With 299 posts under my belt I just couldn't resist making it 300 on Christmas Day. It's been a challenging year, but I did best my Annual Challenge on Strava by a good margin and am alive and well, celebrating with friends and family and hoping you are too.
Give yourself a pat on the back. It's been a tough year and you're still here. Smile, you deserve one!
I've been doing a lot of Winter riding the last few weeks, about 300 miles in the last 2 weeks, and have had a chance to try out my new Castelli LW 2 bib tights, AND, ride my old PI Barrier bib tights for comparison. When sizing, Italian Rules apply, go UP one size. My PI is a large, so my Castelli are XL - and still nice and tight.
I wore the Castelli on a day that started out @ 9:00AM around 60F, with lots of sunshine, and after an hour clouded up with the wind picking up to a solid 10-12mph. I was getting pretty warm riding on the sunny side of the Mojave Bike Trail, where the Garmin reported 67F, and the long knee-socks and lightweight Polartech (Garneau - no longer made) leg warmers under the LW2s were really warm on my calf, and I was seriously thinking of stopping and stripping off the leg warmers - a really great option with these LW tights. Then the sun went behind a wall of clouds coming over the mountains that separate us from LA.
The temps dropped to 59F within minutes, and then 57F and eventually 54F and no sun at all. When you ride you perform a balancing act between generating heat and shedding heat, and you seldom nail it perfectly without working up a sweat on hills or headwinds, and chilling down with a tailwind, downhill, or just leaving your zipper down for too long. Bottom line, sooner or later you're going to end up riding in wet cloths, and then even a slight chill becomes a problem.
IF the sun is out you can usually find a warm place out of the wind to peel off your jacket, balaclava, gloves and helmet and let all that and your jersey and tights dry out. The back of the neck on the jersey and balaclava are usually the most problematic for me, but in a warm, sunny spot you have time to warm up and dry out.
Unfortunately, no such luck on this day, and the only place out of the wind was inside the unheated public bathroom at SVL. This means stop time has to be limited to a few minutes, and no drying off is possible. After a few minutes you lose so much heat your restarts are very cold as your core struggles to generate enough heat to get back into equilibrium.
All in all then, a very challenging day, and yet, I was amazed at how comfortable I was, riding on flat ground somewhat protected from the wind, I tried to keep my HR constant and adjusted my jacket zipper to regulate any excess heat. If the sun had come out, as was forecast, I could have peeled the leg warmers off and stowed them, so a very flexible system.
A couple of days ago it was forecast to be cold, windy and go from partly cloudy to near complete cloud cover, AND be 5-7 degrees colder throughout, so I decided to wear my old PI bib tights. 1st, they were quite loose, which should have been a tell, but they also turned out not to be as warm as I remembered, and the chamois felt paper thin at the end. They'd be great on really cold days with heavy leg warmers and knee socks, but they already weigh 2-3X as much as the Castelli, so that's not very appealing. I'd rather wear the heavy leg warmers under the Castelli. The PI are just not as warm as I remembered them being. They're 10yrs old though, so maybe that elastic is just letting go a bit.
On my next outing, the air was 50-61F, and somewhat cold at the start, but the sun kept burning through the cloud-cover all day, until it there were lots of nice places to stop and warm up. The Castelli did a good job keeping my glutes warm, the compression level was awesome, they're light enough to not bother your cadence much, and the chamois is awesome for a tight. I also had the option to peel off the lightweight leg warmers underneath all day. I did take the sleeves off my PI convertible jacket, but put them on when the sun started getting low to stay warm. What a huge difference! Options in winter are wonderful!
My only complaint about the Castelli is the Lycra below the knees (remember, this is Castelli's response to knicker sales declining, so a tight that's close to a knicker) was easily scratched by the side of my pedal when pushing off and missing the clip-in a bit. SMH
Castelli makes great stuff that just doesn't hold up well in my experience. We'll see about these bib tights, but it is disappointing they can't seem to bring themselves to add a little robustness in a few areas and have a stellar product through and through. Maybe instead of using Lycra printed with their name in giant 4" letters they could just use something much tougher in Screaming Yellow, or Castelli Red for that matter, and print their scorpion label on the legs.
So with that caveat, I highly recommend these bib tights.
PS: Shimano bought Pearl Izumi 2-3 yrs ago, and the quality of PI is spotty now, though they seem to have pretty much worked though their warehouses full of old gear. It's a frustrating time to be searching for a new label. Their PRO bib shorts are awesome. I bought 2 pair, but so far Shimano hasn't impressed me with its take-over management, and I hate getting old crap sold as new. PI has dated their mfg season for as long as I can remember, so it's just obvious that it's old inventory.
About 3 weeks ago, for no reason I can discern, my Garmin Edge 520 Plus (an amazing device BTW, and what a bargain!) started intermittently doubling my cadence while riding. Last week I was looking at my cadence on RWGPS and noticed it was being shown correctly, which seemed really odd until I remembered that what gets written to the .TCX file is recorded only once per second (you can use their Smart setting as well, but I prefer 1-Second mode), AND, each one of those records has a time-stamp on it.
I immediately suspected that a 2nd "Ghost" signal was corrupting the real-time display, but was being discarded as a duplicate or not being written to file stored in on-board storage, which gets uploaded to Garmin's site at the end of my rides. Since my RoadID has a small stainless plate on it, and it gets wrapped around my leg just above the ankle, I suspected it first.
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| This is too low IMHO as it would get covered by my waterbottle |
Googling around I also noticed ads on Garmin's site for the new Cadence Sensor II (ANT+ and BlueTooth telemetry support) showed it mounted low on the crank-arm, not at the peddle end, as I had always mounted mine, so I moved my sensor down to the middle of the crank arm, moved my RoadID to my right foot, and went for a ride. (there's also some torque specs, a QR code, and assorted lettering on the pedal end of my alloy Ultegra pedal, all of which could cause ghosting)
Mount it wherever it works best, but the bottle cage, attachment hardware, water, and reflective bottle insulation will all interfere if mounted as shown in the Garmin ads. (you can't mount it on the drive-side crank-arm bc it will hit the derailleur)
Not sure which of these measures, or perhaps both in conjunction, fixed the problem, but it appears to be fixed. If anyone else is having this problem I hope this helps.
PS: In spite of these measures the problem briefly reappeared. I've noticed that the problem seems to occur when my Scoche HR monitor's battery gets low, so I ordered a new 24hr one of those and we'll see what happens. I hope the stuff Garmin sells the US military is better than the absolute crap they sell us. SMH
Sad to say, my prediction about COVID making a roaring comeback this fall was correct, and we're now losing more people to it in 2 days than we did in an entire YEAR of the Vietnam war. Forget the politics. Save your life. Wear a mask, but know that's not enough. 4:5 biggest venues for spreading COVID are bars, restaurants, cafes, and churches. God knows where you are, and knows if you love him, he doesn't need a building to find you. The rest you can do online. Learn to cook. It's so gratifying and really, how pathetic is it that most Americans can't even feed themselves bc they can't cook? Besides, you'll save so much money you can buy a new bike every year or two.
Don't go into any enclosed spaces, especially not with central heating where the air is circulated throughout the entire building, but generally, stay in the sun and the wind and in the company of your own household. In winter the "Noontime" sun strength that kills COVID in less than 3 minutes is only from 9-3 at best. Don't ride in pacelines, period. DO keep riding, or whatever kind of exercise you do, even in the cold of winter, and enjoy the Great Outdoors with your household.
California has been doing a pretty good job managing COVID, but even we are now over 500/1M deaths. That's 1 chance in 2,000 of dying of COVID. Skydiving is less than 1 chance in 100,000, so if you go skydiving 50 times in a row you have the same chance of dying as with COVID - so far. Every passing day is another day jumping out of a perfectly good airplane with COVID - on and on and on.
I'll move on from the grim warnings now, but please do be safe.
My "Gearhead" at Competitive Cyclist, where I bought my Pinarello Prince, finally got me a new pair of mechanical R8000 shifters as I agreed to do the warranty work myself at no cost to CC. The L-Side was defective AFAICT, and has been malfunctioning since April, so very happy to report a successful R&R on the pair (Kyle said they only come in pairs, though you can buy just the L or the R online for a small premium) Shimano is back-ordered for months, and any discounts are a distant memory - $350/pair is the going rate even on-line these days.
This deserves its own post, which will follow when the weather gets too cold or wet to ride, but long story short, the cable sheathing made routing the cables much easier. I had lots of sheathing, and a brand new pair of cable cutters (a rare splurge to get over the $$$ hurdle for free shipping ~ June IIRC), so I cut clean ends that would slide inside the sheathing cleanly and placed all the sheathing en'masse before pulling the shifters. I labeled them and put them in a 4" piece of PVC pipe in the garage for next time.
I taped the sheathing in place with electrical tape at both ends to make damned sure an end didn't slide back inside, and the short piece between the chain-stays and front derailleur didn't slide out completely. There's a small grommet/dust-cap where the cable comes up through the chain-stays that got pushed into the frame while I was trying to pull it out with a needle-nose pliers, so I ended up pulling the crank and the seat, but did get it to drop out of the seat-tube. Cleaned and R&R the crank and seat post. At least I didn't have to pull the fork this time!
I surpassed my mileage goal for the week AND the year on Strava yesterday, doing a beautiful warm ride along the Mojave River Walk and around Spring Valley Lake. The sun glistening off the water was just gorgeous. Sometime in late 2007 I just couldn't force myself to walk into a gym anymore. After 20yrs I realized being fit enough to exercise outdoors had an expiration date, and until that day, I wasn't going to spend one more minute coped up in a box. Best decision of my life!
The LW 2 Bib Tights are constructed using Castelli's signature Thermoflex brushed fabric on the upper portion to keep your thighs and sensitive areas warm. Considering that these tights are designed to be one step above a knicker as far as coverage goes, the lower leg is made of a non-insulated Lycra called Nano Flex Light. This is done to prevent overheating, while at the same time protecting your lower legs from road spray if conditions are a bit wet. Castelli omits ankle zippers to preserve the lightweight feel, but they put in their flagship Progetto X2 Air seamless seat insert which has one of the softest surfaces we've ever felt in a chamois.
I wear 8" wool socks on "warm" days, and thick snowboarding knee socks on cold days, so the usual thickness everywhere but below the knee is really flexible for me, and if really cold, I'll wear leg-warmers under the tights. It usually makes it into the 60s here on winter days, it's the start that's the problem. These should work well here I think.
Finally, my quest to learn more about grease (grease failures are far, far more common than I, and I suspect, most people realize) continues. I happened upon a blog written by a guy from the Czech Republic, who is probably a bike mech, and maybe a lubrication engineer too. We've been arguing out a lot of useful points and when that gets distilled down I will write a proper blog post about it, but so far I'm happy with all my RX-es here.
We do agree on one thing vehemently, the people who make grease are selling snake oil, as there are no labeling requirements, and that seems to be the preference of the industry. The only exception I have found is AmsOil. It's outrageous to buy grease for $100/oz and you aren't given a damned thing but the mfg's rep to go on. Oh, and that especially in cold weather, greasing shifer cables is a BAD idea. Us a thin oil. I prefer Mobil-1 0W20 Annual Protection from a repurposed Visine bottle.
Looking forward to snow-capped mountains around here soon, and hoping you all have some special holiday treat you're looking forward to. Merry Christmas, be safe, and I'll see you next year (or sooner)!
About half-way home yesterday, on my 1st good ride since dental surgery (hammered the hell out of it!) I started to hear the birds chirping like it was a beautiful spring day, not a beautiful winter day. The "birds", I started to notice, stopped singing when I stopped pedaling - well at least when pedaling hard. I was hoping it was a dry chain, or even the bottom bracket, but after some 1-legged pedaling, pretty sure it was a dry pedal.
I just checked my tracking info, and I got those the last week in October, so, gulp, that just flat out SUCKS! Here's the deal (channeling Joe Biden already), a lot of bike shops are struggling to stay open, so are selling anything and everything they can get their hands on. Shimano is back-ordered for months I'm told (somehow Competitive Cyclist was able to get me a replacement set of R-8000 shifters so I can fix the front, L-hand shifter. Giant Kudos there), and bike mfgs are complaining they could make more bikes if they could get components from mfgs. Post COVID, people have rediscovered the Great Outdoors, apparently all at once. Manage your gear accordingly.
BOTTOM LINE: Don't assume new purchases are new, were stored correctly (why run the AC when the physical store is closed?), handled correctly, or even assembled by the usual assembly fairies who may be sick with COVID. When you buy something that can be greased, grease it before installation.
I'm hoping against hope that the spindle on the right pedal isn't ruined, or wasn't ruined by spalling of the needle bearing, I did use a very fine polish to polish the spindle, and it looks much better now, but I won't know for a few rides if I caught it in time.
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| Visine bottle repurposed with 0W20 Mobil-1 |
Right pedals loosen by turning counter-clockwise, left pedals loosen clockwise.
Right pedals tighten by turning clockwise, left pedals tighten counter-clockwise.
Shimano marks their pedals with arrows, so use those as a guide if in doubt.
A
~ 32" length of 2x4" lumber makes a great crank-arm crutch to keep the
crank fully extended upright, which you can push down on without
impaling your knuckles on the teeth of your chainring. Just flip the
bike over and tuck the 2x4 under the flat side of the pedal, step on the
horn of the seat, then wrench away!
I don't have the special 5-tooth tool to remove the lock-caps, but they came off with a rubber spacer (a piece of leather belt would probably work too) from an old tail-light and a shiny new Vice-Grip with a circular jaw pattern. I used Q-Tips to clean out the tiny bit of grease left inside. I then used Mobil-1 oil (from a repurposed Visine bottle) to clean out the needle bearing by flooding the inside of the pedal with oil & then turning the spindle with a small drill and 8mm allen wrench at ~ 300 rmps.
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| Mother's Headlight Polish |
If you're going to polish the machined needle bearing interface on the spindle, do so before using the 0w20 oil and spinning the bearing with the drill, because if there's debris on it you might scratch the rollers of the needle bearing with a chewed up spindle cone. I used this Mother's headlight de-fogger which has an "ultra-fine abrasive" - probably hydrolyzed silica, AKA soggy sand, which is used in toothpaste, based on the color. Lapping compound at ~ 2,000 grit would be safer, if I had it on hand. A hard piece of denim or quality paper towel work well to hold the compound against the spindle with a hard hand pinch. More is less, so tread lightly, but get them nice and shiny without reshaping the spindle.
Whatever you do, make DAMNED SURE there is no abrasive of any kind left on the spindle. I washed mine off with hot, soapy water, dried it with paper towel, and then immediately wiped it with oil.
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| Note rubber jaw-shield in ViceGrip |
After cleaning the threads of the lock-cap and upper part of the inside pedal body with alcohol, as those threads need to be squeaky clean to allow the LockTite to bond during final assembly, I used FinishLine Teflon-fortified grease for the body and the main "permanently lubed" sealed bearing. After cleaning out the hollow at the end of the spindle with a Q-Tip, I packed it with grease too.
Using the Krytox syringe, I applied a zig-zag pattern of grease on the machined bit of the spindle that engages the needle bearing. As there's no way to reach the needle-bearing, I carefully reassembled the spindle and spun it with a drill to get some Krytox onto the surface of the needle-bearing itself. I repeatd this 3 times until I was sure I had a good Krytox coating on both the bearing and the spindle.
I then squeazed about a 1" length of lube into the pedal body. Not wanting to push the Krytox GPL 205 off the machined needle-bearing interface of the spindle when pressing it into place, I then repeatedly slammed the pedal body down onto a rag-covered bench to force the grease to the bottom of the pedal cavity. I had to repeat this process twice, adding grease again, to fully pack the pedal.
Listen for a grease "crack" when doing a trial reassembly and tightening of the lock-cap. Excess grease will get pushed past the cassette bearing's seal in time, guaranteeing it gets relubed, even if it's supposed to be "lubed for life". The primary job of grease is to slowly bleed out the oil it holds. More grease, more oil, more bearing life. It will add 50gr to the weight of your bike. Do you care?
Once fully packed, turn the pedal with the drill and 8mm allen tip. You should see grease coming out of the pedal end of the sealed bearing interface. Wipe with a clean rag and repeat until the grease stops oozing out. You should then be ready to back the lock-cap off to expose the threads so you can apply LockTite.
The seals on the lock-cap are very good, so if you cleaned them thoroughly with alcohol they should still be clean & dry. Apply 2 drops of BLUE Medium strength LockTite (I used Permatex. Same stuff AFAICT) covering 3-4 threads from the outside in. Hand tighten (the left side lock-cap is left-hand threaded - as is the spindle) as tight as you can and then use the 5-tooth special tool or soft-mouth pliers or Vice-Grip to tighten until snug. There's a thin rubber seal at the base of the threads the lock-cap is meant to engage AFAICT. The seal on mine was cracked & dried, but the Lock-Tite is both a thread-locker and a sealant, so don't sweat the O-ring seal quality.
Blue "LockTite", by whatever name, takes 24hrs to fully cure, so no pedaling until TOMORROW.
Remember, the left pedal spindle is reverse threaded. Turn it clockwise to remove the pedal when facing the crank arm. The right side is normal, so turn it anti-clockwise to loosen it.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
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| Excess Grease Oozing out of Bearing |
PS: Did a hard climbing ride just now and happy to report the pedals are quiet. It will take a few more rides for the grease to get pressed out to an equilibrium quantity, but this is very encouraging. No indication the lock-caps are going to unscrew themselves, and no grease leakage on the left side spindle at all.
PPS: I've put about 175 miles on these pedals in the last week and they are now glassy smooth, smoother than when I first took them out of the box and mounted them - by far. Weather has been 45-65F and there is still a small bit of grease coming out of the seal on the R pedal (packing the hollow of the spindle is probably responsible for this), which is just fine with me. It guarantees all the rust, debris and microscopic bits of spall, if there are any, are getting pushed out of the main bearing, and no water or dust is getting back in.
Cheers!
First, yes, I still owe you all 2 posts on the theory and practice of half-step gearing, which is slow going at the moment, but I'm working on it.
Second, I decided to repack an old set of Shimano Ultegra 6700 carbon pedals and was shocked to find there is no main bearing, and the "needle bearing" isn't a needle bearing at all, it's a home-brew dual ball bearing where the cups are ground into the ends of a ~ 12mm steel barrel, and those balls are teeny tiny, like something out of a Swiss watch. We're talking flat-sided toothpicks for handling all 36 of these 3/32 little devils. The PD-R8000 is made exactly the same way.
Third, I'm still trying to figure out a way to salvage my old bike's headset by using a thicker grease meant to resist being hammered out of the contact area (pound-out). Turns out there's a grease sold by AmsOil made specifically for this purpose used in heavy duty off-road earth-moving equipment - Synthetic Polymeric Off-Road Grease, NLGI #2
Think articulated joint in the center of a bucket loader rolling over rough ground with a bucket load of ore and a huge weight stack at the extreme other end of the machine. (these guys couldn't get laid in a mattress factory, but watch the video anyway) You'd want the thicker NLGI #2 grease for headsets retrofitted with sealed bearings with much smaller engagement areas than the original press-in ball bearing cups.
This, and repacking my Ultegra pedals led me to a lengthy investigation of grease, and especially, compatibility of greases with different bases (they're not), because I bought some of Park Tool's PPL-1 Polylube poly-urea grease, and I wanted to be sure it would play nice with other (primarily lithium-based) greases. Park Tool says it does. My research says NO.
BTW, the base isn't the lubricating agent. The base is the stuff that gels and suspends an oil, and slowly weeps the oil onto a bearing over time, but it's NOT the primary lubricant (some additives like moly or graphite provide lubrication as well). That is to say, the base is what makes something a grease instead of an oil. There's a fairly wide window of bearing speeds and loads where grease works, and bicycle bearings are way, way inside that window. Easy-peasy.
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| 10% ball bearing failure @ 45,000hrs |
At any rate, I leaned a ton of interesting and important information about grease, when it's used, and how to select it. There's a really brilliant blog post in this if I'm up to the challenge. I do want to assure you all though that I'm very happy with all the RX-es I've made on this blog, and in particular, I still think for ball bearings running at the speeds (50-250 rpms) and pressure loads of bicycle hubs, BBs, headsets (my special need notwithstanding) and pedals, pure Teflon grease directly on the balls, cups & cones, and Teflon fortified grease to displace dust, water, etc in the rest of the grease cavity, makes the best possible lubrication.
If this changes I'll shout it from the rooftops, but I don't see that happening for decades. FinishLine makes both the pure Teflon grease and the Teflon fortified grease. I bought some Krytox GPL 205 10yrs ago and paid $65, but it's gotten cheaper. I still have about 1/4 left, so yes, I use it sparingly, but it will never leave you metal to metal and is chemically inert, so it won't react to metal, plastic, paint, etc. If you're riding disk brakes and the hub is soaking up a lot of heat, PTFE grease is about as good as it gets.
With COVID-19 running rampant everywhere again, as predicted, please do take care to stay safe at all times - 90% of the time will get you killed with this remorseless executioner.
Have you ever gotten a recommendation for cold weather riding gear and found yourself frozen stiff or steaming hot, despite that recommendation being from a usually reliable source or friend? Me too. It's been over 10yrs now since I posted this, but my metric has held up very with experience, so I'm going to repeat it in plenty of time for Christmas shopping.
Here's my RX:
Multiply your average ride wattage by your BMI (body mass index) and use that number to compare with others when they recommend winter clothing.
It turns out this is an excellent way to estimate how much core you have to retain the heat you generate in making whatever power you do.
For example, after working out in the gym for 20+ years I have a LOT of core, and am also somewhat barrel chested. I also have short legs, so I have a high BMI of 28. I also make pretty good power (for my age), 225 RWGPS or 115 Strava watts, so not surprisingly I don't need much clothing to keep warm when riding. As long as you both use the same reference watts the fact that RWGPS and Strava differ doesn't matter. For me the challenge is to keep from over-dressing and sweating profusely, which can actually become quite dangerous when riding near dark, or if you have a mechanical and need to wait for a ride. Hypothermia kills.
On the other hand I used to ride with a woman who was 5'2" and 105lbs (BMI=19), making 55-60 Strava watts and 100-110 RWGPS watts, she would freeze to death trying to get by with the clothing appropriate for me (drafting off someone can be a big help if you're getting cold as they break the wind and pass heat back to you - it works). However, one of our older ride leaders was 6'4" and weighed about 150lbs, with a BMI of 18, making about 150 RWGPS and 65 Strava watts, so his recommendations were pretty helpful for her. The closer the product of BMI x Watts is, the better the recommendations will be.
Worth mentioning here that your head is the one extremity you can't completely cover, so what you can cover, cover with the best stuff money can buy. I have 4 Balaclavas, and find them priceless in keeping warm. It's also worth considering buying a winter helmet that isn't so aggressively vented, which is just the opposite of what you want in summer.
Of course, there are always subtleties to be aware of. For example, while it is slightly uncomfortable, especially at the start of rides, I've found having my arms cold doesn't really affect my performance, while having my hands cold seriously impairs my ability to shift and brake. Also, my size 11 feet tend to get cold easily, and that leads to a lot of discomfort and eventually, calf cramping. Finally, my quads just above my knees tend to cramp easily in the cold.
If you want to dress for comfort in winter, start keeping a log of temps before, during and after rides and the clothing you selected. In a month or two you will almost NEVER get surprised and be inappropriately dressed.
One bit of hard-earned wisdom. If riding with a group, especially at night, carry an extra layer of clothing in way it stays DRY, because when riding in winter with a group you're almost always going to have to wait for someone to fix a flat or mechanical, because some idiots just don't get that winter is the worst time of all to compromise on tires, lights & other gear, so you'll be somewhat wet with sweat, and then have to wait for 10-20 minutes in the cold while making zero heat.
Adding more layers, which will also get soaked with sweat, only makes things worse. You'll be more sweat-soaked and much quicker. You need a layer you've kept dry that you can quickly don without losing much body heat. For me this is a jacket over my vest or a convertible jacket I can zip the arms onto. Whatever you do, time is of the essence. Save all that beautiful heat ASAP. You'll be thanking yourself in < 10 minutes.
Hope you have a long, fun winter of riding, and don't ride alone after dark. Fun at times, and beautiful beyond belief at others, but very unforgiving.
Three of the four cities in this valley put on an annual bicycle tour each year called the Victor Valley Bike Tour, which has in the past offered a full 100 mile Century, but in recent years its longest ride was 70 miles, which was cancelled due to COVID-19 this year.
Our little valley is only about 20 miles long, so finding 100 miles is a challenge, but I nevertheless did map out a 100.3 mile route, and have been riding it in pieces where those were not well traveled routes to get the feel of the terrain in my legs and sample the surface so I could do my own Century Ride.
Riding a full Century alone with no SAG support is rather daunting, especially here, so I was biding my time, waiting for the heat of summer to subside, but anxious to go before the days got too short, and as always, a day where the winds were calm, which is quite rare around here. Both Monday & Tuesday of this week met all the requirements, but I slept poorly Sunday night, so Tuesday it was.
The 1st thing I did was line up my significant other for SAG support, which she was more than happy to do. There was just too much weight and bulk to carry everything with me, though I did have some flexibility as to where we met for resupply. I settled on two places pretty quickly, a COVID abandoned prison and the Apple Valley Airport. Because it has water and working toilets I ended up getting SAG at the airport. As I've mentioned before, I spend as little time indoors there as possible post-COVID, but there is a nice BBQ area with shade and a sink with running water, which is where I spent a bit over an hour (no idea it was this long of a break & shocked when I saw the time on RWGPS).
It ended up getting warmer than expected, and the north wind, while bone dry (under 10% humidity), didn't give me quite the wind-assist I planned on coming home, though it was very welcome. There was also a lot of construction equipment on Navajo, as they are FINALLY putting in an elevated, concrete bike path (the grant was targeted at transportation for the 3 schools in the area) along Navajo. It should be wonderful when it's completed, although I hope they don't carve out breaks for every one of the 30+ road & driveway crossings along Navajo. As it was, I skipped the stop at Mendel Park and extension to the end of Kiowa where it dirt-ends due to lack of water at Mendel Pk. That took 4 miles out of my planned ride.
The heat and dry took a bit more out of me than expected, and I was running low on fuel and electrolytes, but the main reason I settled for 83 miles instead of 100 is the route as planned would have left me at about 90 miles, so not much distance needed doing laps of Spring Valley Lake to get to 100. As it is, 83 is a new distance record since moving down to SoCal here in the high desert, which was pretty great in itself.
For nutrition I used a GU flask bulging with GU Rocktane, my last Powerbar (they stopped making them here in the US), and 5 bottles of Gatorade spiked with Emergen-C. Both of those I carry in powdered form and make into a drink at hydration stops. I also took some CoQ-10, L-Carnosine and Pterostilbene at the airport. Those are metabolites or reduce muscle fatigue. I also had a Blueberry Crisp Cliff Bar with me, but gave it back to my S/O at the airport, a decision I regretted later. I still had some Gatorade powder left at the end of the ride, but otherwise, consumed most of my liquids.
There's an easy way to get in a full Century by modifying the route so I do the Navajo-Kiowa box twice. A bit boring perhaps, but if the drinking fountains get fixed a great option vs laps around SVL, where perfectly paved streets are now a giant parking lot after they were lined so homeowners can park their mandatory 4-7 vehicles per household on the street. Ridiculous - and dangerous for cyclists. (SVL is not a gated community, so that paving was paid for by the taxpayers of San Bernardino County and should not have been allowed)
If we get an Indian Summer sometime this winter I may try this Century ride again, with a little SAG modification to dump clothing and take on nutrition when the day warms up, and a little route mod as well. It was nice getting in a big chunk of miles and setting a new distance record locally, and I learned a bit in the process. Since the VVBT is only 70 miles, it was nice to up the ante a bit and get it done!
THANKSGIVING UPDATE: I had to repack these brand new pedals 6 weeks after receiving them as they were squeaking badly. YMMV, but why take the chance? Get the special 5-tooth tool if you can find it, but repack these bearings before even mounting them. They come with almost NO grease, I assume to keep claimed weight to the bare minimum, but that's a very poor trade-off IMHO.
I bought a pair of new Look Keo Carbon Blade CrMo pedals, as my Shimano Ultegra were getting pretty ratty, and the Look are $50 cheaper these days. In fact, you can get the Ti Ceramic Look Keo Carbon Blade pedals online for less than the list price of the Shimano Ultegra carbon. SMH. Not this guy. $135 from Colorado Cyclist with the FALL discount (out of stock now I see), no tax, no shipping charges.
They mount the same, but are positioned much differently, so it took a bit to get them dialed in, and is still a work in progress in truth. You CANNOT unclip from the Look pedals by twisting your heel inwards, which is my habit with my L foot, the one I always disengage. That's been problematic, but hoping with time my muscle memory will adjust.
UPDATE: You CAN disengage by twisting your heel inward, but it takes ~ 3X the force. Weird, as the mech looks symmetrical.
After the cleats wore into the pedals a bit, after about 25 miles I guess, I like them a lot. With 4.5 degrees of float they feel "liquid". They may be slightly less prone to hot-spots too, and I do think the bearings are a bit better, even the stainless ones on the CrMo version.
How I came to this decision is a bit of a long story with a happy ending. A friend was asking about bottom bracket bearing upgrades, and I pointed out that while people tend to obsess about those bearings, the bearings in pedals bear EXACTLY the same amount of force, but are much, much smaller bearings, so a better upgrade would be pedals.
He then asked me about pedals, and I have him some basic guidance, like good pedals have large stainless steel (very hard, usually stainless, which can be as hard as 475 Brinell hardness, used in making steel plate targets for shooting practice) plates under the balls of your feet so they don't wear out. I sent him a pic of my Ultegra R8000 carbon pedals, but looking at the pics I noticed the left pedal's clip mech in the back was looking pretty ratty, and it started to bug me.
I conducted a Google Safari, looking around for good pedals for him and was intrigued by Look's Keo Carbon Blade pedals, which ditched the steel torsion springs in back for what Look calls a leaf spring, which is made of carbon fiber. They come in various tensions, 8, 12, 16 & 20 which you install "permanently" until you get sick of looking at them or just want to change the tension for some reason. Then you unscrew a rod and install a different "Blade" for a different tension, or the same one if you like the looks of the newer blade. They have a special TDF version, for example. Some have a pronounced carbon weave pattern, others are just black with decals.
While the lower weight was interesting from a design perspective, what I liked more was the over-sized main bearing next to the pedal arm. It's a cartridge bearing, very much like you'd find in the front wheel hub of your factory wheel. The outboard bearing is a tapered roller bearing, the same as the wheel bearings on your car. You can find the wrench to service the pedals, and a Ti axle to boot for a bargain price of $8.90 (with shipping) here on Ebay. I include it here just for the pics. The product may be crap, or fantastic. I have no clue. They're supposed to shave 22 grams off the already light CoMo pedals with the included ceramic cartridge bearings. Again, the roller bearing is molded into the pedal, so it cannot be replaced.
Needle point roller bearings, the kind used by Look, are designed to take high axial and radial loads, as they have a lot of contact surface and are tapered in the direction of the axial load. Look's are embedded in the carbon pedal, and the machined taper on the spindle comprises the cone of the bearing, so only the tapered CroMo shaft, or Titanium if you've got an extra $150 bucks (you do get ceramic bearings for that price too) lying around, can be replaced, not the embedded bearing.
You can service both bearings by cleaning and applying new grease. As the tapered roller bearing is moving pretty slow relative to a car, I would highly recommend using Teflon grease on it and then a Teflon-fortified wheel grease to fill the rest of the space in the pedal body to keep water and dust out.
I have no experience with it, but Park's new PPL-1 PolyLube 1000 grease might be a good choice too. As for the cartridge bearing, Chris King is on record as recommending Mobil 1 motor oil for his wheel bearings. I'd choose something rather thick, and perhaps "Extended Performance for High Mileage" which has seal preservatives in it. Now you just have to figure out how to get old oil out of, and new oil into, sealed bearings. (???) The only thing I can think to do is use an electric drill to turn the bearing in a bath of new oil. Let me know if you have a tried & true method.
Happy trails!
I've been riding seriously now as an adult since 2007, and this is the most challenging environment I've ever faced. Throw in having a new puppy (abandoned nearby, probably due to the animal shelters being closed and the owner being evicted due to COVID-19), and trying to find sleep and a schedule to ride has been all but impossible. (the puppy is wonderful though and we're so happy to have her).
The change of seasons is always a challenge this time of year here in the high desert of SoCal, but I put in so many more miles this year over the summer my body is on an early schedule now, but it's too cold and dark now to ride before sun-up, and probably for an hour after, at least without a vest or leg warmers. On the long rides I've been doing there just isn't room for all that stuff AND all the nutrition too in my jersey. With the Pinarello aero headset/stem there isn't a way to fit a Bento Bag either.
Trouble is, the only time the air is breathable here is before the dew evaporates, and those are cold & dark conditions for a 3-4hr ride. Almost all the smoke from the Bobcat Fire is blowing in our direction, so you have to pick your days and be prepared to pull the plug early on a ride, which I've had to do once already.
California, and the entire West Coast of the US and Canada for that matter, is having the worst fire year since 1910! There's ash falling out of the sky all day long here, and family in NoCal reports the smoke is so bad in San Francisco it's been having the worst air quality of any city on Earth! SF skies this time of year are usually pristine.
Yes, I am making excuses, so although I hope to make my 100 miles this week, riding has become quite difficult at the moment. I'm taking the liberty to complain a bit here because there are thousands of other cyclists in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Arizona who are in similar circumstances and I just wanted to add my voice to one in your heads going "OMFG, what now?".
Just know, it's OK. We'll get through this, even if our mileage suffers a bit.
Cheers!
It occurs to me that this post would have been more helpful 3 months ago, but until 6 weeks ago I couldn't have written it with authority, so I guess you can file this under "Better late than Never".
I have tried about every possible way to manage the two, and only two bottles in the cages of my Pinarello, and this method is the clear winner, so I am happy to share it now that I have something to share.
1st, buy the best possible bottles, which are hands-down the Podium Ice bottles by CamelBak. Yes, they are expensive, and they don't hold as much liquid, but they are MUCH more effective than Podium Chill, or **gulp** God forbid, uninsulated bottles. Also, turn the temp down in your fridge and freezer as low as possible. A small mini-fridge can be helpful in this regard. Remember, water ice can be any temp between 32F and -459F - absolute zero. You want that ice as cold as possible. For a special event, like a Century, you might even consider using some Dry Ice, which is frozen CO2, and is at least -110F.
It's important to have only water, or water and Emergen-C in the back bottle, so you can drink the water or pour it into the front bottle to make more Gatorade by adding Gatorade dry powder to the water. I find if I eat GU, rice, or energy bars, I need water to balance the salinity and sugar in my stomach, thus the dedicated H2O bottle. Do don't want to get yourself into a situation where you have fluids on the bike you can't use because they have too much salt in them.
Early in the season, May & June, I tried using Zefal's Magnum bottles in the rear, cock full of ice at the start, and full of very, very cold water, and that kind of works on dry days where you drain the bottle in under 2 hours, AND, move water from the back bottle to the front as quickly as possible. Like when you stop for GU every 15 minutes, drink water from this bottle too. In all cases, LARGER ice-cubes melt slower.
It turns out the bottle on the down-tube, at least on the Pinarello, is better protected from moving air that pushes heat into the skin of the bottle than the one on the seat-tube is, so my strategy, in addition to buying a Silca bottle cage for the seat-tube which has long, slotted bolt holes so it can be seated within 2mm of the bottom of the downtube, is to drain the liquid out of the back bottle ASAP as I ride, because it's the liquid which conducts the cold from the ice to the heat against the bottle's outer skin.
For really hot days, which we have every day in July, Aug, and most of Sept, use only Podium Ice bottles, and PACK them with ice. That means put cubes in the bottles and then slam them down onto a hard counter-top (not so hard as to breach the inner surface of the bottle, but hard) to shatter, crush, pack the ice into the bottle. If you have a cold spot in your fridge, store a bottle there so the water you use is as close to freezing as possible. The Zefal Magnums work great for this.
Now make a Gatorade & Emergen-C mix in a 3rd UNINSULATED Podium bottle using that water about 1/3rd full of ice. Shake the bottle vigorously and put all 3 bottles in your freezer. What you're avoiding here is putting "red hot" Gatorade from 75 degree tap water into those very cold, ice-filled Podium Ice bottles, because that will raise the temp of the ice and the bottle, and you won't have enough time while getting showered and dressed for those insulated bottles to shed that heat into the freezer. The 3rd bottle solves this problem.
When you are all ready, roll your bike out to the kitchen, lights flashing, fully clothed, helmet on, Garmin started, and squirt the slushy mix from the 3rd bottle into the two Podium Ice bottles you are taking with you. I use a 25oz uninsulated or Magnum bottle and aim to have just a bit of it left in the bottle when done. Drink 12-24oz of water (or Gatorade) just before you get on the bike, and anticipate having to pee somewhere 10-15 miles into your ride. Also, expect the Gatorade to get frozen into a slush the first 30-45 minutes as you ride. Don't worry, you won't have depleted your electrolytes this early into a ride, and it will liquefy soon enough.
As you ride, try to find the coldest water you can to replace the water in the back bottle, which should still have ice left in it 2-3 hours into a ride. Sacrifice the cold in the back bottle to chill the water in it before squirting it into the front Gatorade bottle you add powdered Gatorade to. Do NOT take the lid off of the back bottle to squirt water into the front bottle. Having both bottles open at the same time wastes cold and usually results in spilling water & ice that you can't replace. You, of course, will have to take the lid off the back bottle while refilling it with cold water, but only then should you risk a spill.
If you follow this procedure, you can probably still have cold Gatorade 4-5 hours into a ride, even when starting out in 70F temps and finishing up in the low 100Fs. I find the water cooler at the Apple Valley airport very helpful in implementing this strategy, but ice and chilled water from a convenience store can also be fantastic. Unfortunately, the one here in the right location to help doesn't allow bikes inside, so I'm SOL there.
In short, this strategy has two parts:
NOTE: Do NOT, NOT, NOT freeze water in Podium Ice bottles. They absolutely WILL rupture after a few freeze cycles and you're SOL with your $25 bottle.
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I was looking over my shoulder for traffic the other day coming down a lovely, long hill on a local road that is designated a truck route, and thus has some nasty pot holes. This one I've avoided for over a year now, but my timing was just a bit off and I ended up in it because I couldn't swerve out to avoid it - traffic.
This pot hole isn't completely round, having a small peninsula jutting out from the edge, anchored by a single large stone, which put a pretty good dent in my Easton R90 SL's brake track on the front wheel. I expected the wheel to be out of true, so coasted to a stop with a little help from the back brake to open the brake calipers - the OTHER use for that little lever do-hickey (or fizal contuzer, take your pick).
To my surprise, the wheel, clearly dented, and the bead warped enough to affect the tire's bead-lock, was not out of true, AT ALL! Once home I inspected it carefully, and can't detect ANY deflection in the wheel at all. I know wider rims are supposed to be stronger, but OMG, this would have destroyed most wheels. I have to say, if you're building wheels for touring, long miles, or gravel grinding, the Easton R90 SLs are really TOUGH.
I decided to remove the tubed tire off the front wheel that came with my Pinarello, and mount a ContiGP5KTL, using the Folcrum 5's stock rim strip and adding a Stan's valve. The tire went on with no tools, and a good bead-lock, but the Stan's valve really sucks. It wouldn't seal up, and the sealant probably ended up inside the cavity in the rim, so not happy with that Stan's product at all. Otherwise, their rim tape and sealant is excellent. The problem is Stan's valves are sized for tubeless rims, and flop around like a jelly fish in the oversized holes of tubed rims.
CORRECTION: The valves and inner-tubes do indeed fit my replacement Easton rim. Not sure why the holes are bigger on "Universal" or tubed rims, but they no longer need to be AFAICT. Just FYI.
The Fulcrum 5 is a standard width rim, with a straight-pull, no-flange hub and 18 bladed spokes. I have to say, while nowhere near as strong as the 24 spoke, 2X laced Easton R90 SL + Chris King wheel I had custom built at Colorado Cyclist, it did seem a tad more aero, and stood up a bit taller to roll over the 3-5" gaps in the road common around here. In fact, it's given me a whole new appreciation of straight-pull front wheels.
The advantage to straight pull is all the spokes are in the same plane, vs being on one side of the flange or the other, creating a rather messy aerodynamic shape from the hub to the 1st cross. With radially laced spokes, and straight-pull hubs, all the spokes are all in a row, from hub to rim. Especially with bladed spokes, this eliminates one of the few remaining sources of drag due to spokes. Flanged hubs like the Chris King R45 CAN be laced radially as well, with all the spokes laced on one side, usually to the spokes are on the inside of the flange, and heads on the outside, but still not quite as clean as a no-flange, straight-pull arrangement.
The Easton wheel didn't lose any extra air overnight, my concern in riding it, but I think I'm going to ride the Folcrum 5 wheel for the rest of the month and see how that goes. There may be a straight pull front wheel in my future. Both the DT Swiss 240 and 350 (Taiwan, not Switzerland) look nice, the 240 looking nicer to me, but not sure I want to pay $125 premium to lose 5 grams of weight. The Fulcrum will do for now, and should make a good test-bed.
BTW, Fulcrum has put some interesting tech in the rear wheel of the Fulcrum 5. The rim is deeper, the drive-side flange is HUGE, the spokes are all in-line, and the spoke-beds are offset in the rim like the DT Swiss 411s are. The non-drive side is radially laced, straight-pull, and to a no-flange hub side. All of these features work to minimize the asymmetrical spoke tension created by every-growing cassette cog counts and the attendant increased dish of the wheel.
It's over 200gr heavier than my Easton-King wheelset, but if you weigh less than 165 lbs they'd be a good choice for a bargain wheelset.
It will be interesting to see how the front wheel performs. I'll check in with observations now and again when there's something worth remarking on.
Cheers!
PS:
It's mid-January, 2021 and after switching back to the custom Chris King wheel in Oct for my COVID replacement Century, I am still riding it. The Easton rims are more aero, enough so that the entire wheel is more aero, though hard to detect this until ~ 20+ mph net wind.
What I really didn't like was the straight-pull wheels' tendency to "buzz" back and forth 1-3mm the entire time I was rolling, and I think this is just a characteristic of straight-pull wheels where any change in spoke tension from course road surface gets translated into side to side motion. It's a bit like "Dutch Roll" in flying. It's annoying to me, but more importantly, it probably wastes energy to drive all that high-speed movement of wheel mass. A lighter rider might have a different experience.
I pulled a bottle out of storage and found the cap had a lot of black mold growing in the valve/mouthpiece. Even the shortest Google Safari will reveal that this is a very, very common problem with tons of complaints with the old bottle cap valves. The latest caps, which are made to come apart (and do) easily so they can be cleaned solves this problem, but creates another - the new caps protrude deeply into the bottle itself, reducing volume, especially if you're trying to put as much ice in the bottle as possible.
As a result, many people, myself included, still use the old caps whenever possible, and personally, I think either CamelBak needs to make a new, non-intrusive cap, or be sued for mislabeling their bottles. This says nothing about the new concave shape of the caps being an aerodynamic disaster.
Anyway, enough griping, I'm here to tell you how you can clean the old-style bottle cap valves - with a Water-Pic, maybe, OR, an electric toothbrush, Optic White toothpaste, and a lot of rubbing. I also want to reassure anyone who is anxious about taking the valve apart that you can safely disassemble EVERYTHING in the old style valves, just be careful to warm up the silicone mouthpiece with hot water before trying to pull it off. Take pics as you disassemble if you like so you know how to put it back together.
WARNING: Be sure to work over a sink with a tight filter of some sort installed in the drain. These are small parts!
Assuming there isn't any mold inside the valve body itself, you can clean between the large silicone mouthpiece and inner valve body with a Water-Pic. It's going to spray water all over the place, but it has enough pressure to get between the mouthpiece and the inner valve body, so it will work. You can use plain water, or mix up a 3-4X isotonic saline solution to use in the machine.
If you use a salt mixture, you MUST rinse the entire machine out thoroughly because if the salt crystallizes inside the pump, it's ruined. Just put hot tap water in the reservoir, start the Water-Pic, and let it run for 10 seconds. Then put the pic end in the sink and let the rest of the fresh water drain through the machine. Problem solved!
Main slide valve 2 above is Open, above is Closed.
If your inner valve is moldy, like mine was, more invasive cleaning is required. You need to remove the valve from the cap, disassemble and clean the inner valve body.
I use either the glass part of a basting ball, corkscrew cover, or end of a plastic stirring spoon to pop the valve off the top of the On/Off twisting valve body, which you can do before or after pulling the silicone cover off. The valve body itself has 4 parts...
(More pics to come, promise, but my toothbrush battery is dead, and I have another bottle I will photograph when cleaning)
Optic White toothpaste has 3 very helpful ingredients - hydrogen peroxide, glycerine and a very fine grit. Peroxide is a bleach, which kills mold, mildew, bacteria, and probably COVID-19. The stuff you buy in brown bottles is a 3% solution in pure water. A friend reports it was used at 80%+ concentrations to leach uranium out of ore. We're not going THERE, but soaking these parts overnight in 3% peroxide in the bottle had no effect AFAICT, so Optic White is probably a 6-10% solution. Whatever, it works.
Glycerine is a clear, oily substance that helps your fingers move deftly over these translucent, silicone parts while rubbing with the fine grit to remove stubborn black mold and the stains it creates while lubing and protecting the part.
The grit makes Optic White work like SoftScrub, but does so while protecting the silicone in a way Bleach (sodium hypochlorite) doesn't. Working with the part on a hard surface is helpful in keeping the toothpaste against the part you're cleaning, while pressing down with the toothbrush. I used a new soft-bristle Braun brush, but use whatever you like. Less pressure is usually more effective as it keeps the ends of the brush engaged, not the edges.
All of this is done with food-safe ingredients, which should be obvious because you can put all this stuff in your mouth and probably do all the time. The result? Bottles that are not only clean, but minty fresh! ;)
I've been bugging my wife to find me some Lysol Laundry Sanitizer to get the stench out of my jersey's armpits, but in its stead I found some Assos Detergent I like even better, and it has, AFAICT from the Safety Data Sheet, the same anti-microbial agent. We found some Lysol, finally, but the price of that and Woolite aren't much cheaper than this.
In addition, the detergent is formulated to be kind to high-tech fabrics, and as expensive as riding gear is getting, that's become much more important. I also like that it has a very light scent, as my wife is very sensitive to perfumes used in laundry products.
I am happy to report that my clothes now come out of the washer smelling great, as my clothes are both clean AND sanitized, so no stinky armpits, nor bacteria in the chamois to start saddle sores. At $33 per liter, it's expensive, BUT, you only use 1 cap full in an HE load, so I've settled on that for each and every load. Throw the cap in with the load, or it gets to be a mess.
A nice bonus feature is if you forget your clothes in the washer overnight they don't start to mildew. Don't mix cotton clothing with your "plastic" high-tech stuff as it soaks up a ton of water so you get a lot of residue in all the water left in the cotton. Wool socks seem to be OK, as they don't hold much water, especially if your machine has a good spin cycle.
You'll have to decide if $33 every cycling season is a reasonable price to have perfectly laundered riding gear, but for me, it's been wonderful, so I'm giving Assos an A+ on this one. It's also sold in 300ml bottles if you want to dip a toe before plunging in. BikeTiresDirect had the best price I could find.
Cheers!
PS: Just a short update, I've struggled for years with pimples under my bib shorts, especially where riding in the drops or aerobars folds them into my skin near my waist. Happy to report they are all but gone after just a month. Some of these were so persistent, the folds always occurring in the same place, they produced small scars. Those pimples are GONE!
TMI, I know, but if you've tried every imaginable thing, and obsessively cleaned your skin, this is a BIG deal. Njoy!
PPS: I find I have to use 2 caps full now, as whatever is turning my armpits into Super-Fund sites has apparently mutated into something more resistant. I find this somewhat alarming, but for now, will keep using the product. I promise to report growing a 3rd Eye or something nasty if it happens, but for now, this soap is still the best thing going.
I've run into a problem with my L-Shifter, the one that shifts between the big-ring and small ring on a 2x11 gearing. Given how hard it is to buy these, vs the right shifter, I think this is a common problem.
It's very hard to examine the internal workings of the ratchet mechanism, but it behaves as though the "H" ratchet tooth's back-side is shaped differently somehow, so that when you shift past it and then relieve when letting the shift paddle fall back, SOMETHING inside the shifter malfunctions, or at least, acts in an aberrant manner. My guess would be the half-round bit that straddles the ratchet and implements the 1/2 step relief back to H- gets stuck or hung-up because the shifter then refuses to shift from H- back to H.
The problem is hard to define, but easy to fix once you are aware of it. Here is the explanation I sent to my "Gear Head" at Competitive Cyclist where I bought my Pinarello. They sent me a new set of shifters 2nd Day Air at their own expense because Shimano is so backed up it would have taken 2 months. For some reason, they sent me a Di2 shifter set, which is hard to reconcile with the explanation below, but I give them an A for effort, and the Gear Head thing really is nice in situations like this, as I already have a return label to send the Di2 back.
The Shimano Ultegra R8000 L-hand shifter has developed an odd shifting problem.
As you probably know, there are 4 shifting positions for this shifter, let's call them
H
H-
L
L-
I should be able to shift from any of those into any of those, and could until a few weeks ago. Now, however, I can shift from L to H, and relieve back to H- alright, but once I am on H- I cannot shift back into H. I have to drop down to L, and often L- to shift into H. More and more now I cannot even shift from L to H. I have to shift all the say down to L- in order to shift into H. Otherwise the shift lever simply refuses to budge, making this a Go/No-Go failure.
I removed the cover from the shifting mechanism on the shifter (oddly, the retaining screw was ~ half unscrewed, so maybe the assemblers had encountered some problems with this too) and inspected it. I can't see any debris, broken wire strands, grit or dirt in the mechanism. In fact, it looks very clean. I also inspected the front derailleur, and it too looks like it's in perfect shape.
There is no reason I know of why this mechanism should be failing, and I don't think there are any "user serviceable parts" on the shifter, aside from cable replacement, so I have to think something inside the shifter was defective upon mfg and the shifter needs to be replaced. After I sent this, I did another Google Safari, and after about an hour came up with just one poorly described definition of the problem and solution, so I think this needs a little better airing.It appears that Shimano designed the shifter so the H-Stop set-screw needs to stop the travel of the cage, NOT the shifter's cable travel. To me this is an appalling design flaw as even normal cable stretch - which is what happened in my case - will eventually overcome the barrel adjuster's ability take up enough slack/tension (it really IS tension, not travel in this case, as the cable must NEVER be even a tiny bit slack when over the big ring)My RX is to back the cable tension adjustment screw on the derailleur AND the barrel adjuster off as far as you can to give you as much slack as possible to get as much cable slack as necessary, and then unscrew the cable clamp screw and pull up all the slack you can before tightening it back down. The little plastic thingy is a bit of a PITA but does make a nice aero-clean bit when all assembled properly again.Adjust the H & L stops to arrest travel, and use the cable tension screw (put some LockTite on it too, another appalling oversight on Shimano's part) to tweak the derailleur position.