Category Archives: Bikes

January 3, 2017 · 11:11 pm

Buttarific – Seat mod for my Dynamik

I have a Rans Dynamik Crank Forward bike. I like it a lot. However, the seat, although basically OK, is not really as comfortable as I would like, especially for distance riding. Ten miles and I’m alright, 20 and I’m not liking it.

The main problem with the seat for me is that it is too small for my butt, and for my weight. If I weighed less the butt psi would probably be fine. Now, the seat is not small, it is much bigger than a road-bike seat, but not as big as what I am use to, not as big as my comfortable Stratus XP seat.

Today, I tried something and it seems to make a really big difference.

First, here is a photo of the bike, as a reminder of what it looks like. Notice the seat angle. I currently lean against it as much as sit on it.

dynamik02

I have these two old seat pans that at one time or another were on my Stratus XP. They cracked here and there, over time, and I replaced them. On one I put 7,000 + miles in one year, so, don’t be too judgmental of their construction (one plastic, the other fiberglass). The cracks are mostly around the mounting holes. Besides still having these old pans I also have one extra pad that would fit either, and an extra seat cover.

I undressed the current Dynamik seat, stripping off the original thin sponge pad, the slightly thicker pad I added, and the cover. I then laid the Stratus XP pans on top of the bare Dynamik pan, one at a time. The fiberglass pan was a natural fit, like they were in the same stack for shipping, hand-in-glove kind of thing. They were siblings. Where one curved, the other curved. And, they were about the same length. The Stratus seat, however, was/is significantly wider, as is the pad. Brought a smile to my face. The plastic Stratus seat pan? Not so much.

I mentioned that the Stratus pans were cracked around the mounting holes. This would be a problem if trying to mount them in the intended fashion. Should not be a problem when attached to and nested in the lap of the Dynamik seat. And, fortuitously, there were overlapping holes in the pans so that I was able to just zip-tie them together. Will probably attach them more firmly if the test rides please me.

Take a look.

dynamikstratusseat_0744

I just went out and took a measurement. The Stratus seat (with pad) is a little over 5 inches wider than the original Dynamik pan. I hope I have to rename this bike, “Happy Butt”.

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November 23, 2016 · 3:15 pm

Old man on a bike in 2011

This is an our-of-the-blue post on a blog that has been superseded by my Facebook page. However, I cherished the year 2011 in my bike riding experiences and don’t want the following words to be lost to me. They are by a friend I shared biking with that year and were made on a blog that is likely to disappear from the internet. So, the following is a copy of my Facebook post which contains a quote from Michelle Williams’s blog.

“2011 was a special year for me that I often think fondly of. Michelle Williams is a significant part of that memory. We went on several organized rides together, the longest of which I believe was from Brandon Mississippi (east of Jackson) to Natchez, about 105 miles. We regularly compared distance totals and developed a most enjoyable competition, each of us trying to match or better the other. We each exceeded 7,000 miles that year, she exceeding it more than I. She was, and is, the Energizer Bunny of bicycling and can ride on and on forever. She is currently a ride leader in cross country biking. By “cross country” I don’t mean through the woods, I mean across the United States. I am very proud of her.

Michelle gave riding advice on a blog before she became too busy with really serious riding. In that blog she also mentioned the year 2011 and was very generous in her recollection of me. I copy a few of her words here because I don’t want them to get away from me, and I want the memory to be more at hand.

‘I love bikejournal for the way a cyclist could log on and see where their mileage was in relation to all of the other bikejournal users around the world. The data can be sorted in many different ways and I soon found myself atop many of the lists. In 2010, I had more miles than anyone using the program in Mississippi. In 2011, a friend of mine from Hattiesburg, Gary Johnsey, and I started a friendly competition to see who would have the most miles by the end of the year. His riding style was to ride several rides 30-65 miles in length compared to my one or two (or three) 125 mile rides a week. It was going to be interesting to see who would “win” this challenge. Well, we both did! I know we rode on days when we wanted and we were both out riding on days we would have preferred to be doing something else.

The most remarkable part of the story is that I thought Gary was in his 50s – maybe early 60s – I knew he was retired but I never stopped to think about it, really. During our competition, I was very obsessive about checking bikejournal to see if Gary had logged a ride. I talked about our competition to anyone who would listen. Most of the year I was behind him in mileage and it took a 1,200 mile trip around Lake Michigan to finally catch up with him. Oh, you should have seen the happy dance that day!

Well, it wasn’t until October of that year that I found out that Gary was 69! He was outside kicking my butt all year long at 69! I just hope that I am outside kicking the rear ends of obnoxious mileage hounds when I am 69 and beyond. I owe a lot of good memories to Gary for that great year of competition.’

http://blogs.clarionledger.com/cycling/2012/12/21/mileage-logging-websites-part-1/
“

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