will need to upgrade and or buy some newer tech, we are here to help you spend your hard earned coin, if you so desire. ;)

Just do searches for Domane, Strong, Sachs, Madone etc and that should bring you to some of the new bike threads.

Ciao

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PLee
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 3712
Location: Brooklyn, NY

11/27/17 1:45 PM

Wayne -

Your ears should have been burning a few weeks ago when Angie and Andy Coggan, Evan Marks and I got together for dinner here in New York. You figured prominently in our conversation!

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Wayne Lim
Joined: 18 Jan 2004
Posts: 87

11/27/17 4:17 PM

Wow!

Dan, was Death Ride really 17 years ago? I think I did it again the following year, and have been intending to go back for a trifecta ever since. Health issues? Oh no! Stay away from those!

Parkin, yeah, it was my old Look KG196. Not long ago, I saw the pictures that were taken when you were here!

Sparky, yeah, seriously time to get rolling again. The tires on my Strong have some dry rot. I'll check out the threads at some point, but I think I'll probably just make everyone repeat themselves by asking the questions, again, like any newb.

April, dfcas, daddy-o, Greg, all so good to hear from you!

Well, some catching up on my end. A long time ago, my wife and I made a pact to get retired early, by age 55 if possible. So, I did retire at the end of September, three weeks before turning 56. My dad passed a long time ago at age 66, and my mom passed four years ago at age 82, but after an 11 year long battle with Parkinson's disease. With genetics not looking good on my side, we both decided we would rather live cheaply and have the time, because we can always go and "would you like fries with that" if we needed more cash, but could never get the time back. My wife retired a few months after turning 56, so we're both free of the rat race.

My twin kids are 24! My son's working to become an actuary, and my daughter is having a early-course correction in her career, from marketing in the retail/fashion industry to possibly going back to school to get a psychology degree so she can help teens and young adults who are going through tough times.

My wife and I both have the traveling bug. Over the past few years, we've been to France, Italy, the Vatican, Croatia, Dubrovnik, Portugal, and just came back from a long trip to China. We're going to the Galapagos next May, and will take the opportunity to go to Machu Picchu and will hike the last part of the Incan Trail. We've also gotten back to our love of the outdoors and are looking for hiking opportunities everywhere. This past May, we did two long weeks of hitting all five national parks in Utah, and previously did Glacier NP as well as the Canadian parks around Banff.

I've also been playing a lot of competitive tennis. I'm ranked in the 30-50 range in the 55-60 age group in the Pacific Northwest region. And it probably is no surprise that I'm probably the hardest hitter of any of these top 50 guys, so yeah I break lots of strings and racquets.

So all the while, the bikes have been sitting unused. And I've noticed that each year that goes along, I seem to gain about a pound or so. Ten years later, well, let's not talk about it. I commuted home from work a couple of dozen times over the past seven or eight years and loved it each time, but just the hassle of getting the bike to work on the bus made it hard. It's a 30 mile ride home so there was just no way I was going to be able to ride into work and still get started by 7 a.m. But the few times where I did commute more regularly, the pounds came off and I felt great!

So the Strong and a Trek 520 that's about 20 years old are my only road bikes. The Trek has fenders, a rack, heavy wheels with 15 year old Specialized Armadillo tires, and I think an 8-speed triple STI system of some sort.

The Strong has a Dura Ace 10-speed crank, and the rear wheel is a Powertap SL with the same 650 gram, 40 mm deep aluminum Fir SuperRialto rim that I got from **Mark Hoskins** a couple of decades ago. (Is he still around?) The little yellow computer that goes with the hub got put through the washer at some point, and now doesn't turn on at all. I looked it up and it's $350 to have the guts replaced in my hub, which will bring it up to modern standards with ANT wireless, but then I'll need a head unit. And I have no idea what's out there? I think there might be an android app that I can run on my phone, but that's just a guess.

There are a couple of spots where the paint has flaked off the Strong and I was thinking of sending it back to him to have the alignment verified and repainted. My brother-in-law suggested that if I want to go electronic shifting, it might also be the time to have the internal routing put in place and have holes drilled to accommodate it. Electronic shifting?!? What a novel idea! Only it's a weird looking crank and what is with this 34-50 chainring spec? What happened to 39-53?

Lastly, it seems I last posted in 2010. I know some of you are car enthusiasts, so in 2011 when my kids turned 18, I bought a Corvette, in a color called Crystal Red Metallic that was almost identical to the candy apple red that Carl painted my Strong. Slowly over time, I modified it to run on the track, but then it became less suited to be driven on streets and especially in commuting to work. So I bought a first gen Miata in 2012 and drove that around until this past June. The Miata had a stock suspension that I only lightly modified, and so it was so much more comfy and easy to drive around that the Corvette mostly sat, right next to the Strong that sat even more than the Corvette. My first convertible, and I loved it! Then, hair loss happened, and early this spring I got a sebaceous keratosis on my nogging that had to be removed. It seemed my convertible days were nearing an end, and since I had put 50k hard miles into it by that time, we decided to sell it. Still got exactly what I paid for it five years ago!

Being environmentally conscious, and with neighbors who are the same, I was getting tired of the side-eye I got every time I lit up the Corvette with that raucous, possibly slightly illegally loud exhaust and tried to slink out of the neighborhood at idle-speed revs. There is nothing good about actually releasing dead dinosaurs into the air, so my wife and I looked at electric cars - it would be our first. I found that there were still a few never-titled Smart electric cars that were made in 2015. Since we have an SUV and I would still have the Corvette, and since the Miata was a two-seater already, we figured we could probably make do with a third vehicle as small as a Smart car. We ended up paying $12k for a brand new one with a full four year, 50k mile warranty, and we would still get the $7500 federal tax credit on top of that. $5500 for a brand new car! And I get to tell everyone it's a German, rear wheel drive, rear-engined, two-seater! If we drove it 20k miles, it would save up enough money to be a free car. We got that in June, and it almost has 5k miles on it now. We drive it everywhere, and my wife and I juggle our tasks so we can both use it. For the urban running around, it's perfect. It is zippy, can literally park anywhere, and has nearly three times the trunk size of the Miata. It's **way** roomy up front. This past month, we've filled up the SUV and the Corvette one time each, and drove the Smart more than a thousand miles. So, after a brief respite, the Corvette is sitting again, next to the Strong.

Okay, so here's the first of a multitude of questions. If I upgrade my Powertap, they can put the G3 internals into my SL shell. It will then have ANT+ and bluetooth. What head options do I have?

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

11/27/17 4:50 PM

As to 39/53 VS 34/50, you will see quickly why when you start going up again post non riding. Altbough you iirc were a masher extroidaire. Age and time off will tell. ;)

My Series 6 Domane is Di2 11 speed, 11-34 cassete on my climbing wheels, 34/52 cranks, just so I can still go up anything. And the Di2, even with a rear derailleur cage long enough to do it shifts deterministicly like a short cage does.

There are power systems other than hub/wheel, more popular these days it seems. Crank and pedal based, you may kill a few birds going crank based. I bought a good used PT wheel with an ANT upgraded v2.4 hub and use my android phone for the computer. It just shows how much less power I make anymore anyway.

Pacific North West? Where are you?

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Marc N.
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 457
Location: Israel

11/27/17 9:36 PM

Welcome back from the Israeli contingent of this esteemed forum. One of the joys of returning to cycling (I more or less had a 7 year break when I ran marathons) is starting to ride and then deciding that it is worth doing the upgrades, so I am one of those that last year purchased a new Domane and love it. Enjoy the process, it`s a blast.

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Brian Nystrom
Joined: 26 Jan 2004
Posts: 5096
Location: Nashua, NH

11/28/17 6:22 AM

Welcome back Wayne!

I have to say, I've missed all of your tales of destruction, even if they made me wince once in a while. ;-)

50/34 chainrings have become the new normal since manufacturers realized thee things:

1 - A 53/11 is completely useless for the average cyclist.

2 - Most riders would benefit more from lower low-end gearing.

3 - This is doubly true for us old farts, who are the segment of the market who can actually afford the hideous prices on new bikes!

Some of us have gone even farther. I just installed a 46/30 crank on my 'cross bike and would seriously consider it for my next road bike. It would allow me to run a tight cassette (probably 12-25) and still have low enough gearing for serious climbing.

There are a huge number of bike computers that will work with an ANT+ or Bluetooth power meter. It really just depends on what other features you want.

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dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6884
Location: Maine

11/28/17 7:21 AM

Wayne in a Smart Car

OK, that's funny. Picture, please. You ought to get together with Paul Datars, another absentee, who has both a souped up 'Vette and Caddy, I believe.

BTW, I guess it has been 17 years, but I still have flashbacks of you scarfing Oscar Mayer lunchmeat at 4 am, in the beautiful Kirkwood condo....

Glad you and Jean are enjoying retirement. I'm still a working stiff.

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

11/28/17 9:24 AM

My old road strong from 2000 was a single speed for years since getting plastic bikes round 2012. It now has got an XT 28/40 crankset and long cage Ultegra rear DR. I feel no shame spinning up steep grades, but my right knee has never been the same after the 2006 tib/fib fractures from ski incident.

Took me taking off the 39/53 to stay on the bike after painful attempts finally late 2009.

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KerryIrons
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 3234
Location: Midland, MI

11/28/17 2:15 PM

Phoenix rising

Amazing: the Liminator is back. My wife and I sometimes talk about the literally hundreds of riders who have come and gone in our lives, wondering what motivated them to be riders and what caused them to lose that motivation. Same goes for this forum, where people are active participants and then fade into the mists of time. Wayne's reappearance reminds me (not really) of that scene in Wuthering Heights where Heathcliff digs up the grave of his long lost love :)

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

11/28/17 3:53 PM

I never left, but those years after the tib/fib I felt unworthy to post about cycling. I felt vindicated once I was an actual cyclist again. And to me that meant always riding and not riding occasionally in my mind and for me...

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Matthew Currie
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 800
Location: Vermont

11/28/17 5:57 PM

I remember you, Wayne, and have continued to visit the forum though not as often as formerly, as I had a nearly fatal accident in 2012 which put an end to my road cycling forever. But I'm not dead yet.

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Wayne Lim
Joined: 18 Jan 2004
Posts: 87

11/29/17 11:42 AM

Sparky, I had to look up what a Domane is. Wow, a consumer-based, production, five-figure bike! Things really have changed! I'm in Redmond, WA, now right in the backyard of the huge Microsoft complexes that have sprung up over the past 30 years that I've lived here. Anyhow, it sounds like I'll ship off this rear wheel to get it updated. I've got a Note8 so hopefully they make some sort of handlebar mount for something that big (and I got it that size because, well, I can't see anything smaller any more).

Marc, my wife and I are planning a trip over your way in the next couple of years. I'll be bugging you more as that comes closer for helpful hints and info - wouldn't it be cool to get a TTF picture from Israel?

Brian, I ran a 53-11 for some period of time and used it occasionally. I **used** to be able to turn that over, but the reason I really used it was so I could use the 39-13. I've always noticed that my preferred cadence goes up as my fitness increases so I'm likely to be climbing at no more than 75 cadence now anyway, and I think a 39-25 is about 8.5 MPH at that cadence? But I've always had a problem with shifting down to the small ring and having the RPM change be so great. I tended to push the big chainring longer than I should so by the time I got onto the small ring, my legs weren't happy ramping up to 95+ cadence. That and that I'd usually drop down three cogs in the rear - now I'd have to drop four or five - and I always hated the amount of speed I lost to get that all done.

Dan, you know, working in technology like I did, it just got to be too hard to keep up. I had to devote an hour or two of my own time each day just keeping up with all the changes. It almost got obsessive - some of my vacations were spent learning some programming language, or boning up on some new version of SQL Server. And unlike your expertise, I either quit entirely or become obsolete through laziness, so quitting seemed like the better alternative! So, what do you think about doing another Death Ride?

Kerry, that's the cool thing about this forum - we kind of all grew together from the start and there are bonds that will live forever, just like high school friends. Like I said, many times when I saw my bike, I wondered how everyone on this forum was doing and it almost felt like I was missing out.

Matt, I'm glad you pulled through your accident! That worries me a lot. The KG-196 with that infamous seatpost that Parkin rode all those years ago, got destroyed in a fairly scary accident too. I was motoring through an intersection at 25 MPH with a green light and a big dually truck from out of state took a left turn right in front of me. I couldn't avoid it without going head on into oncoming traffic so I hit the truck on it's passenger side by the front wheel, got flung up onto the hood, and then fell off landing flat on my back. My legs went totally numb and I have to tell you there were some pretty ominous thoughts that went through my head. I ended up having to call my wife, again, from an ambulance on my way to the hospital while tied to a backboard. Funny story - the feeling in my legs came back after a minute or so but there was a doctor who was at the intersection when it happened and he kept me immobilized until the medics came. They loaded me into the ambulance and I asked if I could call my wife. One of them said "It doesn't look like you have any life threatening injuries so go ahead. . ."

I said "When my wife hears about this, I **will** have some life threatening injuries. . ."

So the driver gets cited and they contest the ticket. I get notice that I'm to show up at the hearing as there is some sort of contributory negligence or guilt on my part. Our case gets called and the driver proceeds to say "He came out of no where - it must have been that he was speeding. The speed limit on that road is 30 MPH and I found out that Lance Armstrong can ride faster than that, so it is possible he was speeding at the time of the accident. . ."

Wow, being compared to Lance Armstrong - well, hopefully not the doping part, but anyhow while I was basking in the glow of being a potential TdF contender, the Judge shut that person down saying this hearing was about them and not me, and they were GUILTY.

So, I have a fully intact KG-196 with a broken fork, for which they had to pay me over $4000. The other insurance company said jokingly it would have been cheaper if they had hit a car. But if anyone runs across a KG-196 fork, please let me know! I'd love to get that back on the road.

Okay, at least my plans now are clear - I'm going to send this hub back to PowerTap for an overhaul, and I'll hopefully find some sort of handlebar mount for my Note8.

Question #2: my rear Dura Ace 10-speed STI lever occasionally doesn't downshift. It this something that can be fixed by, like, dunking the lever in lubricant for a couple of days or is it terminal? I know the older levers just plain worn out, but if I can run this for a while, I can get a better idea of what kind of gearing I'll buy. There seem to be a lot of options like 34X50, 36X52, and my beloved 39X53 (even if I can't turn that over any more).

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

11/29/17 12:00 PM

Lever: replace the cable first and foremost. May well be fraying at the ball in the shifter. If it breaks in there it will get harder to deal with. Make well sure there is zero cable strand bits still in there.

Flush it out with WD-40. Rap a rag for the over flow. Work it and flush some more. If it responds well to this you may be gold. BUT! Once the solvent flashes off you need to get some good lube like tri-flow in there or it working will be short lived. WD-40 is not lube.

Recovery is probable IMO, but not guaranteed.

Re Domane: Trek wanted to take the Specialized Roubaix market and IMO designed a better mouse trap in spades. If you search my short lived disc Roubaix while lookin for all our semi-recent bike appropriations, you will read in my case of 6 months of diddling and then offing.

I could go on about the Roubaix having been revamped to answer Domane kind et al. But I won't any more than I have. Other than to say Trek has a lot of flavors of the Domane. Including thr flagship made in USA, actually made in USA. And you never read about disatisfaction it seems like.

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Pat Clancy
Joined: 13 Jan 2004
Posts: 1353
Location: Manchester, CT

11/29/17 2:04 PM

Welcome back, Wayne

Good to hear you're alive and well. I sometimes feel a little hypocritical taking part in the forum since my biking has dwindled to a few hundred miles a season. That's what grandchildren and retirement does. You'd think there's more time available but somehow it slips away in a fog of other things. But your return may motivate me. Looking forward to your posts.

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

11/29/17 3:12 PM

Pat, perhaps as younger men we are just a lot more stingy with our time. ;)

That reminds me, I got some new testosterone coffe creamer I want to try...

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dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6884
Location: Maine

11/29/17 6:04 PM

Another DR

Dude, that would be epic!

I might consider it, but first I have an aortic aneurysm to deal with. May have surgery in January, pending another meeting with the surgeon. If the surgery is done and is successful, I can ride whatever I want. Without the surgery, no way I'd try anything even close to the DR.

I did find a ride harder than DR - the D2R2 180k course. About the same elevation gain in fewer miles, and nearly all of it on short, super-steep dirt roads. E.g., Achambo Rd., 27%, dirt. I finished the ride a couple years ago, even managed to stay on the bike.

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Marc N.
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 457
Location: Israel

11/29/17 9:39 PM

While at the best of times I have never been the most prolific of posters, even the years when I was off the bike and running, I checked in here almost on a daily basis, and when suitable, I commented on something. I enjoy this forum and its members too much to let something like not riding a bike keep me away. After all, how many posts actually have cycling content? :)
Wayne - When relevant, please don`t hesitate to contact me.

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