Met this lass out in the wildes near Todd Mountain.. our shoot was purposed to be visuals for a poster I had been working on for ages..

The plan for the session would be shooting some woolies for Splat and Co~ which has gone through a rebrand and is now The General Bean.. and we’ve slowed the river of hand knit products to less than a trickle, so.. the product(s) she is wearing are.. no longer available.. but she sure looked awesome in them. 

The poster idea I had sketched out has a crazed/ manic mountain biker speeding along with ‘bended’ bars, bended crank arms, most likely wearing Dr. Marten boots and a leather jacket.. and it kinda looks like he’s wearing a WWI leather pilots cap instead of a full face DH helmet.. and it was to be used for “Speed- 0- Thon.”

Speed- 0- Thon was an idea I’ve had since the early 90’s that would put a maximum number of gears on a bike.. to see how fast a cyclist could go if he (or she, for that matter) could continue to PUSH (power meter?!?!) on a normal descent.

Eric Barone hit massive speeds and his work with speed on bicycles is beyond compare but.. he was using gravity 100%.. so he was on super steep slopes like a volcano and later on.. a ski hill in France. Me? I wanted other people to try the challenge so I was going to set the decline at no greater than 10% .. 8% is easy to find.. 6% is more common.. Scott Hill is an 8% decline.. and for me, I “spin out” about 100m on the descent. So- ADD GEARS.

The bike she modelled with started off as a vintage steel Specialized Stumpjumper.. I added on an AMP F4 fork for cushion without stiction.. and then the fun began: Starting with a road crankset with *something like* a 52/40 chainring spread.. the rear wheel got built up by the cool folks over at Bow Cycle (Calgary).. a 650c rim laced to a 3SPD Sturmey- Archer hub that has a 9spd cassette on it…

Click to visit her gallery

 

So- [9spd x 3= 27] x 2 up front = a total of 54 gears! Sure, tons of overlap.. but it’s the top end I’m looking for. And this lass posed with an early itteration of The Bike.. the Suburbinator.. in the rain!

Grace with Stumpy

I had worked with grace a few times.. and I’d been working on Stumpy (aka “Suburbinator”).. the goal of that bike was to be a super keen crazy machine with as many gears as I could stuff in to her frame as possible… How many??

2 up front to a 9spd cluster on a 3spd internal Sturmey- Archer hub= 54 gears

The bike has a ton of gear overlap.. and it’s not the number of gears I’m interested in (especially if I swap out the crankset for a triple) its.. TOP potential. The number of gears just makes it a bit easier to push up to the top speed.

The (members) Gallery

 

Sadly, I do think that this dream of mine is being put to bed. I’m a bit older now and as you age, repairs take longer. And I know there will be asphalt slides, broken bones, parts ripped apart by going over their intended speed/ heat generational tollerances etc. .. but mayb.. just maybe.. I’ll find a pilot for this thing and get her running to reach top speeds.. unfaired and all on it’s own with legs pushing.

The goal, as originally discussed w/ Rick over wine at Bloomfield Bike Company (Bloomfield, Ontario.. ) was to install a “jack shaft” to increase gear inches- two bottom brackets with a triple chainring on each.. connected to an eight speed (back then, 8 was tops) and see how fast a person can push the bike. I think it started by me saying that as soon as I crest a hill, I’m out of speed as in- I spin too fast so I gotta just tuck in to the saddle and glide..

and gliding isn’t pushing.

So, increase the gear inches to the point where I am able to push downhill and see how fast I can go.

Eric Barone hit something like 230Kmph just gliding. I wanna know how fast I can go.. PUSHING. That means legs flailing and being massive resistance. And, yes- the faster you go, the harder it is to go faster so.. it was a curiosity that I have wanted to prove in real world explorations since.. the early 1990’s.

We’ll see.. for now, we have Grace with Suburbinator almost finished on her build (a couple simple steps left.. cable housing, grips.. new shifter pods.. new clip ons/ bar ends.. nothing serious). Then she’ll be ready for another pictorial with another model 😉