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Just been catching up here, really nice pics as usual, the Stayer looks really great, pretty ‘perfect winter bike’ whatever that is

(im trying to expel any thoughts of needing a perfect bike to carry on riding through the winter and just go outside and pedal heh)

All needs a clean, which I’ll do before sending it off, but here are some pics to show wear

Just the Deore ‘mini group’ left.
If I could all allocate individual bits to people then I’d split it up

Few bits I no longer need now being sold for cash that I do need

Shimano Deore 1x11 flat bar mini group - £100
M6100 levers, CSM5100 11-51t cassette, M5100 derailleur, M5100 shifter
Bought new in May but taken off bike in October. So all in great condition.

Wizard Works Shazam - SOLD
The big one.
In the discontinued black camo fabric. Really good condition, used a handful of times.

Carradice bagman expedition QR with struts - SOLD
Bought for the Shazam above but obviously not needed.
Used but it’s not battered and serves its agricultural function well.

Pics are coming 🫡

Collection in Herne Hill or post

following this, I’ve always liked Starling and those brakes look sick, sounds like a crazy bike.

@si_mon628 hahah thanks for passing on the message, that’s my first lfgss accolade right there

@AlexD ahhh no way, in civilian clothes or were you the omnium mini max person? I was spying what I thought to be a partly covered up Paradise Cycles sticker on it and was wondering whether to say hi or not.

@MicroDosed™ yeah it’s class, like a long computer game level or something. The Severn Bridge bit was alright to be fair, views were nice, the bits out of Bristol were fine then it got some pretty quiet lanes before getting to the ‘seafront’ that was actually all blocked off meaning I had clamber over some fences to walk through a farmer’s field of sheep to reach the road again. I quite like those quiet lanes that skirt in and around motorways. I always feel quite smug cruising along those whilst getting glimpses of cars razzing along. But yeah, actually negotiating the slip road crossings to get to the bridge is long. Then they’ll just sling a ‘this side is closed, go back and use the other one’ sign right at the final barrier. Nice.

Cheers people! (:

Hope you’re all doin well

Well we did it folks, cranks didn’t fall off but the bars and the levers did start doing what they want at points. I really should buy a torque wrench shouldn’t I…

I left the door of my lil south london home at the lovely time of 5am yesterday and arrived in Cardiff at 3:30pm-ish today.

On the first day I finished in Devizes and fell into the sweet arms of a Travelodge and a foot-long Italian sub from the Subway conveniently located below aforementioned Travelodge. First time having in a subway in years, not good, but yummy calories. It was all going smooothly until after around 4 hours of constant riding cramps began to creep in and would set in here n there whenever going up the small climbs. So that was fun. Whole second half of riding time was pretty dramatically slowed by that. Shock to the system I guess. Haven’t ridden a bike much more than an hour for the last month n a half.

Second day. Devizes to Cardiff. Left knee not playing the game. But with ibuprofen, some deep heat, and an unwillingness to quit, I hit the canal and stayed on it till Bath, hit the railway track for a bit, tunnel was mega fun i thought, but i did divert and took a shorter route through and into Bristol. Stopped at the brilliant Farro bakery for a just-under-halfway stop. Really good, quality stuff. If you like baked goods and nerd out a bit on flour, ya gotta check it out, as someone who works in the biz I’ll stand up and say it’s probably better than anything we have in London. ANYWAY, you know the rest: left Bristol, negotiated lots of closed shit around the Severn Bridge, got on it, rolled on into Cardiff. Fuck aye.

I took a mixed-terrain-as-much-as-possible-but-still-making-haste-in-westerly-direction approach to route planning. Sooo it ended up being mostly road obviously, but with the 45c tyres pumped up, enough fun offroad dribs and drabs, and the awful state of some of the major A-road cycle ways that made up the Welsh portion of the journey it was fine. No complaints there. Bike felt great, much more ærö-enabling than my last one.

Certainly not your most action-packed or scenic route choice or ride plan. 200 fairly flat, road-centric miles through middle England. But it was probably the perfect challenge for me right now at this point in the year. Plus, most of the reason I chose to do this is that I lived in Cardiff for a good 4 years a few years ago so the place has a lot sentimentality about it for me. I rode down the horrible Newport road strip, 6 lanes wide with every possible standard UK retail and industrial estate fixture bordering either side of the road, past the McDonalds, past the Halfords, basking in golden hour light with my headphones in playing music me and my friends used to listen to back when I was fun and didn’t regularly go to sleep at 8pm. And man was I happy to be there.

Some compressed pretty scenery pics attached.
I took some video and less pretty stuff too but that doesn’t really work here well. Might post some instagram soon, if ya happen to use it, im @ b_dare on it.

#baaw

Going to ride this 200 miles across the country, starting tomorrow, finishing Wednesday.

Though in the process of checking everything over for this ride i notice that somewhen in the last 3-6 15 min commutes to and from work, I had lost my crank arm fixing bolt and the crank arm was making its way to falling off the bike. I’m not mega surprised this happened as I put the cranks on a bit of a rush, didn’t clean the threads very well certainly, and must not have tightened it up properly either

I’ve checked it, the splines all seemed fine and undamaged, I’ve put a new fixing bolt on, cleaned, greased/loctite’d relevant threads, and tightened it all up, hopefully properly this time. It seems fine after a small ride around but i doubt that’s gonna tell me anything regarding the likelihood of this working loose again after 30 miles 🤪

40cm road drops on the new thing anyway.

I can’t get any 40cm flared in time for a trip next week so am just going to commit to these for a bit. Luckily said trip is mostly lanes with canal path and some westerly champagne gravel.

Will test bar roll and lever position over the next couple days n taper ‘er up

@amey I’ll run your Zipps back to you soon! 🫡

Ah that seems decent! It’s a weird one ennit, less weight = more fast

but

no bike = very slow

Not strictly CP related but I just bought two Hiplok Z LOK combination lock cable tie things as a way to get some basic protection for solo bikepacking resupply stops.

But then I’ve been reading online that many people have had issues with the combination seizing up leaving them unable to unlock their bikes. In a somewhat paradoxical sense, luckily they’re fairly easy to cut through with some scissors or a decent knife.

Safe to say I’ll be taking my opinel with me on a trip next week as i really don’t wanna be stuck in a petrol station in middle England questioning why I’ve just wasted money on these dumb things.

I used to carry a knog cable lock but it’s seized together on some dumpster bin in Bloomsbury now.

Perhaps i should just walk back the bike shop I bought them from and ask for a refund… sigh

Ah right okay, maybe I’ll give that a go then whenever the cables break in and I need to do some adjustments haha. Thanks

I was thinking also I could just try an online barrel adjuster like the ones Jagwire make right? I’ve never used one before so I’ve no idea really.

Yeah i was a touch worried about that and considered just using them in the bosses I don’t actually use i.e. every boss except the 4 holding my bottle cages on. Maybe torx is a good shout

FOR NOW…

i do manual labour for a living

real upgrades happening

this bike came with the horrible tall head screws for all the bosses. gross.

@ltc let me know if you want some of other 38 I now have spare 🤪

hahah love it!

sorry I missed the last one :(
life got a bit on top this October
Sadly working this Saturday as im dumb and thought this was next weekend … poor form from me on the bike front lately, must improve.

dang nabbit

Hmm too much flare I reckon actually

Just testing bars on a new bike so they don’t need to be spenny

I’ve got some Zipp 70 xplrs with 11 degree flare out at the moment which are nice, but also the 44cm seems a bit wide

Anyone have some - in Londres preferably for a speedy handover

anyway, got to the most important bit of the build

putting stickers on 😎

Took it to a shop and the mechanic has got the gears working after a lot of fettling but is pretty much equally perplexed as to why the barrel adjuster isn’t functioning like it should.

Which is fun!

Weird. I can’t really remember setting this derailleur up on the Kepler but i do know that i used to make all adjustments with the frame barrel adjuster not the one on the rd itself. No one else reading this had had this kinda issue with a GRX-812 before?

Maybe! f knows anymore heh