Thoughts on Bar-End Shifters

When I was getting my first new roadbike in spring , I had it built up with bar-end shifters. This decision was arrived at via a process of elimination. I had ridden a couple of vintage roadbikes before with very limited success and found the classic downtube shifters too challenging. I had also tried to test ride some modern roadbikes and found their combination brake/shifter levers ("brifters") to be so uncomfortable that I had trouble using the brakes. Other cyclists I knew recommended bar-ends - an older style that had grown popular again in recent years. Rivendell - the manufacturer of the road frame I was having built up - was also strongly recommending this setup. And so that is what I went with.






A bar-end shifter is exactly what it sounds like: a gear-changing lever installed at the end of the handlebar. There are different styles. Some are longer, others are shorter. Some are friction, others are indexed. I have tried a few now on different bikes, and my favourite remains what I went with originally: Silver friction shifters. The length and shape make them easier for me to operate than other models; I get more leverage. I find the friction mode easy and intuitive to use, and I like the control it gives me. If a gear is imperfectly adjusted, I can simply move it a tiny bit manually. I can also shift multiple gears at a time quite easily.






The shorter, indexable Shimano bar-ends are another popular choice for this style of shifters. The Co-Habitant uses them on his bikes and loves them. But personally I find them more effortful and less comfortable to use that the Silvers.






Over the time I rode with bar-end shifters, I was more or less fine with them. I was able to switch gears and I was able to install the brake levers I liked, since they were independent from the shifters. But I did find two things about the shifters less than ideal. One was that they required me to dramatically change my hand position(s) on the bars in order to switch gears. I got better and quicker at this over time, but nonetheless I was never "in love" with the process. The other issue was that when stopped or off the bike the shifters would often poke me and give me bruises. But both of these points seemed relatively minor at the time, and I was not considering a different lever setup.





My switch to combination levers was a product of accidental discovery. I was discussing test riding a Seven roadbike with the staff of the Ride Studio Cafe, and all their demo models were set up with modern brifter-type levers. I told them about my inability to brake using brifters when I attempted to ride other modern roadbikes. Rob Vandermark asked which specific makes and models I'd tried. It had not occurred to me until then that this could make a real difference. I'd tried quite a few, all of them by Shimano and SRAM. Rob looked at the Tektro short reach brake levers on my own bike, and suggested I try Campagnolo; apparently the shape is very similar. And so it was. I test rode a demo bike with Campagnolo ergo shifters and it was as if my brain became integrated with them immediately. I resisted making a rash decision to make the switch on my own bike, but a couple of months later I finally did switch and have not looked back.






So what do I think of bar-end shifters in retrospect... Pretty much the same thing as before. I have no desire to "bash" them or to proclaim the superiority of brifters; it is really a matter of individual preference. I still like bar-ends and I am fine riding a roadbike set up with them. I especially love the friction mode. If given a choice of models, my favourites are the Silvers; they feel great in my hands. I imagine that bar-ends are well suited for those who prefer their shifters to be separate from their brake levers, who wish to have the option of friction shifting, and who have no problems moving their hands to the edges of the drops swiftly and efficiently when they need to change gears. I am sure there are other contexts in which bar-ends are the preferred choice, and those who have things to add on the subject are welcome to chime in. To me, bar-ends will always be associated with my first road cycling experiences, and I retain a fondness for them despite having switched to another system.

Urge for Spring

In going through some of my photos I found this shot of some cherry blossoms I took last year. My urge for spring is getting stronger every day.

Unusual Seismic Recordings from Mount Rainier Glaciers

This is Steve Malone with the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network located at the University of Washington in Seattle. We operate seismographs throughout the Pacific Northwest and have three located high on Mount Rainier. We often record seismic events from all of our glacier-clad volcanoes that we associate with glacier motion, i.e. "ice-quakes." However, since about May 20, we have detected a strange set of these events coming from the upper Winthrop Glacier. We are calling these small events "clones" because the seismic waveforms from one event are near-duplicates of those from other events indicating a repeating source. They also seem to occur at very regular intervals.


The interval between events is often as short as every 3 minutes but changes from time to time and has been as much as 15 minutes between events. We think that their magnitude (on the Richter scale) is about M = -1 (i.e., 8 orders of magnitude smaller than the Nisqually earthquake of 2001).



So, what are these puppies? We think they represent small periodic slips at the bed of the glacier. Perhaps there is a large rock embedded in the bottom of the glacier and as the glacier moves it scrapes this rock along the bed, only a few mm in each slip. But why are they so regular in time? Maybe water pools up-hill of the rock until it slightly lifts the glacier allowing the rock to more easily slip and this then drains that small pool of water starting the process over. We think that water has an important influence on glacier sliding but don't understand the mechanism very well.


How can you help? Anyone climbing Rainier on the east side (upper Emmons or Winthrop Glacier routes) may see or hear things that would help us pin these suckers down. Please let me know of anything you think may be out of the ordinary (sounds, sights, feelings???). Particularly those of you who have been in this area before and can compare what may be different from previous climbs. Our best guess where these originate (based on stacking 4000 individual events to get the best relative seismic wave arrival times at six seismic stations and using a 1-D seismic velocity model with station elevation corrections, blah blah blah, other scientific mumbo-jumbo) puts the location at 46.85950 north 121.7610 west (i.e., 2.5 km WSW of Camp Schurman or 3.4 km NNW of Camp Muir or about 600 meters up from the top of Russell Cliffs).

To see these suckers yourself check out our "webicorders" at: http://www.pnsn.org/WEBICORDER/VOLC
and click on the date-time for one of the high Rainier stations (RCS, RCM, STAR). The small blips that have about the same size and shape are our "clones".

Send email to: steve@ess.washington.edu or give me a call (206-685-3811)


Steve Malone

Lost China Dishes

This is my set of china dishes. We certainly couldn't afford anything like this at any time during the 40 years we have been married. But I was lucky enough to find a set. No, I didn't buy them at a yard sale or anything, I actually found them.
We moved into a house in about 1976 and there was what I thought was a dog house in the backyard. It was only about 4 feet tall, but about 6 feet long. We just thought it was what someone had cobbled up for a dog house considering the height of it. There was even a sort of door on it. My dog didn't seem interested in going in it and I didn't want her to until I had a chance to clean it up some. In a few weeks I did deside to clean it so that it could be used. I moved the piece of board acting as a door and crawled in since I couldn't stand up right in it. To my surprise there was a large cardboard box in the back of the short shed. I had hubby crawl in and do a check for spiders, snakes, and dead bodies of any kind and he came back out pulling the box after him. Inside the box was this set of china dishes. There are a couple of the salid plates missing but other wise it is the complete set. It is made my Imperial China and the pattern is called Whitney, but couldn't find out when it was made. I found it on the internet under several sites for older china and it is running about $10 per piece now. I would guess that is about what it sold for new.

Kittens Playing on a Ladder

Yum

My Mom gave me the recipe for this yummy shrimp dish last time she was here.

1 1/2 T garlic, chopped
1 medium onion
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
8 oz can Italian whole plum tomatoes
(We used 15 oz can diced tomatoes instead & added 1 tsp Italian seasoning.)
1 lb cooked shelled shrimp
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
8 oz crumbled feta cheese (we used less than this.)
8 oz uncooked linguini
salt & pepper to taste

Cook linguini in salted water.
Saute garlic & onion in olive oil 3 - 5 min on Med High heat (until tender).
Add cooked shrimp, saute for 2 min, remove from pan but leave garlic & onion. Add tomatoes & liquid & stir.
Bring to a boil, reduce heat. Add shrimp, oregano & basil, salt & pepper. Simmer 3 - 5 min. Pour over drained linguini & toss.
Add crumbled feta cheese at the table.

I think this would also work well with tofu instead of shrimp, if you're a vegetarian.

Smoke From Fires

These are photos I took this evening when the wind blew the smoke in again after almost a week of this. The smoke from the forest fires in Arizona is coming into New Mexico and causing a lot of air quality problems here. That is smoke in our skies here not clouds as it may look like in the photo. We haven't seen a blue sky in over a week. The machine that tests air quality normally reads about a 30 (what ever the scale may mean) and is reading about 200 when smoke is at it's worst right now. I have head that some of this smoke has been tracked all the way to Iowa. But at least we are not right on the edge of the fire as those that live near it are.