I'd recommend mudguards (fenders) for a commuter if you live somewhere it rains. A waterproof pannier (or two) is super handy; I have a pair of ortlieb "front rollers" that I love. The best thing about them is they clip off quickly and have a strap so I can throw them over my shoulder, go shopping and not have to worry about someone taking them. They are pretty expensive though, so maybe there is a cheaper option.
I know some people like having a bell if they ride on multi-use paths, I usually just say "on your left!".
I'm in northern CA, so not much in the way of rain for most of the year. But I do like the look of fenders in general, so will definitely check them out.
And those front rollers are super nice, but you weren't kidding on the price point. Will make a nice wishlist addition though! Like that you can add some visibility with the color options.
Chairman Meow on
"If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."
So after rolling on my cruiser for awhile and getting passed by waaaaay too many assholes blaring "on your left!" .01 seconds before they pass me going 30, I bought a for realsies road bike with cleats and everything!
I bought a Felt Z5!
It was mainly the Battleship Grey with Carbon Fiber accents that sold it for me. I have ridden it a few times and I absolutely LOVE it!
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
Lights are definitely on the list. I've got some decent clip-on LEDs I bought for our road bikes a while back, so we're covered on the safety front, but now I'm looking for something with some style. Unfortunately most of the LED bullet lights on Amazon have poor reviews.
Chairman Meow on
"If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."
I'd link my favourite bicycle light here, but I'm on my phone and besides, I don't think too many of you are interested in a device that can probably also double as a helicopter-mounted searchlight...
I hate cyclists with these über-bright lights. They are never properly adjusted to light up the road instead blinding other oncoming cyclists.
I may have gone down a rabbit hole last night and started looking at triple tree forks. Not sure how I feel about adding that much weight to the front end, but I think even something as simple as the below (older version of the townie) looks pretty cool without going over the top.
Chairman Meow on
"If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."
Saturday's ride up Wolf Creek was great. There was an unexpected surprise: finding that there's a new (really cool) route between two points that, despite having ridden in the area for ages, I didn't even know existed!
One of the ride organizers offered that Old Wolf Creek road is the old valley road. It was replaced in the 1960s because it was too narrow, being squeezed between the mountain and the river, for modern road standards. So my friend and I got to ride on an even more rural road for most of the trip! And here I thought it was just a little stub road for access to some farms!
Being stupid and overcome by the views, I forgot to take pictures. So here's someone else's picture of the creek:
(No, I didn't ride it -- I was one of the SAG cars for the double metric option. 200 km / 125 mi, 13800 ft / 4206 m of climbing, three cat 2 climbs and one cat 1 climb to the finish. And yet I only had to drive one rider back to the starting line due to a withdrawl! 75 double metric riders and 345 century riders rode for between 5ish and 12 hours. There are some tough, tough riders out there!)
That picture is from Paint Bank, Virginia, looking up route 311 (the descent after the first of the cat2 climbs). It's in southwestern Virginia very near a border with WV. http://www.mountainsofmisery.com/
I'm jealous of 52 miles with stops for eats! Any route that long here (that doesn't involve doing circles around town) puts me out in the middle of farms, farms, and more farms. And, let me tell you, neither dudes cutting hay nor cows appreciate you asking them for ice cream.
Related: the world is just so lovely when you've just put a new chain on your bicycle. After months of imperceptible wear every ride, I'm always slightly shocked at those first butter-smooth shifts.
It's basically a cycling MMO that you do on a trainer. I decided to pick up a trainer since here in FL it rains (like thunder and lightning) every afternoon almost when I get out of work, which makes it hard to bike as much as I would like.
I should get my trainer in a couple weeks and I will let you know how the game thing is! :hydra:
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
I just started it as well, and am enjoying it. It is a bit primitive, but way better than staring at a wall. And there's leveling. And sweet unlockables.
Oh yeah... I read that at some point but got lost in my excitement I guess.
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
About to break out my bike for the first time this year, to prep it for Boston Bike Party tomorrow, for my first ride of 2016. https://www.facebook.com/BostonBikeParty/
Strava is very good at what it tries to do. If you use it and end up finding its determined focus on comparison and competition troubling, try Endomondo or RideWithGPS.
@DisruptedCapitalist
Some more info on brakes... Fronts should provide the vast majority of your stopping power, about 75%+ or so. Most of the "flipping over the handlebars" happens when people brake hard and don't brace their arms/hands against the handlebars (i.e. the bike stops but the human keeps moving, bumping their thighs against the handlebars causing a flip). You definitely want to modulate (think "pumping" the brakes in cars pre-ABS [am I dating myself?]), if you're on long, steep downhill patches and run the brakes without flipping between each wheel and modulating you can risk overheating the rim which can cause a tire blowout.
@Beef Avenger
I've used SPDs on my road bike for the last year and a half that I've owned it and they are the only clipless I've used but I look at my dad's old '76 Fuji Gran Tourer with the platforms and I can't even go on nostalgia rides with it anymore :biggrin:
Anyone have any opinions on the different types of pedal cleats? I've had SPD up until now, but my shoes are falling apart and my pedals aren't great so I'm thinking about trying something new. All for road riding
Speedplay Frogs. Even on a road bike.
I used to ride the original Speedplay X series titanium pedals, a true road pedal, but after a while, you just get annoyed at walking around on road shoes when you aren't cycling, and unfortunately, you'll find yourself walking far more often than you anticipated.
So I switched over to Speedplay Frogs, an off road pedal for my road bike, with cycling shoes that look like street shoes, and have never looked back. Cycling shoes that you can comfortably walk in are a godsend.
I remain a big (road) rim brake fan. Hydraulic discs do well what they do well, but, for me, their downsides are way too numerous and large. To each their own, though!
If you're under ~90 kg, buy a set of Swissstop greens (GHP2) and never sweat wet-weather braking again.
Well, unless you're running carbon rims, in which case go with Swissstop Black Prince. And possibly new rims if you're still on 1st/2nd gen carbon, because holy hell those things can be a death trap in the wet.
Huh. That's honestly good to hear! Road discs here have been a fairly low-level maintenance headache with my groups, but that gives me hope that our experiences are an outlier. Things that have happened here in the last two-ish years:
bike air-carried in a hard case for a trip developed leaking seal (change in air pressure / temperature on the plane?). OOPS. Let me tell you, that's super-fun to crack open and discover at baggage pickup.
friends repeatedly forget to put pad keepers in when front wheel is off; car vibration closes the calipers and we spend ten minutes (I exaggerate) at the ride start wiggling pads apart
multiple bikes flipped upside down to work on wheels on the roadside + imperfect seals == leaked fluid from the hoods == air introduction
see above: inability to bleed brakes mid-trip without a lot of supplies
difficulty bleeding in a couple cases caused missed rendezvous (though, to be fair, those may have been inexperienced owners)
damaged fitting leaking == fluid-soaked pad == hardly-working front brakes
soap / oil transfer to rotors during wash-down == squeeeeeeeeeal (though this seems to maybe have gone away with the latest systems?)
one frame paint damaged from leaked GE/DOT fluid. Likely not a problem on a (non-custom) modern PU clear-coated finish. I think he re-sprayed it with Imron or something hard so shouldn't happen again!
Whereas my experience with 30+ years of rim brakes is: twist knob, spin wheel once to make sure it's not rubbing, squeeze for safety check, go. Change pads every few years; make sure they're pointing in the right direction. Change cables and housings every five to ten. I've seen two surprise brake cable failures in all that time: one ball end failure (snapped at the joint inside the hood) and one rust failure (bike rebuild and ignored that water would pool in a funky bend at the top/seat tube). Caveat emptor.
I love rim brakes on my (now-dead, how sad!) mountain bike, by the way! I can totally see their appeal! I'll put them on my next touring (heavy-load-carrying) bike. I just have no idea why I would want them on my road bike. I can lock up either wheel with a one- or two-finger pull and the improved brake feel is such a marginal gain for the not-insubstantial headaches.
Re data (prices MSRP; disclaimer: I am not a weight weenie if it costs much at all):
2016 SRAM Red 22 group: 1741g, $2620
2016 SRAM Red 22 HRD disc group: 2119g, ~$2900 w/ rotors
The gap is a much bigger fraction of the price if you go down to Force, etc., but a smaller fraction of the weight. Add about 80 to 150g to go from a rim brake wheelset to a disc one, so net cost of ~500g (1.1 lb). Weight difference is about the same for Shimano but I have SRAM data at hand. A lot of folks predicted that wheel mfgs would ditch the brake track and re-engineer a wheel to save that weight at the rim; we haven't really seen that (ENVE SES line is, I think, the closest we've seen?). I think that there's just not that much room at the moment to shave the rim without making laterally flimsy or violating ETRTO recommendations. We'll see!
For a road racer, it's about apparent rotational mass of the disc brake, which is why you rarely see it on road bikes geared towards racers. Aka, rotating mass is harder to accelerate and decelerate than static mass, due to gyroscopic effects, and due to air/road friction, any rotating mass on a bike will always be undergoing acceleration or deceleration.
A 300g disc of 140mm diameter at 255rpm (approximately 20mph for a 700c tire) is equivalent to a 1.5kg static mass in apparent weight.
I once rode a dude's Brompton folding bike in Richmond. It was super super nice (well-made)! That's probably not helpful, but your question made me remember noodling around on that thing and I smiled!
Ughhhhhh. I made the mistake of riding a visiting-friend-of-a-friend's Tarmac. It's a very similar bike to my Roubaix (slightly more aggressive geometry and no vibration-dampening inserts) so no big deal there, but he'd just put a fair of extremely fancypants Zip 404 NSW wheels on it. First pair I've seen in the wild.
They felt amazing. I'm sure some of it is entirely in my head, but they're SO GOOD. They have more brake noise than the previous gen 404s (Firecrests); they kind of whirr down like a high speed zipper. The braking feel was just fantastic, though: as good as my dressed alloy wheels with rough pads!
There's no way I'm paying that kind of money for a wheelset, but it was nice to dream for a few laps.
Went for a ~50ish mile loop through a few towns today:
About six miles from home we caught up to a fully-loaded tourer heading our way. We rode with her into town and "escorted" her to her hotel while chatting about this that and the other. She's riding across the country from San Fransisco (Western Express to the TransAm route) and is almost done! Say hi to Freula from Switzerland (flanked by my two intrepid riding friends for the day):
Also if you have tight corridors/stairwells, you may want to look into a quick-release axle for your front wheel (if it doesn't come with one) so the bike isn't so unwieldy while carrying it through narrow spaces.
If you have an REI co-op nearby, their house brand stuff (Novara) is decent quality and not too much pain on the wallet. I pretty much buy that and Pearl Izumi, but I'll make exceptions if I spot something on mega clearance (usually off-season) or fun novelty jerseys.
Basically the only thing you need is a helmet. Then maybe you put on some glasses to keep bugs, wind, and blown grit out of your eyes. Once you start riding longer times or distances, you may want some shorts that don't chafe. (Insert extremely unhappy memories emoji here.) After some time, you may want some gloves to both protect your hands from blisters/falls and help mute some of the bumps from your handlebars. Then maybe at longer distances your sweaty shirt starts to stick to you and annoy you (or, more likely, you realize that having some pockets on the back of your shirt would be AWESOME), so you get something light and neat.
It's hard to go wrong with most of the big-name brands like Pearl Izumi mentioned above. They make a full range of low-price basic stuff to extremely expensive fancy stuff. Generally their cheapest options are kinda crummy (gotta compete with the big box brands so they cut corners) but you only have to go up maybe one step to get fair gear.
I've also found that some store-brand stuff is actually really good for fairly cheap. Performance Bike, for instance, makes some really nice jerseys and bib shorts at the upper end of their line (Elite and Ultra) that are nearly as nice as the best PI stuff for considerably less.
In unrelated news, I finally caved and bought an 11-32 cassette (biggest that will fit in my 2012 Red WiFLi derailleur). It's only a tiny bit lower than the 11-28 it has but those teeth were wearing thin and, hey, a 14% lower climbing gear is always good, right?
I'd argue that glasses and gloves rank slightly higher than the helmet but I'm not actually going to get into a big disagreement over it. The important thing is to get out there and ride with a grin on your face and hopefully the wind behind you.
Which never happens - it's either a headwind or you're riding really well
Disagree. I'd much rather live with skinned palms than not be living at all.
+1 all the above advice about leftover debris and rim tape status. Also double-check tire pressure (maybe with another gauge) since under-inflated tires tend to pick up pinch flats. Were your flats snake bites (matching pairs of holes on either side of the tube) or one-sided? If they're solid punctures, I'm a big fan of trying new tires because it's generally a very cheap option (circa $35 for v. nice road 23s/25s, etc.).
Oh, and I was supposed to ride a 70 miler today into the middle of nowhere, West Virginia, but threatening lightning storms kept me close to town on a little 40 mile loop to the river. Sometimes it pays to noodle down gravel roads and see what's there!
It's also fairly easy to modify / generate fake GPX files and send them to Strava as if they're from your Garmin. You can't take anything you see there too seriously.
I'm putting a lot of my weight on my handle bars. That's not good, right? I need to adjust something.
Is your saddle relatively level with the ground? I start parallel and adjust fit from there. You may be able to raise the nose of the saddle a bit so you aren't sliding forward as much. If you're too stretched out you'll put more weight on your hands too so consider maybe moving the saddle forward a bit. Also consider raising your stem or handlebars slightly so you aren't hunched over as much. Yes it isn't as aero or look as cool but comfort and putting in more miles is way more important than reducing tiny amounts of drag coefficient.
I don't normally pull the wheel or cassette when I clean; just a mild degreaser on the chain and gears, then a little plain detergent (Simple Green, etc.), a big scrubby brush, and a hose. I can get the whole bike pretty darned clean with maybe ten or fifteen minutes of washing. I come back after it dries and make sure all the oily parts get oily again.
If I have to have things apart for other service reasons, I'll pull what pieces easily come off like the chain (KMC X SL 4lyfe, cheap and good!) and sometimes cassette and throw them in the ultrasonic cleaner (~ 70 C / 160 F) with some diluted Simple Green or similar. The sound of a clean, perfectly-oiled chain rolling along is very soothing to me.
I have to do a quick clean of the chain about once a week around here. Rainy rides sometimes warrant a post-ride cleaning all on their own. The whole bike gets a wash maybe once a month. A couple days before a really big event the bike gets a detailing whether it needs it or not.
And here is where I admit that the above picture is as shiny as possible because that's a new cassette and chain. :redface:
If you know what you like to ride, the bikesdirect bikes are surprisingly good. If you're just getting into it, though, it's going to be hard to select what's important to you, etc. CL buys are a great start if you're used to the CL run-around.
(I can't speak to the Diamondback specifically. I sold my MTB some while ago. Google says the Overdrive is lower-end Shimano parts, so while it won't be a dream it'll likely work solidly unless abused.)
Doing the regular maintenance on my trusty old just-back-from-loaned-out steel bike revealed noisy hubs caused by pits in one of the cones! The cups look okay (well, as okay as a wheel with tens of thousands of km on it can!) so I think I caught it in time. Replacement cones and balls are on order. Rawr.
Don't skip your maintenance checks! Noisy bearings become failing bearings!
Posts
I'm in northern CA, so not much in the way of rain for most of the year. But I do like the look of fenders in general, so will definitely check them out.
And those front rollers are super nice, but you weren't kidding on the price point. Will make a nice wishlist addition though! Like that you can add some visibility with the color options.
So after rolling on my cruiser for awhile and getting passed by waaaaay too many assholes blaring "on your left!" .01 seconds before they pass me going 30, I bought a for realsies road bike with cleats and everything!
I bought a Felt Z5!
It was mainly the Battleship Grey with Carbon Fiber accents that sold it for me. I have ridden it a few times and I absolutely LOVE it!
I hate cyclists with these über-bright lights. They are never properly adjusted to light up the road instead blinding other oncoming cyclists.
One of the ride organizers offered that Old Wolf Creek road is the old valley road. It was replaced in the 1960s because it was too narrow, being squeezed between the mountain and the river, for modern road standards. So my friend and I got to ride on an even more rural road for most of the trip! And here I thought it was just a little stub road for access to some farms!
Being stupid and overcome by the views, I forgot to take pictures.
P.S. bike thread is best thread. Hugs!
Especially the second part htere is a big problem for a lot of people.
2016 Mountains of Misery safely done!
(No, I didn't ride it -- I was one of the SAG cars for the double metric option. 200 km / 125 mi, 13800 ft / 4206 m of climbing, three cat 2 climbs and one cat 1 climb to the finish. And yet I only had to drive one rider back to the starting line due to a withdrawl! 75 double metric riders and 345 century riders rode for between 5ish and 12 hours. There are some tough, tough riders out there!)
http://www.mountainsofmisery.com/
Related: the world is just so lovely when you've just put a new chain on your bicycle. After months of imperceptible wear every ride, I'm always slightly shocked at those first butter-smooth shifts.
(KMC X SL 4lyfe. Cheap and good!)
It's basically a cycling MMO that you do on a trainer. I decided to pick up a trainer since here in FL it rains (like thunder and lightning) every afternoon almost when I get out of work, which makes it hard to bike as much as I would like.
I should get my trainer in a couple weeks and I will let you know how the game thing is! :hydra:
Oh yeah... I read that at some point but got lost in my excitement I guess.
https://www.facebook.com/BostonBikeParty/
In other news: Aviva Women's Tour starts tomorrow! It's never wise to bet against Marianne Vos, but I'm cheering for Lizzie Armitstead.
Some more info on brakes... Fronts should provide the vast majority of your stopping power, about 75%+ or so. Most of the "flipping over the handlebars" happens when people brake hard and don't brace their arms/hands against the handlebars (i.e. the bike stops but the human keeps moving, bumping their thighs against the handlebars causing a flip). You definitely want to modulate (think "pumping" the brakes in cars pre-ABS [am I dating myself?]), if you're on long, steep downhill patches and run the brakes without flipping between each wheel and modulating you can risk overheating the rim which can cause a tire blowout.
@Beef Avenger
I've used SPDs on my road bike for the last year and a half that I've owned it and they are the only clipless I've used but I look at my dad's old '76 Fuji Gran Tourer with the platforms and I can't even go on nostalgia rides with it anymore :biggrin:
I used to ride the original Speedplay X series titanium pedals, a true road pedal, but after a while, you just get annoyed at walking around on road shoes when you aren't cycling, and unfortunately, you'll find yourself walking far more often than you anticipated.
So I switched over to Speedplay Frogs, an off road pedal for my road bike, with cycling shoes that look like street shoes, and have never looked back. Cycling shoes that you can comfortably walk in are a godsend.
Well, unless you're running carbon rims, in which case go with Swissstop Black Prince. And possibly new rims if you're still on 1st/2nd gen carbon, because holy hell those things can be a death trap in the wet.
(I know, the weight issue may be a non-issue if your bike is already under the UCI limit and you need padding.)
Whereas my experience with 30+ years of rim brakes is: twist knob, spin wheel once to make sure it's not rubbing, squeeze for safety check, go. Change pads every few years; make sure they're pointing in the right direction. Change cables and housings every five to ten. I've seen two surprise brake cable failures in all that time: one ball end failure (snapped at the joint inside the hood) and one rust failure (bike rebuild and ignored that water would pool in a funky bend at the top/seat tube). Caveat emptor.
I love rim brakes on my (now-dead, how sad!) mountain bike, by the way! I can totally see their appeal! I'll put them on my next touring (heavy-load-carrying) bike. I just have no idea why I would want them on my road bike. I can lock up either wheel with a one- or two-finger pull and the improved brake feel is such a marginal gain for the not-insubstantial headaches.
Re data (prices MSRP; disclaimer: I am not a weight weenie if it costs much at all):
2016 SRAM Red 22 group: 1741g, $2620
2016 SRAM Red 22 HRD disc group: 2119g, ~$2900 w/ rotors
The gap is a much bigger fraction of the price if you go down to Force, etc., but a smaller fraction of the weight. Add about 80 to 150g to go from a rim brake wheelset to a disc one, so net cost of ~500g (1.1 lb). Weight difference is about the same for Shimano but I have SRAM data at hand. A lot of folks predicted that wheel mfgs would ditch the brake track and re-engineer a wheel to save that weight at the rim; we haven't really seen that (ENVE SES line is, I think, the closest we've seen?). I think that there's just not that much room at the moment to shave the rim without making laterally flimsy or violating ETRTO recommendations. We'll see!
</bikenerd>
A 300g disc of 140mm diameter at 255rpm (approximately 20mph for a 700c tire) is equivalent to a 1.5kg static mass in apparent weight.
They felt amazing. I'm sure some of it is entirely in my head, but they're SO GOOD. They have more brake noise than the previous gen 404s (Firecrests); they kind of whirr down like a high speed zipper. The braking feel was just fantastic, though: as good as my dressed alloy wheels with rough pads!
There's no way I'm paying that kind of money for a wheelset, but it was nice to dream for a few laps.
About six miles from home we caught up to a fully-loaded tourer heading our way. We rode with her into town and "escorted" her to her hotel while chatting about this that and the other. She's riding across the country from San Fransisco (Western Express to the TransAm route) and is almost done! Say hi to Freula from Switzerland (flanked by my two intrepid riding friends for the day):
Hooray for meeting strangers on bikes!
Basically the only thing you need is a helmet. Then maybe you put on some glasses to keep bugs, wind, and blown grit out of your eyes. Once you start riding longer times or distances, you may want some shorts that don't chafe. (Insert extremely unhappy memories emoji here.) After some time, you may want some gloves to both protect your hands from blisters/falls and help mute some of the bumps from your handlebars. Then maybe at longer distances your sweaty shirt starts to stick to you and annoy you (or, more likely, you realize that having some pockets on the back of your shirt would be AWESOME), so you get something light and neat.
It's hard to go wrong with most of the big-name brands like Pearl Izumi mentioned above. They make a full range of low-price basic stuff to extremely expensive fancy stuff. Generally their cheapest options are kinda crummy (gotta compete with the big box brands so they cut corners) but you only have to go up maybe one step to get fair gear.
I've also found that some store-brand stuff is actually really good for fairly cheap. Performance Bike, for instance, makes some really nice jerseys and bib shorts at the upper end of their line (Elite and Ultra) that are nearly as nice as the best PI stuff for considerably less.
In unrelated news, I finally caved and bought an 11-32 cassette (biggest that will fit in my 2012 Red WiFLi derailleur). It's only a tiny bit lower than the 11-28 it has but those teeth were wearing thin and, hey, a 14% lower climbing gear is always good, right?
Bonus bikeponies picture:
Disagree. I'd much rather live with skinned palms than not be living at all.
Is your saddle relatively level with the ground? I start parallel and adjust fit from there. You may be able to raise the nose of the saddle a bit so you aren't sliding forward as much. If you're too stretched out you'll put more weight on your hands too so consider maybe moving the saddle forward a bit. Also consider raising your stem or handlebars slightly so you aren't hunched over as much. Yes it isn't as aero or look as cool but comfort and putting in more miles is way more important than reducing tiny amounts of drag coefficient.
If I have to have things apart for other service reasons, I'll pull what pieces easily come off like the chain (KMC X SL 4lyfe, cheap and good!) and sometimes cassette and throw them in the ultrasonic cleaner (~ 70 C / 160 F) with some diluted Simple Green or similar. The sound of a clean, perfectly-oiled chain rolling along is very soothing to me.
I have to do a quick clean of the chain about once a week around here. Rainy rides sometimes warrant a post-ride cleaning all on their own. The whole bike gets a wash maybe once a month. A couple days before a really big event the bike gets a detailing whether it needs it or not.
And here is where I admit that the above picture is as shiny as possible because that's a new cassette and chain. :redface:
(I can't speak to the Diamondback specifically. I sold my MTB some while ago. Google says the Overdrive is lower-end Shimano parts, so while it won't be a dream it'll likely work solidly unless abused.)
Don't skip your maintenance checks! Noisy bearings become failing bearings!