Written on February 10, 2012 by frances

New Tyres

After managing to snap my rear derailleur completely off a couple of weeks ago (there went the € I’d planned to finally buy some nice boots with), and suffering such fingertip pain early last week that I bought some hand sleeping bags, I was hoping all bike things would be pearly.

Nope. Riding home Tuesday night I collected some more glass and once more suffered the langweilige Berlin Reifenpanne. Bah!

I was hoping to get another couple of months out of the tyres, but even the person who fixed my bike in Ostrad said the back one was finished (riding on previous flat tyre in the rain to make an appointment on time …). Today then, I pulled on my stompy hiking boots and walked my bike back to the shop, an evening’s worth of internet cyclocross tyre research leading me.

A very good writeup of Continental’s Cyclocross Speed was one possibility, the other being their Cyclocross Race, both of which were compared elsewhere. My current tyres are more like the Speed, though with a coarser central tread, and the same side knob pattern, which are fine for road riding and getting around the city or forest in all seasons, but the shape of the side knobs tends to cause a lot of bite in cornering, causing anxiety-inducing oversteer.

Actually, the original tyres were fairly crap and I should have replaced them long ago.

Speed or Race? Well, Race is perfect for the current winter, and by the time it’s proper summer or non-wet spring I can possibly find the pennies for some Speeds, and there was only one of the latter in the shop … So I spent 40 minutes delicately pulling off old tyres and inner tubes, and putting on new ones, trying to avoid snow, water, grit and other mess getting where it shouldn’t – all in sunny -7 degrees.

And! I was introduced to the perfect Berlin tyre addition: anti-puncture tape, or tyre-liner as it’s properly called; which is a 1mm thick or so roll of slight-sponginess that goes between tube and tyre. I was dumbfounded I’d never heard of it before. And in Berlin, it’s really necessary. I’ve never seen so much glass on the streets as here, and in a lot of parts of the city it’s filthier than Guangzhou (where despite all else, people still swept the streets).

New tyres, new gloves, tire liners, and … putting my wheels back on I notice how thin my brake pads are …new brake pads …

So far the tyres are nice, a lot more consistent between straight line and cornering, and just enough of a bite that I don’t feel inherently distrustful of what they might do. On the downside, riding knobbies even if they are small is always slower and noisier than slicks or an internal tread centre pattern, which I know will annoy me later in spring. But the knobbies on the Races are just widely enough spread that they don’t pick up a load of snow and mud and other assorted gunk, so I think I’ll have to go riding through the forest early next week and make messiness.

Written on February 6, 2012 by frances

mmm … mits!

I thought perhaps there was a mistake, alas (or yay!) no; as I ate breakfast, it was warming up to -19.7º. And so, having put off for long enough the unavoidable, I rode southwards, not in search of warmer climes, just a nice pair of winter gloves for cycling please.

Stumbling into Fahhrad Frank on Torstr, I found my perfect winter friends. And so, winter, I shake my clam-like mits at you and mock your pathetic attempts to suffer fingertips with frostbite. Even better, I can pre-warm them and have 8-10 hours of hand-hot-watertbottles. It’s quite depraved.

Shall have to buy a hat now to avoid losing ears, however.

clam mits (with heizsysteme)

Written on July 8, 2011 by frances

Trainingsradeln: Berlin – Liepnitzsee und Zurück

After my six-month bike report yesterday, and having been thwarted by rain on the weekend (I’m not really equipped for long watery rides at the moment), I planned all week for today to be my ride day – also because I leave for Brussels early Saturday and shall be bereft of Zweirad for a time). I also planned to ride maybe a third further than last time; just seeing what I can endure.

My original plan had been to bike up to Chorin by way of Liepnitzsee, which then changed to Templin by way of the Biosphärenreservat Schorfheide Chorin, in both cases getting the train back. I decided somewhat accidentally for a loop to Wandlitz and Liepnitzsee by way of Summt, returning via Bernau bei Berlin.

Most of this was on good roads, a bit on cobblestone, and perhaps 15km on trails. The ride out, through Mühlenbeck and turning to Zühlsdorf is one of the nicer ways north; not so many cars, roads wide enough, and even something of a small hill, up to Summt, just past the ring. Even nicer through to Wandlitz, which is almost a tourist town, or reminds me a bit of towns outside Adelaide, tree-lined streets and small cafés.

As for Liepnitzsee, today was perfect, the bright sky turning the water turquoise. I was originally planning to go to Lanke and then loop south from there, but discovered I could follow a walking trail through the forest down to Bernau bei Berlin, around 11km of various widths from fire trail to single track.

From there back to Wedding was one of the less enjoyable rides I’ve had. Narrow streets with a solid stream of pushy cars all trying to make it to the Ring, and even when getting past that and following the S-Bahn down to Pankow, it was a bit too intense – especially having ridden for some hours and having to maintain a high degree of concentration the whole time.

An additional detraction from riding pleasure is the amount of neo-nazi graffiti around, from a Lonsdale sign in Niederschönhausen to ‘pure hate’ sprayed in Schwanebeck, it’s both the prominence of it as well as the obvious age – this stuff isn’t removed in the weeks or months after its arrival. (Lonsdale is popular because the letters nsda are those of the the nazi party, and pure hate, also spelt pure h8 plays on the letter h and number 8, also being h, the eighth letter in the alphabet, being an acronym for ‘heil hitler’.)

I got back mid-afternoon and promptly fell asleep. 5 hours riding around 75km (not especially fast) when I haven’t ridden more than 20 or so km in a day for years was a bit tough for me. Nice to find my limits though. I don’t think I would come back via Bernau bei Berlin again however. The traffic is far too demanding to make that road fun. Better is via Schönewalde, or even better yet, smaller roads I haven’t found yet.

As for the parts on trails and in forests, it’s beautiful in the way Grunewald is, also with the Berlin-Brandenburg sand – difficult to spot, very soft, and likely to try and hurl one off repeatedly.

Oh, and it’s just a couple of days over 3 years since I first arrived in Berlin.

Written on July 6, 2011 by frances

CAADX-105 … a story of riding a new bike

Late last year, I bought a bike. And wrote about it. And rode it also. But not so much. Firstly, I went to Brussels (and took it along), but didn’t ride so much there. Then when I got back to Berlin, I began riding it more, but delicately. After all, it’s a new new bike, and I knew how hard I rode my last one, or rather, how hard I crashed it on occasion.

I missed the winter/spring Cyclocross season – rain, cold, mud, and so on – and still intend to join a Verein in Berlin, but have been riding it enough now – both around Berlin and longer trainingsradeln – to say some things about it.

First, the things that make me a bit mmm … conflicted about it.

The brakes. The XT V-brakes I had on my Marin could flick me over the handlebars with the lightest pressure, especially good for dog-legging the narrow alley between bonnet and boot of cars cooling their heels at the lights. In theory, the cantilevers on the CAADX should provide a similar hard stop, but for me they’re a little too light, especially riding on the hoods. In dry weather I can halt pretty rapidly, but only by hauling on them much harder, but in wet weather … it’s a little like having no brakes unless I ride in the drops. Also the profile is somewhat wide on them, perfect for catching things like bags slung over the bars or body parts when crashing. The carbon forks also don’t help in this, giving some pronounced judder if I don’t brake hard or soft enough.

The frame. Having ridden on a slightly undersized frame for years, and this time buying one that should be my size, I would in retrospect have bought the smaller one. Though equally if I’d done that, I might be saying, “Bah! should have gone one size up.” Mainly it’s a combination of the arrangement of the frame with the bars. The front-end feels a little high and big and far away. Perhaps setting up the bars differently, or buying a new set (the first thing I did on my old bike) would be enough. For long rides or casual around the city, they’re fine, but for really attacking or for snappy responsiveness, it feels just slightly ungainly.

Also, while the frame is enjoyably light (I can easily pick the whole thing up above my head with one arm) it’s also a little delicate. I slid on one of Berlin’s utterly rubbish ‘bike paths’ and clipped a pole at walking speed and put a garish dent in the top tube. It makes me a little nervous, knowing that it might not survive even the lightest crash.

Perhaps also I’m slightly tainted by my old bike, which I rode for so long.

So, on to the good stuff.

Ah! it’s good!

I went for a 3 hour ride up and back to Liepnitzsee last weekend, and despite the derailleurs needing tuning (€12 at the bike shop around the corner), it was an utter pleasure. It rides well in the city in any conditions, and with slightly lower tyre pressure makes even the cobblestone streets fun (I can pretend I’m a Belgian Hard(wo)man in A Sunday in Hell). As for getting up speed on the country roads, it’s more an issue of my inability to use up all the gears than any slovenliness of the bike. And off-road, it just shines, it’s even better. it’s somehow as if the whole time it’s on the road (even cobblestones) it’s thinking, “mmm… dirt?” and once the tires touch unpavedness it just has a fit of excitement.

It handles the sand of Berlin-Brandenburg comfortably – I never felt like the frontend was going to bite in and throw my face at the ground, and the backend conversely didn’t feel like it was scrabbling all over the place. It’s also possible to really lean over the bars and attack (of course with aforementioned slight ungainliness). Like my last bike also, I can be dead tired, sick, utterly blah and jump on and have that feeling the bike is doing the riding for me.

I have a set of Specialized SPD pedals which Radkom threw in for free when I bought my bike, and well … they’re not Shimano. So probably along with new handlebars (and spending some time in a shop getting the bike set up properly with them), a new set of SPDs is likely.

What else?

The 105 groupset (along with the FSA BB30 bottom bracket and cranks) is – when it’s set up well – a pleasure to ride. 20 gears really doesn’t leave for wanting much, and the ratios make for balanced changing. The seat and bars are ok for the moment, but as with my old bike, I can see finding something I like more. I’m also happy with the inclusion of eyelets for panniers – just for the hypothetical idea one day I’ll go on some long trekking through central Europe.

There’s a fairly comprehensive review on road.cc, which I largely agree with; the CAADX is fine out of the box for the in-between world of city/road/cyclocross/trekking, but a little more spent on setting it up is well worth it.

Tomorrow I have a plan to ride up to the Biosphärenreservat Schorfheide Chorin, mixing in some road riding with trails, so perhaps I’ll have something more to say … and more photos.

Written on November 10, 2010 by frances

caadx-105 … a story of buying a new bike

I bought a bike.

(Actually, I bought it a couple of weeks ago, I just got busy, was over in Brussels, and the weather was grey – not so good for photographing my new baby.)

Once I realised there was nothing holding me back from spending (for me) sizable quantities of euros on a new bike, and that I could have exactly the bike I wanted … I spent quite some time. Looking, reading, comparing, more reading, learning, narrowing my choices down.

The first decision was that my new bike would be a Cyclocross model. Looks like a road bike, weighs about as much as a road bike, have you ever seen a road bike pretend to be a cross-country runner (except perhaps in A Weekend in Hell)? Not a road bike.

The first bike to grab my attention (and I looked at scores) was the Raleigh RX 1.0. Nice. I couldn’t find any shops in Germany, let alone Berlin selling Raleigh though. The I started looking at Focus’ Cyclocross bikes. And about the same time discovered the magic number 105.

With my old baby (stolen!), I became quite attached to gear, and knew enough about components to be able to glance at a bike and know if I’d want to purloin it. That was the mountain bike world though. Road bikes were and are a different world; and as for cyclocross… A pretty frame is … well, pretty – but components are are the reason the same frame dressed differently can triple in price.

So … Shimano 105. I have a soft spot for Shimano. The first bike I bought was a ten-speed from them; My last bike was decked out in XT componentry and I had SPDs and the shoes to go with them. Much more reading … I kept stumbling across That’s What She Said About Your Bike, and ended up looking at a lot of bikes from there as well as deciding if it didn’t have Shimano 105 it wasn’t going to get bought. (And I probably couldn’t go up a groupset in price anyway.)

I looked at Trek, BMC, Cube, even tried to find Klein (sadly no longer). I went into so many bike shops in Berlin (which are mostly – around 90% – for the city commuter people; very sensible, very heavy). I looked at uuhh sooo many websites. I discovered Drössiger, and of course, Cannondale.

I was often thwarted.

My first choice after the lack of a Raleigh to test was a Drössiger CCA10.2C or 3C. Bah! No one in Berlin had any in stock. I particularly liked the black frame, and Cannondale’s CAADX had a similarly beautiful matt-black model. Not with 105 though. I thought maybe I could have the frame built with the 105 components – typical, going straight past off-the-shelf and to the ‘Can you build it in black… -er?’ department of pleasing me.

Yes!

er … no …

Yes! But not till Jan/Feb next year. Alternately you could die and be reincarnated and it should be ready thereafter.

Arrival! Followed by more decisions.

I found a bike shop in Berlin. I am possessed with a singular, obsessional loyalty to where I buy things from. If I was a dog (yuck), I would be the type that latches on with teeth to the underbelly of a farm animal and hang there, swinging, jaws locked, paws off the ground, well past the point I should detach. The other aspect of irrationality, likely based in some quite coherent unconscious process is how much I like the shop the moment I walk in. A bit like buying a bottle of wine because the label is well-designed and uses a nice font.

I found radkom on a (I think) forum where someone was asking where to find a road bike shop in Berlin amidst all the afore-mentioned city tourer sensible fahrräder. A few names came up, though I didn’t go into all of them, so likely there are others that could have won my heart and bank account(s). I shall plug them here and say they are most excellent!

I read a lot about frame sizes and fittings. My last bike was small, fast, responsive like a slightly-too independent and frisky mountain goat, indeed often I just needed to point her in the general direction and she’d do the riding – especially when drunk. But I’d never bought that frame for the fit; it was the only one in the shop and my first ride on it was out the door after paying.

Doing things ‘properly’ then… I had a choice of a 58cm or 61cm frame. Probably a 59.5 would have been perfect, but there was nothing between these two. And I am ahem… ‘blessed’ with stupidly long legs, a torso that could fit someone 20cm smaller and not look out of proportion and arms while long certainly not in the vicinity of an appropriate accompaniment for my legs. Which means when the seat to pedal ratio fits, the handlebars are teasing me with their distance, even if I shove the seat right forward.

Hey ho! 58, 61, 58, 61, 58 again, 61… 58… ooh! snappy fast and hello! do you know my friend? she was a mountain goat… 61… 61… … … ok, 61. Really I could have gone either way. Somehow though I decided on the slightly larger frame, mainly because I thought that after 2 hours on the smaller, I might feeling a little cramped.

I got some pedals too. Not Shimano SPDs, though they are probably on the near-future list. And waiting to get some shoes because there’s nothing like riding clipped into feel completely at one with my bike.

All of which is to say, I bought a 2011 Cannondale CAADX 105 61cm in brushed aluminium, which makes it looks uncannily like my last darling, even down to the black forks – which this time are uuuhhh… drool! Carbon Blades! And the rear cassette! Ten sprockets from 11 to 25 teeth, with the two front rings giving a total of 20 gears – considering my last bike only had 24 once I upgraded and that was with three rings on the front, I’m utterly in lust. And finally I get to experience shifters and brakes in one, riding on the hoods. Oh, and I can lift it above my head with one hand.

I haven’t been riding it much yet, and very slow when I do, but she is beautiful. And once I get shoes and other pieces, I will take up cyclocross. Mud, rain, snow, wet, cold? Sounds like fun!

Rear cassette … count to ten!