New Outside Column, Same Old Creaking Sound...

Firstly, here's my latest column for Outside, which is about dooring:

As you may or may not know, it's generally the publication and not the writer who comes up with the headline, and that's the case here.  Of course I'm perfectly fine with this headline (it's certainly better than "Start Hitting Cyclists With Your Car Door" ), though my original headline was something along the lines of "You Can Learn Everything You Need To Know About Americans By The Way They Open Their Car Doors," which might give you a slightly better idea of what I was going for here.  (And what I was going for, in case it's still not clear, is that Americans are selfish assholes.)

Secondly, remember how I said I was battling a creak on the SS Renovo?  Well, someone suggested replacing the current skewer with a Shimano one, which is excellent advice.  Indeed, I've silenced more than one creaky bicycle over the years by ditching crappy open cam skewers in favor of the superior Shimano/Campagnolo-style ones, but I was so busy obsessing over cracks and bottom brackets and so forth that I hadn't thought to employ that tactic here.  So this morning I swapped skewers and headed out for a ride, and guess what?

It's still creaking like a floorboard when you're trying not to wake the baby.

So I stopped next to a pair of inebriated Lime bikes and commenced futzing:

I even attempted to snug up the bolts that hold the dropouts together (and not for the first time):

But to no avail.

Next I'll just swap wheels, and the only reason I haven't already is because the Renovo is my only 11-speed bike so in order to switch wheels I also have to switch cassettes--not to mention brake pads because of the crabon rims.

Still, I can't get past those cracks, which you can see here:

And here:

And also am I crazy or is it spreading over here?

Or, who knows, it seems like there's all kinds of places where this frame could make noise:

Honestly I absolutely love the way this bike rides, but this is no way to live, and if I can't figure out what's causing the creaking soon I may have to "retire" it.

Somebody fetch me my artisanal axe...

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