I want to buy a road bike

[Lobachevsky]

Bought it as a Christmas Day present for myself. with the customisation it comes at a shade over £4k.

due to arrive in Feb. hope to be healthy by then.

[caja-dglh]

Excellent. Only other comment is “holy shit” on Di shifting now hitting 105.

[Sits]

it's a pretty cool looking bike.for an e bike.

Oh yes, it certainly is. Enjoy:

[Lobachevsky]

I know. Could have got the ultegra for £600 more but 500grams and a marginal shifting gain Is going to make fuck all difference to my ride. Can’t wait.

[San Bernardhinault]

Lovely looking bike. Not sure what the value of super high end lightweight componentry is on an e-assist bike. The battery is so heavy, and the motor should be sufficiently effective, that you'd mostly want highly durable components. I might put mid-range MTB stuff on rather than, say, expensive Ultegra.

[Lobachevsky]

I agree in some ways but it’s an 11kg bike so should ride pretty well without the assist on. I’m hopeful that it’ll keep my riding range and motivation up as I slide into decrepitude.

[Lobachevsky]

Plus, and I can’t overemphasise this enough. It doesn’t look like an e bike.

[Billy Casper]

How has everyone's cycling year been?

It's been poor for me. Only 28 rides for a distance of 1126 miles (1812km). This is partly due to starting to play football again once a week, watching my son play football on Sunday mornings and the weather not co-operating (I'll only go out if there's a less than 10% chance of rain and the wind is less than 15 miles per hour).
The best ride was a flat 100 miler past Selby, but other than that there is nothing memorable to report. I'm hoping to do much better in 2024.

[Hot Orange]

I have very similar rules regarding the wind and rain.

My cycling year was going quite well until the end of October, when I started getting intense shooting pains in my right knee, the cause of which is yet to be identified. I took some time off the bike and I have literally just arrived back from my first ride since 23rd October.

That has left me with a total of 3639 km (2261 miles). Not bad - I used to do plenty more when I was commuting but now I work from home it takes longer for the miles to add up. No especially long rides this year so the highlight was probably a 54-miler to Southwold and back, a ride I like to do fairly often but only if the wind direction is favourable (i.e. a tailwind home). It rarely was this year.

[diggedy derek]

Great looking bike above that.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Haven't totted mine up yet but it'll be low. I don't mind a bit of wind or a light shower but the autumn term weather was really awful cutting commuting to a minimum.

No long rides since I broke my wrist last summer, so will be resolving to address that in the new year

[Sporting]

I don't really do any counting but low in any case.

[San Bernardhinault]

Not a particularly impressive year for me on the road bike (I don't pay the Strava premium so this is approximate) with about 60 rides and about 2500 miles, not helped by the fact I didn't ride at all in the first 4 months. Yesterday's final 30 miler broke all my rules and I was slow, meandering and it was raining at the start with a lot of grit on the roads, I should know better. I have no idea on the MTB, but all my weekday rides have been MTBers with only weekends on the road bike recently. I should try and change that in the New Year, with one hard hilly road bike ride mid-week if I'm not working too hard.

[San Bernardhinault]

Ah! And because I use the Wahoo Element, it uploads via RidewithGPS. Which is giving me better data. 2490 miles, 91 rides (some on the mountain bike), 120k ft of elevation. Longest ride was a feeble 73 miler last month.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Checked the app I use, probably a few inaccuracies/undercounting when I lose signal but low, as expected:

1278 for 64 rides, longest a mere 41

[Mumpo]

Just put in an order for a new '23 Émonda SL 6 Di2. 25% discounted, but still more than I've ever spent on a bike. It is lush.

[San Bernardhinault]

Oooh. Nice. What colour scheme? Have you ever owned a bike with Di2 before?

[Mumpo]

This one.



Never owned anything with Di2 but rode a top of the range Pinarello Dogma on a trial day a couple of years ago and the shifting was as lovely and crisp as one would expect. To be honest I wasn't looking for digital shifting but the price was so good I'd have jumped at it even with manual gears.

The guy in the LBS was trying to tempt me with a Domane (slight pricier, natch) because of the comfort angle but the Emonda I've had for the last seven years has been fine for non-stop rides of 40 odd miles and anything longer I break up with rest stops so I hope this'll be fine. Besides, Fred Whitton again in May (stewarded it last year, so guaranteed entry at a big discount this time) so I need something that climbs.

Any advice on using/looking after digital shifters? It's the first time I've had disc brakes on a bike, too.

[San Bernardhinault]

I’ve never done any maintenance on my shifters except take them into the shop every 2000 miles. So I have no good advice.

Using the shifters is trivial.

[San Bernardhinault]

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm off on another bike touring trip. This is not bikepacking - just taking enough stuff to stay in hotels and eat in restaurants. The 20+ year old old aluminium Cannondale is sitting in a shed in Charleston, so that's not an option, so I had been planning on retrofitting my carbon MTB for the purpose, to make it a bit gravel-bike-y.

But that starts to get a little expensive - replacing the forks, replacing the tires, paying for a fair amount of service. So I was looking at budget gravel bikes, instead, and the Poseidon Amibition X looks like a lot of bike for a pretty low price point. Particularly if I get the flat bar edition, and for all my trail riding I want flat bars. I never go into the drops on trails, and would be even less likely to do so carrying a bunch of gear. I'm very tempted by this:

https://www.poseidonbike.com/product...44122291306724

[Sits]

Ooh yeah, nice for US$650. You need to get the chrome though.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Went to pick up a parcel at the depot but it closes at 10, rather than 12, now. Cheered myself up by visiting the 2 very good bike shops on that street, ostensibly to suss out prices for a decent/stylish leccy bike for Ms F. 2000 to 2 500, Trek or Specialized, it seems. The latter is the same brown as AG2R's sadly departed shorts.

[San Bernardhinault]

My new bike arrived yesterday. The one up above. $550 in the end because of an extra $100 discount, and very quick shipping.

After a rather embarrassing few hours putting it together - particularly problematic was that the chain got tangled and I was klutzy with the derailleur - I took it out for a ride this morning. It's definitely less bike than my other 2 main bikes, but then again it cost around 15% of the MTB and less than 10% of the road bike. A little heavy. But the 1x front ring and the wide range on the rear were super nice on the uphill dirt road coming home. Should be ideal as a touring bike because the lack of a front derailleur removes opportunities for things to go wrong. The load of all my clothes and gear will mean the weight of the bike doesn't really matter. The chunk 40mm tires are much less likely to flat and should give relatively smooth rides no matter how shitty the road conditions. And the fact that it's aluminium means that I'm less terrified travelling with it.

On the other thread, Tobes and PT talked about their various shopping excesses. Some might think I have a bike problem - N+1, always. But really, this is only my third bike that I will actually use. The fourth - my old normal road bike - has a crack in the carbon frame and can't really be used on roads, the fifth - the 20 year old alu cannondale - lives in a shed in South Carolina. And the sixth, a $120 Walmart piece of shit, also lives in the same shed and is only there for emergencies when friends visit.

[Lobachevsky]

SB - sounds reasonable to me. nothing worse than being caught short in the bike department.

[Levin]

Instagram has started showing me custom paint jobs. I can't afford the base bikes let alone have them handpainted

[INSTA]https://www.instagram.com/p/C4AyYvAM3cY/[/INSTA]

[INSTA]https://www.instagram.com/p/C2j9e9jMXKg/[/INSTA]