In praise of half clips

It’s been a while since I wrote about foot retention, and way back then I guess I liked Powergrips.  Since 90% of my cycling is for commuting, errands, and shopping, you could argue that I’d be best off with just flat pedals. However, in practice, three out of the four bikes that I ride the most use half clips. They are ideal for the city since they are easy to get in and out of, and they provide a little bit of support for correct foot placement on the pedals.

A little while ago, I found a pair of steel half clips in my bow of assorted parts, and I put them on the Brompton.

However, I was finding that they were a little hard to get into, and also they were scuffing up a new pair of Blundstones that I got around the same time. So off I went to my favourite LBS: Hoopdriver Bicycles. Martin always has a good stock of higher end accessories for the kind of bikes that I ride (i.e. not carbon fibre wonder bikes). I scored a pair of MKS deep half clips with leather wrapping. I’ll review the Crane bell when I get around to it.

Here is a side by side comparison of the old and new half clips. You can see that the deep version fits quite a bit thicker shoe. The standard ones seem best suited to cycling shoes, or similarly low profile shoes.

A bottom view.

If you’re considering a pair of these for a city bike, make sure you get the “Deep” version. You can also get it without the leather.

A much cheaper alternative is the plastic half clip, which you can see has a similar profile. They should be available at any non-racer type bike shop.

The plastic ones break in the long run, but in practice, I only have to replace them every two years or so. However, since the new ones were going on the Brompton, I figured there was no harm in having something a little fancier and shiny.

Here is the new half clip mounted on the Brompton.

Here is an action shot showing how happy my dressy shoes are not being scuffed up.

BTW the pedals I’m using on the Brompton and several other bikes are removable, and have the MKS EZ Superior system. This way it is EZ to swap pedals around. If you are going to go this route, make sure you are getting the Superior pedals, and not the regular EZ ones (that have little yellow plastic retention clips that are really EZ to lose).

Counterclockwise from top left: a clipless pedal that I used on the Brompton for STP, platform pedals with half clips, the flat Lambda pedals that are raved about by retrogrouchs that shun foot retention, and a sure sign of autumn. Switching from the Lambda’s to the platform pedals shaved a little weight off the Brompton; not something I really care about, but every little bit counts when you are suitcasing the bike and keeping the total package under 50 pounds.

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Toronto Spring 2018 Bike Show

Just posted some pictures from the Toronto International bike show over at Dandyhorse. My two favourite bikes at the show were the Tern GSD, and this Cherubim gravel bike commissioned by Blacksmith Cycle.

Ridiculously small fender clearance….and yes I’m wondering why the fender is crooked as well.

Even the derailleur pulleys were personalized.

Quite different than the last Cherubim I saw.

The Tern GSD is a compact long tail based on 406 wheels, that looks like an evolved and e-powered version of my Haul a Day.

It stands on end, just like my Haul a Day.

The side bags fold in nicely when empty.

From the local dealer, it retails for $6500 CAD.

The other thing I’ll mention is this smart helmet: the Cyclevision Edge. It has front and rear 160° HD video cameras. You can check out all the features at their kickstarter page.

It will eventually retail for $660 AUS (versus $500 AUS on kickstarter). I couldn’t help comparing this to the Classon helmet, a kickstarter campaign for a similar helmet that was funded back in July 2016, with a promised delivery of April 2017, but appears to still be nowhere near production.

The big story this year seems to be e-bikes, and the prices are slowly coming down in the segment, with the cheapest bikes being of the order of $1800. Still with the recent news that local vendor BionX has just gone under, there is still a lot of shaking out that will happen before things settle down.

Head on over to Dandyhorse for many more pictures and words.

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Tarik Saleh Bike Club

Back in 2011, I apparently became the first foreign member of the Tarik Saleh bike club. As it says on the official page, there are only two rules:

1. Ride bikes

2. Try not to be an ass

Very wise words in this season of car vs bikes madness.

The TSBC started with you sent him a couple of bucks and he sent you some pins with a postcard. Now it has gotten all fancy with an official store where you can order stuff. When I saw this, I took the opportunity to get the very last of the canvas saddle covers from Randi Jo Fabrications. It arrived a couple of days ago, along with some patches and pins.

Here’s a close up of the patch.

The reason I wanted the seat cover was that my Brooks model had holes in it after probably a year of light use.

Here’s the new cover, shown from the back so that you can see the holes for saddle bag loops.

The green lap is to protect the underside of the saddle, and there are also snaps on the sides.

Overall impression is that looks sturdy, and the workmanship is very good. I’m guessing that it was meant for a B17; the fit is a bit snug on my Selle Anatomica X, but it works.  The only downside that I see is that it is not really a super quick on and off item because of the underflap.I might have been better off getting another Carradice, which was the one that I had before it finally wore out after much use, but I couldn’t find a local source. For the moment, I’m perfectly fine leaving it on the pink saddle for a while.

Update: the Human Powered Race Association is a like minded organization. According to their rules: (scroll down to the bottom)

“HPRA MISSION STATEMENT
GO FAST, HAVE FUN, PROMOTE TECHNOLOGY, DON’T BE AN ASS!!”

Hat tip to Garrie for pointing this out.

 

Read Full Post »

handlebar bags and handling

About a month ago, I had a new front rack put on the Tamarack to lower the mounting position of my handlebar bag. I found that the handling was affected by the regular mounting position, to the point that I didn’t find if very easy to ride no hands.

Of course I don’t have any good pictures of the handlebar bag in the old position but these two will give you an idea. It is a small Arkel bag. You can see from one of these pictures (taken during the Growling Beaver) that the top of the bag is quite a bit above the brake hoods.

After Hoopdriver installed the VO Pass Hunter rack, of course it took me another couple of weeks to get around to figuring out how to mount the bag sans decaleur.

First step: remove the existing mount hardware.

Next, reinforce the bottom of the bag with some coroplast.

Mark positions for holes with a Sharpie (sliver Sharpies rule!)

Use zipties to secure bag. The initial thought was to pass the zipties through the treaded mounts, but they were a little too wide.

Front and side views of the bag. It has been lowered by about 2/3 of the height of the bag itself.

One small niggle is that the top flap has some slight interference with my shifter cables, but this hasn’t been a problem in practice.

Proof that I can stuff a jacket and other things into the bag and still ride no hands  (although you can’t really tell from the picture that it was taken on the move).

Today was beautiful at the lakefront.

The Sunnyside bike park is still not officially open for the season.

We hope that city council will vote for bike lanes on this short section of Ellis underneath the Gardiner. This would tie into other improvements to the intersections that we hope are also coming in the next year or so.

Oh, and by the way, today marks the end of 30daysofbiking.

April is over

30 days of biking done

warmer weather comes

#baiku

Read Full Post »

Out and about around Ward13

It was a gloriously, sunny weekend, the first warm one of the year. It seemed like everyone was out and about.

On Saturday, Councillor Doucette hosted a Community Environment day down at the Lakefront. Ward13 had a table there to publicize the good work that Cycle Toronto has been doing, not just in our Ward, but all across the city.

(photo: Janet Joy Wilson)

Having been at a similar event in Ward 20 two weeks ago, I was struck by the difference in mode share. Ward 20:

Ward 13:

Of course this isn’t a totally fair comparison since the Ward13 event was held just off Lakeshore Blvd, but still it was striking to see many bikers and pedestrians in the downtown neighbourhood. We can do better in Ward13!

Safer intersections on Lakeshore and the Queensway would help a lot. Word is that some improvements to the Ellis/Lakeshore intersection (for example, a northbound cyclist’s crossing on the east side) are slated for installation in 2016. The city is also looking at putting a bike lane on the short section of Ellis between Lakeshore and the Queensway, as well as removing the right turn lane for cars on the northwest corner, but these changes have to be approved by community council, so these further improvments will probably take at least another year. (remember that it took over four years just to get sharrows on High Park Ave!)

Lucy is always up for a ride down to the lake.

Next up: some spring cleaning.

In truth, it was a bit more than just cleaning since I had dropped off my pink commuter bike at Hoopdriver last week to get new lights installed, and I got to pick it up on Saturday. Here is Martin working on my very dirty bike.

All Simcoe bikes have this motto on their toptube.

Here is the new light, mounted below the rack. The mount looks much more solid than the last one I tried.

Here is the taillight. You can see the LED’s glowing because of the standlight feature.

This particular light also senses when the bike is slowing down, and turns on or raises the intensity of the area light under braking. I saw this on another bike, and I can’t wait to check this out. Of course, I’m not going to be able to see it while riding.

After getting the bike home, it was time to do some cleaning. Removal of grime exposed many scratches on the frame; beausage or wabi sabi, take your pick. (although I’ll have to keep an eye on the sabi part of that descriptor).

These scrapes are a bit odd since they’re on the chainstay but on the opposite side of the chain!

In the background, you can see the new chain. The old one had stretched about half a link after about 7000 km.  Only had time to clean the one bike. The others will have to wait until next weekend.

 

Read Full Post »

Hoopdriver Bicycles

Hoopdriver Bicycles is one of the most distinctive bike shops in the city. They sell a variety of city and road bikes, but with an emphasis on more classic designs based on steel frames. They have also carved out a niche in providing bike builds and accessories for the randonneuring enthusiast.  This past winter, they moved to a new location in Ward 13. My wallet is going to be taking a hit until I get used to the fact that this shop is only a five minute bike ride from my house.

They are located at 668 Annette St., just west of Windermere. Ironically, they are right beside the former location of Windergarden, which was the shop that lead the local opposition to the Annette St. bike lanes years ago.

With spring approaching, I wanted to have a front rack installed on the Tamarack, with the hope that mounting a handlebar bag lower would improve the handling. Here I just finished towing the bike to the shop.

When you enter the shop, the first impression is of an overwhelming number of goodies that catch the eye.

Period art and steel frames from Soma, Surly, etc hanging from the ceiling.

Of course, lots of Brooks saddles.

Lots of nice detail on many of the bikes, like this colour matched handlebar tape weave on this Velo Orange Campeur bike.

They carry bikes from Marinoni, Bianchi, Pashley, Surly and Simcoe, as well as build ups from frames from Surly, Soma, and Velo Orange. The emphasis is on bikes for city riding, touring and longer distance riding, with an almost exclusive focus on steel framed bikes.  However, Martin did make an exception for this sweet Al framed, belt drive kid’s bike.

Also when I went to pick up my bike, I did see this titanium Marinoni with a carbon fork and brifters in the back. Heresy!

Many bike shops carry Brooks saddles, but this shop has more hard to find items and specialized accessories such as  Velo Orange racks, all the latest dynamo lighting from B&M and others, plastic and metal fenders from many vendors, and even Compass Pass tires.

Here is the VO Pass Hunter rack installed on my bike. (the second time I’ve had Hoopdriver mount a front rack on one of my bikes).

If you are in the market for a distinctive city or road bike, Martin and company will take good care of you.

 

Read Full Post »

The Growling Beaver

Saturday was the inaugural running of a charity ride called the Growling Beaver. As was mentioned in the last post, I planned to do the 100K. I figured that even with my limited amount of training, that 100K was doable, although I was a bit concerned about the 1000m of climbing. Most of it seemed to be in two climbs up the escarpment, so I figured that I could suffer through them.

Arriving at the start, I see a fancy building for the Side Launch Brewery, with a lot of expensive looking hardware decorating the lawn.

Some nice Mariposas by the front door.

Still more Mariposas inside, with Dede Barry selling some merchandise.

Lots of nice details on these bikes. This looks like a modern rendition of a drillium brake lever.

Panorama of the interior, with the 100K riders waiting to start.

Dede Barry tells us the rules of the road. She warns us that there are several sections of fresh gravel that were described in an email that went out a few days ago. Unfortunately, these sections were laid down and graded just a few days before the event.

We get split up into six groups so that we don’t swarm the first section of the ride which is along the Georgian Trail, a multi use trail. This is the lead group about to take off a few minutes after 9 am.
I seeded myself in the slowest group, which was nominally a 20 kph average. With rest stops, this group was scheduled to finish a little past 3:30 pm. There were about six people in our group, including a retired couple from interior BC, and a guy riding a hybrid, the only other bike that I saw with fenders.

The first 30K or so was a quick ride down the Georgian Trail. Dead flat with a tailwind, and a touch of fall colours.

At the first checkpoint in Meaford, it was still windy and cold, and I didn’t see a lot of people ditching their riding jackets at the clothing drop. The first big climb of the day was up Grey Road 7.

Looking back at Georgian Bay after the climb. Feeling pretty good at this point.

First descent on Old Mail Road. Unfortunately, with all the gravel, I had to take this section slowly, braking strongly all the way. Not the ideal way to give up all the elevation gained earlier.

Nice views, though.

Someone went to the trouble of decorating this bridge over the Beaver River. Very pretty country.

The lunch stop was in Kimberley, at about the 64K mark. More than half way done with only one major climb. How bad could it be? The sun came out, and I put the riding jacket in the handlebar bag.

The food and drink was very good at the Kimberley General Store. Much better than what I expected. Hot apple cider and coffee, gourmet thin crust pizza, and lots of baked sweet treats.

Nice alternatives to Gatorade as well.

I had left my group at the first checkpoint and was riding alone for the most part. Some of them pulled into lunch around the time I left. I thought I was ready for the big climb. Here it is: Side Road 7B. The escarpment looms in the background.

It’s steeper than it looks in this picture, and gets still steeper after the road bends to the left.

With the condition of the dirt/gravel road and my level of fitness, I ended up having to walk about the middle 1K of the climb. I wasn’t the only one having to walk this section.

Even after the climb was done, there was a long slog on gravel straight into a strong headwind with no tree cover.

You can see some faster riders in the distance leaving me behind. They passed me a couple of times because they kept taking wrong turns. There was at least one mislabeled road on the map that caused some confusion in this section of the ride.

The Reid’s Hill descent was another place where a combination of gravel and washboarding made the descent slow and treacherous. Note the dead water bottle.

When I finally reached Pretty River Road, it was huge relief to know that I was done with gravel, and it felt like I flew the rest of the way to the finish.

Here you can see my elevation and HRM data. I note that there are some spikes where I was descending which I can attribute to either some kind of sensor noise due to vibration, or the intermittent fear of imminent death 😉

Pulling into the brewery at the end, I felt quite a sense of accomplishment. I finished in just under 7 hours, with about a little under six hours of riding time. The GPS registered an average speed of 18.9 kph. This was much tougher than I expected due mainly to the road conditions, but also the wind. As it turns out, I only saw about two or three riders come in behind me, including two from my original group, and my understanding is that everyone slower than that was sagged in. Missed being Lanterne Rouge by perhaps two places. I talked to a couple of people that said this was the roughest 100K that they had done. 

It was also a treat to have a brief chat with Mike Barry and Mike Barry Sr, and I appreciated the way that they described the directions to their shop in terms of being able to smell the Peek Freans factory.

Overall, it was a great experience. The event was very well organized, and the rider support was great (especially the lunch, and the enthusiasm of all the volunteers). I was happy to learn that they ended up raising about 200K which was double their original target. I want to thank my sponsors for supporting me in the ride. I was very proud to be in the top 10% of all fund raisers.

Things that the organizers could have done a bit better:

• It wasn’t obvious to me ahead of time what the colour coding on the ride with GPS maps meant. It turns out that red is pavement, and brown is gravel (and purple is the Georgian Trail)
• The section of road just before 70 km on the 100 km route was not SR10D. It was 3rd line, which turned into SR10D after a right turn. This was an error in the cue sheets.
• Perhaps there was some indication that there would be no portapotty at the Kolapore checkpoint, but I didn’t see it.
• I was told that the next time, they will try to work with the local governments to make sure that no fresh gravel would be laid down just before the event.

Lessons learned for me:

• It was smart to have done some mileage on the Tamarack beforehand to help avoid any mechanical issues during the ride. I was glad that I switched to relatively wide tires, although a little more tread might have been even better for the uphill sections.
• The battery on my Garmin Edge 25 was about spent after seven hours. Perhaps having the route following feature on decreased the battery iife.
• I could have been fitter; I would have enjoyed the riding a bit more.
• Deliberately eating a bit every hour helped me avoid bonking. I had a combination of Kind granola bars, and Stinger energy gels, both of which I pretested for being kind to my stomach.
• Although I was concerned about the extra weight of the handlebar bag, it was nice to have the cue sheet and map visible at all times, and it was great to be able to grab snacks and my camera while on the move.

Congratulations to the organizers. I hope that the event was successful enough for it to continue. What I really liked about the ride was that it was very small. If I do it again, I’ll train more so that I can ride with a few more riders rather than being at the very back of the pack.

Update: as per the comment below, next year’s date is Oct 1, 2016!

Read Full Post »