The Bikes
The Bike. It is the central tool in pursuit of our craft. A Velominatus meticulously maintains their bicycles and adorns them with the essential, yet minimal, accoutrement. The Rules specify the principles of good taste in configuration and setup of our machines, but within those principles lies almost infinite room for personal taste.
It seems in some ways like a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, the way we honor our machines. We love them to a point that lies well beyond obsession. Upon these machines upon we endure endless suffering, but also find an unending pleasure. The rhythm, the harmony between rider and machine, the outdoors, the wind in our faces and air in our lungs.
The Bikes is devoted entirely to our machines. Ours, The Keepers, and yours, the Community. It features articles devoted to our bikes, and proves a forum for uploading photos of your own machines for discussion. We will be harsh, but fair; this is a place to enforce and enhance our observation of The Rules.
If you’d like to submit an article about your own beloved bike, please feel free to send it to us and we’ll do our best to work with you to include it.
- Rule #12 and the Cascade Effect
That is a very reasonable opening salvo for the Rule about bike ownership. Three is good and certainly a minimum, and we are talking road bikes here, if there was any doubt. They naturally become ordered: the #1 is ichi-ban, top dog, go-to bike for every and all rides. #2 was the old #1, ... - Guest Article: Black Is Not The New Black@kogalover is singing my song here. Bikes are beautiful. ’nuff said. VLVV, Gianni With all those posts on riding in winter and being visible, either by putting Eyes of Sauron or other car melting devices on one’s steed, or by even considering a YJA instead of donning plain black kit, it was about time to finally get ...
- Dialing in the StableThis was going to be an article about Rule #45. It is amazing how much time is wasted and matches burned when professionals stop for that second bike change to get back on their #1. With all the jigs available to team mechanics it would seem they could set up five bikes exactly the same. And ...
- Matching the drapes to the rugAs a longtime titanium bike owner, I’ve always been jealous of a beautiful painted frame but Ti and carbon frames don’t need paint like a steel frame needs paint. But I want some painted beauty. It’s like buying a white car; I can’t do white, need some color. So between a Ti frame and a ...
- Festum Prophetae: Waiting for the HourEveryone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. – Mike Tyson The one thing everyone should always plan for is that however well-conceived a program might be, things will never go to plan. The high level plan for my Festum Prophetae Hour Ride was as follows: Have a custom Hour Bike built by Don Walker. Because reasons. Reasons like custom ...
@EricW
I’ll give it a visual in person inspection and report back.
@Chris For shame for shame. It’s my mountain bike that hasn’t gotten much love due to a recent move. Still, you’re right, it is unacceptable. Extra hills for me this week as penance.
Off to the Alps in a few weeks and my pal has got me worried that my latex tubes will explode if I’m too heavy on the brakes while descending. Should I listen to him and get some superlight butyl tubes?
Since they were well before my Follower days, I gotta ask…
Have some Cinelli Giro d’Italia 64 bars on my Tommasini. These have the center sleeve with the definitive edge.
1) Should the bar tape meet the lip flush or go onto the sleeve just a bit?
2) Should the finishing tape Bridge the Gap between bar tape & sleeve? Or, should it only touch the bar tape and sit flush against the sleeve, but not cross onto the lip?
Senior Sagacity requested, thank you!
@snoov
Carbon rims or Aluminum?
@Ron
Hi Ron.No gaps and no bridges please. Bartape ends when the edge starts.There you cut the bartape and finish with the vinyl tape.Vinyl-finishing tape covers the last wrap of the bartape in other words the last piece that you trimmed but does not cover the edge of the middle section where those bad ass engraved logos are.Loved those bars and still do.Enjoy the work.
@snoov
Don’t listen to him or be light on the brakes.
Latex inners can explode at any time for no reason.Sometimes during installation you might pinch it slightly or press it too hard against the rim and then you’d think it was something else.Makes sure you mount them properly and use quality latex inners like Vredestein-natural latex ones.Avoid pigmented-coloured ones.
Thanks, Tommy! Yes, those engravings are bad ass, huh? I’d thought about swapping them out for lighter bars at some point, but the bike ain’t light either, and with your words it seems like I should never bring that subject up.
I have Vredestein tubes on two bikes, one with Vittoria Open Corsa CXs and one with Veloflex Masters. The ride quality is incredible. I found mine pretty easy to install, much easier than Michelin latex tubes, which seem too damn big. Yes, Vredestein are the ticket over others, like Michelins. With a nice tire and nice wheels, wow, what a ride.
EricW – a Rapha sticker on a Colnago? Ouch.
@Skip aluminum
@TommyTubolare Thanks for that. Now I have to find a supplier of those tubes and save all these pigmented ones for riding in Scotland.
@snoov
ah, I see you are a convert to the Canadian spelling, nice one.
@strathlubnaig oops not on purpose, but I’m enjoying the way you’re baiting our American friends.
Keep me posted if you arrange a ride with @the_farmer before the 14 of July.
Seriously tempted to biff the bike through the windows tonight. Sodding left hand shifter has frozen up, spent an hour stripping it down and praying it would just have been another eaten cable, but no, this time it’ well and truly f*cked itself. Being Shimano, barely strippable. Oh, how happy the wife’s going to be when I show it to her along with the price for a new one…
@Ron
Nothing should touch the sleeve. I have 64’s myself, and based on looking through Winning magazine from 1984 onwards, nothing touches the sleeve.
@Ron
Study these pics very closely…..
LeMan 1984
1985 Tour of Lombardy
@seemunkee
+1 almost. It’s not what I head hoped for. Listened though it 3 times on Spotify. Not going to commit the cash to a purchase
@snoov With aluminum (or aluminium if you have some extra “i”s lying around) rims I can’t imagine you would have a problem. You’ve got to be a pretty tentative descender to drag the brakes enough to heat aluminum rims to a high enough temperature to blow a latex tube. I’ve done some pretty long descents on latex tubes with no problems.
@JohnB
What specifically didn’t you like? It was a really interesting concept, and good execution I thought.
Then again, I also like Yeezus.
@DerHoggz
Compared to earlier Daft Punk albums it found it a bit dull, a bit too background or elevator music albeit very well produced. Get Lucky is catchy and the best track there for me but I’m not keen on their use of the popular vocalists of the moment to widen their appeal and have a hit rather than write a banging tune. it may grow on me as #1 artist added to the nano for now is Sigur Ros and to be fair some of that can also be best described as ‘background’. Maybe I’m starting a mellow phase?
@JohnB
I never really cared for Daft Punk, since I thought most of their stuff was too mellow for what I like in electronic music. AS far as RAM goes, Instant Crush and Fragments are probably the favorites for me. Chill, good music for mornings/nights.
@sthilzy
Have you shopped that or is his Avocet actually measuring how much of the V he’s currently punching out?
LeMan was just punching in the wheel size for his mountain bike. He was always a visionary.
Just discovered this site via the packfiller podcast. I’ve found my people! Here’s a picture of my Waterford R-33. The white stem is suspect, I know, but I’m going with it.
@GreenGiant
Nice bike. Nice front porch.
@brett How do you know so much about mountain bikes? This is a site for roadies!
@GreenGiant I kind of like the color combo!
Plus, Frank is gone this week. While the cat’s away…
How do you like the Enve rims? A friend just bought some and I’m pondering a set.
For when pink just isn’t “out there” enough…
Want…
@GreenGiant A pass on most things but you need to go away and rethink that whole cockpit habibi.
@G’rilla I’ve just got a set of ENVE SES 3.4 and they are absolutely fantastic. I’m generally pretty non-sensitive to bits of kit, but I really notice a big difference in these especially under hard acceleration.
I’m comparing them to my previous Eurus wheelset. I don’t think it is weight, as the Eurus were pretty light, I think it is more the stiffness.
The other thing which has surprised me is that I don’t feel any issues in crosswinds, and we have a lot of them here. I haven’t ridden deep profile wheels much for exactly that reason, so I was a bit worried about moving to these, but Enve say they have reduced the crosswind drag to be similar to a low-profile wheel and it appears to be true.
Had a Powertap hub built in as well – clinchers so I can use them for training more easily.
@G’rilla
Is there a rule that I’ve missed about matching frame colour to your front door?
Cycling is a great sport for shorter people, large bikes just look completely wrong. Why would you combine a head tube like that with 650 wheels?
@Chris
Rule #8b: Bike, door and flowerpots shall be carefully matched.
Match the bike to the pots and the door to brown or;
Match the bike to the colour of the flowers in the pots and the door to the colour of the pots, or;
Match the door and the bike to the colour of the decking, or;
Brown, brown, glazed terracotta.
@GreenGiant That is a lovely bike. Your name and head tube says you are one of us (see page 1 for my Gunnar).
@Chriseses: He had the bike first, you know, and the rest was a bitch.
And hush about the large bikes. We know they look wrong but pretend it doesn’t matter. Long-term counseling is often necessary.
@ChrisO Dang. I just noticed my doormat is off-center. Have been meaning to replace that with a slightly darker wool piece….
@ChrisO You know – you’re right. From this angle the cockpit could use some work. Fine example of rules 1/2/8 in action.
Check out this beast. Sur la plaque!!
Oops. Image not working. Here’s a link
http://www.donhoubicycles.com/land-speed-bike/
@mouse that just looks like fun
Hi there,
love the site! Here’s my bike. Any obvious violations?
(I know, mtb-pedals, I’m saving up for some road gun-decks and shoes.)
@w de cat
Nice pic – if you’d spannered the pedals off and said your Speedplays were on your TT bike we’d have believed you.
@w de cat It doesn’t look like the rear tyre is properly aligned with the valve stem, close but no coconut as they say. The bar tape at the end of the drops also looks a tad scuffed and a messy at the cufflink.
@Chris you have good eyes.
Road conditions in Flanders aren’t all that superb. Went out for a ride last evening and made sideways contact with the road after flat rear inner tube. Didn’t have the time yet to correct my on the spot reparations. It hurts to see my beloved machine stand there in pain so it will be sorted after todays workday.
Pulled the seat post on my do-it-all bike yesterday to relube. Went to reinsert, what’s that? Oh, the ST was sheared clean in half, right around where the post ended. Shitdamnit.
Cheap steel frameset, but I wanted that so I could actually have one bike out of many that I could lock up and not worry about. The good news is that I bought it new from a big dealer so they’re going to warranty it. The bad news is I have to pull it all apart and ship back to them, then wait to see if they can dig up this model, because it’s 1.5 years old and the new model is a bit different. Argh, I dread taking off the racks and fenders, those were a pita putting on.
Oh well, I’d been wanting to strip it and get it powdercoated a new color. I guess this is my chance.
The seatpost that was in there was a modest Ritchey post. It is diagonally cut at the end, not level like a Thomson or a Campa. I wonder if this caused some sort of abrasion from the inside out? I also wonder if I’d been riding around with a broken ST or if it snapped upon removal. I didn’t hear/see it as I pulled the post out.
Then again, this could just be cheap steel that wasn’t manufactured so well by someone. It looks bonkers though, as if a laser cutter was used to smoothly slice it right in half.
@w de cat
minor quibbles, that’s a hot looking bike & a very nice colour scheme!
So went & had a physio based bike fitting session yesterday where it was as much based around what was best for my specific physical conditions as well as what might produce the ideal performance.
Everything was pretty normal in terms of saddle & seat post position, just raised & moved forward a touch. I’d gone in expecting to change stems to something shorter (I’ve been having neck & shoulder issues from being too stretched out) & hoping to be able to remove a spacer or two from the stack…end result was a 70mm stem compared to the current 110mm stem! Did some pretty significant time in the new possie on the watt bike & then the trainer in his rooms & it feels unbelievably better, can’t understand how the supposedly experienced shop owner was happy for me to leave with a front end so out of line with what I needed!
@Mikael Liddy
Sadly this is often the case, even at the LBS. When “fitting” comes with the price of the bike, the shops have a vested interest in convincing you that the bits on the bike are exactly what you need. Any time spent changing parts and making minor adjustments is a “waste.”
@Fred
I would have thought that the incremental fitting adjustments would generate additional revenue for the LBS: new bars, new stem, etc., all at additional, per item costs.
@Mikael Liddy
70mm! And here I’ve been riding around with a 90mm stem, ashamed of the little choad.
@Bespoke I guess the operative part of the story there was ‘When “fitting” comes with the price of the bike’, i.e., no extra revenue for swapping out a stem.
On balance, I’d probably go for your paid option, though, even if it is a choice between being gouged and being fobbed off…