Education We Like to Ride Bicycles

Lurvely dude.



I got my FSA K-Force carbon bars today, about to fit them now.


I've got a Joplin on the shopping list aswell after racking my balls a couple of weeks back... £150 is a small price to pay not to feel that pain again. :S

Pics up in a bit!




EDIT: Apologies for crappy phone pics...

 

Some footage from the start of the 40 mile charity ride I did today, started at 10:30am, finished at 3:30ish (I had to spend ALOT of time waiting for my mate).

Bloody route was anti-clockwise this year and no exaggeration it was 60-70% uphill climbs... never spent so much time in the granny ring.

A little disappointed to be honest, was labelled as a mountain bike ride but 80% of it was on normal tarmac roads. Me and my mate were laughing at all the roadies showing up in the morning but i'm sure they were laughing at us full sussers when we crawled over the finish line.

Good day though, ~140 cyclists of all ages and types, no major accidents (but a few close calls from asshats going too fast on windy country lanes). Bike handled it supremely aswell, with the front locked out and pro-pedal switched on and never felt like I was gonna gass-out on the longer climbs and when we got to the country park the Nobby Nics were just unbelievable. The front didn't step out of line once and it was as if the rear asked politely to slide out, waiting for me to say "yeah i'm ready, go for it" before letting go and hooking back up for the exit.... must have made up 15-20 places blasting through the singletrack.

Doing another charity ride this time next month for Orchid Cancer, this time in fancy dress.

 

Picked myself up a POV camera on monday, and have been playing around with it a good bit since. It's a little GoPro HD Hero, and honestly, it shoots better video than a few dedicated video cameras that are worth a good few bucks more that I've played about with.

Anyway, here is one of my first runs with the camera, sorry it's not on youtube, but they've got a 10 minute limit on their videos, and I didn't fee like cutting it down that much.

 

Stunning bars - look totally cool but I must admit I am still slightly scared of carbon bars on my bike so have stuck with alu ones.

BTW what bike have you got there?? Looks like a Trek EX something? I have a EX8

 

2010 EX8.



(pic before changing tyres, bars and stem)

 

Looks about as clean as my '08 EX8

 

Its a looooovely sunny afternoon, so time to break out the roady

 

We went out last night and did 35mile in just over 3 hours. There was some cracking single swoopy/rooty single track going on. The arm pump I had at the end of it was amazing.

 

I did a 'long way round' 18 miles, then had a nice game of croquet, then a leisurely 3 mile back

 

I'm getting paid to ride my bike........


The school I work in is taking some of the kids mountain biking.
As I'm a MIAS level 2 instructor I get to do it

So, Monday, Tuesday And Wednesday Afternoons, not only do I do no real work.
I get paid to ride a mountain bike around Delamere.

And some of the kids are pretty good on bikes to, even get to do a bit of shredding.



Sometimes. I LOVE my job.

Mornings- Check IT systems and do a bit of tech stuff (and interweb research )
Afternoons - Mountain bike .

 

I can do that one better: at any point throughout my entire working day, I can just grab any customers bike and take it outside for an extended test-ride under the guise of "customer service".

When it's super nice outside I make sure to "test ride" every single bike that passes my bench. Most of the other guys do the same at the shop


On a side note, I've just made the jump to clipless pedals this week, and wow is that ever a difference! The amount of power I can get down on take-off (I'm spinning the rear wheel quite a bit now), plus the outstanding amount of comfort that the shoes provide over normal flat-bottomed shoes with normal pedals is mind-boggling.

I've got Crank Brothers Candy pedals installed on both my Langster and fixie-conversion right now, and love the feeling of being connected to both of these bikes, which really tempts me to try it out on one of my XC rigs! Though I'm still in the market for pedals with less float (tried a set of Shimano 747's, which are fifteen years old, and beaten to hell and didn't like the feel of them, and given the amount of Crank Bro's pedals we have kicking about, I managed to find two abandoned sets that I could "borrow", and have loved the feeling of them quite a bit so far)

 

I have tried at least 3 different clipless systems and Crank Brothers' is without a doubt the best. Been running Mallets for a good 4-5 Years now, which must be a testament to their greatness if I was running them when I was 12!

I'm in the market for a oldie road bike for a fixie conversion too at the moment, just cause I'm a hipster like that

 

I went clipless for a year or so.

you could get power down on the up stroke.

But they're never a clean bail.
I gave them up.

I use tripple traps and a pair of etnies

 

Decided to finally take my Marin out for a good rip (first time this year) up at the local hill, and managed to get a quick video of it. Still needs a lot of work if I'm going to keep it (despite how hard I was beating on the bike, the fork never went past about three quarters of it's total travel), but it rides absolutely amazingly.


First ride on the tires (2.25" crossmarks), brakes (Shimano Saint), and seatpost (Joplin). I'm absolutely amazed at how all three bits perform.



Despite the video being shot in 720P@60Hz, and being re-encoded at nearly the same, youtube seems to hate good quality video... Same video on PinkBike, in much much better quality!

 

Great, i like riding bike

 

Just last week I had a flat and now there's something going terribly bad in the bottom bracket.. Sigh. Also lately I've been thinking I don't really know what kind of bike would I buy next even if I did have the money. Loving freeride/jumpy bumpy stuff, but there just aren't any good spots nearby Some light freeride bike maybe that I could also run XC with. Anything would be better than the totally beat up dirt bike. Sigh.


Also thanks Malfoleo for ruining my day again Damn that place seems smooth, it's just rocky hills and swamps over here.

 

Link

Nothing new to report, just thought it was an awfully pretty photo of my precious!

 

You're welcome! But thats just in the city (about a half-hours ride from my apartment, actually), so we've much, much better stuff than that just outside of the city ranging from super-smooth single-track, to the most terrifying down-hill courses you can imagine. The sucky bit is that I'm devoid of both a vehicle, and friends, so I only get to experience the stuff within the city, which gets old really quickly, and is wasted on a bike like my Marin.

 

Last summer I got myself a Specialized Hardrock Disk 2009



I barely used it though and I feel like a loser because I should have used it a lot. I guess the good side is it's still brand new and ready to go this year

Brakes need to be calibrated though. They can barely stop me

 

Pro-tip: those callipers suck, and will barely stop you when properly tuned.

I work at the second largest Specialized dealer in the city and deal with these bikes every day, so trust me when I say that upgrading the brakes on that bike is one of the best things you could do with it.

However, if you can manage to find yourself a set of organic pads for those brakes (good chance you won't, mind you), then they'll pick up a bit in their bite, just expect the pads to wear out a bit quicker, and degrade in their power with any foul weather.

Aside from that quibble though, excellent entry-level bike!