In Which I Attempt to Build a Sensible Road Bike + other bike content

Absalutely banging bike and bag

How worried should I be about this?
It appears to just be the lacquer but I think it was caused by a crash around 2 months ago which put the wheel pretty badly out of true and jammed this side of the rim into the brake shoe as I went down. (As far as I remember it was OK at the time and I've only just noticed, probably because I literally only ride this bike at night)

I have been considering getting new wheels anyway but staying in budget on rims and getting wider and/or tubeless tires looks like it will add about 200g per wheel... if tubeless they'll be faster overall but that weight difference is going to be noticeable and one of the things I enjoy about this bike how quick to accelerate it feels due to the light rims and tires.

1 Attachment

Phwoah! This bike makes me want an alu rim brake road bike.. which is saying something!

for me, it looks like just the top layer of clear coat thats flaking, you can check if there are any loose fibres sticking out of these areas and if not, the wheel should be good to use further.

thanks, this sounds like what I want to hear👍

I also read up a bit and braked really hard on the wheel with no adverse effects so I'm going with "cosmetic damage, no risk of involuntary dental reconstruction"
(no legal proceedings will be undertaken against user HK_Berlin even in the likely event of my death)

I can get some nice clinchers cheap so will probably keep these wheels as is and try and save some cash to build something nicer

I am provable with data faster on this bike (except big hills obvs) so I'd like to get some even faster tires on it

I actually bothered to sort out the saddle position on my mtb, which turned out to automatically fix the other problem I had with bar angle. Feels great now, after getting it right I rode around 30 - 40km just enjoying the city at night. Then yesterday it was way too hot and I didn't feel like climbing hills, so I thought I'd try doing a long ride on the mtb and go and look at the sea.

Unfortunately while going up a steep hill on the way out of Tokyo my rear derailleur did a thing.
Fortunately I literally just this week bought a multitool with a chain breaker on it, and swiftly converted it to single speed.

Unfortunately I forgot I have biopace chainrings and measured the chain at the wrong point.
It turned out fine tho and I'm not really sure I can be bothered to buy a new derailleur and set it up again so I might have an SSMTB for this summer.

It turned out fine tho and I'm not really sure I can be bothered to buy a new derailleur and set it up again so I might have an SSMTB for this summer.

I finally fixed this sometime last month? but the post where I broke it says 5 months ago so it definitely went as predicted.
It spent much of the summer carrying things/friends and also getting crashed in the course of it, all in all has been a great investment considering the initial cost wasn't much more than a set of good tires for my road bike.

New derailleur not only has the advantage of looking cool but also of having 32t capacity so I got a new cassette at the same time.
I had been planning to take it out on some dirt roads in the mountains in Izu and camp a couple of nights but shit happened and now it's too cold for the sleeping bag I bought specifically to do that. Oh well, maybe next year.

I also got the new tires for my fixed bike but then almost immediately put risers on it.

This is basically because of one ride around the beginning of august that I thought would be fine but which absolutely destroyed me.
Since I had been riding much more consistently this year I decided to look at my data and see if it was just a bad day, and on doing so I discovered that since starting to ride consistently and with purpose I have been getting steadily slower and worse at climbing.
This is the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen.

I can only assume I was consistently riding more than I was able to recover from, but I was never riding a crazy volume and if I need more time to recover then I would have no time left to actually ride the bike.
This discovery did not inspire me to figure out a better way to train or change up my life or anything it just made me sad and so I've only been riding riser bar bikes around the city for the last 4 months

Anyway I rode my road bike for the first time in ages yesterday and remembered how much I like it.
Unfortunately I discovered not only that not riding properly for 4 months doesn't help your fitness (seriously I'm the slowest I've ever been it really sucks) but that the freehub is completely 100% fucked now. And although I have a replacement the old one is absolutely not coming off.
Current plan is to get a new hub and rebuild the wheel, then see if I can build up some fitness again over the winter. I would like to get back to doing this shit:

If it doesn't work out this time tho I'm probably just going to accept that I don't have the time to get good at riding and give up, at least until I get sick enough of everything to quit my job and go live on no money in the countryside.

I also put drops back on my fixed but it completely fucks me up now, I need to put a bigger cog on till I get my legs back at least a bit.
Oh and I changed the chain for an Izumi Kai I bought for no reason at all in the summer, it does feel quite nice tho.

Fun stuff