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~taps BB height~ you can fit so many smiling_starmers_in_ill_fitting_jeans under this bad boy #pictoscale
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love how the wheels and tires tie the aesthetic together. it’s not easy to be a trailblazer, but this build is the definition of it. well done!
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@cozey if he can’t renounce transphobes in the party least he can do is hold my bike up for a pic 🙊
@launchpadboi much too kind, as we’re constantly reminded this is just a zoomer version of dbad
I’m currently out making sure the bike doesn’t explode before a longer ride
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first review
so I actually got up before nine today, 7:30 to be precise and managed to take this lovely bike for its first ride, nothing big, just a pootle to test that my bolting skills were up to grade, a brake worked, the crank didn't fall off. usual stuff.
pre flight checks:
frame pump
bigger tube in the saddle bag
something to hold my thermos
a bumbag filled with spare cables, cutters, lube and a spanner in case something catastrophic happenedi also made time for a toasted bun and left over vegan ragu i'd made the other day, was delicious, fry a sliced onion in a good bit of butter along with diced carrot and celery, when thoroughly soft, add a tin of tomatoes and some TVP mins, oregano, basil, garlic powder, salt to taste, half a can of water. reduce medium heat and make sure the tomato is broken down. takes 30 minutes and is honestly excellent.
back to the bike, i'd eaten and i was off. my main goal was the orange wall i'd found the other week, just down the road. When i got there however the light was shit, strong shadow, harsh light, no cloud to filter it. this would not do.
i guess this was a larger force telling me i should go for a bit of a bimble, maybe to the forest where the foliage will do the soft lighting for me. reluctantly this made too much sense for me to be lethargic about going there and going home instead.
I have to admit for the ride over there i had amey in my head, the bike was slow, felt lethargic on the cycle paths. plush? yes. extremely good looking? i was yeah, and the bike too i guess. i just heard the inner doubter chant "should have got a trek you dumb bimbo", "what were you thinking? you thought you could have it all? your bike is literally named after an episode where someone fails this????", "your hubris has gotten you again woman".
this is obviously not what one wants to feel about their new bike, especially one they've been anticipating for many months and boring anyone with ears about for the duration. imagine peoples responses if i came back and said "bit shit this, might just get an ebike". half of them will feel smug, the other half will feel the same sense of doubt as they look at their own "do it all on road, off road, no road project" sucking their wallet.
surprisingly when all this is battling around your head you lose track of time and before i knew it i was at the gates of swinley looking to dart over the 9 mile ride like some form of yuppie frogger clone. on arrival i did my usual routine, pulled up to a rock outside ceasers camp, leaned the bike against a tree and got my phone out. shocked at the time, it was no longer than it usually takes on my single speed? not discernible anyway.
soon the voice of amey was replaced by the voice of mr janny heine', the large, vollumous tyres, plush and lethargic feeling, but no slower, just nicer on the bum. this certainly cleared a little of the doubt, i mean really, did i serious expect a 50c bike to be anything to write home about on the pavement? that would be a fair chunk of delusion even by my standards.
a few messages to the anti roadie defence force signal group chat, a few select dms and a bit of a browse later, i hopped back on the ol' homer and set off on a familiar route.
now this is where i should be typing things like "it came alive", "as soon as it was off road it was a different beast", "one this weighty beast had a taste of the rough stuff it was away", would really excite a few readers of cycling blogs looking to buy their next bike. but in reality, it wasn't much like that. the bike felt the same as on the road, sounds daft, but then you consider the terrain is rooty, rocky, meandering and covered with unleashed dogs but i had the confidence as if i was plugging away on some a road outside guilford.
The paths i'd been discovering for the last few months on the 35c single speed became fresh, not in the conventional "under biking way" as many find, but the opposite, over biking. no longer was i looking for roots and rocks which may trip me up or bend a artisan rim, i was just drawing the quickest line and shooting over all of it, off the saddle, bum back and arms loose. was a dream. clicking through the gears when things got tough and conquering the tight sharp inclines without a sweat. no more sitting at the side of the trail waiting for blood to leave my legs, no more huffing and puffing, just a calm and controlled ride through some lovely weekday forest.
it's with this in mind i didn't miss the loud clicky hub, it was just nice to be out with the light sounds of the motorway just the other side of the trees.
Quickly i arrived to my usual photo spot, delivered quietly and uneventfully, the MO for this bike as it were really. I bashed around in the undergrowth to find a stick and took the photos at the bottom of this post, it really is a nice bike.
a swig of tea, some skittles and we're back at it, this time, since i was out now i thought i'd check some more gnarly stuff, making my way to the other side of the forest up to the radio tower and some of the steeper climbs. the climbs one would have to walk before on a single speed.
this also happened to be the first proper hill i went down to get there, a loose gravel slope, rutty with baby heads. i don't remember this being fun on the pompino but was impressed with my wheel builder that the rims were straight and true after it.
This is also where the new bike showed its quirks. I'm sure it hasn't escaped you that it's well, rather tall? and short? referring back to our commercial bike blogger friends this would make it fall firmly within the negatives section with quotes like "unstable" and "did not inspire confidence". however one would assume their first taste of a bike was their father pushing them out onto a road ride for their 12th birthday in a way they've romanticised into a hobby now they're in their 40's. mine, and many others who look at such geo less sceptically know what this actually transpires to, a fun chuckable bike which is playful and great for hopping over stuff. that's exactly what it was, every root and bump would flick the front end, paired with some mega wide bars and a longish stem one could easily ride this out in a manner which made them look in control and "rad"
a real joy, i started laughing when i got to the bottom. there really was no other response to such an experience.
inversely, i now had to pay the descent tax and get out of the geographical hole i found myself in. the only way to do this was a rather steep, 15-16% rocky hill which took you up to the top of the forrest with the shrub land. something i'd struggled with on all my previous bikes when placed in similar situations, both by my equipment and my poor fitness. on this bike? with a nice wide tyre supply deflated in a way belagerent would have approved of, it just rode up the wall, it wasn't spritely, it wasn't fast, but it delivered me to the top without feeling too puffed out and no fear of my wheel slipping. what more could someone ask for?
for many of you this will come as no surprise, "what does she expect? she's pretty much got a 1990s mountain bike there". as i've stressed many times however, it's all new to me, i have no idea what bikes are after i stopped riding a bmx to school at 12 years old and instead put years of my life into getting really good at video games. so please, suspend your inner experience just for a moment, or think back to what it was like the first time you got over a big hill.
The shrub land and radio tower of swinely is really nice if you've ever been there, i stopped by the pill box, drank more tea and then explored the various dead ends and mini loops it had to offer. all with a smile on my face, be it riding light gravel or stumbling over poorly constructed woodland trail jumps, the bike did it all and it did it well.
it's at this point i checked my phone again, realising what was supposed to be a quick ride around to check the bike out was now several hours. it didn't feel like it, which i guess is more praise for the bike. eating the last of my peanut butter and jam fold over i joyfully set off for the down hill home, with the new found experience of knowing what fun it would be. one turn into another, and uphill, a down hill, smiles all round.
and there I was back at the road, ready to cross back into the estate on the edge of town for the road ride home. i knew it wasn't going to be spritely but i didn't dread it, i just tried to find a few extra kerbs to jump off along the way to fill the time.
final first impressions? it's good, it might not be a bike for everyone, nor every situation, but it's a bike for me and what i enjoy doing most of the time. i ordered this on the back of the raleigh, which long time readers will know was a bit small. at the time i described that bike similarly "big tyre steel bike which was slow but you could plug some miles on it and have fun off road", this bike is all of that, but with a bit more fun thrown in to make it playful when it needs to be.
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bike is begging for some wheelie practice imo.
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Look, the bike is wheelie good is that not close enough??
Day 2 and the first change, borrowed post from the pomp, couldn’t be bothered to change the saddle, the think it looks rather handsome like this, Thompson’s are dead???
Due to the ornate nature of the seat clamp set up and lug it takes a lot of torquing down. I thought I’d torqued it, but noticed some saddle slippage yesterday, and did not fancy rounding the bolt
Talking to mv he sent some bolts straight away and said to grease them and REALLY go for it, they arrived this morning and I got a bigger Allen key and did just that.
I’m scared to get the bolt out again tbh, but that’s for future me, riding around the park going off every bump I could find to get it to budge? Seems fine
Now touching every piece of wood I can
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Now touching every piece of wood I can
Fnar
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Thank you both! I like the cables as they look like an extension of the paint and MV insisted on the single sided stay as he “loves a lightweight frame”
Enough of that innuendo @snottyotter I’m merely stroking the wood for good luck and ensuring a firmly grasped pole.
Seat post is holding after another ride round the forest, maybe I can stop getting off every couple of miles to check the post is still in the same place
Hopefully all set for a longer weekend ride, I have two routes, one is the South Downs via swinley and the canals targeting some mtb trails, the other is a loop taking in swinley, chobham common and Windsor park. We will see if I do either or I just keep riding loops around swinley forever.
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New to the thread, could I request a picture of a slightly damp hand towel draped over the lower TT (middle tube?) ?
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thank you again all!
unfortunately i will not be supplying you with laundry fetish posting @umop3pisdn, not without payment anyway, @jtfh it has not but now you mention it i cannot unsee, good thing it looks like a frazzle and not a wheat crunchy (awful crisp).
@Tonts i'd be interested to hear what your minds eye thought it would be built up with
on the way back from the live blogged shakedown ride 2, gravel boogaloo, on the last 2 or 3 hills before the aforementioned 9 mile ride i heard a "PING!" and my seat dropped, which caught me off guard because i did not recall installing a dropper.
Stopping at the base of the hill i got off my bike to see what i expected to see, i didn't want to see it, by all means i wanted to look at this clamp and see a perfectly in tact bolt. it was however not in tact, and one half, some would say the better half, was gone.
i'm standing here, some miles from home with a seat post and tube which works more like an umbrella holder than a trusty perch. as you can imagine, i lost it, middle of the woods, a little dehydrated and quite hungry (I was saving my skittles and ready salted crisps for a preferred rest spot), im left with what is essentially a chopper.
i fire up the signal one message to the lycra haters and cnc enjoyers, another to mv, one message was to completely lose my mind and say i was going to impale myself on the nearest tree and when i was found to tell people why, the other to inform what had happened and how it could be fixed. i'll let the reader decide who got which message.
while that was being taken care of, no group chat, dm or forum post could get me home, not least during novel coronavirus (covid-19), so i set off to ride home in the manner of a bmx rider nursing their bike home after 6 flats and a twisted ankle, only somehow less elegantly. the cycle of shame when your bike breaks leaving you without tools to fix it is something, but let me tell you, to do it on this thing, in full wanker get up, it hit different.
on arrival MV had noticed the bolt was protruding quite a lot, both speculating at the cause of the sudden failure and a solution to removing it, suggesting i grip onto it and twist.
how to do this?
i tried big pliers
i tried small pliers
neither of them did it, but then in a moment of absolute euphoric genius, truly, cutting edge philosophical and mechanical thought i gripped the small pliers with the big pliers and that little snapped maggot started to move (the bolt, not me), elation, joy, every positive emotion realising i wouldn't have to seek out someone with a good selection of tools or scrape through increasingly niche youtube videos and forum posts.
moving onto replacing the bolt, mv then told me to do it till you knock the nose and it doesn't budge, i done that and a 1/7th twist for good luck, the difference in protruding bolt is significant, this failure is on me.
I don't think i'll be doing a big ride just yet, at least till i dial in the right amount to stop slippage, but not enough to have it snap.
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Inevitable that you'll run into some issues when you're dealing with a cutting edge seat stay cluster like this.
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good thing it looks like a frazzle and not a wheat crunchy (awful crisp).
Unsubscribed.
amey
cozzzzzzzz
launchpadboi
mind_maze
miro_o
Tijs
Belagerent
stelfox
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snottyotter
Tonts
umop3pisdn
yak
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About
MAJs gay bikes [she’s in her fitness era]
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@Maj
what do you expect from a heavy bike?