TATI

Roubaix Season

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 21:48 -0700

Tatitos bum rushed the show at Battenkill and Hillsboro today. As usual for our novice squad, most were experiencing their very first road race. There were cobbles. There was deep, loose gravel. There was pouring rain. There were crashes. There were stitches. And there were attacks. And more attacks. There were scuttled plans, improvisation, suffering, grit, frustration, camaraderie, elan, grief, relief.
For the third year running, a TATI M4 brought home a Hillsboro podium brick, with Michael Berman securing third after spending much of the race initiating moves and winnowing the field down to twenty riders.

Katie Mann had the breakout performance I've been anticipating since she first showed up to cross practice on(and went on to race) her thirty pound Bianchi road bike. Her fifth place at in the W4 field is the best placing ever for a TATI woman at Hillsboro.

Sometimes a Schleck is just a Schleck

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 21:45 -0700

Ever since the photo of Andy Schleck in his national champion flavored Radioshack-Nissan kit was released, it bothered me. The design itself was appealing enough, clean and simple and structured as it is. No, it was a nagging image buried somewhere in my brain, just one more piece of cycling ephemera buried under layers and layers of equally useless nostalgia and trivia.
But before long, I gave up, and the quandary slipped my mind. Weeks went by, and this being cobble season - Andy wasn't very visible in his tidy little tricolor kit, so I wasn't reminded of the question. And so I forgot about it entirely, until this morning.
I was chatting with a friend about Roger Sterling's office design, and how I really admired the discipline necessary to design completely without color. "But aren't you color blind?" he asked. "Yeah, pretty severely." I answered.
The conversation turned to cigarettes, elevators, wingtips, and then back to the interior office design. "Do you remember the episode with the painting?" he asked. "Um, yeah, it was an Ellsworth Kelly, right?" I said. "Oh come on, did you even take art history in college? It was a Rothko," he said.
But just as he said those words, an image popped into my head. It was a real Eureka! moment. The image in my head was of a dress that Kelly had designed in the early 50s during his time in France. Surely the Radioshack-Nissan kit designer also had this image in his or her head too.
I mean, this can't be a coincidence, can it?
But boy, do I like me some Color Field painting. Even if I can't really discern the colors themselves. And maybe even more so because of it.

Welcome Back, Linus.

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:06 -0700

So happy to have Linus back in the shop again. They are, bar none, the best value in minimalist city bikes. Place your orders now, these things sell out f-a-s-t!

linusbike.com

Priceless.

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 06:55 -0700

I'm pretty much snooper chuffed that we've had 121 racers participate in the Calumet Practice Crits so far this year. And among them, 24 had never before raced. Plus we're seeing about 20% ladies, which is more than double the rate at a typical Chicagoland race.

And so now we've had partipants between the ages of 14 and 58, categories 1 through 5. Experienced riders are dusting off their wintry trainer legs, newbies are learning what a "paceline" is, and folks are reconnecting and making new friends.

All. Good. Things.

But do you know what the best thing is? The very, most special, bestest thing is? The best thing that's happened so far is how Paul and Molly showed up yesterday in full Cipo zebra regalia.

March 2012

As the World Turns.

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:57 -0700

As anyone who has visited the shop knows. Tativille is the kind of place that doesn't make a lot of sense. Maybe it shouldn't exist in Hyde Park, or in Chicago, or in 2012, or in this particular time-space continuum. It's a bike shop sans bikes, a retail establishment without a cash register, a service industry business without service hours, or a telephone. But it is a conventional storefront in a conventional commerce district with conventional neighbors and occasionally, conventional customers. And the other day, I met one of them.
But first, a detour.
One of the very first rules of the shop, one that has never been broken, is the rule that says Thou Shalt Not Own Wheels Worth More Than Thine Bike. Needless to say, you don't see too many Zipps or Lightweights or Carbones rolling out of the shop. I mean, you do, but you also don't. What you do see is a lot of handbuilt wheels, and by a lot, I mean a lot by 2012 standards, but not a lot by 1982 standards. On the other hand, you're a lot more likely to hear Cameo or the Human League than LMFAO or Adele. Which is to say, maybe that's just it: maybe what's going on is Tativille really exists in a 1982 thay wishes it was 1952 but through the lens of good old 2012.
1982 was a good year. I raced most of it on a hand-me-down Gios and the Badger totally did the Giro-Tour double. I learned how to moonwalk. I raced in Utah, upstate New York, Georgia, Texas, Colorado, and Philly. And my wheels were 36h Mavic Montlhéry Légère rims laced to Campy hubs. The rims had been my employer's for exactly one ride, after which he determined that they were better suited to a 51kg junior than a 75kg coach. The rims weighed in at a svelte 315g each. Even by 2012 standards, that's pretty light. And by 1982 standards, they were bananas. The rims possessed virtually no inherent structural rigidity, but that didn't matter much, what with a whopping 72 spokes to keep them rolling true and round. They were fast, I was fast, end of story.
I didn't hear the guy come in at first. I didn't hear the guy come in at first, because I was playing Don't You Want Me REALLY LOUDLY. And also, I didn't realize that the shop door was unlocked.
"Can I help you?" I asked.
"So... I just moved into the building next door, and, um. Um, I found this bike in the basement. I was wondering if you could tell me if I can use it, if I should use it."
The boy rolled up a dirty-as-hell road bike further into the shop. I cringed. A spider dropped from the saddle onto his sneaker and scampered off.
"Whaddya know.." I muttered.
"Excuse me?"
"That was a really nice bike," I began, "in 1982."
"Wow, it's that old?"
"Yup, but it's almost completely original. Dirty, but original" I said, eyeballing the Bridgestone Sirius equipped with Suntour Cyclone II and 36h Araya tubulars. "I bet with a proper cleaning and tune-up, it would work just fine. But you'll need to replace those wheels."
This was one of those moments. This was one of those moments where ethics and esoteric fetishes and commerce and maybe a little greed were getting all mixed up in my head, and in my heart. Clearly, I thought to myself, he needs new wheels. But what to do with the old ones? And what to replace them with?
Thirty minutes later, after a brief lecture on the 70s bicycle boom; the weak yen; the relationship between Matsushita, National and Panasonic; the Paris Roubaix; Andrew Dugast and FMB; and kevlar beaded clinchers, we determined that I would take the old wheels in as partial trade giving me a pass to temporarily waive the Wheel Valuation Rule and build some super sick, all silver, box section wheels for this here Bridgestone.
Sure, the new wheels are probably worth a lot more than the bike, and seeing as how it probably won't leave the confines of good old Hyde Park, they're overkill for the application. But I know they're awesome, and he knows they're awesome, and, you know, I think that's all that matters.
Well, that and... now I have some pretty exciting 36h Araya tubulars from 1982.
P.S. You should really own some handbuilt wheels, and you should really have TATI design and build them. I'll even play whatever music you want while we discuss these things over tea.

To Raise a Ruckus.

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:16 -0700

I get needled a lot for my antiquated, contrarian ways. If I had my way every novice racer would be rolling 32h 3x wheels and a practical steel frame, so when the inevitable crashes occur, life would go on without a hitch. But you know, that's just not the world we live in. In fact, as prices have fallen, we're now seeing upwards of 50% of first year racers on entry level (and used) carbon frames. It's really not an issue of novices purchasing products "beyond their station" so much as carbon has pushed other materials out of the market.
Once upon a time, even the smallest amount of damage to a carbon frame (or fork, or rims) was a fate dreaded by all. In most cases, it meant complete replacement. Later, the fine folks at Calfee came along and launched a novel carbon repair service. And in the past few years, some young entrepreneurs have followed suit. The most interesting company in this new wave is called Ruckus Components. Though based in Portland these days, the firm has roots in the midwest, and specifically with the Chicagoland racing scene. TATI has been working with Ruckus for years, and a couple of weeks ago I had a nice conversation with its principal, Shawn Small, about the state of affairs here in Chi-town. We talked about a number of topics and brainstormed ways that we could mutually offer a service to the racing community, particularly the newest and most vulnerable racers. And, of course, that problem would revolve around busted carbon.
The problem is pretty simple. Crashes happen. Frames break. And then a few things typically happen. Sometimes folks simply don't have the funds to replace the frame, or at least not immediately. And even if they do, there's typically significant downtime while everything is sorted out. Sometimes folks will just choose to sit out the rest of the season, or wait for cross (or in the case of cross, road)... again, saving up funds all the while. And even in the cases where they do choose to send off a frame for repair, it's not cheap and then there's the problem of working out a spare/loaner bike. It's just not easy. And it's certainly not cheap.
So Shawn and I decided to try to come up with a service that is cheaper, easier, and most importantly -- much faster. It should keep folks training and racing with as little downtime as possible. And if it keeps some busted up carbon out of the landfill for a few more years, that's a bonus.
Here's how it works:
RUCKUS will offer a reduced price repair service that also will include rapid turnaround. For most repairs, the cost will be only $200 and with less than 2 week turnaround. It won't include all of the fancy repaint and finishwork that Ruckus is most famous for, but will include a super professional structural repair and resin topcoat that in most cases will make the frame *stronger* than before.
TATI will offer 75% off our normal labor rate for the teardown, shipping, and rebuilding of damaged frames. For those in dire financial straights, we will charge nothing at all for labor. This includes: teardown and inspection of the damaged frame, packing and shipping to Ruckus, building up a loaner frame with your parts, receipt and unpacking of the repaired frame, teardown of the loaner frame, and rebuild of the repaired frame. What's the turnaround for this amazing service, you ask? 48 hours. This is a bananas deal, yo. And it's all because we love you so much.
TATI will loan you a super sick team edition Hulot frame. These are no-joke, no-holds-barred European pro-style racing bikes. In fact, I would venture to say that in many cases they will be better racing frames than the carbon whatsits being repaired. In only their first year of production, Hulot frames have been ridden to multiple local podiums. Did I say what this service will cost? It will cost $0. Because we love you so much.
Last but not least, we'll do our best to bundle repairs (we send a lot of stuff to Ruckus) -- in order to keep shipping costs down and not waste so many dinosaurs to send your frame back and forth across our fine nation.

That's about it. Break your frame. Bring is to TATI. Pick up a loaner bike. Ruckus will repair it Like a Boss. Trade the loaner bike for your bike. Never stop training or racing.

P.S. if you break a carbon rim, handlebars, etc.

Need Practice.

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 11:33 -0700

There are still a few more weeks to get this right. So rusty.

Everything's Gonna Be All Right Now

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:08 -0700

Some pretty neat things happened this week.
The Gaper's Block Crits sold out in less than 48 hours. Including the Women's Race. Which is totes cray.
After 2.5 years of working on it, we now have official team silk squares (above) on the way. Better schedule a clinic on how to tie them, STAT.
Collegiate racing started, with Tatitos Ian and Hunter already racking up a win and a 5th place.
I taught my cat how to wear a monocle and eat Nutella.
Caught up with Lou Kuhn over coffee to talk shop.
Started working on a program to help out all cash-strapped Chicagoland racers.
Received word that TATI alum Adam Kaye was picked up by the Astellas elite program.
Got to drive an orange Gallardo for eight minutes. Didn't crash. (Almost crashed.)

The Double Paceline

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:51 -0700

This morning, after a thoroughly enlightening meeting over coffee with Lou Kuhn of The Pony Shop, I staggered back to Hyde Park for an atypically busy morning in Tativille. First up was a chat with a young woman planning a solo bicycle tour through the Andes mountains. We spent the bulk of our time discussing volcanoes ("I'm an anthropologist first, lepidopterist second, amateur volcanologist third.") before getting down to the brass tacks of tire pressure, portable tools, handlebar bags, and the all-important titanium spork. She left with a hour's worth of marginally useful advice and an orange Rhodia pencil.
Next up was a young Divinity School doctoral candidate. Having dealt with a number of Div School cyclists, I knew all too well that veering away from the topic of bicycles would likely prove foolhardy and probably embarrassing as well. So I tried to keep things tidy.
"Where did you grow up?" I asked.
"A town in Minnesota called Winona."
"Like Winona Rider?"
"Well, yes, but also Princess We-Noh-Nah, from the romantic legend of Maiden Rock."
"..."
"Yeah, like Winona Rider." he said.
In fact, I knew about Winona, but I tried not to let on. We only had a half hour, and in that time we'd need to get through so many things: the differences between Retul and Serotta, titanium and aluminum, Gaulzetti and Primus Mootry. We'd never make it. We'd never make it, especially if I allowed myself to tell my Winona anecdote. And like all of my anecdotes, it would be complicated, and take a while to elucidate, and at the end probably wouldn't be all that interesting.
But of course, I couldn't help myself.
"James Earle Fraser is also from Winona, you know," I began.
"Who's that?"
"Fraser was a sculptor. He designed the Buffalo nickel, the one from 1913." I said.
He didn't look all that interested in the story, but there was no going back now. We were still nowhere near the punchline.
"Actually, he moved to Chicago in the 1890s to study at the Art Institute at age 14. He lived in what is today Bridgeport and became friendly with the bicycle messengers of the day, and even himself rode solo from Chicago to Milwaukee and back one summer. He then moved to Paris, another city dominated by cycling culture. He developed a fondness for absinthe and opium and midnight rides through the city. He would carouse all around Paris from dusk until past midnight, ride back to his tiny studio and work until dawn, then sleep throughout the daylight, and repeat it again. Needless to say, it wasn't the most productive lifestyle."
"I had no idea. Not too many famous people come from Winona."
"Well, so, after several years of this, he got his act together and set up shop in New York, focusing on numismatic work. And a decade later, he was commissioned by the federal mint to design the Buffalo nickel."
"Isn't that the one that's really collectible?"
"Yeah, some are worth thousands, but most are worth about a hundred dollars."
"Well, for a nickel..."
"Yeah, for a nickel. Anyway, when I was a teenager I worked in a shop that was owned by an old Belgian guy. His family had moved to the states after the war. His father was a jeweler and a watchmaker, and his father's brother had been a professional cyclist and owned a shop in Ghent. The brothers bought a small building and set up shop. On one side, the father repaired watches and did a bit of custom jewelry - but mainly he dealt in rare coins. On the other side, and down in the basement, the brother built a bike shop. By the time I started working there, the brothers had died and Henri ran both businesses."
"OK..."
"I was far too unskilled to be of any use outside of the bike shop, where I spent most of my time gluing tires in the basement. But I was a bit of an amateur coin collector myself, so I liked to check out the glass case in the jewelry shop from time to time. One day, Henri set out an complete set of 1913 Buffalo nickels that he'd recently acquired. I had a couple of Buffalos, but they were really worn and were probably work only a few dollars each."
"I don't mean to be rude, but... I need to get to class in about fifteen minutes."
"Right, almost done here." I said. "So... where was I? Oh, right. This was around the time that I started to ride with the other guys at the shop. I wasn't racing yet, but was starting to pick up all the little skills, like riding rollers. We had a few sets that Henri had built himself in the basement. They were really tiny and narrow, but had steel supports, so they were impossible to move. This, I found a little unnerving, because you'd end up essentially elbow-to-elbow if more than one person wanted to ride."
"I don't want to ride rollers."
"Oh, I know. This isn't about rollers. Actually, it's about what you learn after you learn to ride rollers. It was maybe a month later, after I'd gotten pretty comfortable riding indoors, that the winter training began in earnest. It was really fantastic, actually. Fifteen or sixteen of us would go out for two hours at a time. We all had exactly the same gearing on our fixed gear bicycles, so it was so smooth, and quiet, and perfect. We'd do a double paceline the entire time. It's kind of sad to say it, but those first few years might have been the best riding of my life."
"Wait, how does the nickel relate to this?"
"Oh yeah! That was the point, wasn't it? So, one of the drills we used to do on these training rides was to take a penny and stick it between two elbows: yours, and the rider's next to you. And you couldn't let it drop!"
"No way, that's impossible."
"It's not as hard as it sounds, but yeah, they'd drop and you'd have to pick it up. And then you'd get dropped, and it wasn't so easy to catch up, so you learned pretty quickly. Anyway, I was pretty bad at this one. So to teach me a lesson, one day Henri showed up to the ride, but instead of a penny, he gave me a mint condition 1913 Buffalo nickel. It had to be worth hundreds of dollars, even then. It looked to have barely been in circulation at all. I was so afraid! But I made it through the first sector of the ride without dropping the nickel. That simple experience gave me so much confidence on a bike. It sounds dumb, but from that point on, I felt like I could do anything."
"Wow, now I kind of want to try that."
"You should, it's a lot of fun."
"Hm, I kind of need to get to class, and we haven't even talked about bikes yet."
"Really, I think we just did!"

Shaping a Season

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:26 -0700

The merry band of misfits is back at it, returning to the road in a few weeks: a wave of orange wool and cobbled together steel bikes rolling on old thirty year old tubulars ready to wreak havoc on the Chicagoland racing scene. As usual, Team TATI's turnover is around 40%, which can be both an exciting and frightening statistic. When every race is novel, every corner a new and exhilarating experience, the optimism and positive energy can be infectious. And thus far, in our short time together, this has proven to be the dominant emotion.
For the past few years, when considering which races to attend and how to generally shape the ebb and flow of our short road season, we've first consulted the Chicago Bike Racing calendar. Now, as always, it's the most current and complete local resource. From there, we looked at which races were the easiest to reach without a car; which races were the least expensive, and which races were part of the Illinois Cup omnium series. And by and large, the process was a pretty straightforward and simple affair. Granted, there were individual scheduling conflicts and upgrade considerations to manage -- but as a coed, yet homogeneously lower category club, the calendar basically built itself.
The first few years, the process was pretty laissez faire. We wrote up a calendar, showed up to races, and that was that. But over the past two seasons, for any number of hand-wringing reasons, participation in local road racing has slipped. I spent much of last year trying to hype the cause, in order to ensure competitive, profitable, and enjoyably large enough fields to make a race... a race. Unfortunately, on far too many occasions, this didn't work. It's not the end of the world, but I think we're just experiencing a very natural cycle as well as the effects of a clear shift in the demographics of amateur racing. Racers are getting older. They are racing less often. But on the other hand, many of the new entrants to the sport have the resources to attend multi-day omniums (such as Galena) -- something that wasn't as true a decade or two ago, when inexpensive, locally managed races were the rule rather than the exception.
But this year is different. It's different first of all, because we will no longer be targeting the Illinois Cup omnium. There are several reasons for this, but simplest is merely that this year's Cup is so abbreviated that, as a team with several collegiate riders, half of the Cup races will be over before we can even begin to field full squads. While we'll certainly attend some of the IL Cup races, it will no longer be an organizing principle for the team calendar.
Next we took a careful look at travel expenses, personal budgets, and race distances. Most of the Tatitos are by necessity frugal, and do not own vehicles -- requiring a very high degree of consensus and coordination. Furthermore, because of our primarily southside location, we suffer from the anomalous perfect storm of NW suburb race locations + weekend afternoon traffic = return drive times are often double that of the trip out. Taking this into consideration, we began to look at long-ignored races in Northwest Michigan. And boy, are there some gems out there.
Finally, after a wonderful experience at Galena last year, we talked a lot about what it would take to attend events with (a) awesome road races and/or (b) multi-day events that wouldn't break the bank. And wouldn't you know it, a half dozen races were immediate added to the calendar.
I don't think our decisions are necessarily indicative of a trend. But I do think that it's important to provide (especially novice) racers with the very best experience possible within a club's logistical and budgetary constraints. This year, that means we'll be heading out to to the Western Michigan Stage Race, Cherry Roubaix, the Gateway Cup, and Tour de Great Midwest - perhaps at the expense of some locally managed parking lot crits. Furthermore, it will possibly mean racing a little less, or choosing a Tuesday Matteson practice crit run by the South Chicago Wheelmen instead of driving out to the burbs for the weekend's edition of the IL Cup.
In the end, the changes aren't all that dramatic. What's changed is the decision-making process. We've expanded our definition of "local" a bit and are trying to weigh each race on its merit, rather than its political importance. For 2012, we've doubled the number of target road races over last year while slightly decreasing total projected expenditures. And that's change I can believe in.