Junk Miles

While I think Grant Peterson from Rivendell (and Bridgestone before that)  is an important foil to the high tech side of cycling, and he’s done a lot to bring back practical road bikes after the skinny-tired dark ages of the 1990s (when there was very little in the happy middle ground between touring and racing frames), I’ve learned to take his technical pronouncements with the same grain of salt I take Bicycling magazine and I usually find happiness somewhere between them.  But this article on the drawbacks of carbon as a frame material (specifically its catastrophic failure mode) are pretty close to my thoughts on the matter – at least with regards to the outsourced, made-for-a-price-point carbon I can afford. I weigh 180 lbs when I’m in shape so I’ll stick with steel forks and aluminum bars, thanks.   Also see the Busted Carbon blog.

Filed under: Bikes
Posted By: Adam

Well, they call it a Fixed-Speed Bike so it’s probably just a freewheelin’ one speed, but I still hope this foreshadows the imminent implosion of the fixie fad. Partly because after evangelizing fixed gears since 1998 I’m almost embarassed to be seen riding one now, but mostly because it’ll mean lots of nice cheap track hubs flooding the market. I like the irony of naming it the “cachet”. I also like how it has all the hipster kids who ruined fixed gears up in arms about how it’s ruined fixed gears.

I jest, but I think it’s actually good that they’re offering a simple, cheap bike that has little to go wrong with it, instead of the $200 full suspension “mountain-style” bikes that department stores usually foist on the unsuspecting. update: apparently it’s still junk.

40 lbs shipped, though… I really hope it comes with 15 pounds of packaging.

Filed under: Bikes
Posted By: Adam

This time of year the weather can be pretty much anything, and I’ve learned not to get my hopes up too much about nice days in March… but sometimes you can tell when the weather’s really turned. For the past 3 weeks I’ve been seeing definite signs that it’s really spring.

One sure sign is that the idiotic whimsical concept bikes are hatching after spending the winter as larvae deep underground below the frost line (thanks BSNYC). Now you know where potholes come from.

(Read on …)

Filed under: Bikes
Posted By: Adam

This week I finally conceded defeat to spring, put away my XC skis, and swapped the studded tire and snow boot friendly BMX pedals on my ‘cross bike for SPDs and mud tires (the skis got used twice, the ice tire once). It was actually a fairly good winter for regular street riding, which makes a change from two years in a row of snowmageddon, but I had my heart set on blizzards and ice so I spent most of February on the internets looking at snow pr0n from south of the Mason-Dixon line. I’ve decided that I better stop and get outside while my jeans still fit even if it is nice and sunny.

We did have a couple of wintry days though:

A spin on the ice with the Hearn power plant in the background (fear not, the ice here was pretty thick and the water is really shallow).
(Read on …)

Filed under: Rides
Posted By: Adam