Bicycles!

[eizbaer]

Bar tape and tubeless seem to have been a great success. After losing all the air in the rear overnight, I put another 20ml of sealant in, pumped it back up and headed out for a 50km ride. The air stayed in.
The new tape is also very nice - the old one was weirdly loose and sliding around in places…

 

[altoid]

Hooray for upgrayedds!

I have Silca Cuscino 3.75 here that I need to set up. I’m wondering if I can find an affordable carbon handlebar to lessen some off the vibrations without going full suspension stem before installing the tape, but I don’t think want to spend that much at the moment, so I should just go for it.

 

[eizbaer]

affordable carbon handlebar

yeah that's a difficult combination to find, unless you're willing to go the aliexpress route and risk your health

Silca Cuscino 3.75

wowza, that's some premium tape right there. mine was like 1/4 of that (on sale, fair enough, so regularly 1/2)... because I've accepted (at least for myself) that bar tape is basically a consumable. ... speaking of, I really should re-do my zwift-bike bar tape, that's slowly but surely getting disgusting

 

[altoid]

yeah that's a difficult combination to find, unless you're willing to go the aliexpress route and risk your health

I’m not, not even a little bit. I caught wind on some podcast of some brand that’s supposedly not too pricey, but I think they still ended up being nearly $200.

wowza, that's some premium tape right there. mine was like 1/4 of that (on sale, fair enough, so regularly 1/2)... because I've accepted (at least for myself) that bar tape is basically a consumable. ... speaking of, I really should re-do my zwift-bike bar tape, that's slowly but surely getting disgusting

Well, I do like premium… I think I got it on sale, but either way, hopefully it’ll be nice and last a decent while.

The other one I was considering was the mega thicc Tasis.

 

[altoid]

So, uhh, let’s talk lights! Namely headlights, and particularly ones that won’t make everyone hate me.

My current top three contenders are:
• Magicshine EVO 1700
• Magicshine EVO 1300
• Outbound Detour

I’m not sure about the StVZO status of them, but they all have a cut-off beam friendly to opposing traffic.

I think the determining factor for me might be how well they play with my Route Werks bag, as I’ll probably want to mount the light on the handlebar stub that came with it, like I did once before.

This post brought to you by my wishing I could go for an evening ride tonight and not feeling like any of the lights I own are even remotely suitable for that, ha.

 

[eizbaer]

I think the determining factor for me might be how well they play with my Route Werks bag, as I’ll probably want to mount the light on the handlebar stub that came with it, like I did once before.

huh, I can't quite figure out whether that whole situation is genius or an ingenius solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place at least they thought of lights and stuff when they made their bag, so i guess fair enough. is the whole thing... ehh... rigid enough? so the light doesn't start to bounce around with the bag with bumps in the road?

anyway, I think I've posted this before somewhere... I run a comparatively puny cateye gvolt 70.1 that gets mounted upside down underneath the computer mount using a gopro connector. i basically never go out in the dark, so it's more of a save my ass thing, and i didn't want to spend an arm and a leg... or i just couldn't justify something like a 150+€ light to myself for that niche use.

StVZO status

yeah I wouldn't worry or care about that, tbh. not even here in DE, where that would actually mean something. most cops are usually just happy that you're running a proper light at all (optional bonus: not blinding the bejeesus out of everyone) and won't care whether said light is actually theoretically legal. also: i am almost certain there are a bunch of lights that exist in a stvzo and non-stvzo version, where both versions are exactly the same except for the note on the box.

 

[Eye-Q]

I’m not sure about the StVZO status of them

As @eizbaer wrote in the US that really doesn't matter. Given the state of cars on the road sometimes that's the least of your problem anyway...

but they all have a cut-off beam friendly to opposing traffic.

That's the main thing you should look for.

is the whole thing... ehh... rigid enough? so the light doesn't start to bounce around with the bag with bumps in the road?

It seems the mount of the bag itself is solid and there is an aluminium frame around the top edge of the bag where the handlebar stub is attached. That should be almost as stable as the handlebar itself.

 

[altoid]

The bag is pretty damn solid even on proper chunder, as tested by yours truly. Not with a light, but I’d trust it’s good enough. Plenty of reviews on YouTube, too. The mounting stuff is all metal, and this is literally what it’s designed for, too.

Regarding StVZO, I definitely don’t care about the standard itself, but the cut-off beam it prescribes I absolutely want after looking into it based on y’all’s suggestions. I don’t need to get run over by a driver I myself blinded.

Now I mostly want one because it would be a cool gadget.

 

[altoid]

New helmet: Bell XR Spherical!



Just in time for this shitshow tomorrow…

 

[Eye-Q]

Eww, the bottom bracket of my three months old Grizl seized up. I haven't ridden it in the last two weeks, as I wanted to use it again today the crank was pretty hard to move. To test which component seized up I took the chain off the chainring and discovered that said bottom bracket was stiff.

Let's see what Canyon says about that. Here in Hamburg we have a Canyon authorized dealer, maybe they are authorized to swap the BB so I don't have to send it through half of Germany twice...

 

[eizbaer]

Let's see what Canyon says about that. Here in Hamburg we have a Canyon authorized dealer, maybe they are authorized to swap the BB so I don't have to send it through half of Germany twice...

Well that’s a bummer! also that should be a fairly easy swap / fix… so packing the bike up and sending it to Koblenz would be pretty crazy for that.

Out of curiosity… and because I’ve recently done this a few times: have you checked whether the preload collar on the non drive side is loose (ie little grub screw not tightened) and has thus maybe moved while riding? This may cause the preload on the BB to be too tight, making the whole thing sticky - or the preload was too tight from the factory in the first place.

 

[Eye-Q]

I actually took out the crankset - you can move the left bearing of the BB about 20°, then it stops. The right bearing is fine.

 

[eizbaer]

yeahhh… that’s quite definite then and very good that you caught it early on, before the bearing had a chance to start wearing it’s way into the spindle.

 

[altoid]

New helmet: Bell XR Spherical!

View attachment 3572051

Just in time for this shitshow tomorrow…

View attachment 3572052

WHELP. Neither the helmet nor that shitshow happened. Allow me to explain!

The helmet is new and could use some breaking in. I didn’t really want to embark on what was going to be a good five hours away from home with the potential of getting a hot spot or whatever, so I opted to ride with my outgoing Giro Cinder. That’s reasonable, right?

Anyway, for some godforsaken reason I got only a bit over four hours of sleep Friday night, and I could tell before I even set off that it was going to be a rough day. I set off anyway, preemptively forgiving myself for possibly cutting it short, and that’s exactly what happened. I’m still pretty proud of the effort I put in, honestly:



As a bonus, I rode by the absolutely lovely Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills, and got a very lovely photo:



Since the Saturday ride was only 2:09 long, I still needed 1:51, and it turned out that gamifying my riding with the four-hour weekly goal absolutely works, because I went and did exactly that much work and not a minute more :



And just now I ordered two things: the aforementioned Magicshine EVO 1700 light (to be able to ride in the dark at least a little bit) and the Route Werks Light n’ Fast Bundle (to be able to leave the bag at home and utilize its mount).

Tomorrow I hope to get an hour in, maybe 90 minutes if I’m lucky.

 

[altoid]

The light arrived, and it’s pretty sweet. I haven’t used it out on the road yet—though others have—but it’s very, very promising. It looks like a retro TV and is bright as all fuck, with a nice, sharp cut-off at the top of the beam. The mount it came with is definitely intended to be the main out-front mount, so it’s absolutely not meant to work with my giant bag. It’s too long for me to really want to mount it on the handlebar stub, so I’ll get some 3rd-party solution to hang it directly below. But in the meantime I tried rigging it up anyway for funsies, and it could do the trick, I think.



Unrelatedly, I was thinking about my aspirations to ride for longer and how restroom breaks are tricky when riding solo if I don’t bring a lock, and I wasn’t sure how it would work with my tail bag, but it works just fine, actually.

 

[eizbaer]

I was always very adamantly against the death trap that is the kiddie seat on the rear rack (or bouncing off the seat tube). Time to eat my words again!
Since we can’t possibly take the cargo bike on holiday and our little one doesn’t cycle herself yet (balance bike is good, tricycle crank action is good - just not both at the same time)… well, we got one of those damn seats. It does interfere with my front derailleur cable, but I don’t use that on the “daily” bike anyway - actually I’m not even sure it would still work if I tried…
Anyway, because of the novelty value and all the inherent bounciness, our daughter seems to love the thing - so at least we should have no issues convincing her to get in that thing for the total of 3 weeks that we’re probably going to need it (Easter and summer holidays).

 

[Eye-Q]

I just realized I never showed the final stem and headset spacer setup of my new-ish bike (2370 km on the clock since I took delivery on December 2nd). A yellow frame with all black accessories is kinda boring though so I thought why not having one more colour for both hubs and stem/headset spacers to spice up things a bit. That said, the stem had silver screws so I swapped them for black ones.

And since the last photo in the old Elbe tunnel was washed out (turns out you should park the bike so the lights are lighting it up instead of parking it in the darker areas...) I went there again and a couple of km more.

 

[altoid]

I just drove 1.8 miles to the store and really wish I’d just taken my bike and a backpack.

In fact, I need to find some sort of bag I can wear on the bike that also folds up small enough to put in a jersey pocket. I could’ve just made this stop at the end of today’s ride instead of doing this dumb drive only to go back home, get on the bike, and ride literally past it right away.

I can’t really get a cargo bike right now, or even an errand bike, but I could do a better job of using what I have, I think.

 

[eizbaer]

just taken my bike and a backpack

There’s your first step easy answer right there.
You made the extra trip anyway (at 2mi I’d argue you’d have even been quicker on the bike, full trip considered), so you didn’t need to include this in your ride for time reasons. thus you don’t actually have a reason to spend big on a weird bag you can take on your jersey pocket on your ride.
Just do exactly what you did today, but instead of taking the car, just take the bike and any old backpack. I’ll be the first to admit this doesn’t satisfy GAS and is very boring, but it’s easy and will work for you straightaway.
Also depending on your backpack situation: you can fit a lot of crap into one of those. No need for a cargo bike when you just want to go for groceries

 

[Eye-Q]

You have a (relatively speaking) humongous bar bag so just tuck a small grocery bag in there. Or do you detach the bar bag depending on the ride?