Trying something new...

For a few years now, I've been making it a regular practice to take morning walks on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, in Maryland.  The canal has been a favorite place for me, ever since I was young, but it became even more important when, after many years away, I returned to the DC area in winter of 2002.  At that time I was fresh off a divorce, starting a new job, and trying to re-start my life.  I found bike rides and walks along the canal to be good for both my body and soul.

Beginning in late 2020, when my mother's health took a turn for the worse, I found myself driving back and forth between her home in Maryland and mine in Virginia, six days a week.  Since my drive took me right past an access point to the canal, I soon started stopping there on my way home in the morning.  I found even a short walk of fifteen to twenty minutes helped me start my day on a good foot, in a good frame of mind.  It helped a lot with dealing with both my mom's health issues and the broader issue of the COVID pandemic.

It's now four years later, and I still maintain a practice of walking there most mornings on weekdays.  On work days it's an hour, but on days the shop is closed (Monday and Tuesday), I'm often out there for hours.  Typically, I have at least one camera with me, a pair of binoculars, and a small pocket notebook.  I've been jotting down the things I've seen, what the weather was like, and any other things that strike me.  My original thought was to transcribe them using my typewriters, just so I'd find them easier to read later (you would be amazed at how sloppy even my printed words are), but I've also wondered about perhaps sharing them.  So here goes.  Starting soon, I'll be sitting down once a week or so to share my notes here on my blog.  I figure it would be fun to share my walks with others, and it would also be a way to inject some more life into this blog and get me back into writing more.  It might be a bit of a work in progress as I get started, but I'm looking forward to it.  Stay tuned!

Some of the pocket notebooks I've used for my walks.

My "new" 1977 Mondia Super "gravel" bike.

 A few years back, my pal Shawn surprised me by shipping me this lovely Swiss Mondia road bike frame for my birthday.  It hung on a hook in the shop for a couple of years, while I pondered how best to build it up.  Finally, after riding my fully equipped Goshawk touring bike on the C&O Canal and Great Allegheny Passage for years, I realized the Mondia might make for a fun, lighter option for those unpaved trails.

Originally intended to be a sporty/racy road bike, the frame is built from the well known Reynolds 531 double-butted manganese-molybdenum tubing, with the very pretty Nervex Professional lugs at the joints. Intended for 700C road wheels and tires, it would probably fit around a 25 or 28mm wide tire, which wouldn't be ideal for the kind of riding I wanted to do on this bike.

On the other hand, over the last 15 years or so (how time flies!), the bike world has seen the resurgence of a tire/wheel size that many had considered obsolete - 650B.  Wait, what the heck is all this "700C" and "650B" stuff anyway?  Well, both of those are tire/rim size labels that come from the French cycling industry.  In the original scheme of things, the number (700 or 650) indicated the nominal outside diameter of the tire in millimeters.  The letter was used to indicate whether the tire was narrow or wide, with A being the narrowest, D being the widest.  As with so many things in the bike industry, how things started out is not where we are today, and a typical 650B tire is much, much wider than a typical 650C tire is today, and 700C tires range from 23mm to 50mm or wider, while 700A, B, and D have vanished as labels. Confused?  Welcome to bicycle tire size "standards" which are anything but standard.  Some good info can be found here:  https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tire-sizing.html#french

Okay, what does this mean for my Mondia?  Well, 650B tires and wheels are smaller in diameter than 700C by 38mm.  Mounting a set of those on a frame designed for 700C wheels gives you room for wider/taller tires, which give more cushion on rough surfaces.  In the case of this Mondia, I was able to easily fit 40mm wide tires on a bike that normally would have only allowed for 28mm or so.  I even had room for a set of fenders to boot!  I had a set of 650B wheels I'd built some some time ago, with older parts, Sansin hubs and Alesa rims with Panasonic Col de la Vie tires.  I'd thought about using them on a couple of other projects, but it wasn't until the Mondia that it came together.

The rest of the parts are things I've used on a number of other builds, because they just work for me.  Sugino Mighty Tour crank with 40 and 52 tooth chainrings, MKS Touring pedals, SunTour 14-30 freewheel, SunTour VX derailleurs and Power Ratchet bar end shifters, Nitto bar and stem, and of course a Brooks B17 saddle.  The brakes are long reach Weinmann centerpulls, which work great.  Accessories at this point include SKS Longboard fenders, a Velo Orange Randonneur front rack and handlebar bag, and Carradice Lowsaddle Longflap saddlebag.

 More photos can be seen here:  1977? Mondia Super

Another try...

Well, the last attempt to get this blog rolling again sputtered and died.  Why?  I'm not totally sure, but I think part of it was I just wasn't feeling very inspired to write, and didn't feel like I had much to say about anything.  Has that changed?  Well, I think so, otherwise I wouldn't be trying to rev it up again.  Part of it is just having a bit more gumption, and part of it is feeling like I have some new things to write about and some potential for regular material to share on something like a schedule.  Not a fixed, rigid schedule, just a sense that I can find things to write about often enough to be interesting to me and any audience I might have.

By way of a preview, I'll throw out some topics I plan to post about as I go forward:

Bikes I own and ride, especially projects in the works or completed:

 A relatively recently developing interest of mine... old typewriters!  Yes, you read that right, typewriters:

Outdoor adventures, especially exploring one of my favorite parks in the US, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal:

And of course, combined with  all of the above, my photography.

Stay tuned!  I'm feeling good about this, so we're off to a good start.  I hope you'll stick around.

Tim