Ploafmaster General

Crust blind-baked, quiche now in the oven, coffee in my cup, and soon: A Muppet Christmas Carol.

Happy Christmas to those who celebrate!

Happy Thursday to those who don’t! I hope it is a great day whatever it is.

In what is likely my last outdoor ride of the year I hit over 9010 miles (over 14,500 km). Not quite last year’s ridiculous numbers, but still a lot of riding. Can’t complain! #bikes

The cynic in me (about SCOTUS specifically, I’m not a doomer generally) thinks today’s ruling about the National Guard is a small pre-Christmas gift in advance of some larger lump of coal in the near future.

Penultimate outdoor #bike ride of the year, probably

One of the best parts of replacing all my home’s windows is that they can all open now, letting in fresh air and letting out bad smells.

I wish I’d remembered that a few hours ago when I was cleaning the bathroom 🙃

If I still have to go to a swim meet is it really vacation? 😛

I don’t know why it rankles me so, but it seems heavily bro-coded when a YouTuber or podcaster refers to their audience as “[show/channel name] nation”.

This film of Henna Palosaari is exactly the sort of adventure that makes me feel like I wasted my younger years not riding my bike, hanging out in nature. What the heck even is this split snowboard-but-sometimes-cross-country-skis thing? Incredible footage, and a real sense of what it is that makes riding so compelling for me - the bike as enabler, fun on its own while also unlocking experiences.

I totally didn’t have an alert on my phone reminding me to “blog about the new pizza place” like it’s 15 years ago or something.

There’s a new slice shop in town: Pizzeria Mungo. Richmond, Virginia doesn’t exactly have a lot of slice shops to begin with, so I’m always interested when a new one opens. They originally operated out of a ghost kitchen but have occupied a spot on Arthur Ashe Boulevard for the past month. I finally tried them out for lunch today, and uh, wow. Here are my notes:

I ordered one slice each of cheese and pepperoni.

• The food came out really fast (Wednesday lunch, I suppose)
• Looks right, smells great
• Fresh grated grana padano on top
• Only 3 slice types available today: cheese (just came out as I was ordering), pepperoni, and special of the day (double pepperoni and portobello)
• The cheese slice was a little floppy when folded, but the crust is really thin (also it just came out, not reheated)
• Crust looks great underneath
• Sauce-to-cheese ratio is great
• Sauce tastes great; balanced, well-seasoned, a little spicy from chili flake
• Crust has a terrific crunch, good flavor
• Cuppy peppies :-D

Next time I’ll try some sausage and ricotta. I would say this place has NY-style slices that are on par with Zorch (one of my favorite places in town), but they’re much closer to my house and I don’t have to go through Carytown to pick it up. Granted, Zorch has more creative topping options and will be a better bet if you’re vegan for sure. But this is a solid start for a new joint in town, and I wish ‘em the best. My family loves pizza night, but sometimes I want a little pizza noon on a work day, and it’s great to have a place close by where I can just grab a slice or two.

The school band is “tuning”, but it sounds like an industrial vehicle trying to shoo a pedestrian out of a crosswalk.

Today was coffee, #bikes, one call that made the whole day better, a terrific new pizza joint (more later), more coffee, and now an elementary school concert. Pretty solid, I must say.

Good god, Rian Johnson is a remarkable filmmaker.

Low quality Squidward, could be yours for the low, low price of 10 clams (seen on Marketplace):

The weather during my ride never got above 38° F (less than 4° C), but it felt so good to get out on my #bike that it rescued my entire week.

Any dish can be “restaurant level” if your standards are low enough.

I wish the Nitto UI-16 tall-stack stem was still available…while I love so many VO parts, their tall-stack stem isn’t the right look for my bike, and I don’t know any other options that aren’t cu$tom. #bikes

If you can shop from McMaster-Carr, you know you can get 100 stainless steel M5 bolts (for bottle cages and loads of other #bike applications) for under $17?

What is the best educational typing program these days? Happy to pay. Ideally it should be a native app I could run on macOS that requires neither internet connection nor subscription. Good ol' Mavis Beacon seems like abandonware with issues.

Pretty sure this is the first time since my kids were in school that they’re going to have (so far) 3 snow days in December.

Genosack music selections are always on point, but their latest video drops in “Stars” form Hum, a delicious fuzz/post-shoegaze early 90s classic.

Current state: enjoying our annual family holiday brunch at Can Can.

Alright, so back in 2022 I started riding bikes again, and to make sure I wasn’t putting a lot of money into something without proof of commitment, I bought a used 2015 Fairdale Coaster from Re-Cycles Bike Shop in Richmond, VA. In a short few months I rode with increasing frequency and distance, eventually hitting my first 20+ mile ride on a single speed bike. Then I was hit by a pickup truck on September 1st, and while I was fine (other than contusions), enough of the bike was wrecked that it sat in storage. I was able to have the frame repaired for a mere $35. For my money, that resilience and repairability are why I choose steel bikes in the city.

Anyway, I’ve held on to the frame with the intention of turning it into a grocery bike with gears. But since it was originally a coaster brake bike with narrow track dropouts, I knew I’d have to modify it. The bike was essentially a write-off; I used the money I was paid by the guy who hit me to buy my Space Horse, so I was only off the road for 5 days after all. If I tried modifying the Fairdale and screwed up, it was no big loss on my end. But I didn’t screw it up! I stripped most of the bike down and then I ran into something weird.

When I pulled off the cranks, I wasn’t looking at the expected BSA square taper. Instead there was a splined shaft and larger, exposed bearings pressed directly into the shell. I did some measurements and while the shell width was 68mm, the inner diameter was just over 41mm. And then I remembered that Fairdale came out of Odyssey BMX, so I started researching BMX bottom bracket standards. Sure, I could have stuck with BMX cranks, but I wanted the flexibility to use a wider range of cranks from my parts bin (or swap in the future), and that meant BSA for me. Was this even possible? Based on my measurements, it became clear that Fairdale used the trickiest BMX bottom bracket standard to convert: mid. Now in the BMX world this would appear to be pretty solid; large bearings for a strong and durable BB. But finding conversion options was nearly impossible. American BB shells have just a large enough inner diameter that there are more options, and Euro is really the same as BSA.

Well it seemed like there was only one company I could find that made a “mid to iso/Euro” conversion kit, and it’s the British company Mafiabikes. I still don’t know a whole lot about them, but I know they had the part I seemed to need and it was $35. But there’s basically no information on the website and hardly anything I could find on the web about using these conversion cups. I’m fortunate enough to be able take a $35 risk, so I placed the order. In the mean time I could have a battle with the old pressed-in bearings, eventually knocking them out with the help of a socket extension, some penetrating oil, and a rubber mallet.

Having thoroughly cleaned the interior of the BB shell, it was time to make all this work.

I basically had 2 threaded cups that should press fit into the shell and I would need to use some Loctite green retention compound to hold it in place. I was lucky enough to already have an old 110mm square taper BB that has at least a little life remaining (for grocery runs at least).

The conversion cups had wrench flats which was helpful for dry-fitting the BB, but I wasn’t quite sure how I would press the threaded-in BB to the shell with the spindle in there, so I just tested the fit first by holding the cups in my vice.

Ultimately I added the Loctite and used my vice (with protective cardboard) to slowly, and carefully press in each conversion cup, one side at a time. It didn’t even take 10 minutes before the Loctite was set enough for me to torque down the drive-side of the BB to 50 N-m. Another major step of this slow conversion/build finished!

I don’t know how many bike shops would even know this is possible, let alone try doing this for you. I have to say I’m fairly proud of my self for figuring all of this out and actually succeeding. It’s also nice to know that with enough patience and willingness to tinker, you can figure out almost anything on a bike.

Seasonal drink at Julio’s is a masala flat white, and it’s quite good, with a house made syrup made from whole spices.