Extended testing, and a near-ish miss

I think I finally got the handlebars to stop moving! 

It was pretty hair raising on the way home last night.  I tightened the bolt up before I left work, but it continued to tilt forward every time I braked hard.  When I got to the traffic lights outside Mcvities in Levenshulme, I couldn't reach the brakes anymore, so figured it was probably time to get off and re-adjust.  :P  I tightened it as hard as I could, and it seeeeems to have done the trick!

A couple more things that I've found, now that I've cycled it to and fro a bit more:

The pedals weren't designed with flatfooted people in mind.

My feet seem to be wider than average, meaning that I either have to wear wide fitting shoes, or wear one size larger than needed.  I trip over myself when I'm wearing large shoes, so my footwear of choice are nice wide skate shoes!  That was fine on the MTB, but the pedals on the road bike are much narrower, and curve upwards on the outside.  I'm actually finding it more comfortable to pedal with the pedals upside-down.  :s  Time to investigate an alternative..

Something weird is going on with the back wheel.

I noticed something when I was unlocking my bike after work; the rear tyre looks closer to the left seat stay.  I can only think of two possible causes for this: badly aligned stays, or a badly dished wheel

Before I'd decided to go the singlespeed route, I'd re-spaced the stays from 126mm to 130mm, in order to allow it to take a more modern hub and freewheel.  I'd used the Sheldon Brown cold setting method of a plank of wood and a chair, and it had gone well - one adjustment to each side, with no mucking about.  I used his string method for checking alignment, and it looked perfect! 

But the wheel looks to be something like 5mm closer to the left seat stay, so maybe it wasn't as perfect as I thought.  It doesn't make sense, though.. I pulled each stay out by 2mm, and measured it each time to make sure I hadn't gone too far.  To make it like it currently is, I'd have had to have pulled only one side out by 4mm.  I suppose it could have been badly aligned before I got to it.

The other possible cause is the wheel itself.  It was cheap, so it may have been built badly.  Maybe they got the dishing wrong, and the rim isn't centered.  I'm not sure how to test that..  maybe put the wheel into the front fork.

Other than that, it's been good!  The cycle home last night went well, and I even managed a personal record on a Strava segment, although that may have had more to do with lucky traffic lights.  I still think I could possibly switch to a 16 tooth freewheel, as I hardly stood up on the way home, and I felt that I could do with more of a gain on the way into work this morning.  However, when I did stand up, my steering went to pot, so I think I need to get used to the new bike before I switch.

I also nearly got squished by a red light jumping HGV this morning.  I was on the A6, coming up to the traffic lights on the exit from Longsight, at the junction with the A6010.  The lights went to green just as I got to the start of the ASL box, so I kept going.  I glanced right to check the state of the cars who were still hustling for a lane position from the previous direction, and was extremely surprised to see an HGV jump the lights at that exact moment.  This wasn't an amber jump, or a milisecond jump.. this idiot jumped the light at least 5 seconds after they'd changed to full red! If I hadn't looked right, I'd be dead right now, or at least lying comatose in a hospital bed.  I braked in time, despite my crappy brakes, and managed to call the driver all sorts of names as he passed, and even managed one of the more universally recognised hand signals (seriously - who remembers the signals that're in the highway code?).  What an anus.

That's the first really bad moment I've had while cycling.  I can usually second-guess someone who's intending to turn across me or do something stupid, but it's the nutjobs that I don't see coming that scare me.  The risks that people take to get somewhere a few minutes earlier never cease to amaze me, although I suppose cycling is that in a nutshell.  I get to work much quicker on a bicycle, but the journey is riskier.

Middle-aged men on hybrids

There was one thing that bugged me when I started cycle commuting properly - middle-aged men on hybrids!

There'd always be a few of them on each commute..  men in their 40s/50s, on ratty-looking hybrids, often with a pannier, and usually in their work clothes.  Generally, they're just obstacles to get around, but every now and again there'd be one who I couldn't catch, or worse - one that overtook me! 

For me, hybrids will always be a thing to be ridiculed, no matter how sensible they are.  It's just something that's been programmed into me.  How were these old dudes going so fast?  What did I need to do to avoid the shame?

I kinda knew the answer already.  My knobbly tyres weren't really designed with tarmac in mind, and I could often feel my knackered suspension bouncing against me when hitting potholes.  To level the playing field, I had to either make my mountain bike more like a hybrid, or try something else.

The upgrade route meant replacing the front fork with something fixed, and getting thinner, knobble-less tyres.  I wondered if there were gears more suited to road use.  I'm still not sure if there are.  The cost would've been just over £100.  That seemed kinda pricey - you can get whole bikes for that!

And so, I visited ebay.  But not looking for mountain bikes - I had one of those.  And not looking for hybrids, either - I'd rather die!  I was looking for racers.  The last time I bought a racer was in 1995-ish, for about £20.  I didn't think prices would've increased much over the years. Racers from the 70s are even older now, so they're probably even cheaper now, right?

Wrong!

'Vintage' racers can be quite pricey.  Through a combination of inflation, trends, and increasing rarity, racers rarely sell for less than £50, and good examples can fetch well over £100.  That wasn't as cheap as I was expecting!  I didn't really want to spend more than £80 on one, as it was supposed to be a cheap experiment, so I tried bidding for one that was in that price range - a 1980 Carlton Kermesse.  I looked it up.. a nice bike, apparently! Stuck on a max bid, aaaaand.. lost.  It went for about £140 in the end, I think.  That seemed crazy!  Enough of that, I thought.  I'll have to order the fork and tyres when I get to work the next day.

But something happened on the way to work.  I was stopped at some traffic lights in Longsight, and a guy on a singlespeed conversion pulled up slightly ahead of me.  I don't see many racers on my commute - the ones I usually see are new bikes, with ludicrous logos all over them, ridden by people clad entirely in lycra.  The people who rode them often seemed to ride like the road belonged to no-one but them, like the cycling equivalent of BMW drivers.  I didn't want to join that crowd.

But this was different.. it was a guy dressed in baggy shorts and a tshirt, and his bike had no logos that I could see.  It was painted metallic green, and had a fair bit of chrome.  It had old-style tubing and old-style wheels.  No deep rims, no oval tubes.. it looked amazing!  Then I looked down at my own bike.  Fat silver tubes, black wheels, big old handlebar.. not very elegant.  Not very elegant at all..  Then I pondered what I'd be doing to it..  it'd be a mountain bike that was trying to be a hybrid.  A wannabe hybrid?

To quote Darth Vader; "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

So, back to the racer idea!  With renewed purpose, I expanded the distance I was willing to travel, and increased the amount that I was willing to bid.  And I won an auction.