Janice Joins the Fleet
19 April 2023
It's been more than a month since the last time I sat down to write a blog post. During that time, I steeled myself for sticker shock and the entry into the world of electronic shifting.
Plain Jim calls the sound of index shifting "kla-dunk." It's all I've known since I bought Kermit in 2000. Pete says the sound of electronic shifting is "shnick." Everyone says that once I go shnick, I'll never want to kla-dunk again. I didn't want to believe that. I like Kermit and Beaker too much for that, and Miss Piggy is running well these days.
I've been on a lot of rides, most of them not on Saturdays because nearly every Saturday has been rainy since way back in the winter.
March 18 was one of those rare, sunny Saturdays. Tom led a ride in the flatlands. I took pictures of horses somewhere, possibly at the edge of the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area.
We diverted from the route to go look at the lake.
I don't remember why we stopped on the side of a road the next day on one of Jim's rides, but it seemed like a good time to take a picture of Kermit.
Compared to Kermit's paint job, there's no new bike out there that comes close. Cannondale's Synapse line was looking as colorful as an overcast night sky. With the components I wanted, I could choose between a matte, gunmetal gray and a strange bluish-green that looked like toothpaste. The rear triangle of the toothpaste frame would be aquamarine, so that was something. I knew I didn't want the gray one. My job was to learn to like the toothpaste, or at least to figure out how to snazz it up.
Later in the ride, I also got a picture of the bridge tender's station by the canal on Blackwells Mills Road. Rickety and I are sure that if we set up a coffee shop here, we'd sell out in ten minutes.
I was on another Jim ride a week later. I didn't take any pictures on the ride, but the shadows of a redbud tree against my neighbor's fence seemed worth pulling my camera out for.
At the end of March, I pulled the trigger and ordered the new Synapse from Ross at Hart's. He knows me, my riding style, my fit needs, and my penchant for funky colors. I did a deep dive into Amazon to look for snazzy bottle cages, bar tape that would match the rear triangle, and, of course, a Muppet for the saddle bag.
I also took a day off from work to ride with Tom and the retired portion of the Insane Bike Posse. This is Etra Lake where it drains beneath Milford Road.
Rickety showed up on a new bike, a carbon Trek with carbon wheels, disc brakes, and mechanical shifting. He found it on eBay.
Jack H was on the ride with his new Synapse, the toothpaste color. The more I looked at it, the more I liked it. When the sun hit the rear triangle, the aquamarine color popped. At the end of the ride, I brought out the boxes of bar tape that I had in the car for whenever my newbike would arrive. Nope, nope, nope, and maybe. At least I could use them for another member of my fleet. The bottle cages worked, though. I went back to Amazon and found another bar tape color.
On the Saturday that we got all those tornados in Central Jersey, I gave Miss Piggy some new bar tape. I finished as the sky turned green. I went on another of Jim's Sunday rides the next day. I took Miss Piggy and told people it was probably her last group ride.
The new bike was ready on April 4, a Tuesday. I had glassblowing class that night and my first shingles vaccine scheduled for the next day. I wouldn't have a chance or the energy for a test ride until Friday after work at the earliest. I listed a ride for Saturday. The route included Poor Farm and the dirt section of Stony Brook. I had 10 takers.
Her name is Janice. She's a Muppet, just like the rest, but a lesser-known one, the lead guitarist for the Electric Mayhem. In my case, it's electronic mayhem.
Janice is a Cannondale Synapse 2 RLE with Shimano Di2 electronic shifting and Boyd carbon wheels. She has a 36/52 front chain ring and an 11-36 12-speed cassette. She has built-in front and rear lights, the rear light with radar that has its own little display mounted on the handlebar. Everything talks to my GPS and my phone. The Boyd wheel logos have a metallic, rainbow finish.
I found a plastic Janice and hooked her up to the saddle bag with loops of copper wire. Turns out that nobody but Heddy so far knows who Janice is.
The bar tape is moderately reflective, with a greenish sheen over purple.
I thought the side-opening bottle cages would be a hassle, but they're not. The cages are aluminum.
The rear triangle sparkles!
Janice's debut ride was on a chilly day. I was wearing full-finger gloves. The shifter levers are closer together than what I'm used to. I hit the wrong one multiple times.
The first thing I noticed was how low-geared this bike is. I mean, it's what I asked for and everything, because I had to give up the granny gear. I've made the trip up Route 206 to Franklin Corner so many times that finding myself near the small cog while in the big ring on the way over is an oddity. Maybe it was the wheels, too. I've never had carbon wheels.
As I waited for the light to change at Franklin Corner, I saw Pete up ahead. He waited for me to cross. I greeted him with, "Shnick!"
The geometry of the new frame and my old Synapse are identical, save for a 1mm difference somewhere. When we got to Poor Farm, I wasn't anywhere near first up the hill, but I wasn't last. The effort seemed slightly less than I'd expected. The whole ride felt smoother.
I only took pictures once, at the top of Lambertville Headquarters at Sandy Ridge Road. It's a beautiful barn now that the MAGA owner has taken down his massive T**** banner.
By the end of the ride, I'd gotten the hang of the too-close shifter levers. I did miss having a separate cycle computer so that I could quickly see my speed and distance without having to push any buttons. With the new setup, my GPS records all of that, but I have my display on sleep mode unless a turn is coming up. This will take some screen tweaking. I tried mounting a wireless computer, but the distance between the fork and the tire is farther than the sensor can handle. There's enough stuff up in the cockpit already anyway, what with the GPS, the radar, and a mount for the Fly12 camera.
I noticed right away that, at the end of 54 hilly miles, I didn't feel trashed. Tired, yes, but not trashed. This was different.
I took Janice out on Jim's ride the next day, even though there weren't any hills. She did fine on the rollers too.
The next day I had enough energy to take Miss Piggy on her first commute. For the past two years, I've been riding Rowlf, a 1986 Colnago Saroni Master, steel, full Campy. Rowlf is stiff. Rowlf is heavy. It takes a lot to get Rowlf moving when I'm carrying my clothes and my lunch on my back. There's one very short, steep incline off a roundabout on campus where I have to gear way down to get up, and another on my way home between the rear parking lot and the back of the Dinky station.
The minute I started off on Miss Piggy, I knew it would be a different story. After over 17000 miles together, Miss Piggy and I know each other. Taking her up Princeton Pike loaded down with a backpack felt natural. She glided up the little hill at the roundabout, and at the end of the day she slid up the hill behind the train station. The manual shifting felt natural. Each kla-dunk was where it needed to be.
Rowlf was going to be demoted to the Wahoo Kickr trainer, where his weight and stiffness would no longer matter. I tried with Rowlf, I really did. But the more I tried, the worse it got. We only logged about 3000 miles together. I always felt slow on road rides. We avoided hills, although when we found a descent, Rowlf was a delight. He could go downhill all day long. When Beaker got smashed by a university maintenance truck, Rowlf took over the job. With Beaker on the weekend circuit, and with Janice taking over Miss Piggy's job in the hills, I had to make a choice: ditch Rowlf, or ditch Gonzo, the LeMond who had been living on my trainer since the beginning of lockdown.
As bad as Rowlf was, Gonzo was worse. Gonzo's frame was an eBay purchase for the princely sum of $250. I cobbled the drivetrain together with spare parts. He had Campy brakes with Shimano levers. Removing a wheel was an act of sheer force. The steerer tube acted independenly of the handlebars. The bottom bracket frequently sounded as if it were a crow rookery. The cheap powder-coat I put on to replace the original, battle-scarred paint was flaking off. Rowlf was a tank to ride to work, which is why I got Beaker to replace him.
So when I enlisted Jim's Ramblin' Wrench services, there were a lot of little jobs to do. I'd already taken the Shimano cassette off of the trainer, but stalled out at the hub replacement. Jim did that, then put a derailleur extender on Rowlf so that the drive train could accommodate the new 36-tooth cog. Miraculously, we were able to keep the chain. There was some shifting weirdness, though, possibly brought about by a pinched cable when I affixed the iPad holder to the handlebars. So I stripped the bar tape and he checked the cables. This gave me the chance to practice wrapping bar tape yet again. I didn't have anything that matched on hand, so I used one of the packs I rejected as a bad match for Janice. Meanwhile, Jim took Gonzo apart. I asked him to save and clean all the shiny bits so that I'd have spare parts for Kermit. Some of Gonzo's parts were actually the ones that came with Kermit when I bought him at the Trexlertown swap meet for $1500 cash in October 2000.
With Rowlf mounted on the Wahoo and Gonzo gone, my n+1+1 was back to n+1 and there was room to walk around the house again.
The next Saturday had rain predicted, because of course it did. Rather than go through the digital paperwork of listing a ride and tracking the attendees, I emailed a handful of friends and we set out on an inland route, with one eye on the road and the other on the sky.
We got lucky. There was no rain. The clouds were playing with us, though. Here's our view from the top of Hopewell-Amwell where it meets Province Line:
Our Jeff, who has a new carbon bike, was on his old, custom-fit, steel Serotta. He flew up the hills. John K, at my insistance, brought his Yasugiro Admire and floated up the hills. At the top of the last hill, Rickety said of his new Trek, "I frickin' love this bike." What did these three have in common? Kla-dunk!
Once again, I didn't feel dead when I got home.
I went out on Jim's ride the next day. This time I took Kermit. "Where's your new bike?" people asked. "Do you see any hills on this route?" I replied. Kermit performed beautifully.
I'm happy with my new shnick, but I'm also happy with my kla-dunks. I can have cleats in both worlds.
Colonial Park
Skillman Road
