eep! – a blog

Yesterday I managed to find the only few hours of fair weather so far this weekend and rode down to the Zero G bike shop in Bedminster for a test ride of the achingly beautiful Trek District. There has been a ton of hype about it online, mainly I think as a result of it’s somewhat intriguing belt drive system and also perhaps, because this bike has taken what feels like an age to get out into the wild. But it *is* now available, costs £600 and I’ve got the chance to bag one on cyclescheme if I want to for about £30ish per month.

So anyway, I rode the 56cm medium, which seemed to be the right size for my 5’8″ (172cm) height. I had the saddle about 10cm out of the seat clamp, but probably should have gone a bit higher on reflection. As I’m not sure what I’m going to write about it, so I will just categorise as a go and you can post any questions in the comments…

Looks – admit it, half the reason for getting a single speed is because it is pretty. And make no mistake, this a very pretty bike indeed. It looks every bit as good as the photos you’ll have seen online, and simply is a very striking bike. It was the one in the window display at the bike store, so I think that says enough. The only thing I spotted which let the side down a little was that the bottle cage screws on the production bike were in plain metal whereas the official pics show them in orange. Can’t really complain that much though! The frame is an aluminium number with a carbon front fork, painted to match, so if you are hoping for super skinny steel tubing, then you’ll be disappointed and I know this is a bone of contention for a lot of single-speed purists. But whether it upsets the purists or not, it brings me neatly to…

Weight – this is a very light bike indeed. Considerably (and upsettingly) lighter than my road bike in fact. But with no gears and mechanics to drag it down, it isn’t a surprise.

The ride – I didn’t get far as I was a bit nervous about the rain coming down at any moment, but I just went for a spin up North Street and back. The bike pulled away nice and swiftly and I can confirm that the belt drive has no slack in it at all – no different to a chain, except for the spooky silence that accompanied it when I was pedalling. I would need to get more used to the upright riding position which came as something of a shock to me compared to the road bike, but I also found the angled handlebars (pic here by arsbars) left the steering feeling a little twitchy. It is however nice and quick to ride and when I got out of the saddle and pushed it a bit, it did feel very swift indeed. My biggest gripe about the bike altogether though was when it was freewheelling though. I may well be completely spoiled by my road bike, but I found the freewheel to be very clicky and it just didn’t roll as a well as I was expecting, despite the fact that it was on 700c x 25 tyres.

Overall – so would I buy one? Well it’s difficult to say. This is the first single speed I’ve ridden, so I don’t know how it compares to the rest of the competition and I would like to try a few other things including the Kona Paddy Wagon, Specialized Langster and the Giant Bowery.

I think if I were to get one then the following modifications would be in order:

• Swapping the twitchy handlebars for a flat or preferably a bullhorn set, even though I’ll end up paying through the nose for a nice matching set.
• Swapping the pedals for a set of Shimano PD-A530 with an SPD on one side and flat on the other

Finally, afterwards I got back onto my beloved SCR1 and rode it home and it did make me wonder why I’d need another bike, as I still love it to bits. So not a clear cut decision at all. More test rides are needed I think!

Got a question? Post it up in the comments!

Cycled home in 19:38 today. A new PB! Hurrah!

(As a technicality, does a PB only count as the average of the ride to and from work, or will one blazing fast journey do, regardless of the other leg?)

(Obviously, I’m voting for the latter)

Do any of you know that I’ve been cycling to work recently?
*runs from angry readers fed up of more cycling*

Well I have been and as the weather has got progressively colder I’ve been guessing exactly how cold it will be each morning and dressing accordingly to try and balance not freezing to death against not overheating. So in an attempt to take the guesswork out of the situation, I set out the other night to Maplin, home of all things geeky and the spiritual successor to Tandy where I had my first job.

According to their website they had a number of weather station things which had a barometer built in and more importantly an outdoor thermometer so I could tell at a glance (no less!) how cold it was outside. All of them were pretty much the same thing. Little digital clock thingie with a display that would show cloud and sun logos, as well as the indoor and outdoor temperature. The outdoor bit took batteries and then you hung it on a hook (or whatever) outdoors and it transmits the necessary info back to the display inside. Brilliant.

Or so I thought.

On a whim, I opened up the packaging, (which refreshingly wasn’t one of them indestructible plastic clamshell things) had a look at the instructions and there, at the end, in small print it had the immortal words:

“Do not expose external sensor to direct sunlight, or extremes of weather, such as heavy rain”

Hold up. So we have a weather station that you can’t expose to…

…the weather. Genius. I gave up and bought a simple in/out thermometer in the end. The sensor is on a wire I have to hang out the window, but heck, the packaging proclaimed the key thing I look for in a weather recording device. “With 100% waterproof external sensor!” That’s more like it.

Transcript of a voicemail I received earlier today:

“Hi Rob, this is winter calling, I know I’m not due for another couple of months, but I’ll see you at half five once you’ve finished at work for a sneak preview of what I’ve got in store for you – hope you can make it”

This is the reason it is a good idea to start cycling and get into the habit while it is good weather.

And to add insult to injury there is now blue sky outside my window!

Today, on my ride home, not only did I get up into top gear, I also racked up my fastest speed to date on my commute (32.39mph – not *that* fast for a road bike, but fast enough for me). And much more exciting than that, I got home in under 20 minutes, not just slightly under, but a whole 15 seconds under at 19:45.

I am pleased :)

In other “bike news” I have now covered nearly 500 miles since I got the bike three months ago.

And as the final item of “bike news”, I still love my bike – yay!

Firstly, for any of you who know me, I’m not a particularly religious person. I respect religion and those who make it part of thier life (a “you carry on, but please don’t expect me to get involved” type arrangement), but that is about it. I rather like the principle of karma, which might explain why enjoy My Name is Earl so much, but I digress. So on the very simple understanding that if I do good things, good things will happen to me and if I do bad, well bad things happen; read on.

In the last few months, both Dave and I have dramatically cut our car usage to and from work, him by car sharing and me by cycling. Now I can’t pretend for one minute that our sole motive in either case was to reduce pollution and cut the number of cars on the road, as in his case it saved a fortune in fuel costs and in my case I wanted to get the exercise, but in the end a bit of saving the planet certainly crept in.

But since then, a couple of strange, but good co-insidences have happened:

Firstly, within days of starting his car sharing Dave was offered tickets to the recent Foo Fighters gig. You can see what he had to say about it here.

And then, as a result of getting my new bike (have I mentioned that before?), I found myself taking part in Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride on 22nd June. Nokia were sponsoring Bike Week and at the end of the 18 mile ride, promotions people were down there on hand with the latest handsets photographing people. To see your photo, all you had to do was sign into the Bike Week website. This somewhat annoyed me, but I did none the less and as a result, I was entered the prize draw to win a new Nokia handset. And I thought nothing more of it until I got home from work a week or so ago to find an email saying:

Congratulations on winning the Nokia N95 handset for registering your details on the Bike Week Nokia Photo Gallery. Unfortunately, we don’t have your address and so are unable to send the phone to you. Can please confirm your address by replying to this email so I can send the phone out to you early next week.

And since then, the phone has arrived. And it’s awesome. Winner!!

So to finish in the words of Dave:

Now there is no guarantee that if you start car sharing cycling you’ll get offered tickets for one of the biggest gigs in recent memory win an N95, but it might just happen.

Go on – give it a try.

So I have a slightly obssessive relationship with my bike and it turns out that I have a similar thing for my blog’s stats. And the thing that the two have in common is that quite a lot of my (piffling) traffic stems from people searching for the Giant SCR1 bike. So now that I’ve ridden over 250 miles on it, I feel I am in a position to comment on/review it. So if you are here from Google or wherever else, I hope this is of some use to you. Read on…

(more…)

I put in the formal request for the awesome yellow bike today. Hopefully my accounts lady will tick the right boxes and off I jolly well go along the route of road-bike ownership. I can’t wait.

Seriously. I have never been excited about what essesntially amounts to exercise. That I’m paying for and doing voluntarily. Mental.

I’ve driven into work the last two days because the office shower has a bit of a leak and I’m feeling guilty for it as I could/should have ridden really. (My colleagues may have thought differently, what with the smell of cyclist and all that though).

It is the eve of my 30^th birthday and here I am wondering what wondrous, pithy reflections I should put here about my life so far. I did an entry a month ago talking about what my expectations had been of the things I thought I’d achieve or do by the time I was 30, and at the time I had some ideas of a follow up entry to do today.

But I’ve forgotten them all completely.

So maybe it would seem that if nothing else, in the last month, my otherwise functioning brain, has forgotten how to remember things…

Anyway, who cares? For today I test rode the beautiful yellow bike in the cycle blog. I was expecting it to be like nothing I’d ever ridden before and oh my goodness was I right. I have never ridden a bike which was so direct and resistance free. It just goes. I did a little ride around the block from the shop: down a hill, along the main road, up the cycle path and then back along the other main road to the shop. Google maps says it’s 3.6 miles and I breezed it with no effort in no time at all. The bike was just awesome.

I’m getting one. As simple as that.

Back to turning 30 in the next half hour though.

It’s official. I don’t care. I’m going to hit 30 and carry on acting exactly the same way I have until now. I have my low points from time to time (like we all do), but I wouldn’t change how I am for anything. Onwards and upwards.

Life is good :)

Today I feel that I made the move from someone who has recently started cycling to work, to “cyclist”.

Yes, today, I was knocked off my bike by a driver. I was cruising downhill at a good pace, the wind was on my back and all was good, until the lady who didn’t double check before pulling out of the side road actually pulled out of the side ride without looking, leaving me no option but to swerve into a lay-by which led the front wheel to catch the edge of the kerb and me and bike to go sideways along the road.

I have a minor scratch on my left hand (massive props to my boss for telling me to wear gloves all the time for cycling regardless of the weather or I’d have taken most of the skin off the palm of my left hand) and there is a nice bloody scratch a couple of inches long on my left elbow.

Thankfully, you’ll be pleased to know the car and driver were fine. She didn’t even notice and carried on driving…

*sigh*