The Bike Hive

On June 18th, my wife and I drove to Goshen to do the annual Pumkinvine ride.  They offer a 50 mile and a 100 mile (actually, 103 mile) ride through Amish country in northern Indiana.  Proceeds benefit the Pumkinvine trail, a paved rail trail that runs between Goshen and Shipshewana, Indiana.  We planned to do the century, my wife's first this year and my first one in nearly three years.  It would also be Kathy's longest ride (a new PR) and my second longest.  As a matter of fact, it's been 25 years since I've done a ride longer than this. We met up with Kelly, a long time friend and frequent riding partner of Kathy.  We left the Elkhart county fairgrounds at 8am with no preconceived notions of average speed and no hurry to finish.  The ride was well marked, but just in case I had downloaded the route to Kathy's Garmin so we had an easy to follow map. The country is beautiful in this part of Indiana.  For the most part, things move a lit...

I received this frameset as a Christmas gift last year and it quickly turned into one of my favorite bikes.  I haven't spent much time trying to find out the exact model and year because, frankly, it really doesn't matter to me.  I have a serious appreciation of old steel, particularly Italian steel.   (Don't mistake me for a curmudgeon though.  I like carbon fiber too- I own a couple carbon bikes)  I was raised in my mechanical youth with steel and they still have a soft spot in my heart. When I was younger I worked in a small shop in a small town.  The only Colnago bikes I ever saw were in a magazine.  To me they were rare and expensive, something I wanted badly but never thought I'd be able to afford one.  At that time the used bike market wasn't anything like it is today (how eBay has changed things!) and these types of bikes have become much easier and less costly than they were in 1990. For the last few years, I've enjoyed b...

This posting is a shortened version of a technical paper I wrote for work. I hope you enjoy, and learn in the process! At one time, all bikes were made of steel.  Steel has been popular thanks to its strength to weight ratio and ease of use.  These factors as well as it’s low cost and availability make it ideal for use in bicycles.  The most common type of steel used for bikes is chromoly , and 4130 chromoly is the most widely recognized.  So what does chromoly mean and what do the numbers 4130 refer to? Steel is an alloy of iron and other metals.  The term ‘alloy’ is commonly used to refer to aluminum but it actually refers to any metal that’s mixed with other elements in order to achieve the desired mechanical properties such as strength, weight, durability, hardness, weldablitly, etc.  ' Chromoly ' refers to a specific type of steel alloy that combines Iron with Chro mium and Moly bdenum (chro-moly, get it?) along with small amounts of oth...