New Bike now has pedals!
Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 5:24 pm
Having become dissatisfied with the Fred Flinstone bicycle propulsion method I have finally put some pedals on my Giro 26 
I went on a shopping spree round Sydney's bike shops yesterday with the intention of buying various essential accessories such as spare tubes, a pump, some grease, a Space Grip, some magnets (I'll explain later) and most importantly, pedals. I managed to buy all these things apart from the pedals...
I wasn't able to find what I really wanted, so instead I bought a bloody big pedal spanner. The Trusty Steed had previously resisted my attempts to steal her pedals but she couldn't stand up to the might of the bloody big pedal spanner and after a brief struggle gave in. Yes, I've put old pedals on a new bike and left my other bike pedalless in the process. Shameful, I know, but it's only temporary... 
Anyway, now that she had pedals I was able to take New Bike out for her first ride today. As I set off I was having all sorts of trouble until I realised (thankfully after only a minute or two) that the seat position had moved and I was over extending, adjusting the seat made things much easier. I quickly discovered that the secret to low speed handling was to sit up to enable weight shift to come into play, once I started doing that starting off and maneouvering at walking pace became pretty easy aside from the need to watch out for heel strike. Anyway, I managed to make my way the short distance to Centennial Park via back streets and cycle paths and started doing circuits of the 3.7km Grand Drive. Here I discovered that New Bike was indeed comfortable, fast (on the slightly downhill sections she really took off, it felt like someone had come up behind me and started pushing) and able to impress small children ("Wow, that's awesome!", etc.)
I went on a shopping spree round Sydney's bike shops yesterday with the intention of buying various essential accessories such as spare tubes, a pump, some grease, a Space Grip, some magnets (I'll explain later) and most importantly, pedals. I managed to buy all these things apart from the pedals...
I wasn't able to find what I really wanted, so instead I bought a bloody big pedal spanner. The Trusty Steed had previously resisted my attempts to steal her pedals but she couldn't stand up to the might of the bloody big pedal spanner and after a brief struggle gave in. Yes, I've put old pedals on a new bike and left my other bike pedalless in the process. Shameful, I know, but it's only temporary... Anyway, now that she had pedals I was able to take New Bike out for her first ride today. As I set off I was having all sorts of trouble until I realised (thankfully after only a minute or two) that the seat position had moved and I was over extending, adjusting the seat made things much easier. I quickly discovered that the secret to low speed handling was to sit up to enable weight shift to come into play, once I started doing that starting off and maneouvering at walking pace became pretty easy aside from the need to watch out for heel strike. Anyway, I managed to make my way the short distance to Centennial Park via back streets and cycle paths and started doing circuits of the 3.7km Grand Drive. Here I discovered that New Bike was indeed comfortable, fast (on the slightly downhill sections she really took off, it felt like someone had come up behind me and started pushing) and able to impress small children ("Wow, that's awesome!", etc.)
(not sure what happened there, the live cadence display was working fine). Still need to tweak my derailleurs a little, I managed to dump the chain off the inside of my cassette while clumsily shifting all over the place on the steepest hill (I'm not used to these strange derailluer things, haven't used them for years), but apart from that managed the climbs without undue distress and made it to work about as quickly as I do on the Trusty Steed. I was pleased to find out that my sleek and stylish yellow Radical Design