The Doors

One of the renovation tasks we decided to tackle ourselves was the kitchen cabinets. Replacing cabinets is a very expensive proposition, and it requires a permit. We decided to "reface" the old cabinets instead.

The first order of business was to remove the doors and drawers, patch the holes, and let our professional painters do their thing.

Going from dingy white to gray was an immediate improvement.

Then it was time to make a door prototype. I watched a few videos about making "budget shaker doors" and decided to use 1/2" maple plywood with a 1/4" maple boarder. While it came out OK, it didn't have the quality I was looking for.

I also needed to replace the drawers. The old ones were a little small for the cabinets, so I built the scrap wood prototype a little wider so there wouldn't be as much slop and play.

On the next trip to Tahoe we checked the fit and everything was perfect.

Time to go into production.

I watched a few more videos and decided to make true shaker cabinets. We would go the MDF route because it's inexpensive, easy to work with, and the doors would be painted anyway.

I took all my measurements and performed the calculations to build everything.

I purchased the components to build a fairly professional table router setup. It was expensive, but very much worth it.

This allows you to route all the rails and styles with precision.

Unfortunately my trusty old Craftsman table saw bit the dust during this project.

It was replaced with this DeWalt portable unit that turned out to be so vastly superior that I should have bought one years ago.

Assembly went pretty quickly and soon we had a bunch of doors and drawer fronts.

Each one had to be painstakingly sanded to smooth out the seams and round all the sharp corners.

Then it was off to paint, a task that Jennifer handled. She learned quickly and did a great job.

She pre-sprayed all the drawer parts so when I tacked them together, they were mostly painted.

Everything went up pretty easily and lined up well.

I made one calculation mistake thinking I would use 1.5 inch overlay hinges everywhere. It turned out that a few doors needed 3/4" hinges. No big deal, I was able to cut down the offending doors and replace one rail without too much effort.

Installing the drawer fronts was easily the most difficult part. Getting them level and lined up with both each other and the cabinet doors proved tricky.

All that was left was installing the black hardware. It was a piece of cake with the jig I bought.

In the end we were pretty happy with the finished product.

Were they perfect? No. But we learned a lot and next time we will edge much closer to the perfection we always seek with home improvement projects.

Later.

The Wall

After recently finishing the remodel of the Tahoe condo, I thought I would highlight some of the cooler improvements we made.

The bar area was pretty terrible: Tile countertop, hideous gray and pink tile on the wall, and a high bar level which closed off the room a bit.

We tore out all the tile and I cut down the wall.

I installed sheetrock so I had something to glue the wall treatment to.

Unfortunately we didn't quite have enough wall panel. Back to Floor and Decor.

In the end it turned out great. I will definitely use this stuff again for a feature wall.

Later.

CP2 Update

I finished building Jennifer's Velo Orange Neutrino. It came out really well.

Due to current Archive shortages, the orange grips and pink pedals are merely functional placeholders for eventual black replacements.

I used the Jones loop bars with a 2.5 inch rise. Because Jones.

Due to the smaller wheel diameter lowering the effective gearing, a bigger chainring is necessary to compensate. This is a Cues crank with a 42 tooth chainring. Most people are using square taper cranks for mini velo builds, but I can't stand them. The quiet, creak-free two-piece crank is one of my favorite cycling innovations.

A 10-speed Deore XT 11-36 cassette is mated to a Zee derailleur for shifting duties. You can see the Zee derailleur has a very short cage, which is crucial for such a small wheel diameter. More gear range would have been nice, but a modern 12-speed derailleur would be dragging on the ground.

The Sun Ringle Duroc wheels are solid and modular, and they came with almost every cassette body and axle configuration one could need . . . except the one I needed. The pictured wheel on their website had an HG cassette, which was the one I needed, but the wheels showed up with Micro Spline and XD freehubs. After harassing Hayes with a few e-mails, they sent me an HG body.

Although the wheels are tubeless ready (coming pre-taped with valves and sealant included), 20" tubeless tires are still rare. I couldn't find any that met my needs. I went with non-tubeless Maxxis Grifters because I have had good luck with Maxxis overall. I had a heck of a time getting them seated, but once I did they held air like a champ. So far I haven't seen any sealant seepage through the sidewalls, which can happen with non-tubeless tires.

Typically you see mini velo builds with a huge stack of spacers under the stem; this is something I find aesthetically abhorrent. I used a Velo Orange Cigne stem as a much more elegant solution. The bars may even be a little high, but Jenn always has the option of using Jones bars with no rise.

My first test ride was eye opening. I expected something completely different, but it simply feels like a bike, albeit one with quicker steering. The acceleration is amazing. If you don't look down to see the tiny wheel, or the huge stem, it all feels very normal.

Jenn registered much the same reaction.

My frame is tucked safely away in the attic, where it will stay for a while. We are neck deep in a renovation, and I have little time, money or inclination right now. When I do get around to the build, it will look something like this:

Later.

System of a Down

Before we moved to Folsom, we lived at the top of a hill in Shingle Springs. The view was nice, but every ride from that house ended with a tough climb. After 20 years, that grew tiresome. A typical elevation profile looked like this:

Here things are pretty flat for the most part, but we can climb some hills depending on the direction we choose. Today we rode east on a route I've been fine tuning, and now we have perfected the elusive ride that front-loads all the climbing and ends with a long descent.

Except for the short climb at the end, from the lake back up to our house, it's a whole lot of downhill for the last 40 minutes. It may seem like a small thing, but after around 4000 rides that ended with a tough climb, it's quite a treat to coast into home.

Later.

The End

At the end of the 1988 racing season I was at a crossroads. For three years I had focused my life on mountain bike racing, and I didn't have a whole lot to show for it. I was drained, disenchanted, destitute and my knees hurt. It didn't have to be that way.

In late 1987 I met a guy named Don McElfresh. We worked together at Frank's Bicycle Lane in Roseville, and we quickly became friends and training partners. Don was a very good Category 1 road racer, and he greatly influenced my training for the '88 season. At the time Steve and I had conflicting work schedules, so our riding time together was more limited than it was before. And when you start riding with a road racer, you need a road bike.

I had already purchased a beautiful orange Colnago from my manager Tony shortly after I started working at Frank's, but even back in 1987 it was considered old (I think it was a 1974 model). Don convinced me I needed something new.

I bought the Faggin and before I knew it I was spending far more time on a road bike than my mountain bike.

When Don and I first started riding together, I thought it would make me faster. He was powerful, and just staying on his wheel in flat terrain was nearly impossible at first. It was only on climbs where I could hold my own. Even going downhill it was very difficult to stay with him because he had such a huge engine. In fact, my all-time max speed record of 60.5 miles per hour was sitting behind Don on a descent into the American River Canyon. We didn't wear helmets in those days, either.

Emulating him was a huge mistake. I figured a guy getting numerous top-5 placings in big Pro/1/2 road races knew what he was doing. He did not. I realize now that Don was simply very gifted and did well despite his horrible diet and terrible training habits. Even back then we knew Don rode too much. The guy just loved to ride his bike. In hindsight, given my current understanding of training practices, I know he rode WAY too much.

We did some long rides, man. Sometimes we rode from Citrus Heights to French Meadows and back, which was 150 miles. Other times we would ride in the foothills for 6-8 hours. He knew all the quiet back roads in the region and some days it felt like we rode every single one of them.

On weekdays when we worked at the bike shop, it wasn't uncommon for us to ride before work and again after work. I remember a number of occasions when we rode over 100 miles between the two rides in one day.

For Don there was some justification for doing these long rides. Many of his races were 90-120 miles, so he needed that big base to train his body to still be firing at the end of those long races. However, I was a mountain bike racer. My races were usually around 25 miles. I needed to go really fast for a couple hours, and that's it. There was really no reason to go on a 12-hour slog up to French Meadows and climb 15,000 feet. I would have been much better served by riding 2-3 hours with some intermittent speed work. This is exactly what Steven and I were doing on our typical mountain bike rides in 1986 and 1987.

And I needed a little rest.

I just didn't rest that year. I was young and stupid and I thought that more training was better. I know without any doubt it was by far the highest mileage year of my life. I didn't start documenting annual mileage until 1995, so I don't have data from the big racing years from 1986 to 1988. But I do know I cracked 6,000 miles in 2024 for the first time since I started keeping track. I arrived at that number by doing lots of rides in the 25 to 30 mile range, and almost all of them were on a mountain bike. In 1988 we were doing lots of rides in the 60-90 mile range on road bikes. I believe I rode over 12,000 miles in 1988.

When races came around, I was terrible. Although I was in the best shape of my life in many respects, I wasn't fine tuned for mountain bike racing, and I was probably suffering from fatigue and nutritional deficiencies. On most training rides I felt great, so I didn't understand why I wasn't seeing results. The self doubt creeped in. I started coming to terms with not being good enough. I wanted to be a professional racer, but I wasn't even cracking the top ten as an expert.

As I alluded to in the first sentence, I finished the season at a crossroads. I felt internal pressure to succeed at racing, and plenty of external pressure to move on. I was 21 years old, poor and undereducated. I saw the disappointment in my parents' faces whenever the subject of my future came up.

In November of 1988 Don and I went to the Interbike trade show in Reno. All the big bike and component manufacturers and distributers were there showing the latest and greatest equipment. We were supposed to be representing Frank's Bicycle Lane, our employer, but we had other ideas.

Don produced a polished racing resume and cover letter (which I still have) to pass out to prospective sponsors, and he encouraged me to do the same. Don's was an impressive collection of top-5 finishes in many races—three whole pages of them. Mine was half a page of mediocrity.

(This is a 1993 edit I used to help get a "sponsorship" from Dean/Adventure Mountain Bikes.)

I can't find my cover letter, but it was equally pathetic. Each time I handed one to somebody at a booth, they would scan it and try desperately to say something kind or encouraging. A lot of them weren't very good at hiding a smirk.

The phone never rang. In that silence the message was loud and clear: "You are not very good."

I quit racing.

While the year was pretty horrible from a racing standpoint, 1988 still produced many great memories. Don and I had an absolute blast working at the bike shop (when Frank wasn't around) and I did some absolutely epic road rides. Some of the ones Steve, Don and I all did together will forever be some of my favorites. (One particular French Meadows ride deserves its own post.)

It was also a year that caused so much regret as I grew older. I still wonder even to this day what might have been if I had a mentor or coach who really understood what I needed at that time to achieve success. I'll never know.

Later.

Little Pink Velos for You and Me

I finally accumulated the parts to start building Jennifer's Velo Orange Neutrino mini velo.

It's very early in the experiment, obviously, but I can't help but feel one step closer to riding in Mexico again.

Later.

the Crash: Part 2

At the time of the crash, I was a busy guy. If there were such a thing as a three-ended candle, I would be burning it at all three ends.

After a brutal first semester in college carrying 18 units, I was now in my second semester carrying a slightly more manageable 16. I was also working full-time as the night manager at Round Table Pizza. On top of that, I was trying to ride as much as possible to prepare for the upcoming mountain bike racing season.

We raced around ten times in 1985 and had a blast, but this was during and after my senior year of high school, and up to that point it was only for fun. I intended to race a little in 1986, but I wasn't that serious about it. I was focused on school first, making some money, and riding when I could. Steve and Doug, however, were going to take it up a notch.

They had both just started the process of having custom frames made by Ibis. I was envious, of course, but I was fairly happy with the Fisher Montare I had purchased late in 1985. It would work fine for my limited racing aspirations, and it was a major upgrade from the Ross I had raced the previous year.

Then I crashed my car.

The path I had been on, the one that seemed so very clear the previous day, had now muddied up considerably. Being a responsible adult and working hard towards some unseen life goal somewhere on the distant horizon now felt very different. Working too hard had nearly killed me. I wondered what the point was. My path suddenly had multiple forks jutting off in all directions.

Steve and Doug visited me the day after my accident and told me about the ordering process for their custom frames. They were excited in a way that nothing in my life had been giving me. Suddenly the fog cleared and my life came into focus: I was going to be a bike racer.

I called Ibis and talked to Scot Nicol, and he described the process and sent me a fit sheet. When it arrived I took all my measurements and filled out the short questionnaire. I made it clear this was a bike purely for racing and racing only. I even had them remove all the eyelets on the dropouts just to emphasize that this would be a sleek racing thoroughbred that would never have a rack or fenders bolted to it like some lowly pack mule. I went to a local autobody shop and picked out a Dupont Imron color—a metallic purple. I threw the fit sheet and a check for $300 in an envelope and mailed it off.

In a matter of weeks a pretty purple killing machine arrived, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

In the meantime, I was gathering the parts to build the most perfect racing machine possible given a relatively low budget. There were boutique parts out there that may have been better—WTB roller cams versus the Suntour version I was using, for example—but it was all very solid equipment at the time.

Was I a bit detail oriented at 18 years of age? Maybe.

Even at 18 years of age I was a fairly seasoned mechanic, having built many BMX bikes from the frame up. I already knew enough to buy my own hubs, spokes and rims to build my own wheels. I got them pretty close to the finished product, and my local bike shop fine tuned the spoke tension for ten bucks each.

It all added up to produce my favorite racing bike of all time and the one I had the most success on. Unfortunately, I would get less then two seasons out of the frame before it broke.

I went back to school around 10 days after my accident, and obviously I had fallen far behind. My heart was no longer in it, and within days I dropped out of college entirely. My candle suddenly had only two ends, and the racing end now burned with the fire of a thousand suns. I eagerly looked forward to the first race of season with a new focus. Being a responsible adult would have to wait. I was now officially a bike racer.

Later.