Ploafmaster General

Haven’t Smushed this well in a couple of weeks:

hankgreen.com/smush · Sep 18 1110 pts · PERFECT 💯 · 71-day streak 🥞🥞🥞 🥞⭐🥞 🥞🥞🥞

My wife was just laid off from her job of like, almost 20 years? If anybody knows of a need for a commercial interior designer (with strong office and hospitality experience, deep building code knowledge, and Revit skills) in Richmond, VA (or remote) please hit me up.

I know I’m not even the 100th person pointing this out, but the new bullshit interstate exit for Short Pump will cost ($157 million) more than the entire 2027 operating budget for GRTC ($101 million) and around half the cost of building the Fall Line Trail (~$300 million).

Oh hell yes, my new chubby-tire, comfort road bike is amazing. Say hi to my latest restomod, Shween. More details when I get the chance to give it a photo shoot!

Whelp. My now teenage daughter fits my wife’s #bike. So good thing I built up that Raleigh Olympian for her after all 😂

What, uh…what kind of um…meat…is it?

I can’t believe it took me this long, but I saw Gremlins for the first time last night. The whole dang family loved it. Gizmo’s puppeteering is legendary.

So I think I’m gonna hang on to that Mongoose Alta I picked up for 10 clams this summer just long enough to use for the cheap bike build-off in 2027. Valerie’s cool with it. Kinda hard to pass up starting with a complete #bike for that cheap.

It’s hilarious/depressing that you can steal the attention of the world’s richest asshole just by questioning the truth of his freaking internet posts.

When I played my son “Modern Major General” he asked, “how can someone sing that fast?”

So then I played him Busta Rhymes’ “Gimme Some More”.

I don’t think Richmond’s utility billing issues are resolved; just got my new bill and it says they received no payment for last month, but the dashboard also lists my recent payment for exactly that amount. New bill shows last month balance forward + this month 🤨

Got some old, seized pedals unstuck from a cheap crankset I got off eBay (which is why they were cheap).

LIKE A BOSS.

Anyway, the Scwhinn Crosscut roadbike experiement has nearly everything necessary to finish the build…

It’s pretty validating to have one of the guys from Crust tell you your #bike looks cool.

This fine Jimothy reflector will dangle from the saddle of the next bike I’m building up 😁 (https://parsecobjects.com/products/jimothy-reflector)

It has not been my best year in the #bike, but I did finally cross 4000 miles (6437 km) for the year today. I could still cross 7000 by year’s end if I can get in the riding time!

Pool birthday party for the nearly 13-year-old. The easy way.

Alright alright alright, here’s the proper post on my latest bike project: a 1990 Diamond Back Apex resto-mod that I like to call Rattle Can. I got this bike earlier in the year for $25 on Marketplace. The listing was for “3 kids bikes $25 each”, and this bike was in the back of the single photo behind the other two. I could tell it wasn’t a kids bike, but I think that error in the description kept it unsold for a while. But this bike was closer to the upper end of Diamond Back’s line in 1990 and was made with some nice Tange MTB double butted tubing all over, and looked like a great platform for my idea.

My vision for the Apex was a fun little street ripper - something with agility for getting rowdy around town, but comfortable enough for the multi-hour rides that are my daily bread. There is ultimately nothing original on this bike except for the front derailleur, but the rest is a mixture of parts bin, eBay, and some new items that fit what I was going for. The outside of this bike is beat to hell, but the inside of the frame and fork looked clean and rust free after I stripped it all down. So I used rust converter on a few exterior spots, rust prevention spray inside the frame, and some hard core 2K clear coat to protect what’s left of the outside. The result is a stable if battered paint job that I don’t feel bad about sticker-ing up a little bit.

Before I get to the build specs, here’s a few of the known sins:

• at some point the cable end popped off the front-D cable. Need to dig through my bins and find another.
• the rear brake cable looks a little jacked between the v-brake arms; I originally tried setting this up with ratio converters so I could use these totally sick NOS Suntour XC Pro brake levers (SO. SICK.), but it was wonky. I had plenty of cable length left after switching to XTR levers, and didn’t want to waste the existing one so I kept it. It looks weird but works fine.
• Yeah…black rims wth non-machined sidewalls and rim brakes. You can see the paint wearing. Not ideal, but they’re the rims I had.
• Poo-brown sidewalls on the tires. Sorry Garry—I have bad luck with flats and I need the endurance casing.
• Non-matching wheel set and skewers. I built these, but I’ll get to why they don’t match down below.
• The red pedals…Valerie likes them but I think it’s the wrong red and too matchy-matchy anyway. But they were cheap and they’re at least Race Face.

This is probably the…3rd…resto-mod I’ve wrapped up at this point? But I’m super stoked at how this turned out. Pretty much exactly the feel I was going for with some unexpected surprises along the way. Number one? I have a tool that I use to help see what size tires will fit in a frame, and it looked like this frame could fit some fat meats. The 26" wheels that came with the bike were 1.95", but my gauge made it look like I could fit some 650b tires up to 48mm. Whoa! A 650b conversion? This thing already had a higher BB since it’s a mountain bike, but raising it more with larger wheels? And what about the brakes?

So I built a custom set of 650b, rim brake, quick release wheels. I already had a new-old-stock SunTour XC 9000 front hub (sealed bearings!) and really wanted to use it here. But not only would it have been difficult to find an appropriate SunTour rear hub, my options for one with a wide gear range—let alone a cassette—would be limited since they’re out of business. So I used a Rivendell Silver hub and went 9-speed Shimano. The rims are Velocity Cliffhangers, 32-spoke, and the tires are Rene Herse Switchback Hill. I already had one of these as a spare for the Space Horse for the past couple of years, but I found a match at Outpost in their clearance tire bin for TWENTY-FIVE BUCKS a few months ago.

And stopping? I had a set of XTR BR-M952 v-brakes, and there is juuuuuuust enough vertical travel in the pad adjustment to make these work on 650b rims. And they’re not angled up, either! I was shocked, and had a pair of some cheaper v-brakes with a ton of vertical adjustment on standby. No need.

The last pleasant surprise before the rest of the specs: this bike’s fork has mid-blade mounts, which as far as I can tell is pretty uncommon for MTBs of this era. But it made it possible to use this rack from Hyacinth that I previously used on my Space Horse.

Now for the rest - mostly a list, but with a little commentary here and there.

• first headset I ever pressed in! This bike has a 1-1/8" threaded steerer, so got the Tange Falcon with sealed cartridge bearings. It’s simple, but it’s really smooth and adjusted fine.
• stem adapter from Origin8 for 1-1/8" threaded steerers to 1-1/8" threadless stems, with a black Nitto stem spacer I picked up from Crust.
• Thomson cockpit; 70mm stem (angled up) and a 26.8 straight seatpost. I actually reamed out the seat tube a tiny bit to make this work since it came with a 26.6 post. I figured I should be safe with only 0.2 removed and more than enough post in the seat tube.
• the stem is holding on to the Crust Shrike Bar in black. This is the 800mm wide-boi with 31.8 clamp diameter. This is my third handlebar from Crust (Nullabar on the Bombora and Ron’s Ortho Bar on my old Trek cruiser), and I feel like they have some great ideas for bars that balance comfort, utility, and aesthetics. These are the craziest, widest bars I’ve ever used, but my shoulders are already about 52cm wide. Coupled with a short stem, these end up being just right. Perfect amount of sweep, total control, and enough rise to work with this old frame.
• the saddle is a nice, simple Brooks C17. In this riding configuration, it’s more comfortable than the one on my Space Horse which makes me want to rethink my saddle position on that bike.
• grips are my third attempt at finding the right comfort level, but I keep a lot of grips around. These are Wolf Tooth Fat Paw lock-on grips. Simple, but just right for my meat hooks.
• brake levers are the XTR levers to match the v-brakes. I was lucky to find the stand-alone levers without integrated shifters because…
• …I have my beloved SunTour Power Thumb ratcheting shifters to pull cable. If you like friction shifting (and I really do), these have well earned their reputation.
• shifting up front is the original Deore DX derailleur. It’s in kinda crummy cosmetic shape, but it works great and suits the character of the bike.
• rear derailleur is every alt-bike-kid’s favorite XTR M952. I got this one on the cheaper end because of a split jockey wheel and got some low-price sealed bearing replacement wheels that still made this cheaper than the usual asking price. The rest of it is in great shape and it works perfectly.
• I’m running 3x9 here with a cheaper 9-speed 11-36 Shimano cassette in the rear and a lower-end-but-still-pretty-nice SunTour XCE triple in the front (48/38/28). The drivetrain is clear because you know I’m waxin' and relaxin'.
• miscellaneous: cheap Lezyne bottle cage, Ultradynamico bottle, Wolf Tooth bar ends, Topo Designs stem bag, Fab’s Chest Mini on the front, Ass-Savers Win Wing 2 fender, and a Crane bell (that I wish was black, but at least it sounds fantastic).

And you know what? This thing rides GREAT. I’ve put 125 miles on it so far and it’s as fun as I’d hoped. It’s nimble, and I don’t notice the high seating position after I’m rolling.

That’s the long and…long! of it. Peep the gallery for more detailed glamor shots. I’d like to some day make a simple bike-check video for this bike (and all my others), but video editing is a whole other thing.

Spent about 30 minutes in the yard this afternoon photographing the red bike. Even brought out the 85mm f/1.4 portrait lens! Got lots of excellent detail shots, but NONE of the most important frames—the side profile!—were in focus. I’ll give it another go tomorrow…and check in camera!

Why does the entire Westover Hills neighborhood smell like apple cider vinegar?

Rewatching this Bike Breath video on their trip to Montréal from last year and reminiscing while also reminded how many benches there are all over the city! It was so easy to find a nice place to sit.

I would never buy DI2 Dura Ace, but the latest rear derailleur officially shifts up to a 36t cog. From my experience if Shimano says 36, you can most likely actually get up to 42 (with b-screw adjustment) which is just bonkers for this level of #bike component. Dura Ace wide-range double? :-P

Back in proper Smush-ing form:

hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 23 1116 pts · PERFECT 💯 · 45-day streak 🥞🥞🥞 🥞⭐🥞 🥞🥞🥞

I’ve heard of folks putting their locks through their bike helmets, taking their helmets when they leave their bikes. The brand Thousand sells a helmet with a hole through which you can pass your lock. Do…do people steal bike helmets? Mine gets pre-t-t-t-y gross during a ride.

Montréal travel wrap-up, let’s do this.

We all really didn’t want to leave yet. After a scant week in this excellent city we only just scratched the surface. But ah! Isn’t that just the way with standard American vacation allowances? Besides, we had this week between vacation and the start of the school year to reacclimate to our home environs and routines, so return we must.

We made one final stop at St-Viateur Bagel for some breakfast and left the city. We hit a grocery store for some final Canadian snacks (and nearly a liter of dark maple syrup!) and a post office so our son’s post cards would have Canadian postage and postmarks. The border crossing was pretty quick and without incident, as was most of the ride down. Home, unloading, decompressing, recovering.

I don’t know how many family vacations we have left; both of our kids are starting the last years each of elementary and middle school. So it isn’t only a matter of family travel before they grow up and leave home—I wonder how much longer they’ll each tolerate schlepping around this city and that museum and such-and-such guided tour before they only want to stare at their devices talking to their friends. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’ll take what I can get, but I really loved how much this trip covered all the bases of how well our family can travel together.

Hiking around a city? Great! Exploring a natural wonder? Sure! Checking out cool food and beverage spots? You bet—as long as that includes dessert! Museums? Parks? Cool buildings? Yes, yes, and yes. Me and Valerie are pretty lucky on this front.

Anyway. Now we focus on school and dream of the next trip…

Shall we continue? Let’s shall.

Wednesday…

…began as, perhaps, every day should have: bagels. Now I’m not a bagel purist. I grew up in New Jersey and have had my fair share of great doughy rings from Jersey, NYC, and some pretty solid options here in Richmond. I don’t have a canonical bagel in my head so of course I was excited to try Montréal’s distinctive style on its home turf. The photo above is the storefront of the original St-Viateur Bagel in the Mile End neighborhood. Boiled with honey, baked in a wood-fired brick oven, these puppies were really dang tasty and my whole family agreed.

I really wanted to sample Montréal’s rich coffee scene after breakfast so we walked a little bit up and over to Café Éclair where we had some of the most delicious coffee this year. Micro-lot espresso, a huge list of featured and in-house pour-overs, special iced drinks, and a gorgeous cafe meant a repeat visit the very next day. One of the baristas even brought over the grounds for each of Valerie’s and my pour-overs so we could smell them before she brewed them! Outstanding.

The rest of the day included some general exploration and meandering around the old city and port again with a healthy amount of time spent at the excellent Pointe-à-Callière archeology museum. The kids enjoyed it as much as the adults, and we learned a ton about Montréal’s history and its people, including the First Nations peoples that predated colonization.

Dinner was early, though, because we found what was supposed to be a high octane Ramen shop (of COURSE it was in Mont Royal just off Rue Rachel!). They recommended showing up right as they open to avoid long lines and we were glad we did. We arrived at 4:45 before a 5:00 opening, and there was already a couple ahead of us. The dining room completely filled within minutes after our seating, but it was absolutely worth the hype. Yokato Yokabai served some of the most delicious ramen we had ever eaten—so good that I need to wait at least a month before I eat anywhere around Richmond to avoid complete disappointment.

Valerie wanted to wrap up the day with a post-sunset ride on the city’s massive ferris wheel, La Grande Roue de Montréal. I know it’s a huge tourist trap and it’s overpriced, but we were on vacation and the weather was clear, so pourquoi pas? I brought my tripod with us specifically for post ride photos.

Thursday, never looking back

Our last full day in the city started with another trip way out northwest, but this time to ZAB Café on St-Denis in the Le Petite-Patrie neighborhood. Their coffee looked good, but specifically to Valerie’s interests they have their signature Cafelimo drink both on tap and in can multipacks. Valerie loves coffee lemonade from one of our local shops, so she had to try it. If she liked it she could take home a bunch of cans. She did, and she did! ZAB didn’t have much in the way of food (a few cookies) so we made our way back to Mile End to grab some wonderful pastries from Brioche à Tête on Fairmount. [ominous foreboding] I would return later that day…

We caught a bus back toward Place des Arts so we could hit another museum and as we got off the bus our nearly 13-year-old daughter informed us that she’d left her sling pack back at the pastry shop. Heading all the way back out there to retrieve it could scuttle our plans for the day, but I hatched a plan that would both save time and give me an excuse for a final BIXI ride.

But first, that museum: MEM, or Centre des mémoires montréalaises, is all about the people of Montréal. Not so much the founding as much as the recent past, the changing fabric of the city, and the people that have come from near and far to make its population what it is today. There was an excellent video exhibit with interviews about the city’s queer community, urban exploration, a man who dances in parks, a woman who grows banana trees all the way up there, and many other slices of life. Most of the museum’s space was devoted to subsections about the 1976 olympics, the history of alley sheds, alleys themselves, immigrants and the stories/objects they bring with them, the utility infrastructure, and so much more. We could have spent twice as much time there if we hadn’t been so hungry.

Oh yeah—catch that photo with the supermarket flyer? I dug up a little more info about the now-closed store bearing my surname.

So now that missing sling bag. While Valerie took the kids to check out the city’s modest Chinatown in a bit more detail I caught a bike back out to Mile End to see whether the pastry shop still had the bag. They did! Couldn’t hurt to get one more financier before heading back to the hotel, right?

With a successful recovery we headed once more over to the old city to visit Basilique Notre-Dame De Montréal. This cathedral looked a little simpler on the outside compared to some I’ve seen in Europe (heck, even in the US), but holy chickens was it ornate inside. Beautiful in that over-the-top sorta way.

There has to be some kinda metaphor around the convenience of using a credit card to light up a prayer candle…

After the cathedral Valerie wanted a family photo by a “Bonjour Montréal” sign at the port with the skyline in the background, so I indulged. We had our most mediocre dinner of the trip at some forgettable creperie, but wrapped up the night with some pretty solid coffee and wonderful dessert from Le Petit Dep (the Rue St-Paul location). I should have one more post to wrap up the trip soon.