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 ...
Graeme Obree – new world record.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-24088647
@snoov
Awesome, i had been following this over the months…..great to see Old Beastie finally make it with Graeme at the helm!
@snoov
Holy insane freak! Chapeau!
So here’s the latest instalment – photo taken by my LBS so I take no responsibility for rule infringements.
Just needs my saddle and cages to be complete. And those are not the final bars – waiting for some 3T Ergonovas to be delivered.
@ChrisO Watch them with that hacksaw down there…………
@ChrisO The white cabling looks good!
What kind of cables did you go with? I opted for the Jagwire pro’s in sterling silver. I love them, but they were pretty hard to get the housing ends on.
@G’rilla
As much as I love Cervelo, they’ve been known to conduct studies that support their own design decisions. I remember Gerard Vroomen justifying his tall head tubes and claiming that Faboo can’t reach his drops because his headtube was too short and that’s why he’s so slow.
@ChrisO
Nice! Our bike sponsor is Giant, and a number of my teammates ride that frame. They’re all super happy with it. Looking good!
@Weldertron Nice – I just went with the Campag cables in white.
Although apparently the shop is going to become the local Jagwire distributor so I might get some blingy gold cables for the Ridley when I next need them.
@Scaler911 Yes, unfashionable as Giant may be I have never heard anyone who rides a TCR speak badly of it.
The only mistake they’ve made recently IMHO is to put the integrated seatpost onto the TCR frame. With that compact geometry the seatpost sticks up a long way and is inherently weak. I know a guy who’s lost one seatpost in a fairly mild crash, and the replacement while in transit by plane.
It wasn’t easy finding a non-ISP version of the Advanced SL in my size.
Can someone explain the advantage of an ISP frame? I can’t think of anything except maybe a 50g weight savings.
I think that’s about it Weldertron. I suspect a bit more than 50g though maybe not much. It’s the weight of the clamp and also the length of post that has to go inside the tube.
There are supposed to also be ride and aero advantages from the one piece frame and that ISPs are generally more shaped than non-ISPs but again I think it is pretty marginal.
Against that you have the difficulty of getting the length right and the pain if you get it wrong, potentially lower resale value, difficult for anyone to borrow your bike and a bastard when travelling.
Put it this way, I have an ISP on my Ridley and I went out of my way NOT to have one this time.
@ChrisO
Yeah – my 2012 Damocles has an ISP and the 2013 does not.
Put it this way – the ISP has made me very good at bike bag origami.
@Weldertron
the ISP has an advantage of not changing height over time or during a ride. Sounds silly perhaps but for me, a drop in saddle height more than 1-2mm can be 48 hrs of knee pain if I don’t notice the seat position . Another is with the “stubby” if u dual purpose the bike as a TT rig w/ clipon aero bars, you can have the second seat in tt position ready to go(like at a stage race out of town where u can’t bring 3 bikes and multiple wheel sets). Some frames (sadly not my particular wilier) allow you to cut the ISP down and put a conventional seatpost in. Otherwise, yeah, kinda silly and inconvenient, ESP when test riding. A lot of medium size retailers hate stocking em.
@ChrisO
Very nice. Hopefully they didn’t have it stacked up with the other bikes in the back there.
@ChrisO
It is now incumbent on you, given your first line, to go back to said LBS and show them whats what !!
Explain in no uncertain terms how photos should be taken or fear public flogging and humiliating scrutiny
Not exactly a bike but my parents picked this bread up from the grocery store. Record sandwich anyone?
any good suggestions on a chainstay gaurd for a road bike. I’m looking for one doesn’t stick to the frame. We have many rough roads down here and chain slap can get pretty severe.
@RedRanger
http://shop.lizardskins.com/collections/road/products/carbon-leather-chainstay
@RedRanger http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/ca/en/lezyne-smart-chainstay-protector/rp-prod36265
@Weldertron perfect! are you using one? do you know what size works best?
No, but it’s been sitting in my basket for months. I just refuse to pay for shipping on stuff, and after buying a Giant Trance, and a Felt F in the same year, the budget is in the nots.
A friend uses one on his mountain bike. It’s held up pretty well over time.
@RedRanger
Perfect? It’s for Atb/Mtb. What an ugly thing to put on a race bike. Make sure you have enough wheel/tire clearance. Anyway it’s your call.
I don’t think it looks that bad. It’s tight black neoprene. I rather something i can take on and off depending on the conditions, than a sun bleached clear guard peeling at the edges.
@gaswepass
Fucking learn how to tighten a seat pin, dolt. For fucks sake. Carbon paste, torque wrench. Your seat pin should never, ever slide – not even after riding Roubaix V consecutive times in a single day.
@ChrisO
I doubt this amounts to any savings at all as all ISPs have largish and complicated mounts at the saddle and/or mini seat pins so you can adjust the height by a few cms if need be.
I’ve heard people saying that particularly in cornering, the bike handles better; a more cohesive unit, if you will. But I’m with you – seems like a classic gimmick and most frame builders are moving away from them. Veloforma had them in their 2012 range and not in their 2013 range.
Same for BB30 on the CX line, by the way.
I laugh at the notion of me fitting a bike with an ISP in a bike box.
Cool looking bike – you putting that ugly saddle of yours on their mate?
@zeitzmar
You must live in Seattle or Portland, eh? It takes self-control every time to reach past the Campa bread and grab the whole grain.
@Weldertron
Chain slap got to do more with a road condition rather than the weather.Chain is slapping equally loud come rain or come shine.
@TommyTubolare
Spot fucking on. Its about time someone talked some sense around here.
RR, get a carbon glue-on or ride it naked if you’re not riding Roubaix regularly.
@Weldertron
That bad? THAT BAD? What the FUCK are you on about?
We accept nothing less than Looks Fantastic around these parts.
Fuck, all the doping talk on the VSP thread must have melted everyone’s brain. For Merckx sake, people.
@frank
You should probably forward it to Marko,no?
@RedRanger
Just took my neoprene one off the MTB, they look like shit, they do work but, they look like SHIT, especially when they get covered in chain oil, did I mention they look like shit?
@TommyTubolare
By conditions on meant road, but i can see where it may have been assumed i meant weather.
I guess my mountain side still brings it’s side out every now and then. Hill repeats for me it is.
At least I Rule #9 the fuck out of it.
@frank
An ISP a gimmick?!? Oh sure – next you will be telling me that the different colored dampeners on the ISP of my LOOK 595 don’t really giver me the option to change the bike’s ride quality…
Why not just have a seat post with dampeners?
@Marcus
Dont look now, but the Easter Bunny isnt all that he seems to be. Sssshhh dont tell anyone
@frank a carbon glue on?
@piwakawaka I agree they look like shit, but so does cracked carbon
@RedRanger
If your chainstay cracks from chainslap you have a warranty claim. If you just want to protect the finish, a $3 roll of clear sock tape will last a lifetime.
@frank I will repent
Chainstay protectors on downhill bikes only and then only made of an old inner tube and electrical tape.
I had a similar Cannondale item on my Prophet but it always seemed like it would do more damage than it prevented from grit and dirt getting trapped behind it.
@Marcus Next you’ll be telling us you have one of those twin pronged triathlon saddles to protect your poor backside.
Here it is at last… I’m afraid the photos really don’t do it justice. In the flesh it looks like it should be muzzled when taken outdoors.
7.1kg all up, including cages, pedals, clinchers and Powertap with a mostly Record build. Could easily be brought down to UCI limit. I put my Compact on this and Standard onto the Noah.
I love the white on the matte black and the carbon weave is beautiful to look at.
The only issue is that it makes it insanely difficult to photograph – against any sort of backlight the black just becomes a silhouette, and if you put it against white the accents are lost.
I’ll have to do a proper session outside in full daylight. Still have to put the gumwalls on too. The only remaining question is whether I should stick a V-cog decal onto that top tube, to go with the V-cuffs.
@ChrisO
Beautifully proportioned and assembled sir!
I almost got a regular carbon TCR last year instead of my Felt.
With the sloping top tube, I would love to see how much post Frank would need.
@frank
But that’s Cervelo quoting a scientific paper…
@ChrisO
Really really nice bike, but this photo is hurting my brain. The background is like a colour blindness test or one of those 3d magic eye posters. If I kept looking i’m going to get flashbacks of Vietnam.
@tessar
Somebody was extolling a Trek to me recently and pointed me at a Trek report that started something like “The following comparison of the Trek xx against all leading brands shows the Trek outperforms……blah blah”. So the tables in the report had only a single European made bike. I guess they could consider no European bike to be a leading brand but I’m not sure I would agree!
@ChrisO
We’re introducing matte-finish decals this week. That would look pretty bitchin, if you ask me.
@RedRanger
@frank I’ll be up for those matt black too when they come on line. Look great.
Something been chewing on your steerer there?
@frank
That looks like The Bit of Concrete Wall Against Which All Bikes Must Be Photographed but you haven’t ditched the Record and gone all Rotor have you?
@frank Perfect, the finishing touch.
And I realised I had a much better place to photograph my bike. I didn’t install these lights and archway over my bed, they were there when I moved in, but I have been toying with the idea of making a little bike shrine… plus it’s so handy when I get up to go riding.