This is absurd, no really.

While I'll probably be the first to suggest that many environmental movements are somewhat misguided or misinformed (read "Smelling Land" by David S. Scott and you'll find an interesting story about the "energy crisis" and turning off lights that will have you looking at a lot of things differently) I do make an effort to minimize my impact on my surroundings. I'm not perfect, and I'm sure I could do more, but I do try to visit the grocery store with my own bag on my back so I don't need to take away yet another plastic bag no matter how much less beautiful Sam Mendes's world gets as a result. I generally ride my bicycle everywhere, shop locally etc. Not everything that is recyclable ends up where it should in my house but more often than not I find the right receptacle for whatever consumable it is that I'm abusing and I'm always a little surprised at how much garbage the average bike build generates considering the environmental pluses these simple machines are supposed to embody. Which brings me to today's blog entry. Check out that svelte and appealing Selle Italia SLR saddle. Wow! Only 135 grams (claimed weight) and it looks good too. But what's with that packaging? I mean, I realize it's a high end saddle and that presentation of such an item isn't to be overlooked but this seat comes bolted to a hard plastic shell that doesn't even protect the saddle in question as the majority of the shell is formed to provide a convenient hook to hang the saddle on the wall by and a drawer, yes, an actual sliding bin, to hold a small catalogue in, though for the life of me I don't know why I would need a catalogue for saddles after having just bought a saddle. One would think my research into the world of saddle catalogues would be somewhat complete since the very vehicle to which was attached said catalogue carries within it a high end/high performance saddle.





Check this out, 495 grams of packaging and saddle.



And the packaging itself, 347 grams. Let's overlook that this makes this 135 gram saddle actually weigh 148 grams and focus on the fact that the packaging to deliver the product weighs more than twice as much as the product itself. As recently as a year ago this very same seat came in a cardboard box that allowed you to stack a number of these saddles conveniently on a shelf. The new custom formed packaging isn't nearly as stacking friendly nor is it easily recycled in comparison to the user friendly cardboard box the saddles used to come in.

I don't really know what the point of this blog entry is except that I was so blown away by the excessiveness of the backing for this saddle that I had to tell someone. I suppose fifteen years ago this kind of thing wouldn't even be noticed but today it just seems so out of place.

Another day, another rant

I sometimes come across as someone who could referred to as a curmudgeon and a bit of a retro-grouch. You'll often hear me rant against whatever new and improved technology is being rammed down our throats as the next best thing. While it's true there are numerous things to complain about in the bike industry and maybe one day I'll tackle integrated seatmasts, spokes made of tubular carbon fiber, and despite the fact I have a stash of new-in-box LOOK S2R mountain bike pedals that will last me through the apocalypse I take little glee in hearing about the recent recall of 40,000 pairs of LOOK Keo pedals. I really do like the new stuff but wish there was more consideration for quality over lightweight or performance over style. Which brings me to the impetus for this blog entry.

We've recently built up a couple of cross/touring bikes and while I usually recommend a decent set of cantilevers for this type of bike in both cases the client opted for disc brakes. I actually like the idea of disc brakes for road bikes, I'm okay with it, really. And there are a number of very nice cross bikes out there where you have no choice but to use disc brakes with them. And being a guy that generally rides Campagnolo who doesn't make disc compatible hubs, I've even gone as far as to find a hub manufacturer who makes both road and mountain hubs and both Shimano and Campagnolo compatible freehub bodies (DT Swiss, though White Industries also does this, perhaps others) so that I could install a Campagnolo freehub body onto a disc hub and run disc brakes with Campagnolo shifters. So let it be said that I have at least given it a try before becoming suitably unimpressed by this appropriation of mountain bike brakes by the world of road and cross bikes.

Check this video out:



Four for four rotors came out of the box brand new and this bent. It's hypnotic how it dances with the music in the background which is amusing enough but doesn't make me any happier about the additional set up time required to "tune" as in "bend the crap out of" four disc brake rotors. Avid BB7 disc brakes aren't the most expensive or high end disc brakes available, they aren't even that high up the Avid line-up, but when dealing with the relatively new frontier of disc brakes on road bikes there aren't many choices and these represent pretty much the highest end disc brake option available for road bikes. Firstly, most higher end disc brakes are hydraulic while road component manufacturers don't have any plans to offer an integrated hydraulic compatible shift/brake lever in the near future. This means cable actuated disc brakes are realistically the only option. Of course most cable actuated disc brakes are designed to work with a v-brake lever which pulls more cable than a road brake so even in the cable actuated disc brake world the options are limited. Hence the conundrum, to use disc brakes on a road or cross bike your options are limited to a single hard to get model from Shimano, a couple of Taiwanese knock-offs, a sole IRD model, and these Avid BB7s which are considered by most to be the "industry standard" for road compatible disc brakes.

I will admit disc brakes as a concept are a pretty good idea. Brake pads last longer, the brakes work better in the rain, you can beat the bejesus out of your rims knocking them out of true without compromising your braking, but if the industry is going to push this concept while touting these and numerous other benefits, shouldn't they offer a more impressive product? And while there are advantages to using disc brakes there are plenty of disadvantages too, like convoluted fender mounting techniques snaking their way around the calipers like in the following picture.



Also, bolting on stoppers where things like racks might normally go creates it's own set of problems. Like the rack you need to use which moves the "hooks" where your pannier might attach further up the rack frame rather than right down at the bottom where they would traditionally be and a weird appendage on the rack that despite articulating in three dimensions and being spaced out from the rack itself still needs a bunch of spacers to get it to attach to the frame properly.



So that's a whole lot of complaining about something to get to this point. Do the brakes work? Yup, and though I'm not happy with how they are designed and what needs to be done to get them to work on a bike and the adhoc redesign and modification of standardized items like racks and fenders, they do work pretty well. But considering how well a properly set up pair of cantilever brakes work I'm not sure they are worth the hassle. That said, I'm sure these won't be the last set of disc brakes I put on a road bike and I really do look forward to the day when more effective and better designed disc brakes are available for road bikes. Until then, call me a retro-grouch, I'll be sticking to cantilevers on my cross bike.

Don't try this at home

It was 1989 when Greg Lemond's unconventional aerobar setup in the Tour de France gave him the advantage he needed to beat Fignon. Since then all sorts of handle bars have been designed to give riders the competitive edge. I spotted this unique setup in Toronto over the weekend. I'm pretty sure it's a prototype and I'm not sure what advantage it's designed to provide but it's interesting nonetheless. You need to click on the picture for the full size version to appreciate the details. Yup, that's electrical tape holding the flat bar in place. Crazy.

Ride Report - Soma Speedster

It's not that hard to convince yourself that in order to speak about what you sell knowledgeably you need to try things out once in a while or in other words, you need to pedal what you peddle. To that end I was easily convinced by myself that I should try one of these Soma Speedsters for a bit.

The Speedster is Soma's all rounder road bike designed with the old school Randonneur in mind, or just for someone with an appreciation of a well made bike that looks pretty good too. Soma uses Tange Prestige double butted chromoly on pretty much every bike they make and they make quite a few bikes without being silly about it. So yeah, the Speedster. What do you need to know? It's steel, and I like that, and it's got some pretty nice paint, and I like that too, but most novel is the use of chromed lugs, and I really like that.

As a person who owns too many bikes already I questioned the need for yet another one but there's very little I can't rationalize when I put my head to it. To that end I realized that I didn't have a sturdy but quick urban commuter capable of holding a pair of full fenders and geared just right for both racing down Broadway when I'm late getting to the shop to open it and hauling a kid trailer up a steep hill to daycare in the morning. Sure, I have a cyclocross bike with fender eyelets on it but I couldn't bring myself to putting full fenders on my cross bike because that's just not "right." And my 29er, well, it's just too heavy for riding every day. So there I was in the shop moving a collection of bike parts I had onto a pretty cherry red Soma Speedster.

That was about a month ago and I figured with 30 days of riding on the bike it was fair to write a little something about it. The quick review is this: I like it, it's a very good bike.

But of course there's more. What I like about the Speedster is that it is first and foremost a road bike. The BB isn't too high like a lot of cross bikes, the handling is reasonably quick, and while steel is rarely light (especially lugged) this bike doesn't feel heavy. I mean, it is heavy, but it doesn't ride like it. You'll notice they've designed the bike around long reach brakes so that there's room for a full fender set and slightly larger tires. I'm running 700X28s on it and there's probably a bit of room for something a tiny bit bigger. There's also mounting points for a rack. The longer wheelbase isn't excessive, it's 101cm on my 56cm frame, which is only a centimeter and a half longer than what you might find on a more aggressive road frame the same size and can probably be wholly attributed to what they needed to do to leave room for a fender and bigger tire between the rear wheel and the seat tube. This slightly longer wheelbase makes for a stable bike without being too slow in the handling and I have a great deal of confidence in it when I'm aiming for the gap between the segmented bus and the construction pylons along Broadway at Cambie on my way to work.

Criticisms? Yeah, there is at least one. Why are the head tubes so short? You'll see from the pictures I've got a couple of bigger spacers under the stem and the stem has been inverted to get the front end up where I like it. Across the size range of the Speedster the head tubes are quite short which seems contrary to the stylings and most likely use of a frame such as this. I think it would be nice to see the sizing of this bike increase by about 2cms for the head tubes and seat tubes for any given size. Another bike I sell, the Salsa Casserole, seems to be more in tune with this fit ideology and though it's a bit more affordable than the Speedster it's lacking the chromed lugs and like I said before, I really like the chromed lugs. And that being said, I really do like this bike despite the low-ish front end. Now I just have to figure out how I can rationalize owning a Casserole too. I mean, I really should ride both of them to speak knowingly about the differences between the two similar bikes, right? Right?

We're alive

And we're still here but we're busy so there hasn't been much time to update the blog. More soon though, really...

"It's so small," she said,

but I was okay with that because, well, it is small.



bicycles is now a Felt dealer and our first few bikes have arrived. This one, an FW35, is the first one I pulled out of the box to build up. It's an interesting bike, and it is really stinking small, but Felt actually makes two bikes smaller than this one for women, the smallest of which is a 650c wheeled bike.



It's always bothered me that companies will take a frame, paint it pink, but a big squishy saddle and a short stem on it, and call it a "woman's bike." It appears that Felt has taken the idea of making a bike for women a little more seriously. There are five different bikes in the line up specifically for women and with all of them their smallest size uses 650c wheels. While some might groan at the idea of a bike with 650c wheels one needs to understand the finer nuances of bike geometry and realize that once a bike gets down to a certain size the top tube can no longer get effectively any shorter (by this I mean making the seat tube angle steeper to shorten the measurement of the top tube length isn't the same as actually reducing the effective top tube length, come see me and I'll draw you a picture to show you what I mean, or maybe in a day or two I'll edit this entry with an inserted crudely drawn rendering of what I'm talking about) and the head tube can only get so short meaning once you hit a certain point the front end of the bike can't get any lower. The result of extra small frames with 700c wheels is very slack head tube angles which make the bike handle quite poorly due to an excessively long trail number, and a front end that is too high for shorter people.

Another thing Felt manages to do is put 105 10spd components on a sub $1400 bike which is nice enough, and they also don't assume that women are weak (which they aren't) and they spec an affordable woman's bike with a double chainring with the understanding that women are often very serious cyclists and don't need to be pandered to with equipment that betrays their ability.

It's a nice "little" bike.

Quality parts for a reasonable price

The Globe and Mail has a section that they title "Darts and Laurels" where they give praise to some things whilst criticizing harshly others. It's in that spirit that I review two products today. The first, would it be soft enough for it to accept one, would have a dart hucked furiously at its being. It's a Syntace F99 stem. For certain it's not a cheap item retailing for $129.00 and it's advertised as coming with "stainless steel bolts" but as you can clearly see from the example that I own that someone at Syntace is a Neil Young fan because rust isn't even having a nap before attacking my stem bolts. In fairness, my stem is one of the older ones that were recalled because they were likely to implode or somehow disrupt the time/space continuum and they may have since really switched to stainless steel bolts but regardless of what they do now I find it quite incredible that any company would suggest such a high retail price without automatically including a readily available metal for their bolts that is commonly used for bicycles due to their exposure to the elements.




And now for the good. A "laurel" if you will. Tektro, oh how I love to hate you and hate to love you and with the installation of these brakes I am full of hate because they are wonderful. For years I have sworn an allegiance to Paul Components because of their Neo-Retro brakes which have previously been the best thing on the planet for a cross bike. And then Tektro shows up with these little darlings. I'm sure they won't last as long as the Paul equivalents (which are spectacular in construction), and the hardware will probably rust, but they cost $28 an end vs. the over $100 for the Paul cantis. You'll get a lot of leeway from me for saving me so much money and not just because my fridge will be full of beer paid for with the money I save. These Tektro cantilver brakes are pretty much the best thing going for a cross bike. I've sworn at my Shimano cantis but they didn't hear my cry of disapproval over the brake squeal they emit every time you engage the rim with them. And Paul, oh how I've loved thee, and you will always have a home on my custom swanky cross bike until you wear out and I know that will never happen because you are so indestructible, but Tektro, you've caught my eye and I'm looking forward to seeing where this relationship goes.