Some Great Clothes Sources

If you're 2 metres tall (or more), finding shoes and clothing is tough! Here a couple of sources you might try:

For hipster doofus styles (think Chuck, or Kramer), go to oddball.com.

Basic blue jeans at a basic price? Try Carhartt jeans from dungarees.net.

Columbia has a great line of big and tall shirts and outerwear (with long, long sleeves!). Good prices from supercasuals.com.

And these links are untainted by any commerce -- they're just places that I like!

Places I don't like? Casual Male XL, with poor quality, limited sizes, and wildly inflated prices. Like $60 for a pair of ill-fitting Levis jeans.

Antidiscrimination law

Yesterday's Boston Globe reports on a law before the Massachusetts legislature that would outlaw emploment (and some other) forms of discrimination based on a person's height and weight.

I say bravo!

"How's the weather up there?" A hate crime, I say.

Tall bike: nearly complete

I'm working my way through the componentry on the tall bike, replacing and upgrading things that are worn out or obsolete. I was unable to get the existing cup-and-cone headset to adjust properly, probably because it was missing a spacer, so I decided to splurge and have Harris Cyclery in Newton install a new Chris King headset. So at this point, the key "big bearings" on the bike (headset and bottom bracket) are now high-end sealed units (Phil Wood BB and Chris King headset).

When I picked up the bike I happened to see a 68cm Rivendell Atlantis bike that was also in for service. It had a very high stem called a Nitto dirt drop. I asked if Harris had one for sale, and they did, so now I have my bars high enough and I don't have that ugly, kludgy, heavy, steel steerer extender no more!


So at this point, the only components that haven't been upgraded are the derailleurs, brakes, and wheels. The wheels are kind of a conundrum. The 126mm rear dropout spacing means that it's hard to find a good hub (although Phil Wood has one). Plus, because of my weight, a freehub would be a much better choice than a standard hub. Also, the current wheels are 630mm, while must replacements are 622mm. I'm not keen about dropping the bike by another 4mm, given the long 185mm cranks.

Or should I get a new bike? I love the look of the Rivendell Atlantis, which is available in a 68cm size. Or I could get Mike Flanigan to build me a custom. Or I could do the Peter Cole thing and get a used 68cm Cannondale touring frame.

Hmmmm.

Nitto "dirt drop" stem

As discussed elsewhere, after a 25-year layoff, I've been doing some bike riding. When you're 6'9" tall setting up a bicycle (like lots of other things) isn't always straightforward. The bike frame that I'm using is the largest production frame ever made (68cm), but it's not big enough for me with normal components. Until recently, I had been using a steel steerer extender plus a Nitto technomic 100mm stem to get the handlebars high enough:


Last week, I had the bike in to Harris Cyclery in Newton to get a new Chris King headset installed, and when I picked up the bike I happened to see a 68cm Rivendell Atlantis bike that was also in for service. It had a very high stem called a Nitto dirt drop. I asked if Harris had one for sale, and they did, so now I have my bars high enough and I don't have that ugly, kludgy, heavy, steel steerer extender no more!


This makes me happy, because now I have a bike that is comfortable to ride, with decent components, and no obvious kludges:

From the Archives: The tall bike 25 years ago

And now a word from the archivist:


That's me on the bike in 1980 or so, in it's as-delivered state (except for the enormous, solid aluminum seat post). Note the tiny little handlebars, cramped up riding position, quaint Bell helmet, and those unbelievable electric blue Adidas sneakers...

The tall bike project

I've been spending a lot of time working on my bike recently. After riding it for a short while with the upright MTB stem and riser bars using SRAM twistgrip shifters, I decided that:

• It didn't handle well. The steering was extremely light and twitchy. I attribute this to the fact that the riding position put most of my weight over the rear wheel.
• It wasn't comfortable. The trouble with the riser bars is that you don't have any choice of hand position, so I was finding that my wrist was getting stiff and sore.
• It wasn't aerodynamic. When riding on the flat or downhill, I could feel the wind pressing against my chest.

So I decided to re-do the bike using drop bars. The existing drop bars that were on the bike were tiny, and the existing stem was normal size, so the bars were too low. I decided to go with a set of 46cm Nitto noodle bars and a Nitto technomic stem. But even this combination put the bar too low for me. So I got a steel steerer extender which, when used with the Nitto stem, puts the bars about 2 cm below the level of the seat. I also got a set of Take-Offs from Kelly, which let me mount old-style friction shifters in a geezer-friendly location near the brakes. Despite how wacky they look, they're actually extremely nice to use:


As I started to think more about the fit of the bike, my attention turned to the crankset. The existing crank was a low-end three-piece crankset with steel chainrings and 170mm cranks. After reading various articles on crank length, I decided to see if I could come up with a set of 185mm cranks for the bike. But, as with all of these upgrade paths, there were constraints. First, I didn't want to change the front derailleur, so that meant sticking with a double. Second, I didn't want to change the chain or the cluster, so that meant avoiding hyperglide or ulgtraglide chainrings.

Harris had a promising solution: a set of vintage 185mm TA Vis Pro 5 ("cyclotouriste") crankarms.

Unfortunately, they did not have chainrings that would allow me to maintain the current gearing on the bike (which I like, chart appended below).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
SP  CRxFW    GI      GIdf      DI      diff      DF        PRPM      RT
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1>  40x32   33.75   14.29%   106.03   15.15    8'10.03"   597.57   1:1.25
2>  40x28   38.57   13.75%   121.18   16.66   10' 1.18"   522.88   1:1.43
3>  52x32   43.88    2.56%   137.84    3.53   11' 5.84"   459.67   1:1.62
4>  40x24   45.00   11.43%   141.37   16.16   11' 9.37"   448.18   1:1.67
5>  52x28   50.14    7.69%   157.53   12.12   13' 1.53"   402.21   1:1.86
6>  40x20   54.00    8.33%   169.65   14.14   14' 1.65"   373.48   1:2.00
7>  52x24   58.50    8.60%   183.78   15.80   15' 3.78"   344.75   1:2.17
8>  40x17   63.53   10.50%   199.58   20.96   16' 7.58"   317.46   1:2.35
9>  52x20   70.20    9.89%   220.54   21.81   18' 4.54"   287.30   1:2.60
10>  40x14   77.14    7.06%   242.35   17.11   20' 2.35"   261.44   1:2.86
11>  52x17   82.59   21.43%   259.46   55.60   21' 7.46"   244.20   1:3.06
12>  52x14  100.29    0.00%   315.06    0.00   26' 3.06"   201.11   1:3.71
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
SP  CRxFW    GI      GIdf      DI      diff      DF        PRPM      RT
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

But I found a fellow in Toronto (Bicycle Specialties) who had a stock of TA Cyclotouriste rings, so I had him send me the rings and the mounting hardware.

Next stop was a new bottom bracket. The experts at Harris (Jim, Sheldon, and Dave) put their heads together and decided that a 116 (+5 asymmetry) Phil Wood bracket would work for me. Pricey at $112 plus two mounting rings and two Phil consumer tools.

When I got this home, I obsessed for a long, long time about whether this setup was going to work. There are a lot of considerations when selecting a bottom bracket, especially when you have long feet and you're sticking ginormous 185 cranks on an existing bike:

• Chainline
• Front derailleur operating limits
• Clearance between pedal and ground, which is related to
  
• Q-factor (tread)
• Interference between rider's heel and rear derailleur
• Clearance between crankarms and rear wheel stays
• Interference between rider's toe and front wheel when turned

And the problem is that there's no way to tell if it's going to work without actually installing it on the bike. Which means your pristine $112 Phil Wood bottom bracket ain't going to be so pristine when you take it back to exchange it. Plus, of course, you cannot assemble and disassemble the crankset without an appropriate crank puller, which in the case of a TA crank takes a 23mm (as opposed to the normal 22mm) thread. This is not a case of blame the contrary French, however, as the TA crank predates the other cranks that used 22mm.

Now there are two suppliers of 23mm crank pullers, Park tool used to make a reversible 22/23mm puller with handle and VAR still does, although their distribution in the US is spotty. Turns out that Harris didn't have one of these, but VELO Orange did.

In order to minimize potential pedal-to-ground interference problems (all of the technical advisors to whom I spoke had the same response: "Don't pedal through the turns, buddy"), I bought a set of MKS platform pedals, which are narrow and slightly shallower than the non-name touring pedals that had been on the bike. Plus, they take 'standard' MKS toeclips.

So last night I put this whole thing together, and the end result is pretty amazing: The chainline is quite close in, the crank arms clear the rear stays by just 3 or 4 mm, and my feet clear the derailleur. Because of the closer Q-factor and the smaller pedals, I have at least as much pedal clearance through turns as I did before. The only real interference is toes-to-pedals, which is a non-issue above parking lot speeds.


Parenthetically, I would note that this upgrade has been extremely satisfying on a personal level. From the moment I first acquired the bike about 25 years ago, I was not satisfied with the crankset. I disliked the cast-in-place nonremovable chain guard, the heavy steel chain rings, and the fact that the damn thing was warped.

Sweet new TA crankset

Nasty old "custom" crankset

I never had the time or money when I was a kid to go through the rigmarole of putting on a proper crankset (and before the whole internet thing, living up in the woods of New Hampshire, it would have been impossible to find the components anyway.)

Anyway, the only thing left to do now is take it out for a ride!

Which I did. It works well, and is very comfortable. Biggest problem is that the front shifting requires more finesse than the old chainrings. In particular, if you don't downshift firmly and with an appropriate amount of pedaling force, the chain gets hung up on the inner ring, and then wedges itself into the chainstay.

Tall web resources

The height site.

Tallpeople.org.

And (drum roll please) an actual tall blog. Kind of.

More on Casual Male "XL"

A reference to Casual Male's target customers as tall but not fat.

A really tall bike...

Yao Ming's Gunnar Rockhound:

I'm not sure that Yao's bike is that much bigger than mine, even though he's 10 inches taller than me.

By the way, I've been out riding on my tall bike a few more times. After 25 years, I have to say it takes a while to get used to riding with cars. The roads around here are narrow, and the drivers are...well...not particularly skillful or considerate. But I have a little loop that I like first thing in the morning.

Tall bike

Twenty-five years ago, I used to ride a bike a fair amount. I had a Univega Viva Sport bike that I purchased around 1981. It was a low to mid-range Japanese road bike with a Chrome-Moly butted lugged frame, Sun-Tour drive train, no-name cranks and headset, and Dia Compe side pull brakes.

In order to ride the bike, my Dad fabricated for me a 14" seat post turned from billet aluminum (solid). There did not exist at that time seatposts longer than about 8 inches. The bike was never that comfortable, because the handlebars where way below the level of the seat.

Anyway, recently I decided to try to rehabilitate that bike as a more relaxed cruising/commuting bike. I found that the selection of seat posts and stems was much greater now. This is what I came up with:


The work I did on it to bring it back to life (it had been sitting in a series of barns and garages since the mid 80s):

• Disassemble, clean, repack, and adjust wheel bearings. Old-style cone and cup bearings in 27" wheels.
• New tires (Conti Gator Slicks) and tubes. The selection of tires for old-style 27" rims is pretty limited. I may switch over to 700c wheels at some point, along with long-reach brakes.
• Clean and lubricate chain.
• Replace seat post, seat, and handlebars with MTB units. Switch shifters to indexed SRAM MTB shifters. These worked perfectly with the Sun Tour Vx derailleurs on the bike.
• Install a taillight and buy a Gilo helmet.

Overall, I'm very impressed with the variety, quality, and low price of bike components nowadays.

How's the riding part? I would say tentative. It's hard to get used to riding with cars, and I quickly determined that the original saddle was no longer compatible with my 25 years older behind.

If you're 205 cm tall, how much should you weigh?

After many years of weighing about 250 pounds, I recently decided to lose some weight. It was a lot easier than I thought, and now I'm down to 215 pounds. But I don't really know if I was overweight before or not, and I don't know if I'm underweight now.

	250 lbs	215 lbs
BMI	27 (overweight)	23.2 (normal)
Tall BMI	26.1 (overweight)	22.4 (normal)
Dr. Koop	Ideal (232-255)	Underweight
People's Choice	Overweight	Ideal
Devine Ideal Weight	Overweight	Ideal

So clearly, everybody except Dr. Koop (a bit of a pudge himself) thinks I was overweight at 250, and pretty much at a good weight at 215.

So why are there no tall blogs?

Because being tall is so incredibly boring? I mean there are scads of fat blogs, and I don't think being fat is any more interesting than being tall. More common, maybe. Short people blog, but being tall is much more difficult than being short.

Casual Male thinks I'm "freakish"

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Casual Male CEO David Levin displays the contempt with which he regards the customers of Casual Male Big and Tall, recently renamed Casual Male XL.

Q. What exactly makes the name XL more palatable than Big and Tall?

A. It is strong. It exudes confidence. Whereas big and tall is like, 'I am a freak.'

Other tidbits from the interview include a discussion of the travails of getting "premier" clothing labels to manufacture (or license the manufacture of) large sizes:

Q. Casual Male XL has persuaded elite brands to manufacture big and tall sizes. Why did it take them so long?

A. These brands do a lot of aspirational, inspirational-type branding. To see it on a big size — they don't want to go there. It took us a year to work with Reebok, to have them shop our stores and realize that a lot of these customers are jocks themselves. These were football players and basketball players so why would you not try to continue the brand heritage into those sizes?

I find Mr. Levin's cynicism breathtaking. In an earlier interview with the Boston Globe, he said:

Q: You recently changed the name of stores from Casual Male Big & Tall to Casual Male XL. Why such a fuss over a few letters?

A: The big and tall market is a $6 billion business. It was puzzling why our market share -- at $430 million -- was so small. We got a focus group together of men those sizes who never shopped at Causal [sic] Male. We asked them what their perception was and it was alarming. They thought we didn't carry their sizes, that we don't have their brands, and that our clothes are for older men. When we asked them about the big and tall market, they said: 'We're not those guys. Those are obese guys, overweight guys.'

Q: But these sound like big and tall men. Aren't they?

A: Even though at a 42- or 44-inch waist, they are pretty big guys, it's a matter of self-perception. Today, we don't think we're as old as we are, as big as we are. We don't look in the mirror and see ourselves that way. Lazy, fat, and unmotivated were what they associated with the words big and tall. XL, though, that's powerful, that's masculine. So the light bulb went off.

It's wonderful for David Levin's wallet, I'm sure, that he has figured out how to sell clothes to overweight men without forcing them to admit that they are overweight. But what about tall guys? Casual Male retail stores do not stock any pants with inseams longer than 36 or waist sizes smaller than 44.