Big Bikes

I'm Just a Boy With a New Haircut

Yesterday I kind of meant to get all my awesome tech-feature material out of the way. Wasn't that an amazing tech feature? Well there's more where that came from and I thought it deserved its own post. OK, maybe not its own post, it might have to share a post with photos of me making faces while I get a haircut, but at least it doesn't have to sit next to a Thru-Bolt made by a bunch of Cuckoo Clock making Neutrality Monkeys.

What we're looking at above is Peter Verdone's hardware upgrade for the Paragon Slider Dropouts on Miriam's Igleheart. Below you'll see the Paragon Dropout with its original hardware. The bolts have 5mm heads which round out pretty easily, and don't allow you to apply much torque while tightening. The replacement bolts have 12 point heads which can be tightened with a 10mm socket or Box end wrench. There is no chance in hell of stripping these things.

The Paragon Slider is a beautiful piece of work, but like 22" Spinner rims on a '94 Nissan Sentra Pete's hardware upgrade only enhances the inherent beauty of the original. Wait, it's nothing like that, nothing like that at all.

Here we see a bolt head to bolt head comparison.

Pete sent me a bunch of other hardware which only served to confuse me. I called him up and he told me that the several 4mm bolts in various lengths were for the rear facing tension adjustment bolts. The bolts provided by Paragon are very long. If you want to neaten up the look you can use a bolt which better suits the position of the dropout in the slider, i.e: not have so much bolt hanging out. Thanks Pete, these things are sweet!


As alluded to in the title of this post I got a new haircut. Not really new, it's the same freakin' haircut I get every time my mop gets too unkempt. I've been on the grow until intolerably shaggy then shave to stubble regime for as long as I can remember. The mess of hair is good during the winter months for keeping the brain warm. I've read that keeping your netherlands cool promotes high sperm count. The opposite is true of your brain, you want to keep it warm to promote high..brain cell...count. It works for me or can't you tell? Made up, but what's not made up is that I needed to wear a hat around the house after the haircut, it felt so drafty. This proves beyond a reasonable doubt that having tightly shorn hair and the enhanced air-cooling of the head associated with it is a performance advantage for cyclists.

Oops, I just ruined my own joke about only having a pair of Conair nose hair clippers on hand (they were for my cats, the ones I had euthanized, and then ate) by adding the photo of the hairy mess in the sink with the proper clippers. Crazy baldhead.

Scruffy, Depressed Mess - Clean up & Cheap Liposuction - BLUE STEEL!

What I like about hair-cutting time is that I look and feel like crap and then Bam! In a few minutes I've taken years off my life...I mean on the other end, not the I'm going to die sooner end but the I look and feel younger end. I may actually start getting carded again (as opposed to getting cut off at the bar before I've had my first drink). What is baffling about this process is that you end up with piles upon piles of hair, it looks so heavy, there's so much of it, it must weigh something, but no. You hit the scale and it all adds up to nothing, 0 weight loss from hair loss. Sorry Bruce Willis.

This gave me an idea. It has been proven that Squirrels are stronger than Carbon Fiber...

I have proven that hair weighs literally nothing. Why not make a bicycle frame out of hair? Make it out of hair and lug it with Squirrels!