Random findings...

I’ve been really lucky over the past 18 months through the pandemic, but last week I was pinged by the NHS app and told to self-isolate for a week. First off, I’m fine, as are my loved ones, I managed to get a test the same day and the result the following day was negative. I’ve been very careful during the pandemic, so was a bit dismayed to have been told that I had come into contact with…

Riding: The Trek Domane AL 5 Disc. Part 3.

After my first ride on it, the commute home after building it, my initial thoughts on the Trek Domane were that the saddle was uncomfortable, that the bars wider than I’m used to, and that it felt quicker than the Checkpoint that I was replacing it with. This thing…? It’s alright, I suppose. On paper, it should feel similar to the old one… but it doesn’t. It feels quicker, and smoother. Both of…

I’ve previously written that the Trek Checkpoint that I do the commute on is a bit of a workhorse, and that it has in all honesty not received the level of maintenance that it perhaps should’ve done. Especially as at the point of writing that, it had been ridden 7,665 miles in 18 months. When it’s replacement (the Trek Domane) arrived the weather was atrocious, so I continued to ride the…

Or, why it was that nothing seemed to work as well as my old Tamiya screwdriver. When I first decided that I was going to try adjusting the indexing on a derailleur, I grabbed the only screwdriver I owned from my tool box (which at this point I think it was a plastic ice cream tub) and, though trial and error got them to a point where I thought I’d got it dialled. I hadn’t. Eventually though I…

Riding: The Commute. Part 2.

Or, what’s in a name? It’s only a small thing, but it seems to make a difference to how I treat my commutes everyday. Both Garmin and Strava automatically name your uploaded rides after saving them, to a rough location or a rough time of day, and rather than have screens full of ‘Morning Ride’ or ‘Stratford-upon-Avon Ride’* I continued to rename my commutes just as I would do a ride at the…

These are another item that I first came to via The Radavist site, potentially back when it was known as Prolly is Not Probably, and quickly decided that I wanted to give them a go. Up until that point I was still riding in mountain bike gloves, which were starting to look out of place as I started to morph into a proper roadie. The SPD pedals had been dropped in favour of some SPD-SLs, the…

Maintenance: Be prepared. Part 2.

Road and trail side repairs are… a pain to say the least, and are inevitable. Despite the fact that you’ve kept on top of your bike maintenance, checked it over before riding, made sure the tyres are pumped up to the correct pressure, something is going to happen. Whether it’s a flat or a mechanical, something is going to come along and try to ruin your day. So I’m going to ask you to do three…

Riding: How many bikes do you need?

A variation of which I have been asked several times at work over the past year, with the last time being when one of my colleagues saw this blog. But how many, is too many? And is however many I can comfortably fit in the shed, the right answer? Or do I need a bigger shed. There is of course that famous sum, there’s types, there’s roles, or do I (or you) need to justify the amount at all? My…

This post could’ve been called “A failure to plan is to plan for failure”, or “Plan for the worst, hope for the best”. Or any number of inspirational quotes that I’m certain you’ve all worked in a place where someone has printed one, or some, of them off and stuck them up on a notice board. Instead I went with the shorter, and far more positive, “Be prepared”. The motto of the Scouts, which I was…

Riding: Look around you.

I’ve pretty much made peace with the fact that riding with a club isn’t for me. Now it could just be that I haven’t ridden with the right club, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across a club or group ride whilst out on the road and thought that I’d like to be out with them. There will always seem to be a few at the front busy talking, so busy in fact that even their subconscious seems unable to…

My go to riding essentials: The KMC X11-SL gold chain.

This is another item that I have ended up returning to time and time again over the years, so much so that it now feels as if no bike is complete until it is fitted with a KMC gold chain. Before I tool a break from riding, my go to chain had always been a Sedis. The first mountain bike that I’d actually built, not bought, was fitted with a Sedis. It ran much smoother than the Shimano ones that…

Riding: Catching up on the wrong things.

Whenever I get home from being out riding with friends, Jen will always ask three things: “Did you have fun?” “Where did you go?” “How’s ****?” And that last question always stumps me, because I don’t know. I could tell you what they thought of the latest episode of ****, or what the last film was that they saw. I can also tell you what upgrades they’re about to make to their bike, or the…

If you’re being down on it, and I have in the past, Strava can be viewed as both a way of promoting unhealthy competition and a sure fire way to ruin a ride. Pushing riders to chase targets and speeds to best, all whilst on open roads. Whilst I’m convinced that I wasn’t trying to beat any Segment times on the day that I killed the De Rosa, I’ve not chased one since and my speeds and times have…

Riding: My go to riding essentials.

There has been about a handful of items over the years that I have ended up returning to time and time again, or rather, buying time and time again. An item that has become a staple, an essential, an item that I simply must have on my bike. It’s usually only come about from experience, and the process of using it (I’ve certainly never done it by sight), but every now and again I’ll come across…

Maintenance: The wrong mindset. Part 2.

It was just 20mm of excess fork steerer, that I’d simply not ever bothered to cut down, but it’s now gone. And, in the end, I think it was my own laziness rather than the spacers sitting above the stem that bothered me. I could blame no longer having access to the correct tools, but that has never been an issue in the past. I’d spent years building, fixing, and maintaining, my own and friends…

Riding: A love of dirt. Part 2.

Or to mountain bike, or not? The last time I owned a mountain bike was 6-7 years ago now, which was the Orange Crush that’s shown here. In hindsight my relationship with that bike was pretty strange. In that, it was a bike that I feel now like I was coerced into buying. Not the Orange Crush specifically, but a mountain bike in general. At the time I worked in the bike shop. All the staff had…

Riding: The one that got away.

Everyone cyclist has got one, that bike, that ride, that for some reason you’d thought you moved on from. Only, you didn’t did you? If you close your eyes you can see it, feel it even, so why did you get rid of it? Idiot. It could just be a sign that I don’t like change, or that the grass isn’t always greener, but I am pretty sure that I have more than one. The Kona Paddy Wagon was one such…