Gideon's bike life - Genesis, Graham Weigh, Cinelli, Land Shark & Ritchey

New wheels, tyres & brake pads make for a much grippier experience all round!

Removed some stickers & had to change the stem as 130mm was too long on this. 120mm is probably a bit long too tbh.

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Nice. Very nice.

Looks proper. How are you finding the ride?

I might have an x2 in 110 will try remember to have a look.

Cheers! Yeah, rides well!

Have an 110 X2 on the MASH which I'll swap to try, taa. Definitely feels like a bigger frame than the Donohue was, I have to reach down further to get a bottle.

I've been thinking more about bike geo with comparing the ride of this to Donohue & it'd be nice to quantify the differences better. The Donohue isn't an off-the-peg frame & wasn't built for me, so there's no geometry charts available. Does anyone have any experience in measuring the geometry from the frame?

I've only got a tape measure, & I figure a protractor wouldn't be much use anyway as it'd be hard to get an accurate measurement with the tubes curving away. Got a 300mm lens for my DSLR lying around, so could try a long shot & measuring on the photo, but it'd be hard to get it lined up properly. Perhaps just measuring what I can & then seeing if I can SOH CAH TOA my way to all the necessary measurements. Any ideas?

Edit: I guess I can try whatever technique with a frame I do know the geometry of, & validate the results.

Put the rear wheel against a wall, measure points on the frame (dropouts, bb, stem clamp, tube junctions etc) wrt the wall. Use a phone app angle measurement tool too and you should get a decent idea of what's going on.

This looks superb

The wheels on my Graham Weigh are a bit knackered. They're out of true & I've hammered the rims with doing stupid off road riding on it. I'm pretty sure any bike shop I'd take them to would just tell me they need a complete rebuild, so after some new rims. Anyone got any experience of Kinlin ADHN rims? Looks like what I'm after - 32H, shallow profile & silver.

I've been looking at getting some in the near future. A couple of people in the wheel building thread mentioned they weren't the easiest wheels to build as they were not perfectly round but it could have been a dodgy batch. Maybe not your problem if you're not gonna build them.

Not many bad words about Kinlin rims generally.

Mm, cheers for the feedback - gonna give them a punt. Half the price of the TB14, so even if it doesn't work out it's not a lot of money sunk.

Got the Suzue ProMax hubs rebuilt onto some Kinlin ADHN by Woodrup. Pretty pleased with them, they spin lovely again (were in need of a service) & match the look I was after. Plus the rims are pretty wide, so the 25mm Gatorskin measures up as 27mm, nice.

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Sadly (but not for all), the blue GravelKing SKs are pretty shredded, so having to retyre (heh) them. Just stuck some Continental Contact IIs I used to have on the Croix de Fer on as we're going touring down next week.

Realised that the year is slipping away, I've got shedloads of leave & probably no plans to go away in September as we'd hoped. So booked in a last minute mini tour in Wales next week. Since camp sites with communal facilities are a bit iffy in the current coronavirus climate, I've opted for the cheapest hotels we can find around. Something to look forward to, not ridden in Wales since I went to university there & was one of only two people in Aberystwyth who rode fixed gear.

Anyway, spent the afternoon swapping tyres between four bikes. It's a faff, but each one is a five minute job, so can squeeze it in while waiting for builds to run.

Oh, & ordered some pink bar tape for the Ritchey. All black is a bit boring.

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Pink bar tape is popping, but doesn't handle the rigours of dirty post-puncture hands very well. My fault for going touring on a patched tube. Glam photos from our questionably four-starred hotel in Barmouth last week.

Little tour of Wales was fab. A complete mixed bag in terms of weather - never been wetter on the bike in the Peaks & never been hotter on the bike (in the UK) in north Wales. Some fantastic climbs - lots of inspiration from the top 100 climbs books - & generally great roads - really pleasantly surprised how much better the roads surfaces than around home. It was a nice change hotelling it & being able to pack light (still took too much) & knowing that no matter how wet or sweaty we got, we'd be able to get comfy in the evening. Maybe I'm getting soft.

@Tor managed to get up some tough grades on her Aurelius, but when we got back she's been shopping - a drivechain overhaul to the same range as I have on my Ritchey. Think she was jealous of my comparative spinning on the 20% ramps of Long Mountain climb.

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Personal highlights of the trip's riding have to be:

Dyfi Forest climb out of Aberllefenni. Beautiful & quiet, winding up the valley past a few slate mines. Felt really remote. A few good kickers, but plenty of nice gentle bits where you could recover & take in the scenery.

Stwlan dam climb out of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Consistently steep closed road climb up to a little reservoir, with nine hairpins! Racing down again I was reminded of that swoopy mojo you get into descending a windy col, fab.

Ffordd Pen Llech in Harlech, which may or may not be the steepest road in the world. Either which way, it's bloody wild how that road ramps. A little bit annoyed my Strava didn't stop properly at the top when I went to buy a postcard. Ah well.

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Lovely sounding rides, routes sound v similar to a bunch of overnighters I did last year trying to tick off all the 100 Climbs. That Blaenau climb..

Don't tell any more people, it's nice enough without too many other cyclists...!

Hmm, bubbly paint on the fork crown of the MASH & a bit of white aluminium crustiness. I drilled it for a brake when I first got it, & I guess some wet got under that paint. Instant write-off? Will give it a sand & see what's up underneath.

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Looks like oxidation. That is what happens when aluminium isn't properly protected from the elements. Only happens on the top layer. It isn't dangerous, but it is ugly.

Cheers for putting my mind a bit at rest. I suspected it was okay after a bit of sanding, so going to clean it up a bit & then get some clearcoat on it to protect it a bit better. Either way of resolving this (getting a new fork, trying to sort of this one) isn't going to be pretty, & with the dings in this frame already it's been destined to be a rat bike for a while.

You have a great taste in bikes

Love that ritchey and the gt (dat blue paint+tanwalls is wining)

Cheers! You're not the first person to comment on the GT's blue & tanwall pairing - does work quite well :)

Continuing the theme of last minute trips - I took off the second half of last week to do a little tour of the Yorkshire Wolds. There's an official cycling route which comes in at around 140 miles. I made a low-effort a gravel version of the route, but decided on the road one (which still involved a gravel section, thanks Sustans) as I wanted to go on the road bike after touring on the gravel bike last time. @Tor was going to take her Aurelius but one of the specific brake shoes it needs broke so had to take her Woodrup, limiting us to just road riding.

Quite a nice chill route. Split it into three days of sixty miles, getting a train out to Malton & staying in cheap hotels in Beverley & Hunmanby. The first day was blisteringly hot, the second day was thick sea fog & the last day was a mix of the two. Glad we didn't get any thunderstorms, they seemed to miss the north east entirely.

Also managed to squeeze in a ride up Rosedale Chimney Bank, which is often compared to Hardknott Pass but IMO is vastly easier. Managed to get up it with light touring kit 34x26 as my rear derailleur skipped in the 28.

Packed super light as I wanted to go on the GT but the only wheels I have which work at the moment only have 16 spokes on the front which had me nervous at first (especially on the unexpected gravel) but worked out fine in the end.

1. Harvest time for many fields in the wolds.
   
2. Gravel section at the end of the day was unwelcome.
   
3. We brought a little monocular to see the birds at Flamborough Head - could barely see the cliffs, let alone any birds.
   
4. Rosedale Chimney Bank with the low cloud was dramatic.
   

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Did another little trip last weekend with a few friends - camping out near Gisburn in the Forest of Bowland. I don't have a hammock, so ended up bivvying. As a first time, it wasn't as bad as I expected. That said, I did get barely any sleep & woke up drenched in my own sweat. Still, better than rain I guess.

Shot some stuff which was used in the little film Restrap made out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iCj0Hkiuyc&feature=youtu.be

Two more little trips in the bag.

Rode up to just outside Northallerton to meet some friends for a night's camping. Tried the tarp & wheel setup for bivvying - it worked pretty well! Pretty much no wind that night though, & I'm not sure how well it would survive were it more blowy. Cheapo WTB slicks worked out pretty well.

Second trip is a last-minute Leeds Liverpool canal jaunt. Got the train out on Tuesday morning & stayed in Blackburn overnight. Turns out Blackburn doesn't have a huge amount in terms of tourism (quelle surprise), but it was a cheap Premier Inn. Absolutely chucked it down yesterday afternoon, but thankfully we only got properly drenched in the last twenty miles. Feel like I've seen every possible variation of canal towpath now. Glad I swapped to knobbly tyres for the trip, though there were no sections worse than the bit around Silsden which I've done a few times anyway.

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Was up in the Lake District for a few days earlier this week with @Tor. We got the train to Langwathby & then rode over to Ullswater to stay with some friends.

Unfortunately, poor signage meant that we arrived in Pooley Bridge with no way across to the northern side of the lake - the temporary footbridge was closed only a few hours before. Faced with a fifteen mile detour back to Penrith, or a lot of hike-a-bike over to Patterdale, our hosts hatched a plan. They had access to a small dingy & some kayaks, so they came over & we lashed our bikes onto the kayaks. Made it across without losing either of them- winner!

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Also did a gravel lap of Skiddaw, plus some mucking around in Whinlatter (route from Red Bull which I found at the last minute). I need to ride more in the Lakes, it's fab. Blue MTB run was loads of fun on the CX bike.

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Got Woodrup to sort out my old wheels (needed retensioning) for winter as I don't fancy running the Dura-Ace ones into the ground. I've amassed a huge amount of part worn tyres but turns out very few road ones so these old Vittoria blue ones will have to do. Kind of dig it (but I do have a history of weirdly liking blue tyres).

I scuffed the bar tape by accident last week & now it's ripped, so need some new stuff. Been considering swapping the bars for the Integralters I have lying around but @darlojim might have put me off the idea due to how awkward the internal routing is. Reckon they'd suit it though.

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