Daylight Saving Ruined My Furniture

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

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Now, I know not everyone is as enthusiastic as me about daylight saving. There is apparently a woman in Queensland who blames all those extra hours of government sponsored sunlight for making her furniture fade. But riding home from work while it’s still light is nice isn’t it? And this is the bicycle that got me through the long, damp Auckland winter.

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Yes, it’s my old friend the Bridgestone MB4 – looking much more ride-to-work friendly than when it came out of the factory back in the early 90s. You will notice, it now has some comprehensive mudguards (Planet Bike) new tyres (Compass Bicycles) moustache handlebars (Planet-X-Bikes) and a discrete, yet semi-permanant light (DKG).

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As I have blathered on about before, I reckon mudguards are virtually essential for a practical bike, and I think these ones are very good. Easy to put on and specially designed for mountain bikes – so they’re pretty wide. They are also very sturdy & non-rattly. Except when you don’t bother to tighten up the bolt on the rear brake bridge properly, and then the nut falls off while you’re riding home. But even then, there’s enough other stays to hold them on, so you can fix it when you get home. Or so I’ve heard. Ahem.

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The previous set of tyres I had on this bike were Schwalbe Super Motos. Brillliant though they were, mudguard-friendly they were not. So I replaced them with some similarly exotic, but more conservative looking tyres from Compass Cycles. They are made by Panaracer for Compass, which is why they look very much like Panaracer Paselas. According to Compass, their version of the tyres are made to a higher standard, and therefore roll better. I haven’t tested this properly, but they certainly feel fast.

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The front light is slightly unusual – it’s an LED Maglite held on with a bracket from DKG. I really don’t like the way most bicycle lights these days are clamped on to the handlebars with crappy plastic brackets. This one is machined from solid aluminium, and is of excellent quality.

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Is this the perfect ride-to-work bike? Not really. But it’s pretty good. The 26in wheels make it agile for city riding, and it looks crappy enough to be fairly theft-resistant. Also, there’s a shortcut I sometimes take, which involves a brief climb up an incredibly steep street. So, thanks to the mountain bike gearing, I can chuck it into first & grind slowly up – a handy feature at 7:30 in the morning when you’re half asleep, and cold.

The Road to Belleville

31 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Bike Test

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A few weeks ago, I saw a bicycle advertised for sale on a popular New Zealand auction website. I was tempted to bid because it was priced very reasonably, and I remembered seeing this particular model when it first came out, and thinking that it looked pretty good. It’s a Trek Belleville. Cyco on Ponsonby Rd used to sell them.

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But then an associate of mine bid on it, and I also remembered that I already have a million bikes. So I didn’t. He duly won the auction and asked me to pick it up for him. So I did, and took the liberty of going for a couple of rides to see what I had missed out on.

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I think it was the first practical bike that I ever saw for sale in New Zealand. It also stood out from the other bikes in the shop, by being really nice looking. Partly it was the retro look, and partly it was the way all those useful extras like the mudguards, chain guard and racks, looked so much better because they were designed to go with it.

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The extent of my “testing” was to ride it home from the pickup, which was about 10k. And taking it to work one day, which was another 9km or so. And… I liked it. The 3-speed transmission was very nice (I do love a 3-speeder). The racks & mudguards were very solid & didn’t rattle. The front light, with the hub dynamo worked pretty well – not amazingly bright, but good enough for the city. Also, people I met said nice things about it. It was fun to ride.

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I do have some criticisms – the hand grips and the saddle were horrible, but no big deal to replace. And I didn’t really understand the front rack. Because it didn’t have a rail on the front, you can’t just dump things in there like you can with a basket. It needs something like a cargo-net or bungy cord to hold them in place. In fact the previous owner had by-passed the rack and just put a basket on the front (I took it off for the pictures, but you can see the plastic bracket on the handlebars). There are a couple of slots in the middle of the rack – perhaps there was some helpful accessory that went there? I don’t know. Also, the brakes were pretty average, but that might be fixed with a decent set of pads.

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On the whole though, it’s a very attractive and useful bike. 

An Austrian Rain Bike

11 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Bicycle Build

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In a previous post, I referred to my Cotic Roadrat as my “Everyday Bicycle”. I also mentioned it’s lack of mudguards. So when it scarcely stopped raining in Auckland - ”The Seattle of the South Pacific” – for a couple of weeks, I assembled a different “Everyday Bicycle”. One with mudguards. Let me introduce The Puch.

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It’s not an especially pretty bike, although it probably was back in the 1970s when it came out of the Puch factory in Austria. I spotted this particular vehicle on a well-known local Internet auction site and arranged to purchase it for the very reasonable sum of $10. There was some work required - I replaced the handlebars, wheels, front brake, brake levers and derailleur.

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As a general purpose bike it has some shortcomings – the chain has a tendency to fall off if I change too quickly in to a higher gear, and the actual levers are placed, not very conveniently, at arms-length. And then there’s all that.. ahem.. rust.

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But The Puch also has some excellent qualities – the aforementioned mudguards, a surprisingly comfortable riding position and a pair of very nice Schwalbe Marathon Racer tyres.

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And… a dynamo powered headlamp.

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The lights were also an addition of mine. They are made by Busch+Muller. The headlight has a facility called a standlight – meaning that it stores a bit of charge from the dynamo, so that when you are stopped at traffic lights, the headlight stays on for a few minutes. It doesn’t produce an enormous amount of light, but it’s enough to see by if I find myself in an area without streetlights. Thanks to the dynamo, I don’t have to worry my pretty little head about batteries, and it makes a pleasantly loud whirring noise that warns pedestrians and frightens dogs.

Testing the Monstertruck MB4

28 Monday May 2012

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I mentioned in my previous post, that I would test the MB4 with the Schwalbe Super Moto tyres, to see if it really was fast or if I was just imagining it. So I took it out for a ride. It’s a loop I’ve got worked out that goes from Newmarket railway station, up Remuera Rd to St Johns, down to Tamaki Drive, in to the city, up College Hill, back along Ponsonby Rd & then through Grafton back to Newmarket.

In the manner of a modern and sophisticated rider of bicycles, just before I left, I started up the Map My Ride application on my phone, and told it to log my ride. As I sped through St Johns about 20min later, I heard a voice just behind me. A woman’s voice saying something about my speed or the time or something. It like totally freaked me out & I nearly fell off looking around to see who it was. Eventually I realized it was my arse. Or rather it was my phone sitting in my back pocket telling me something about my “workout”. So I calmed down & kept riding.  Later on, I got home & whipped the phone out so I could tell it I’d finished, and read statistics about speed, distance, calories burnt, increases in gluteal firmness etc. Only to find that the battery went flat 20 minutes ago and the phone thinks I’m sitting in a bus stop next to Victoria Park.

So… umm… I’ll have to try that again sometime.

101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Riding at Night

17 Thursday May 2012

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I have a book (actually I have more than one book – I may even have too many books) called ‘101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life‘. Each chapter of this book is (as the title would suggest) an experiment you can perform that may change the way you experience the world. Chapter 88 is “Prowl at Night”. It suggests that you wander around your city at night. To look for things that you don’t see during daylight, and to see things you’re familiar with, in a different way. I think this is an excellent idea, but I think that riding is better.

The other night, it was raining and I had just finished making some significant changes to a bike of mine that has been lying about in the shed for a while. I had an idea that it might be interesting to take this old Bridgestone MB4 mountain bike, fit some really fat, slick tyres (Schwalbe Super Motos) some On-One Midge drop handlebars, a set of bar-end shifters and see what it was like to ride. So I did.

I rode through The Domain and the down to the waterfront.

Now, some people think that fat tyres = slow. But some research has suggested that on a rough surface you’re faster on a more compliant tyre. You’re certainly more comfortable.

I stopped at The Cloud to shelter from the now-torrential rain. I didn’t realise that the “building” is full of lights that change colour. Makes it hard to photograph.

So what’s the Monstertruck MB4 like to ride? Well, I really like it. The tyres do what you would expect – they smooth out the bumps while still feeling fast. I say “feeling fast” – don’t really know though, I’m not a fast rider. I’ve overtaken the odd mobility scooter, but only when it’s battery was running low. Sometime I’ll give the bike a proper test & let you know.  The Midge handlebars are nice too – riding with my hands on the brake hoods was comfortable, and since the drops are very shallow, the shifters are never far away.

I know that when it’s wet and cold and dark, you’re supposed to stay home. But can I suggest that you give winter night riding a try sometime? You might see a bunch of things that you’ve never seen before, and the city can be quite beautiful when the lights are reflected off the wet streets. Also, when you get home (wet, cold and tired) you can feel fully justified in having a hot shower & going to bed. Maybe even have a hot-chocolate – you totally deserve it.

My Daily Bicycle

01 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Bicycle Build

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I read somewhere that in the Finnish language there is a specific word (Poronkusema) for the distance equal to how far a reindeer can travel without a “comfort break”. I wish there was a similarly useful word in English to describe the situation where you want something, but when you go looking for it you can only find a million varieties of that thing – that you don’t like at all. This happens to me all the time. Writers in a gentler age would have called me particular. Writers of this age would call me a wanker. Unless they were American – in America a wanker is a type of fannypack. Interestingly enough, I knew someone who was travelling in the US some years ago and they met a guy who’s name was Randy Wanker. Really.

So anyway, a couple of years ago I decided I was going to cycle around the place instead of driving, and went looking for a suitable bike. I couldn’t find one and decided to build my own. This is what I made.

The frame is a Cotic Roadrat, and the rest of the bike is put together from parts made by  Velocity, Sturmey Archer, Brooks, Sapim, Tange-Seiki, Michelin, Jagwire and Shimano

It’s not perfect – there are no mudguards and the rear basket is a bit crap. But it’s practical enough to be my primary means of transport – I ride it to work and everywhere else around the city (including to synchronized cycling practices and performances).

It has a front light powered by a large rechargeable battery…

3-speed gears…

Comfortable handlebars…

Front & rear hub brakes…

It also has a rear light attached to the carrier and some fat tyres. These days there are some more options when it comes to buying city bikes, you’ve got Velo-Ideale and Rode for instance. But I think a good point to remember is, if you can’t find what you want, you can always go & make it yourself. And if the project turns in to a Vortex of Damnation, well then at least you’ll know not to do it again.

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