Monthly Archives: June 2010

The Bob Jackson frame is back complete with a bottom bracket that looks to be fitted straight, they even managed to send the correct forks back with it. All being well, and provided the LBS don’t find anything else wrong, I should be able to pick it up after work tomorrow.

Having received the returned frame yesterday, Bob Jackson Cycles reckon there is nothing wrong with the BB shell and so won’t do anything to rectify it. As a last resort they’ve been asked to fit a BB in the hope it might prompt a phone call saying “oops, it is a bit wrong isn’t it”. However the LBS had heard nothing back when I popped in after work, so the frame may reappear in the next few days.

Today was my first voluntary long commute to work. I took the fixed-gear Tricross instead of the Lemond, and consequently was about 5 minutes slower, albeit over a fractionally longer route. Part of that will be the lowish 42:18 gearing, and part down to the 32mm cross tyres instead of lightweight 25mm slicks.

Unfortunately it was very humid this morning, and there was a slight drizzle at the Bitton end of the loop, so I got to work absolutely drenched in sweat. However no-one has complained of the smell yet, so I might get away with it.

Whilst spinning back along the canal towards the end of my ride this evening, I managed to ride under a bridge in the dry, and appear on the other side in a somewhat surprising rain storm. Despite the mild soaking on the way back it was a good ride. I’ve got nettle rash and bramble cuts on most limbs, and I think I’ve found the source of one lot of creaking on the Hemlock, but not the other. It’s a start though.

I may or may not ride the long way to work tomorrow, it’ll depend on whether or not I wake up early enough and can be bothered to sort kit out really.

Spurred on by a week of decent commuting, a ride down to Chew Valley Lake was in order for today, the first time for just over two years. After rather too much faffing, I left the house somewhat later than planned just after 9 and headed out along the cycle track. Despite not having ridden the route for ages I only got slightly off-route once and had to loop back on myself slightly then wing it a bit to get back to where I should be. The biggest problem today was the heat, by the time I reach Saltford on the way home I was out of water, otherwise I’d have taken a longer route back and increased the mileage a bit.

In the end I did 36 miles with 1800+ ft of climbing, making it 108.5 miles for the week, more than I did in most months last year, and my longest week for nearly 4 years.

The last of the semi-organised rides to work today, and again there were only 2 of us. As neither of use were in a particular hurry we rode back at a leisurely pace meaning I did the round trip in 53 minutes.

Time will tell if I keep up with my plan of continuing to do the longer commute a couple of times per week whilst it’s still light by 07:30.

Back in mid-May, a semi-custom Bob Jackson Vigorelli frame was ordered for me through an LBS and all was well with the world. Almost 4 weeks to the day later a beautiful frame was delivered to the shop, complete with the wrong forks. They’d supplied threaded, we’d ordered threadless. That didn’t prove to be too much of a problem as two days later a new set were being built and sprayed, and they arrived yesterday. Plans were made to collect the bike on Friday, a suitable route for the initial ride was decided on, and all was again well with the world.

That is until today, which is coincidentally the day I made the first payment for the bike.

In order to start the build process the LBS mechanic retrieved the frame from it’s packaging and started to chase out the threads in the bottom bracket shell and face it properly. When the two facing tools didn’t meet in the middle, he realised something was amiss. The drive side threads haven’t been cut straight, as soon as you screw something into the threads it sits off-centre. Not ideal for a bottom bracket on a fixed-gear bike. Apparently Bob Jackson Cycles were somewhat dismissive of the problem when contacted, and don’t seem to believe anything can be wrong, but the frame and both sets of forks are sat in a box waiting to be couriered back to Leeds tomorrow.

Hopefully they’ll see the error of their ways, or rather the error of their bottom bracket shell threads, and sort out a swift replacement. However I fear it’ll be at least another 4 weeks before I’m up and running. I’d look for an alternative, except the reason for going custom is that I couldn’t find what I wanted off the shelf, and going to any other custom frame supplier such as Mercian will take just as long if not longer.

Just two of us made the trip today. We had a far more leisurely ride back into Bath, but I still did the round trip in 52 minutes.

A much better turnout today. 5 of us made the ride into Bath, and a 6th had met us at the start but headed in along the road rather than wait for us and use the cycle track.

I set another fastest time on the way out, mainly because I actually read the instructions for my GPS and worked out how to enable auto-pause which shaved a couple of minutes off. We had a much more leisurely ride back to Bath, taking a couple of minutes longer than usual.

A free breakfast awaits me in exchange for riding in today, although I think I’ll save it for Friday. Most of the rest of today will be taken up with the cycle open day we’ve organised. Various local bike shops and cycling organisations are coming, all we need now is for the staff to come in and visit.

The same intrepid trio made the trip today. In search of a bit more speed I’d dug the Lemond out which turned out to help quite a lot.  I took nearly 3 minutes off the ride out to Bitton, and another 1.5 off the ride back, taking the journey time down to just over 48 minutes. I could probably drop another minute or two off that as I kept getting told off for riding too quickly when on the front of the line.

I was up at the crack of dawn today, well 6am, to ride out to Bitton Station to help with the semi-organised ride to work week. I ended up mistiming it slightly and arrived at 07:40 for an 8am ride giving plenty of time to lounge around in the sun admiring the occasional bit of totty riding past.

There was a stunning turnout for the ride today, myself and Steve who were taking the long way in to help run the ride, and Andy who would have normally left Bitton at 07:30 but waited around for the rest of us. We had a fairly swift ride back along the track, I ended up doing 12.5 miles in around 52 minutes.

My aim is to do the ride everyday this week, we’ll see how long I manage to stick to that.

The Peregrine now has almost matching wheels. The Bontrager Race on the front has been replaced with a Deore/A319 combo to match the Deore XT/A319 on the rear. It’s a damn site easier to get a road tyre to mount cleanly now, no washing-up liquid or swearing needed any more.

10am on a Saturday morning is a very early start for a ride for me, I’m usually still tucked up in bed at that sort of time. However Al needed to ride early, and Andy wanted to christen the old Kona Lava Dome Al had passed on to him. I led a ride round the usual Uni route, the dust having been damped down slightly by the rain yesterday evening. It was still nicely fast rolling though and we hardly saw anyone out until we reached the canal for the spin home.

Time to re-hydrate with a small beer, shower, then head into town to pick a new wheel up from the bike shop.

The weather forecast didn’t look promising for today, I almost didn’t bother bringing a bike up with me, but I’m glad I did. We rode into Kettering mid-afternoon to give us time for a wander around first. We’d already picked out a likely spot to watch from, if there were going to be any crashes, it would be on the last corner and that’s where we wanted to be.

As we were in plenty of time we walked round the course to see what was about, and the answer was not a lot really. Halfords and Endura had stands somewhere along the start/finish line, and there were a couple of other bits dotted about, but that was it.

After a complete loop of the circuit we stopped off at a coffee shop for coffee and cake, I had to live up to my new Velocake cap.

Suitably refreshed we took up our position on the outside of the final corner and watched the camera bike rider try and get the corner dialed in, sparks were seen on several occasions as he bottomed out the exhaust on the road. The race commenced slightly late, and we were entertained with a speeding line of rides every two minutes or so. The pack stayed together for the majority of the race with a couple of breaks towards the end. I won’t give the result away, mainly because all I know is that a bloke on a bike won, and another came second. The rest followed in rapid succession.

As soon as the race was over, we retrieved the bikes from the barrier they were chained to, loaded the worlds heaviest lock back into my Wingnut bag, and rode the few miles back to the house before it got dark as neither of us had thought to bring lights.

An excellent evening out, it’ll be interesting to watch it on telly tomorrow to see everything we missed and to try and spot myself on the big screen.