Ride home for Thursday, 12 April
Picked up my new bike today as it's due to snow tomorrow. I'm getting it for free in exchange for fixing up the network at Ideal, which is by all accounts a bit iffy. They have a windows install that's got heavily infected with spyware, so I'm going to throw Linux on there and see if that will do any better for them.
The new bike is a Bottecchia that has been pretty heavily modified; it has a new rear derailleur, a 7 speed Megarange cassette (up from a 5 speed road cassette), new brake handles, new brakes, and new fenders. I also had to swap out the seatpost as it was too short. The guys at the shop told me I'd have to ride it myself to find out any problems, as no-one there was tall enough to ride it! The only problems I found were a slight rubbing on the front fender from the tyre, rubbing of the chain in the big ring on the top of the derailleur cage, and slipping in high gears on the big ring. I have a suspicion that the cause of the slipping is having a Megarange cassette on a road bike with triple chainrings, so I'll probably have to step down to a mountain bike cassette. The downtube shifters took a bit of getting used to, and I think I might look into seeing if I can move them further up the downtube at all.
The bike itself is extremely fast and agile; for summer use I may well strip off the fenders and put some skinny tyres on (it currently has 32C and 37C tyres on). The feeling when cornering is most odd, it feels like it's on rails. This came in handy when I encountered the muppet of the day; I was going down Dublin approaching Cork when I saw a car approaching the stop sign at the two way stop but looking like it was going to try to jump out across me. I suspected the muppet was going to try to jump the sign but the the car slowed down, so I rode on. When I was about 10 feet from the intersection the muppet decided to go for it, and it took some fairly agile swerving around to avoid getting hit (although there was a moment of temptation when I thought, "hmmm, I have the opportunity to get a new bike here..."); after I stopped I looked back and the muppet had stopped in the middle of the intersection and wound down her window. She said she was sorry and that she didn't see me; my comment that she should look before going through an intersection instead of apologising afterwards didn't really seem to register.
Fun ride home the rest of the way, although I had to take a shorter route as I was running late. Not as fast as I could have been due to the problems with gearing, but for a first ride things went pretty well.
Distance logged: 12.767km
Time: 39:06
Average speed: 19.6km/hr
Max speed: 49.7 km/hr
Temperature: 8C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2393.210km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.23
Monthly distance: 359.588km
Monthly cost per km: $0.61
The new bike is a Bottecchia that has been pretty heavily modified; it has a new rear derailleur, a 7 speed Megarange cassette (up from a 5 speed road cassette), new brake handles, new brakes, and new fenders. I also had to swap out the seatpost as it was too short. The guys at the shop told me I'd have to ride it myself to find out any problems, as no-one there was tall enough to ride it! The only problems I found were a slight rubbing on the front fender from the tyre, rubbing of the chain in the big ring on the top of the derailleur cage, and slipping in high gears on the big ring. I have a suspicion that the cause of the slipping is having a Megarange cassette on a road bike with triple chainrings, so I'll probably have to step down to a mountain bike cassette. The downtube shifters took a bit of getting used to, and I think I might look into seeing if I can move them further up the downtube at all.
The bike itself is extremely fast and agile; for summer use I may well strip off the fenders and put some skinny tyres on (it currently has 32C and 37C tyres on). The feeling when cornering is most odd, it feels like it's on rails. This came in handy when I encountered the muppet of the day; I was going down Dublin approaching Cork when I saw a car approaching the stop sign at the two way stop but looking like it was going to try to jump out across me. I suspected the muppet was going to try to jump the sign but the the car slowed down, so I rode on. When I was about 10 feet from the intersection the muppet decided to go for it, and it took some fairly agile swerving around to avoid getting hit (although there was a moment of temptation when I thought, "hmmm, I have the opportunity to get a new bike here..."); after I stopped I looked back and the muppet had stopped in the middle of the intersection and wound down her window. She said she was sorry and that she didn't see me; my comment that she should look before going through an intersection instead of apologising afterwards didn't really seem to register.
Fun ride home the rest of the way, although I had to take a shorter route as I was running late. Not as fast as I could have been due to the problems with gearing, but for a first ride things went pretty well.
Distance logged: 12.767km
Time: 39:06
Average speed: 19.6km/hr
Max speed: 49.7 km/hr
Temperature: 8C, sunny
Cumulative distance: 2393.210km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.23
Monthly distance: 359.588km
Monthly cost per km: $0.61
posted by steve at 4/12/2007 09:43:00 pm
1 Comments:
Sounds like a pretty cool bike. I'm just getting used to down tube shifters myself on my Bianchi. The ones I've got are mounted with braze-ons, so I'm stuck with the reach that they are at. Hope you enjoy your new ride!
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