It was an early Monday morning. The Hudson River was like glass: And the pickleball courts of suburbia were as yet untrodden by New Balances: It was across this placid landscape that one semi-professional bike blogger pedaled a now-silent carbon and titanium racing bicycle: I’m pleased to report that the crank transplant I mentioned yesterday has so far proven to be a success. For one thing, the external bottom bracket is noticeably stiffer than the ISIS unit it replaced, and the improvement in power transfer is immediately noticeable: Just kidding, of course, it’s a fucking crank. However ..read more

Further to last Friday’s post, a lot has happened on the Spinergy front, and a lot continues to happen: [Well this hasn’t happened…at least not yet. Extreme Normcore!] I will of course fill you in when I have a better idea of what’s going on, but in the meantime all I’ll say is please do not attempt to obtain any Spinergys on my behalf because the carbon-bladed wheels are very much in motion. Meanwhile, this coming weekend is the Five Boro Bike Tour–sorry, the TD Five Boro Bike Tour: [The TD stands for “Tour de”] And if you’re riding it this year you’d better watch out for me because I’ve be ..read more

Call me Fred. [Spotted by a reader.] I’m about 80% of the way through “Moby Dick” now (technically “Moby-Dick” if you’re a Literary Fred) and so immersed am I in it that I see Dick everywhere I go. And like tempestuous Ahab pacing the deck of the Pequod upon his whalebone peg-leg, I too am tormented by my own white whale, that being a pair of Spinergys: [It is said that a full-grown Cipollini can produce more oil than a mature sperm whale.] It all started when I was plying the seas of Craigslist and spotted this post: As a semi-professional blogger currently engaged in a detailed analysis o ..read more

Further to yesterday’s post, an anonymous benefactor generously offered to underwrite my Craigslist Spinergy purchase in the name of content creation: I should point out that this benefactor has in no way requested anonymity; I just think it’s more fun to refer to an anonymous benefactor. And before you get carried away, no, the anonymous benefactor is not Grant Petersen–though a Roadini with Spinergys is exactly the bike the Internet needs right now: [Photo: Rivendell] Anyway, naturally I sent the seller another message agreeing to pay the full asking price, but as of now I have not receive ..read more

What makes a bike ride good? Is it the frame materials? The geometry? The fit? The tires? The components? Whether or not the rider has had a satisfactory bowel movement? The answer to each one of these questions is probably “Yes,” though to what extent each one contributes to the ride is difficult to quantify, which is particularly frustrating in the case of this bike: Basically, the bike rides the way a marketing department would tell you a bike made from titanium and crabon is supposed to ride–let’s call it smooth and springy–but as a curmudgeon who’s inherently skeptical of marketing I’m n ..read more

Further to yesterday’s post, I should make it clear that ample tire clearance, versatility, wide-range gearing, “gravel bikes” or whatever we’re calling them this week, and The Many Supple Tire Offerings Of Jan Heine are all good things. Mostly I was just making the point that versatile road bikes are nothing new, and if anything the era of the “thong bikini” bike (minimal clearance for asscrack-width tires, only appropriate for the road in the same way the bikini is only appropriate for the beach) was relatively short-lived, though it was recent enough that it still defines the road bike for ..read more

Last week we revisited the Golden Age of Hybrids–that brief yet magical time before the term became a catch-all for boring bikes that get ridden three times a year by people in sweatpants, and still referred to performance-oriented combination road-and-mountain bikes: By the mid-1990s the hybrid dream was effectively dead, and the bikes came to embody the worst of both worlds by combining the skinny rims and tires of a road bike with the uncomfortable-over-long-distances flat bars of a mountain bike: Arguably however there was still one exciting hybrid available as late as the early 21st cen ..read more

Great news! SRAM has succeeded in creating the world’s most expensive pedal or something! Finally, it’s the $440 pair of pedals that you’ve been waiting for: I’m pretty sure they’ve got their Pounds and Euros mixed up there, but in any case it’s the “ultimate expression in pedal technology:” Of course you can’t bolt the ultimate expression of pedal technology to just anything, so you’ll also want to run out and buy a diamond-coated titanium crank: No word on price yet, but if you want to save some money the non-coated version is a real bargain at only $999.99: That may sound like a lot, b ..read more

Further to yesterday’s post, you may have noticed a lurker in the background of one of the photos: This is because Yonkers is rife with deer, and they fear no man: In fact this one actually started to approach me, and for a minute there I thought it was going to come up and sniff my crotch like a dog. The trails just north of the city are full of such wonders, and for a time my favorite deer-slayer was the RockCombo, which was more or less in its stock configuration when I first received it in 2020: It grew on me quickly, and over time it became my “ready for anything bike:” Then came The ..read more

As I’ve mentioned before, cyclists have been waging an anti-cotton fear campaign for decades now, and this is the subject of my latest Outside column: Someone on Twitter suggested this was a “straw man” argument, which is entry-level Internet discourse, like using one of those adjustable stems on your road bike: [Instead of those pointless angle indicators all adjustable stems should have a QR code on them that takes you straight to the Rivendell website] However, the fact of the matter is that if someone hasn’t Fred-splained to you why you shouldn’t ride in cotton then you haven’t been ridi ..read more