New Tyres and Rapha Sample Sale

My Specialized hybrid currently has some fairly chunky, 700 x 38c, tyres which seem a bit surplus to requirements, given that most days I ride on the not very gnarly Brixton Road (mind you, some of those potholes...).

So I've splashed out and bought some new, narrower, slicks. APPARENTLY, according to the nice man in the bike shop, I don't need 38c width tyres and can actually take them down as narrow as 28c, so that's what I've gone for.

I'll let you know on Monday whether I can actually get them on my rims and whether I go any faster.

And in other news, Rapha have another sample sale coming up next weekend, next door to Condor Cycles. Hopefully I'll make it to this one and can find out whether reduced Rapha is within the price-range of us mortals.

Opening Times are:

Friday 30 January: 12am-8pm
Saturday 31 January: 10am-5pm

Truing A Wobbly Wheel

Truing a wobbly wheel is one of those bike maintenance tasks that I always thought was some kind of dark-art, that could only be done by the tattooed, big bearded mechanic you always saw lurking in the back of your favourite bike shop. But having watched a video on Bicycling.com, I was able to carry it out with reasonably good results.

The video assumes you have a truing stand, but I was able to manage with the bike upside down, so that the wheel could spin, and using the brake pads to gauge how much the wheel was wobbling from side to side. One other thing, I had the tyre off (I was replacing a spoke) which seemed to make it easier to see what was going on.

Warm Head

Seeing as I'm a slaphead, I can't believe I haven't previously owned one of these. I got one as a Christmas present and tried it out for the first time on the ride to work this morning. Needless to say my head was suitably toasty, despite London being "colder than the Antartic" (© the not remotely sensationalist Evening Standard).

Mine is the Pearl Izumi Microsensor Skull Cap for around £14, but I'm sure others work just as well.

Now I just need some winter gloves and I'll be sorted.

Keep 'Em Peeled...

...motorbikes can use TFL bus-lanes from today.

50 Quirky Bike Rides

Some cycling is all about performance, hauling yourself up Leith Hill so that you're ready for your summer trip to Mont Ventoux or Whistler, or to take another minute off your PB. It's the battle between your will-power and abilities, seeing which will give in first.

Another side is more about the journey, the people and places you come across. The remote hill-top cafe in Cumbria, the beatiful viaduct in mid-Devon, the guy with the recumbent you meet at Newcastle Station. I have to admit this is where my heart lies and is very much the emphasis of Rob Ainsley's excellent book "50 Quirky Rides".

It lists 50 rides in the UK that take you to somewhere notable or unusual. If you've ever wanted to go on a ride that features a trip on a ferry, a visit to a cycle maze or over a scary unfenced viaduct, this is the book to satisfy your need. It even tells you how to ride up that optical-illusion road they used to feature on Blue Peter, where you appear to free-wheel up an incline.

The rides themselves are between 5-50km ("many can be done in a lunchtime"), but the introduction suggests you can expand them into a day-long trips (or longer)

The routes themselves are listed on the website, but I'd encourage you to buy the book, so that we can hopefully get
50 Quirky Bike Rides Volume 2.

New London Bike Shop...

...well, a bike-shop specialising in Fixed/Single-Speed, so not sure how well it caters for those of us not wearing skinny jeans.

Tour De Ville

I'll make a trip up there soon and give it a review.

Another Nice Mapping Tool

I've just come across Bikehike, a website which combines Google Maps, Ordnance Survey Maps and elevation date to make a rather powerful off-road (and hiking) route planner. The OS map pane is great, as it has far more detail than the Google maps, so you can plan trips through forests, over muddy tracks, across fields, etc, that Google alone would struggle with. The elevation graphs are nice too, allowing you to switch between pure elevation and incline (where you can see how much of the ride you'll be going "Arrgh" and how much you'll be going "wheeeeee").

Maybe less use for plain old road-riding and I don't actually have an MTB myself, but I'll certainly be using it for planning my next walk.

Be Careful Out There!

Not one, but two friends of mine fell off bikes while hitting black ice last night; you can see the results of one rider <-> tarmac interface above!

It looks like the weather's getting "warmer" (i.e. not below zero) in London for the immediate future, but it's worth bearing in mind, next time you head out there in near-zero temperatures.

You Won't Get Far With That Front Wheel...

...not to mention the flat at the back

(from Norwoord Road in Herne Hill)

Lovely picture

Pictures like this make me want to leave the South East (where it snows rarely) and move further North.

Does Anyone Know...

...when you should replace your bike helmet ? In particular, I'm wondering about after dropping it. A lot of sites on the internet (the source of all reliable information) suggest you should replace it in that situation, but none of them specify what constitutes dropping it. I'm fairly sure that of the people I cycle with, all four of us have dropped a helmet from table/handlebar height at least once. Does this really ruin the integrity of the helmet ?

Best advice I found was on the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute site. One of their criteria for replacement is "Is The Helmet From the 1970s ?" :-)

More Bike Tattoos

I've mentioned bike tats in the past but they seem to be growing in popularity. Check out some of these "bad boys" from Wired

Crap Cycle Junctions of London #1

Queen Victoria Street and Queen Street, Mansion House


Want to encourage red-light jumping in cyclists ? Then why not create a set of cycle traffic lights where the cyclists only get one green-light for every two green-lights that the rest of the traffic and the pedestrians get. Guaranteed to either make people think that the lights are broken or just infuriate them that they're regarded as less important than everyone else.

Not mention the queue of cyclists that back up, blocking the pavement...

Rapha Sample Sale

A bit late, but if you're a fan of ponce-tastic Rapha cycling clothes (actually, they're not that bad :-)) they're having a sample sale, starting tonight. 18:00 - 20:30 @ Condor Cycles (51 Grays Inn Road, Clerkenwell, WC1X 8PP).

It's also on tomorrow between 10:00 and 17:00

My ideal beer

They make Belgian-style beer! They like all the organic, granola, hippy crap I like! They like bikes!

Just need to find somewhere in the UK stocking them now.

http://www.newbelgium.com/

Apologies again

Sorry to all my reader :-) for the lack of posts recently. I had one of my bikes stolen (along with Jen's) and it put me in somewhat of a bad mood re: the world of bicycling. Not sure that there's too much of interest in the theft itself, we'd been a little naive about the security of where they were kept. Live, learn and don't get too attached to physical possessions.

On a more positive note, I went to Amsterdam at the weekend, which is generally regarding as a cycling city. Interesting to see, the whole approach to bikes (at least in the city centre) seems to be that they are purely functional. Everyone rides "granny bikes" because of their lack of desirability to thieves. I think I only saw two people on single-speeds in the whole weekend (in some parts of London these days, you'd be hard-pushed to see two people not on single-speeds these days). I saw a few people out on nice road-bikes, but this was out on the roads in the middle of the countryside. For the commuter the purely most-basic wins.

And if you ever stay in Amsterdam, I can recommend this place http://www.sevenbridgeshotel.nl/

Open Cycle Map

I've recently bought a cheap second-hand GPS and have been playing about with it. One thing it's introduced me to, is Open Cycle Map, a sub-project within Open Street Map. The idea behind OSM is to generate open-source map-data, which people can use without the usual restrictions that apply to data from Ordnance Survey (see this for the whole story). The Open Cycle Map project plans to use this data, to plot the National Cycle Network, along with other useful cycling features (shops, cycle parking, etc).

The map already seems considerably more user-friendly than that on the Sustrans site and will presumably only get better. I've already started contributing to OSM (tagging up some pubs in my local area, natch) and hopefully once I get a bit more up-to-speed with my GPS, I can start adding some cycle routes too.

Armstrong in, Contador out (probably) at Astana

The newly un-retired Lance Armstrong looks set to join the Astana cycling team. This is a bit of a shame for their other big signing of the year, last year's Tour winner Alberto Contador, who has hinted he'll be offsky if this happens.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycling/7632837.stm

Aldi Bike Bargains

Before I begin, I should point out; I've never bought any bike gear from Aldi, so have no idea of the quality (or whether it's made by 8 year-old children in Bangladesh). However, by the look of things some of these are at least worth an investigate. Most eye catching has to be the SPD Cycling Shoes for £19.99! Although looking at the picture they look like they're made out of some plasticky, non-leather, non-breathable material. Perhaps most practical are the overshoes (£5.99, including cap!) and the bike holder

Not sure about the locks though, I've heard rumours of groups of friends buying locks from Aldi/Lidl and finding that all the keys opened each others locks.

It all goes on sale tomorrow (18th) - more details here

Latest Purchase

Well, a birthday present actually. Despite sounding quite dull, the bike stand is one of those incredibly useful things that I can't believe I haven't bought thus far. If you've ever tried to do any kind of cleaning or maintenance, that requires the turning of your pedals and back wheel, you'll know you have two options: turn the bike upside down, or ask your partner to come and help you while you swear a lot. Neither of these is ideal, I find.

The Minoura DS500 Bike Stand takes the place of your partner, lifting the wheel a few centimetres of the ground allowing the back-wheel and pedal to turn freely. Note, if you want one of those full size ones you see in bike workshops (so you can fix the bike while standing up), you'll have to splash some extra cash, plus they tend to be quite big. The strength of this model is that it folds down to about a foot-and-a-half.

Even better it has some of the best mistranslated instructions I've seen. I particularly liked:

"Do not ride bike while is on DS500. The man will be injured when the bike fallded down"

Thanks to Jen for buying it for me.