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Suppose being on a singlespeed didn’t help....
It's been amazing fun during lockdown & I've really enjoyed the quiet roads. Now that the "stay home" and "stay local" restrictions are easing I'm looking forward to doing longer rides.
Very fast on the flats due to lower wind resistance, REALLY fast on the downhills but a bit slower on the climbs as you can't stand up and "mash" the pedals.
I got it as I've broken both my wrists in the past & get completely numb hands if I ride a "normal" bike for more than an hour or so. That's not an issue with this. It's much more comfortable for my back too.
The only downsides I've discovered are, as Jaycee suggests, low visibility as I'm closer to the ground. Busses and trucks are a bit more intimidating. This is mitigated by the fact that everyone who sees it is fascinated so they give it a wide berth. I've been stopped by the police 3 times so far simply because they wanted a closer look, one of them had a go (& promptly fell off as there's a bit of a learning curve)!
The other is when cycling in the rain/snow/hail (Scottish summer weather) your face is upwards, great for admiring the view, but you can't hunch up to escape the rain on your face.
They don't pop up for sale very often & I just got lucky to find one.
If you want crazy, have a look at the three wheelers, and the hand/arm cycle ones. I timed a sportive last year, and a couple disabled guys done it on them, and managed to beat some of the able bodied entrants over the 80km route.
I had a front-wheel drive FlevoBike for a couple of months, THAT was brilliant fun to try, but quite a learning curve! I sold it as I realised I didn't think that I would be able to ever ride it on the roads.
I fell off repeatedly in the learning process and lost LOTS of skin when I THOUGHT I'd mastered it. Cruising down a closed road at work I clipped a pothole, squeezed the brakes, but the bike wasn't straight... so it jack-knifed and spat me off.
I offered £10 for anyone who could ride it from one end of the carpark to the other. 15 people tried. I still have the £10 in my wallet.
I accept, ....... I am now able to fall off my bike in slow motion.....
it did get a clean on Sunday morning though. Only ruined by having to throw myself into a roundabout to avoid a blind motorist trying to wipe me out.
Anyway I managed a ride of 24.22 MLS and a height gain of 983ft. I think my longest ever ride since teenage enthusiasm 45 years ago.
My older brother has persuaded me to take part in a sponsored ride in a few weeks with options of 25, 50 & 100 miles. I think the 25 will do me nicely.
But.. like a lot of my hobbies it got out of hand quick, after meeting up with a friend of mine fora ride who's cycling mad, I got bike envy. much scouring of eBay and FB Marketplace later I ended up collecting this:
GT Grade Carbon Expert Gravel - Love it, pedals have been replaced with non clip ones, shorter stem fitted and a bike computer arriving today - Longest distance is 13.5 miles on a ride so far, but the stamina is building up, my main issue is spare time really!
Next job is tubeless tyres, just waiting for the ones I want to come back in stock.
Oh and I've also experienced my first bit of road rage from an idiot in a Volvo estate who I held up for around 2 seconds, whilst I stuck as close to the curb as was safe to do so, beeped when he went past and started pointing to the path for me to cycle there, I pointed back with my middle finger.
Respect! My BMC hybrid weighs less than half that and thats enough weight to push around.
Finally fitted my new 200mm rotors last night night, off for a test spin before weekend on our flow trail (1st day of the season on Sunday)
Managed 4 rides, over 3600m of climbing, and 124km. Only 1 road ride this week, but the trails have been 99% dry and dusty, so the mountain bikes have been getting lots of use. I say bikes, because I finally realised where the creaking has been coming from on my big bouncy bike, so it's waiting on some new linkage bearings getting delivered, and the short travel bouncy bike has been getting some abuse the past couple of days.
Well I finally fitted them this weekend - did a loop of my local flow trail.
Jury is still our for me as I need to do a full on downhill downhill day, but these are my first impressions (I should point out that I am quite a heavy rider at 97kg)
1) Increase of stopping power, it's noticeable how much more oomph you get from less effort with a single finger.
2) Proper weighting of the bike under braking required to ensure you don't skid (frowned upon here), especially the rear wheel.
3) Silent, I run SRAM trails, so prone to sounding like a wailing banshee when they get hot. No noise so far.
4) Decrease of modulation - but I think this is a good thing as squishy breaks encourage dragging the brakes (imo)
Most painful part was sorting a 40mm Post mount adapter for the fork, which is why it took me so long to install. One I had all the bits, installing and setting up was very easy.