Education We Like to Ride Bicycles

Santa Cruz launched their updated Tallboy today at my local bike shop!

http://singletrackworld.com/2013/06/santa-cruz-launches-the-tallboy-2/

The SC Syndicate, the factory and some of the UK's bike press have been based their for a weeks riding on the new bikes.

 

My friend in the office has just got himself a tallboy. Got it second hand, carbon frame for just I think about 2.5k. But it only has 100mm travel up front, nice reba fork though. And it has XT groupset. Is a nice bike!

 

Had my first few rides now the worst of the weather (is surely!) past us. Taking it pretty steady as I'm not overly fit or all that confident riding a full sus setup - coming from a hardtail 100mm setup the Heckler is a different beast lol.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/186785634/250217
http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/196664092/250217
http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/200176780/250217

With work and looking after my little one a few days a week its hard finding time sometimes but I'm hoping I can fit at least one a week in and maybe the odd other weekend on a longer ride / trail centre.

 

A few new additions to my Wall Of Interesting Things may just be of interest to a few of you fellow part nerds. This was also an excuse for me to test out my new drop cloth.


There is an interesting story here, but what I know is limited: given to me as a bag of random parts, pieces, then slowly put back together to form what looks functional, this dérailleur is very rather broken, never to be used again. The outer plate on the parallelogram has separated from one sides worth of bushings, and the parallelogram itself is quite rather bent as well.

This is little more than an interesting wall decoration.


Arguably the most interesting addition, if only because I have absolutely no idea of it's history, year it was made, or what happened to the company. Exceptional in quality and heft, this is possibly the nicest, most likely Italian, dérailleur I've ever held from the era I suspect it to be from, that of the late 80's.

And just to save you some time, I've already Google'd information on this lovely little gem for you. Find it here. Seems my suspicions on year and nationality were correct. Nifty.


This. This is damn cool. This is what Deore looked like before it was Deore. Not only that, look around the back for the single coolest plate on a dérailleur I've ever seen...


I'll be honest here: I'm not entirely sure what the intended purpose for this was, but it is damn cool. And yes, this is exactly how it is intended to look.

Should you want more information on this dérailleur just search for "Shimano Super Plate System".

 

I went for another great ride this weekend. We decided to give the Deeside way a go to see how quickly we could do the whole thing and managed from Aberdeen to Aboyne, a distance of 37 miles, before the other half through in the towel due to a sore butt. I was a bit dissapointed as we only had another 10 miles (40-60 minutes cycling) to do to complete the whole thing but it was worth it.

 

I rode a local hill about 2 weeks ago and got joint 1st place on Strava in 45secs (1st was split 3 ways), 3 or 4 days ago I we lost the joint 1st by 4 secs.

Yesterday I went out with the sole intention of reclaiming 1st all for myself, I paced myself all the way to the hill (posting a few top 5 times in other challenges along the way),but I wanted to arrive at the hill fresh.

I managed to get up the hill in 36secs and I'm very happy, but I was on my XC bike, so next time I think I'll go out on my CX bike and see if I can't post a time of around 33/32 secs.

 

I ordered a new frame and headset recently which fingers crossed will be here tomorrow.

Ive an On-One Scandal 16" coming and an FSA Orbit MX. The rest of my kid will carry across from my current bike which is going to become a work commuter hack. Going to keep it simple for that.

The new bike im hoping it'll come in around the 11-12Kg mark. Fingers crossed a picture spam tomorrow though!

 

As with eBay I placed a bid not expecting to win and did...£165 bought me a freshly built unused charge sink:

I wasn't sure how i like it, especially being fixie but its cheap enough to try it out and sell on again if I can't get along with it! (Maybe converting to freewheel first)

Frame- Charge Sink (Large)
Wheels- Raleigh 700c Fixie omega rim wheel set (RGH957W/RGR957W)
Tires- 700x25 Raleigh T1739 Peloton
Tubes- 700x18-25 specialised 0300-0211
Bottom bracket- 68x100.5mm square taper
Chainset- Sturmey Archer single speed RBR700
Handle bar/stem/grips- Outland white handlebar/stem/grip set
Seat post- Raleigh 400mm black aluminium 27.2 mm
Saddle- Charge spoon saddle white
Pedals- Silver DX style pedal
Brakes- Lee Chi side pull brakes (front and back)

 

What cyclocross bike are you riding? I have an itch to get a cyclocross bike, i think they are awesome things. Am probably going to sell my roadie and my hardtail in order to fund it.

 

NEWS just in, the bloke who previously held first spot went out again today taking in this hill on his commute to work and only managed 40 secs (shaving 1sec of his previous time), I feel a fight coming here.

Is the rear hub not a flip flop? If so there should be no converting needed/

I've got a Forme Calver Race from last year, it's great as something rougher than a road bike but not silly like a mountain bike. Where I live we have loads of old railway lines which have been converted to bike routes, these are sometimes tarmac, but more often than not hard pack dusty tracks which I would say it's possible to ride on a road bike, but having a CX bike gives me the option of running a 700x35 slightly knobbly puncture proof tyre which is an advantage.

If you have any spare road tyres keep them as they will go on the CX bike, you'll be running a smaller ring on the front though so you wont get the same speeds.

What sort of riding do you do?

 

Spent the better part of last week and the weekend buying and fitting new/ebay parts on my bike so it now looks like.....

​

My Dog thought it was hilarious that I was taking pics of my bike ....

​

Spec is now as follows...

On-One flat bars (New)
Planet-x 120mm 6 degree rise stem (New)
Planet-x seatpost (New)
Hope 34.9 Seatclamp in Blue (New)
Selle Italia X-1 flow (New)
Shimano MT65 UST wheels (New)
Schwalbe Racing Ralph Evo TL ready tyres (Sealed with Stans) (New - Birthday present from wife)
Hope QR skewers in black (came with bike)
Shimano XTR M975 Brakes (Won for £113 on Ebay last Monday - delivered the same day as seller was only a few miles from me)
Shimano RT75 XT 160mm rotors
Shimano XT M770 shifters, front/rear mech and cassette
Shimano LX HTII Crankset
Aerozine HTII ceramic bearing BB
Cube Aim Disc 2011 model in 20" (Large) frame
Mowa bottle cage and topcap bolts in blue

Things to add in the not too distant future....

Blue hope headset
Blue hope grip-doctors
Possibly blue hope skewers (although the black ones are perfectly fine and functional - they'll just make my OCD twitch as the machining on those doesn't match the machining on the seatclamp!)
Exotic Carbon Forks 44.5cm (For 100mm fork) in white - bulk of my time will be spent on these as I mostly ride on the road (Will eventually get a road/CX bike but for now I need a bike that I can easily mount a childseat to and will be stable enough)
Rockshox SID/REBA/RECON - likely from Ebay/Pinkbike/Bikeradar as I want a QR version for when I decide to venture offroad and test my skills. That and the TORA 302 SL on mine is fubar'd (upper stanchions are chipped/pitted - but I ride with it locked out the whole time so causes me no bother, will just be cheaper to source a new fork than to get it serviced/rebuild it myself)

 

Mostly mountain biking and trail riding but I get out on the road bike during the week in a bid to build up stamina for trail riding. I just find my road bike really unforgiving. Both my bosses have Kona jake the snake bikes - but I quite fancy a cyclo with disc brakes. I quite like the genesis bike with an alfine gear. It won't be for a couple of months that I sort it out.

 

Road bikes with discs are starting to filter out as are road/cx mash-ups - search teh interwebz for the Giant Anyroad - looks like a candidate for MTB biased riders to have the best of both worlds with some limited offroad ability but the light weight and a slightly more forward riding position.

I'll be keeping tabs as things move along and start to build my collection so I have something for whatever mood strikes and can be used all year round.

 

Did anyone else do the Bristol Bikefest this weekend just gone?.

Wen't there with about 20 riding friends and we had a lot of fun . My team of 4 managed to get 26th out of 62 teams which we thought was pretty respectable as we are by no means whippets, there were quite a few proper sponsored teams and lots of race whippet types, as well as normal mtbers. Weather was great, course was fun and spent the rest of the day eating and chatting. It was a 12hr with one teammate on course at a time so plenty of time between laps.

Definitely recommend it to anyone

 

@ Teacherboy - the pics are all broken links..

Was listening to a bit of LBC.co.uk today about cycling safety (focused on London). Apparently a ''study'' has been done which recommends getting more women cyclists on the roads. Despite the fact that out of 14 deaths in 2012, 6 were women, which is a higher percentage.

To round off the discussion people called in about what can be done. The amount of FOOLS who called in to say; ''there should be a road tax and registrations for bikes'' - was staggering.
IMO, investing in the infrastructure, make bike lanes where possible etc would be a far better plan.

30% of Danes commute by bike daily to Copenhagen because of the vast network of cycle lanes and cycle traffic lights etc.
Surely this is all the evidence you need?
Not more useless, expensive, public debate that come up with bollocks solutions like 'get more women cycling'.

 

Fixed

 

30% traffic reduction in London would be amazing, even a 15% would be great!

My new frame arrived today, plus its headset so i popped into my LBS who kindly put it in for a fiver. He noted the inside of the headtube had a couple of bits of swarf left inside so he cleaned it out fully and fitted the new headset in. It wouldn't go quite flush so he explained why and apologised.

Cannot complain really friendly guys didnt belittle me for using internet parts and said if i ned any help to ring and ask or drop in and they can how me how to do things, pretty please with them I have to say!

More over, PHOTOS! More tomorrow when i finish stripping the old frame and fit it on here, New frame is an On-One Scandal 16"

 

Just ordered this:



And got a new hat at the same time:



Ready for the new tri and ride season.

 

Mal, do you think you could speed up your commute with one of these? It looks like Fatboy tyres.

 

Today, I built a bike...