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[PH]

Good stuff all round John, new hip, great looking bike, nice ride, lovely colours in the photos, hope it continues in the same vein.

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Mike.

My 'glider fits a 15 - 18T sprocket at the rear, and is sized for a 38T ring at the front.

The front section of the 'glider at the ring is 13.5 mm wide.  Pls note, though, that this 'glider is just a few months old, and all three of its tabs at the front fit snugly together.  On my older one, that fit became  looser with time (maybe as a result of the plastic surgery described below?), and sometimes one part or another of the front section of the 'glider bulged outwards a bit.  Easily enough corrected.

On Freddie, as on my previous Raven, I run a 17T sprocket with a 36T ring.  The latter size accounts for the unseemly visible teeth at the rear of the ring.

(OTOH, making a virtue out of necessity whenever poss, that smaller ring allows for more play slop in the setup, both fore-and-aft and up-and-down.  "Slop" is a precise engineering term, for which I'm sure there's a compelling German noun, but I don't know it.  )

My chainring is a Rivendell alloy item, mfd by Origin8, I believe. Its teeth are 2.8mm thick, just within the allowable/recommended thickness. The "body" of the ring is exactly 3 mm thick.

To ensure as little friction as poss betw the inner edges of the 'glider and the body of the ring, I cut off the small collar facing the ring on both faces of the 'glider where it embraces the front and rear sections of the ring.

On my Raven, when I surgically modified the 'glider to fit the smaller ring, I cut away the parts of the front section of the 'glider which cover the rear section of the ring.  Thus, the teeth at the rear of the ring were wholly exposed & visible. (I would ask onlookers of a delicate disposition to avert their eyes.) So far as I could tell, over the eight years I owned the Raven, very little crud entered the 'glider via the surgically removed bits at the front.

For most of those 8 years, I used a Surly stainless ring, which is quite a bit thinner than the Rivendell item.  Hence, I didn't trim the "collar" on the inner & outer front sections of the 'glider where they covered the teeth of the Surly ring.

Eventually, I switched out the Surly ring for the Rivendell, 'cos the latter produces no tight spot in the chain.  After riding two-wheelers for, I dunno, 60-plus years, and being aware of tight spots in the chain for more than half a century, I was equal parts surprised and delighted to find a chainring that created no tight spot.

Hope this is helpful, Mike.  I have no hesitation at all in recommending a 'glider, if your chainring is 3 mm thick or thinner.  I don't know if Hebie makes 'gliders to fit your rings.

Good luck!  John

[John Saxby]

And if really tight, in a threaded hole a flat-head bolt can be ground (or filed) down a bit without compromising strength. A locknut can then be fitted on the outside.

Thanks, Martin.  Yes, I considered/checked a flat-head bolt for the right side, inserted from the inside outwards.  That would fit, though the clearance is quite tight.

Fitting the bolts inside-outwards would probably make removal of the rack easier, esp on the right side, so I may do that in the future. 

I used the outside-inwards setup for this first fitting, simply to avoid removing the wheel.

Cheers,  John

[hendrich]

My 'glider fits a 15 - 18T sprocket at the rear, and is sized for a 38T ring at the front.

Thanks John for the comments. I use Surly SS rings and don't seem to have a tight chain problem, but anyways, the rear chain to the rohloff (17t) has the requisite amount of "slop" per rohloff. I suspect the front 13.5mm wide part of the glider will clear the timing chain, but may it may need some "surgery" for channels. If I can now just source the pieces without high shipping costs.

[UKTony]

A few notes to follow up on notes from late August:

1)   First, I'm not normally so tardy in replying to posts.  But take this as a delayed-but-celebratory response:  I had my right hip replaced three days after the posts on Aug 22, and all has gone very well.  So much so, that a couple of weeks ago, my surgeon said I can return to normal activities like cycling, with no restrictions.  So, last Friday, I took Freddie on a brief 40-minute canter along the bike paths through the Experimental Farm, a splendid acreage of greenery and (now) autumn colours a few minutes' ride from where we love.  Notes and photos on that follow below.

2)  And, on Tony's query about fitting a Tubus Vega

>   Then, photo #3 below shows the upper fixing struts for the "shelf" of the Vega rack, from above & the rear of the bike.

Further below still, in the post on my mini-ride, there's a photo of Freddie in our back garden, with the Vega rack as it appears "in real time" 

Hope this is helpful, Tony.  Let me know if you need more detail.

Cheers,  John

John, thank you so much for the detailed guidance re Mercury/Vega rack fitting. This will be very useful. And, great to hear you’re back on the bike after the operation. Tony

[PH]

And if really tight, in a threaded hole a flat-head bolt can be ground (or filed) down a bit without compromising strength. A locknut can then be fitted on the outside.

Thanks, Martin.  Yes, I considered/checked a flat-head bolt for the right side, inserted from the inside outwards.  That would fit, though the clearance is quite tight.

Fitting the bolts inside-outwards would probably make removal of the rack easier, esp on the right side, so I may do that in the future. 

I used the outside-inwards setup for this first fitting, simply to avoid removing the wheel.

Cheers,  John

I use button head screws in that application, Torx in preference to hex to minimise the chance of rounding, M5 have a head height of 2.8mm and the T25 key has a lot more purchase than a 3mm hex key. I use a dome nut on the outside, just because I like the look!

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Phil.  Loadsa details to ponder over the long winter months!   👍

[John Saxby]

Across the river and into the hills again --

The weekend before last, on a bright, sunny and improbably warm late-October morning, I took Freddie the Mercury for a canter up into the Gatineau Hills across the Ottawa River.  To mark my first long-ish ride since my hip-replacement op eight weeks earlier, I wanted to visit a favourite lookout, and reacquaint my shiny new hip joint and related leg muscles with some real-but-not-too demanding hills.  And, I was hoping to catch the last splash of the hills’ autumn colours.

The autumn foliage in the Gatineau is usually past peak splendour by the third week of October, and this year, the reds, yellows and oranges of the deciduous trees—birches, beech, aspens and maples—had largely disappeared before my visit.  The green of the conifers interrupted the spreading greys and browns, and the red oaks were still holding onto their deep copper-bronze leaves.

But, with the trees’ summer canopy of leaves now on the forest floor, the woods were awash with the bright mid-morning light (Photo #1 below).  You go away for a couple of months, and all-of-a-sudden you remember how beautiful the open woods can be in late autumn.  The red oaks—not so common in the city—have their own stark beauty against a clear blue sky.  (Photo #2.)

The ride up to the Pink Lake lookout was easy enough:  I dropped down a gear on the hills, and kept to an easy cadence of 80-85.  Because motor traffic is strictly limited on the roads in the park, I was able to relax and enjoy the scenery.  My ride was not without near-incident, though:  tootling along the bikepath on the lower slopes, I watched a couple of young guys come hurtling around a blind downhill corner towards me, just a couple of hundred metres ahead.  Taking the entire width of the path—what could possibly go wrong, after all?—they narrowly missed a walking family of five.  As I drew abreast of the family—slowly, with Freddie’s bronze temple bell gently alerting them—I remarked that “Nos dimanches matins sont assez dangereux,” (“Our Sunday mornings can be dangerous, eh?”) and the dad replied with a laugh, “C’est vrai, m’sieu.”

The view from the lookout (Photo #3) shows muted colours above a calm blue lake.  Re-crossing the Ottawa, I paused on an island to take in an everything-blue view of Freddie against the river upstream. (Photo #4). 

Total distance for the ride was about 40 kms, including an unforeseen 8 kms searching for a route home which avoided pervasive roadworks on the riverside bikepath.  (A reminder that we have just two seasons here: “winter” and “construction”.)  Happily, no complaints at all from either hip, though I was more fatigued afterwards than expected – a sign, I think, of how much my hip problems over the past 6 - 8 months had compromised my fitness.  But, “This too shall pass.” 🤞

[Moronic]

Hi John, not sure how I missed your camping report on the Mercury but I did. Likely because it came up as an addition to this thread when it deserved a thread of its own. Fab report - I was out there with you, loving breezing along in all the right places and then glad that over the horsefly-infested deep gravel I was really just watching a movie.

I'm delighted to hear the operation went so well. Looks like you'll have many more occasions for having fun on your new bike. 

Oh and fab photos too.

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Ian, for your kind words.  Glad you enjoyed the stories -- like you, I'm very pleased with me new bike.

I neglected to add into my notes above, the fact that the woods will be full of light for the next seven months -- that is, into and through winter and thence well into spring in late May, by which time the leafy green canopy will be in place again. 

That date holds promise for me as well (other things equal, of course!):  I'm not yet at the stage of "planning" a slightly longer tour next summer, but I am distracting myself with the possibilities.  My 2nd (left hip) op is scheduled for March 2, and that means that by late May/early June, I should be ready to look at something more adventurous.  Maybe 7 - 10 days north & east from here into W Qué, and onto the P'tit Train du Nord rail trail at Mont Tremblant; then west & south from there to Maniwaki and the Route des Draveurs, which parallels the north-to-south Gatineau River, a tributary of the Ottawa.

Could you send me a PM with photo of your new motorcycle?

Cheers,  John

[Andre Jute]

I see the light you refer to, John. And I grasp that the trees in canopy allow Wendigo, the spirit of the forest, to come for you on your third day in the forest, slinking unseen from shadow to shadow. Or at least so an Eskimo shaman in Alaska told me after I crossed his palm with silver. Fortunate then that you're on a reliable, speedy bike... (The bicycle ad from decades past of the black man on his Raleigh outrunning a hungry lion comes to mind.)

Endless fascination in the interplay of the bare branches and the light; see especially the big ole tree trunk, mostly in shade, but patches of light reflected from somewhere several places on it.

All the same, I think my favourite is Pink Lake, the reflections of the forest in autumn sinking away in it. A fabulous photograph.

I wish you the same good fortune with your next operation as you've had with the first one.

[John Saxby]

Thanks as always, Andre -- glad you enjoyed the photos.  And thanks too for the ref to that Raleigh add from so long ago:  I'd forgotten it, only to realize that I hadn't, when you jogged a shared memory.

Last Thursday aft, I headed up into the hills again -- only a short two-hour there-and-back to Pink Lake, 'cos I was busy with too many things.  The woods were nearly bereft of foliage, as we were into early November, but the temp was around 22 - 23º.  This is getting seriously weird -- people are wandering around in shorts and T-shirts with dopey grins on their faces. Most everyone seems pleased; BUT, many, myself among them, are unsettled inside.

Nevertheless, I took Freddie along a section of the bikepath parallel to the main parkway into the hills, and at the top of a steep'n'short hill, I caught sight of a couple of rocky outcrops flanked by bare trees, with a carpet of dead leaves below. In the summer, such outcrops are difficult to see -- the woods are darkened by the canopy, and the greenery obscures the rocks.

The first of the photos below looks southeast; in the second, the view is directly eastwards, with the sun behind me.  I prefer the second photo -- the straightahead shadows lend a sharper quality to the scene.  (Full disclosure:  I didn't realize what I had seen until I looked at the photos at home, showing me what I'd seen.  Duh...)

I paused for a few minutes at Pink Lake lookout -- as so often happens, a cheerful conversation happened.  As I rode into the layby, I saw a couple of other cyclists there.  One wore a dark blue longsleeved jersey with a cross of St Andrew on the front.  In my best faux brogue I said as I passed by, "Scotland the brave, aye!"  He laughed and said in a distinctly Canajan accent, "It was the only longsleeved shirt shirt I could find."  But then he said he had family in Dumfries, and asked about my accent. "Mid-Atlantic," sez I, "born in Dorset with a Scots-Irish mum, but we came to Canada in the mid-'50s.  I grew up a few hours' drive west of here, but spent many years in Southern Africa, so my vowels have no fixed address."  "Ah," he said, "my wife's from Lancashire and we're off to Cape Town for a wedding at Christmas -- a cousin of hers is marrying a Capetowner she met in London."  They're planning some tours around CT and along the Garden Route. I said how envious I was, and suggested he try to rent a bike and ride Chapman's Peak -- but to watch out for hungry and audacious baboons if he's carrying snacks.

Barely any degrees of separation, sometimes 

[Andre Jute]

The first of the photos below looks southeast; in the second, the view is directly eastwards, with the sun behind me.  I prefer the second photo -- the straightahead shadows lend a sharper quality to the scene.

I understand why you prefer the second photo, probably in part as a record of where you've cycled. But I have no trouble explaining why I prefer the less defined, less ordered first photo.

As an artist I take the opposite view. If you want pinsharp precision, get a camera with a good lens; I also happen to think that pocket phones above a very low price take marvellous photos, and for years I took publication quality natural light portraits of musicians that were often commented on by my readers -- on a Canon Digital Ixus 300 (I know, when it was new it was cutting edge technology and therefore horridly expensive -- but it was worth every penny), and was disgusted when after twenty years with the Cannon a newer pocket camera from Olympus lacked some of the Canon's delightful premade programs.

On the other hand, with a paintbrush in my hand, I believe that a certain lack of precision, of serendipity about where the paint runs, of not wholly defined elements, draws in the viewer of a work of art, and points of deliberate or preferably coincidental ambiguity let the viewer add something speculative of his own, involving him in the interpretation of what he sees.

As an aside, some of the digital applications involved in the manipulation of a long run of equally successful photographs published on this forum, clearly seek to bring some of these artistic elements back into the photographs, so at least some skilled photographers share my view to some extent, otherwise the makers of these applications wouldn't assign expensive programmers to include the "artistic" features in programs mainly aimed at the reprographic trades, who have other priorities.

Horses for courses, of course, but one of my most successful paintings of recent years was based on a conjunction of memories of a photo you took of The City Across the River, which I didn't even look at again lest a sharp detail distract me, and something you said about friends at Prince Albert in the Karoo, and possibly a third element of a photo by you or someone else of trees beside a stream, with the Prince Albert Mountains in the background (which in landscape reverse are obviously in my memory from my childhood in Oudtshoorn on the other side of those peaks). Not that the finished article looked like any representation of any one of these elements, but they were definitely present in the inspiration.

All that said, nonetheless I'm glad to have both photographs, just in case I want an element, say a tree in the foreground, in sharp focus with plenty of detail, as an anchor or a reference point or the start of a perspective view of a landscape. And I'd be horrified if any of my cameras took a fuzzy picture I didn't ask for!

Slainte!

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Andre, for your time & thoughtfulness on these matters.  (I could spend more time, but without your experience or thoughtfulness  )  I'm flattered that your artwork draws on some of my amateur photos, helped as they are by splendid landscapes, not least in Soufafrica.

I've been pleased with the quality of photos from by iPhone 8.  I take it with me for its phone function; the photos are a nice add-on.  A better tool for photos is my compact and versatile Panasonic Lumix ZS40, now nearly a decade old and once through the repair/refreshen cycle after it got sloshed by a rogue bottle of Gatorade    It has an A-grade telephoto -- when I first bought it, I was visiting Europe once or twice a year, and my Nikon P50 struggled with the photos of urban architecture & narrow streets. I take it with me on tours, because its very modest bulk & weight is quite manageable, and I find I can usually manage the composition of photos better than with the iPhone.  Then the 28-200 telephoto, plus the Zeiss lenses, make a big difference in any landscape photos.

Have attached a nice cross-reference to early this past summer:  the photo below was taken, I realize, from more or less the same spot on the bikepath as #2 above, the difference being that the green-mit-sundapple shot below is looking due north, with the sun pretty much overhead.  Not evident in this photo, but as i recall there were scarcely any rocky outcrops visible.

Cheers,  John

[Andre Jute]

Tempting to turn off the main road and see where that shaded path leads...