Evolution: We started with mountain bikes, that we did not ride in the mountains. Like most SoCal imports, we used our bikes for everything. Why can't I just ride my flatbar fully suspended mountain bike everywhere, on 50 mile rides, and to a coffee shop? The answer, you can, but it will suck! This lead us, over the course of 3 years (our formidable biking years), to adopt 3 bikes each, mostly. One road bike, one "city bike", and one mountain. This is not all inclusive, not perfect, and sometimes there are crossovers.
Today: All 3 of my bikes are esentially custom built, a fast sub 20lb road bike, a 29er franken-mountain bike 1x9 with no suspension, and a 1994 Specialized Crossroads commuter/cross bike that i converted to drop bars. Gen (Master Blaster), has a Riv Sam Hillborne for inbetween stuff (Long slow rides), a Riv A. Homer Hilsen for faster "road" rides, a Public C7 city bike for tooling around, and a 1994 Bridgestone MB6 for the mountains (someday).
All of our bikes are steel, with the exception of my 29er, witch is aluminum with a steel fork. We both like the feedback of steel better, I just went with Alu on the mountain bike to save weight.
What I have learned as a rider and mechanic:
1. Being short is difficult, but you adapt. (In life and with bikes)
-The world is made for Men who are around 6 feet tall, and women who are about 6 inches shorter, I can search craigslist, ebay, and walk into a bike shop, and both of us will have the same problem, our bikes have to be ordered, or custom made. We never get to test ride the "rite size".
2. Bike maintenance is a continual learning process:
-I know 10x more today about derailleurs, than I did even 1 year ago, it's all about cable tension.
-Don't discount good tires, patching sucks.
-SRAM chains with the "master link" are the best thing ever, I can remove the chain to clean it.
-build or buy a chain "whip", you will need this, cassettes get changed.
-Bar tape get's worn out quick, not from use, but from swapping bars!
-Furniture polish cleans/protects amazingly well.
-Buy ferrules (cable ends) in bulk.
-Double tighten/check everything (some bike shops don't do this)
-Noisy usually means DIRTY.
-10k other things.......
3. EXPENSE: Don't get me started, and don't walk me into a bike shop, some bikes are great, some suck, and most bike shop employees are confused (Apologies to the ones who are not). An expensive shiny bike, may not be for you. You must go by feel, with a close 2nd in aesthetics.
-Sometimes it's not worth it to source/build you own bike, and vice versa. There's no hard rules for this. You will learn the HARD way, it's a law of nature.
4. Clothing: I tried to fight it for a long time, but what the masses sell, work. Lycra and wool wick sweat, and tend to stink less. Cotton sucks and hurts, it's great for sitting here, or even going to the Gym, but smooth light things are excellent on a bike.
-Underwear is not your friend. Spandex and/or chamois are. -Old Jerseys from unknown rides are cool.
NEXT: We are both doing larger rides, Master blaster is doing the Venus ride in the next couple of weeks, probably fretting about it right now : ). I'm going to attempt to qualify for the Leadville 100 by racing in the Apine Odyssey 100k on September 15th. I have never ridden over 53 miles on any bike, and I have never ridden that far on a Mountain bike, so this should be interesting. As a supplement to training/stress releif, i'm carpooling to work, and riding home. Ole blue is sitting with me today, being dirty:
What is the point of this post? I'm not sure, maybe so I could type it out, and Imagine the other things I need to do also, Like a FIRING of my pottery, or building a set of stairs for our house!
I swear the next post will be about a firing, and photos of said disaster!
