Roady: tales of misadventure.

So i bought a road bike. After much deliberation and some sideways looks at ebay, i decided it would be best to test ride and then make a decision. With the help of Dave-chops-optional at Alpine Bikes, i was fitted tirelessly on several bikes and given the opportunity to ride them to check for fit and comfort.

In the end i went for a cannondale caad 8 Tiagra, size 54, with triple chainring. Having not had a geared bike for 10 years, and never had a proper road bike, i was impressed that a low-of-the-mid end bike could be as light, function as well and have as many features as it did. I guess thats progress for you.

I then decided to get out for a ride to check this road riding thing out.

Glasgow on a frosty morn led to views as i climbed out to Mugdock and then onto Aberfoyle. First mistake: there is no road from here west...when i have done this previously i have gone off road albeit on flat dirt road. Oh well, over the Dukes Pass it is.

Good climbing. Getting used to the short wheelbase (relatively) and the stiff bb area. I cant see me ever going into the small chainring tho' not in the uk at least. We'll see. It can't weigh that much...

Then click up into top gears and tuck for the decent. Weight distribution good. As was noted when i was trying them out, the 54 cannondale seems to have plenty reach and excellent steering and weight distribution for my size, even though on paper it seemed small.

The road past Brig O'Turk is partially flooded and there is a new trail following the road into Glen Finglas...Hmmm.....

Thence to Calendar, a quick sausage roll and irn bru (its very cold now) and onwards. My plan was vague, i wanted to duck off south back to glasgow shortly, but had forgotten the road that does so led straight back to Aberfoyle. So, onwards to Doune and Stirling. Would i have enough light? maybe....it was a clear day after all.

With a tail wind, the road passed easily as i sped to Stirling. I.m not sure normal reach bars are my thing. I like the length of the stem to the tops, but the hoods seem maybe a cm too far....and i'm not sure i want to move the saddle forward. We'll see.

At Denny it went dark like someone turned the lights out. Again, i had not looked in detail at a route, so even though i wanted to return directly to Glasgow, infact i had to go via Kilsyth. The roads i had been on for the last hpour and a half had been unpleasantly busy. I guess the M80 road works were responsible for the back-road traffic, but i wanted off. The road to kilsyth approaching rush hour, in the dark, with no pavement and lots of winding up and down was horrific. Yes drivers screamed at me with their windows down to get lights, get off the road etc, but what were my choices? i had made a mistake and just needed to bash on, pull off when it got too busy and just try and stay safe.

A puncture in Kirkintilloch as the temperature was plunging meant my plan to take the canal back to Glasgow, and thus be off the roads, was deemed insensible. "trina! help!" i tried to warm up in the Stables pub as trina rushed to my rescue, but i had to hide under the duvet to get my core temp up.

So: what did i learn. Road riding is more than just riding. Planning routes is going to be important.

75 miles took me way longer than anticipated. 5 hours in point of fact. Either my legs are slow, or the gears don't necessarily mean average speed is huge.

Heavy traffic and bad roads are not fun.

I think i want compact short reach bars.

There we go, it isn't straight from Roleur, but its the only tale i have - so far.

Kiwi fruit.

Go register at sswc10nz for updates.

Cold storage.

So last night we came home and the cat was chasing a wee wire coil around. It shot into the bike room and under a set of shelves. Attached to which there are one or 2 bikes i'm quite partial to. I noticed that the shelving was leaning over at a pretty messy angle. Ooops.

Seems as though my old ikea shelves are overloaded and it is time to research some better storage options. Fortunately, it seems to be a pretty good time to buy old warehouse stock...

Sprinter cut.

For those of us with LEGS.

Standing start.

Watch it.

Muso.

So, yes, them crooked vultures album is out. It is good, but its a grower...


Then there is radio moscow who have a new album out - brain cycles. All good. Will be in europe feb ish?

And more...

Things to ponder...

From our Albert "If something worth living for is worth dying for, what about something not worth dying for?"

And Jean Paul "How do you really act in private?"

Not forgetting Franz "Without love, without people, what is a person?"

Do not go gentle into that good night.

What Dylan said.

It is about that time to make some sort of plan. Drifting aimlessly is only good for the none-sentient.

I've already mentioned my thoughts of doing something different on bikes. Those idyll dreams are beginning to coalesce. Saab Salomon Avalanche.

I have also had some thoughts on a bike to use. I'm blaming 2004 ssec champ Dan Darwood squarely, if not fairly for that. More on this soon.

What else? Apart from drowning in H1N1, anyway?

Cross racing is always hard. Perhaps one of the joys of it in Scotland has been the variety of the courses. The last race in Inverkeithing was for me a watershed. I'm going to have a break.

The course was very euro. Essentially an 80% grass, waterlogged loop, with 3 staircases thrown in for good measure. All corners were off camber. The bikes packed up remarkably fast (apart from those that fit fatties fine). With so many derailleurs hanging off i wondered if there would be a rush on singlespeed cross bikes, but with the pain in my arms from dragging my bike around in foot deep mud i doubt that will be the case.

This is all well and good if there is the resource and desire for second bikes and pit crews but for me it forms an impasse. No more for the moment. I'll have a week or 2 off and then re-assess.

And so much for that. Maybe i am weak, but i will not choose to be weak *and* unhappy.

The world continues to steam-roll towards doom, with china trying all sorts to block free speech and the mess in the middle east . Pathetic, isn't it?

Maybe it is truly time to throw my arms up in the air and go hide in the highlands. Who knows?



Meanwhile, it's a case of continuing to claw and scrape my way through the day to day, all the while remembering that which the existentialists held so dear: the challenge is to choose to live.

Kinda diggin' this now...

So: the new wheels dropped some weight. taking off one or 2 extraneous parts dropped a bit more. Then changing the Gore cables to nokon (due to the tight bends forced in the crook of the drops because they are both short reach and compact) improved the feel and dropped some more weight.



20.9 lb. But i guess the real story is that nothing is 'light' and it has bb7 discs. Rumours of bb9s abound, but whether there will be a road version or not is impossible to say. The cane creek short pull, scr 5(compact) levers are great - wide paddles, and the compact reach means a lot less bother in the drops. Better yet, the hoods are fatter and less drooped than the dia compe 987's so the comfort factor is better all around.



The cable routing worked out really tight. Smooth lines i can thank IF for. The steel conduit is carefully bent in 3 dimensions and all the joins are sealed with shrink wrap. Smooth.

It won't challenge for lightest cross bike, but i love it.

Not the way to go...

More on this shortly.

750g from 900g.

So, after a flurry of wheel building, i now have dropped 150 g from the front wheel on the cross bike, and 135g from the rear. stan's 355 29 rims (thanks raoul), to dt revo with alloy nips stuck in place with loctite, and a dt 340 front hub (centrelock) and a 240 ss rear.

Sweet. Rimstrips are Ritchey.

They were hard to build so that the tension average wasn't exceeded (80kgf with less than 10% variation)...i always tend to build to a much higher tension than that....We'll see how they last.