Monthly Archives: June 2009

Good weather, good beer, good food, good riding, good friends. All in all it was good.

A nice shiny new chainset has arrived in the post, I could build a bike round this :)

23.5 miles on the crossbike tonight out to Bradford-on-Avon and back. It was fantastically hot and sunny, and very very dusty.

The seatpost was still slipping slightly on the 456 tonight, so I’ve replaced the Thomson post with the best post in the world ever, a Raceface XY. Time will tell if it’s an improvement or not.

That’s how long it’s been since I rode a geared mountain bike off road, gears aren’t really necessary round here, but they do make the first 20 minutes of climbing out of the valley slightly easier. I just did the normal 11 mile route with 750′ or so of climbing. Oddly I was about 0.5mph slower on than last time out on the singlespeed possibly due to the heavier bike with fatter tyres. The rear wheel looks a bit wonky at the moment, but I have a feeling that it may be the tyre rather than the rim, time for investigation later.

Riding home on a bike with the seat at it’s absolute lowest is not a comfortable experience.

The weekly email newsletter has just been sent round at work, proudly stating that:

Free breakfast for staff who cycle to work
On Wednesday 17 June, staff will be able to enjoy a free breakfast as a reward for cycling to work.

.
I shall bear that in mind for 2015.

In advance of a trip to Welshland next week, it seemed sensible to resurrect a bike with gears. Whilst the 69er is a fantastic bike, a singlespeed would probably not be ideal for Afan. So the 456 was retrieved from it’s resting place, the tyres were pumped up, and the chain even received some oil in anticipation of a ride to work today.

The bike felt very odd to start with, however I quickly decided the saddle was an inch or so too low. Once at work out came the multitool, and the saddle duly move up an inch, however on tightening up the seatclamp both bolts stripped, making the ride home an interesting proposition.

I blame all this on what I suspect is a slightly shonky seattube in the 456. The Thomson seatpost continually slips, and to keep it in place I had to resort to a slightly OTT DMR double clamp done up to the official "bastard tight" level.

It’s cycle to work day today which usually means that I walk in just to be awkward, however I actually rode in today and didn’t even claim my free breakfast. The fact that it’s cycle to work day is probably the reason why it was pouring with rain on my way home after work.

Thursday saw my first proper off-road ride with the Jones bars on the Unit. Whilst they are very comfortable they don’t work so well on the Unit which has stupidly short forks fitted. With sub-400mm forks the front end is way too low, even with a good couple of cm of spacers under the stem. For the moment I’ll go back to the 2" riser bars and ponder the addition of some longer, and possibly bouncy, forks in the future.

Dusty Trails. Singlespeed. Twatty bars. Sunny summer evening. Tingling legs from nettle rash. Creaking bike. The smell of burning brake pads. Totty. 11 miles, many more smiles. Beer to finish. Heaven.

Did I say the trails were dusty?

Despite grand plans to fit a couple of decent rides in over the weekend whilst I was away, all we managed was probably the slowest 6 mile ride in history. We did the 6 miles on flat dusty trails in just over a hour plus a mid-point ice-cream stop, mainly because one of the riders was only 7.

After a sweaty day at work today I headed straight out on the 69er for an even hotter and very dusty 11 mile loop round the Uni, delivering Ethan’s birthday present on the way. Same again on Thursday hopefully.