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Also, why Italian steerer thread? Surely ISO is the most sensible way to go?
We talked about this on the day, the discussion at the time (potentially garbled through slight language misunderstanding) was that what when they were talking about Italian, they meant ISO. Either that or they meant that Italian and ISO headsets were interchangeable.
Maybe the bigger question is JIS versus ISO and the issue of headset availability. If one wanted a reasonably bling cartridge JIS headset, I guess there is the Dura Ace 7410 headset, although a question exists about replacement bearings.
Hypothetically there is a wider range of 1 inch threaded ISO headsets. One can still get a Campagnolo Record, and in theory Chris King Gripnuts (but where you can actually buy one online is another question).
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So while the cycling part of my Instagram feed is awash with masochistic cyclists tackling the Rapha Festive 500 and the UK is just literally awash with floods, I've been in Japan for the last week and a half photographing some areas that were devastated by the 2011 tsunami (and on that inappropriate note, here endeth the water references).
The last time I was in Tokyo, during the spring, I photographed along the banks of the Tama River (Tamagawa), which flows through western Tokyo before emptying out into Tokyo Bay amid Haneda Airport and a dense hive of factories, shipyards and refineries. One of my planned routes took me along the banks of the Tamagawa, through parks, baseball diamonds, large raised levees seemingly continuously under construction and repair, small encampments of homeless men and just the odd random bits of civilisation that get pushed up against a river. One of those random things was a large cycling velodrome, where I planned to explore at the end of the day. But despite my best efforts, I ran out of time (or more specifically daylight) and finished well short of it. I always wondered if I'd find my way back to it.
For this trip, my girlfriend, who had developed a mild obsession with track cycling, insisted on seeing a keirin race. "I don't care what else you or I do, but we are damn well spending one day at the keirin!" I bloody love my girlfriend. I have a friend who had cycled from Osaka to visit and photograph the NJS Keirin School, while also (fruitlessly) searching for the framebuilder behind Gan Well Pro), but beyond that I had no idea where to start.
After a small amount of searching and a far larger amount of Google translating, it turned out that somehow the stars had magically aligned. Firstly, the season-ending Keirin Grand Prix, the three day event that decides the Keirin champion racer for the year, would be taking place while we were in Tokyo. By a further odd coincidence, it would be taking place at the velodrome along the Tama river, the Keiokaku velodrome that I had failed to visit. It's a strange sensation to tell someone that you "know" a place which you've never visited. But I knew where it was, I knew how to get there, I knew the river, I knew the lay of the land. So that settled that, we were bloody well going to the Keirin Grand Prix.
And today, we did. As we took a train 30 minutes out of central Tokyo, more and more gentlemen of a certain disposition joined us in the carriage. Old working-class men, many wearing caps, with worn, creased faces, clutching newspapers. Keirin gamblers basically. We didn't even have to figure out how to get to the velodrome from the station, we just followed the crowd of old men. We paid a token 50 yen (30p) to enter the stadium and there we stayed for the whole day, from first race to the final grand prix.
Most people know about the riders and we all love their beautiful bikes, but the best part of the experience was hanging out in the company of the gamblers. As the day progressed, the clouds of cigarette smoke grew thicker and the shouting and yelling before, during and after the race more frenzied. By the final races, you would see a noticeable number of spectators throwing their betting slips away in disgust at the end of a race but also an equal number cheering and saluting the winning rider who had no doubt earned them a hopefully healthy amount of yen. The bikes were beautiful and gleamed in the golden, afternoon winter light (I saw a few gorgeous Kalavinkas), but you're really there to soak up the atmosphere and hang out with some real characters. As my girlfriend said, pretty much a ridiculous amount of fun for less than £10 per person.
PS. Appointment booked with Cherubim to discuss frame geometry when the store re-opens after the new year.
PPS. My friend Tim's photography project on Keirin spectators: http://www.timbowditch.com/big-dream/
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Like yours and Tim's style. They look like they where shot on Fuji as
well. Great stuff. Are Tim's portraits in book form? if so where do I
get one?Tim was shooting on a Mamiya 7 with Fuji film, probably Pro 400H given the conditions. On the other hand, I was shooting happy snaps on my iPhone and my "play" digital camera (Olympus EM1, relying on the in-camera RAW conversion)
I don't think Tim's keirin stuff is published in physical form. He told me his adventures of arriving in Japan with his Fuji track bike, strapping his Mamiya camera onto his back and heading out into the hills in search of some velodrome, almost dying from fatigue a combination of vertical elevation, riding fixed, a high gear and camera gear on his back.
I also remember him telling me how he finally tracked down the Gan Well Pro builder, after searching for several days. Apparently the guy had retired and a youngish female builder had taken his place. Or that apparently was the gist of things, given his poor Japanese and her poor English. I guess it would have easier just to look around njs-export.com!
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So back in January I had a long back and forth with Cherubim regarding geometry, when they were probably being too polite to me. I eventually said "give me a Cherubim-brand package for agile and responsive for urban riding and I will stop quibbling about angles because you're the expert"
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Yes that's the infamous vending machine.
After more than 3 months of not thinking about this, I got an email from Japan over the weekend saying that the frame has been built (and obviously painted a vending machine-matching Cherubim red).
A snapshot from Japan:
So now I need to get my ass into gear and start scrounging up all the parts I have yet to scrounge up; this thread will live again.
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Cherubim Pista
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That's an interesting point regarding the geometry that I was going to clear up when I'm in Tokyo in a couple of weeks. I wanted the starting point to be "standard" keirin geometry, but I remember Keigo (the Cherubim guy) mentioning off the cuff that the geometry for the pista was quite similar to many of their other road bikes.
Which might have been an English mis-communication or not, but it didn't quite make sense at the time. Although to be fair, very little of this entire thing makes complete sense, I think much of what was going on in my head during that initial discussion was just "CHERUBIM CHERUBIM CHERUBIM CHERUBIM".
And this is a really stupid question, but where in that order sheet does it say HT angle of 73 degrees?