Just for laughs, I broke out my old DBR Prevail TT road bike, greased the chain, aired up the tires and took it for a spin this morning on a hilly street/bike-path combo ride.
Man, 110 psi in 700×25 road tires sure feels different than 45 psi in 700×32 ‘cross rubber, especially on these lousy Bibleburg streets. Ditto a low end of 39×25 versus 34×28 when gravity becomes more involved. And finally, where the hell were my top-mounted ‘cross-bike brake levers? Why, on the ‘cross bikes, of course. Eejit.
I got my first flat in months — something truly evil that solved my high-pressure problem in a nanosecond as I was climbing west on Woodmen. Happily, there’s a trailhead there, and I had a bench to sit on as I swapped tubes and reinflated with the cursed minipump (about 300 strokes’ worth and still well short of 110 psi).
The grind past the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration reminded me that casual ‘cross-bike rides do not a climber make (bless me, sister, for I have sinned, and as soon as I get off this goddamned bicycle I’m going to get right back after it). The 40-mph descent reminded me that I am a sissy, especially when some dude in a ‘Vette roared up to a cross-street stop sign as if he planned to treat it as a yield).
But I made it home alive, and it was lots more fun than working, so I must have been doing something right.
Mad Blog Media 
110 psi? in a 25c tire? Why? Even a fat slob like yours truly gets by with 80-90 max in 23c tires whether they’re my favorite Vittoria CX open tubulars (too nice to waste on Iowa roads where they wear straight across the center since there are no twisty roads to speak of…I save those for Italy where I can wear the sides off as fast as the center on all those fantastic curves) or my every day faves, Torelli’s open tubulars which are even made with the old-fart favorite brown/tan sidewalls (Torelli calls ’em honey) 110 psi gives a rock-hard ride with no benefits that I know of….try 85 psi and see how you like it. Rough roads, frost heaves or concrete slabs are far less jarring and I’ve NEVER had a pinch flat.
I buy the Open Pro CX in whatever color happens to be on sale, even if it is graphic pink. Fortunately, the last set on sale were black. Generally run them at about 110 psi.
Those are generally saved for special occasions, such as the last month before the Red River Century when if my plans go well, I am actually looking like a road cyclist rather than a donut on wheels.
Everything is “lots more fun than working.”
Umm, I run 110# in the rear Schwalble Stelvio 700×23. Much lower that 100# and the resistance seems to go up. I get 4,000 miles out of set, but I’m only at 170#. Though I don’t look like a cyclist.
Italy, oh to ride in Italy or France. Maybe I should sell the car and just go for a few weeks. The furthest I getting this year is Massachusetts for the Great River Ride.
I might take a stab at lower PSI, but in concert with a tire change — these Vredenstein Fortezza SEs have to go. Every time I ride this bike I flat, and my ass, while of planetary dimensions, is not yet Saturnesque, so it can’t absorb all the blame.
Meanwhile, turns out these tires are actually 700×23; I thought I swapped ’em out for 25s. Early onset Alzheimer’s or just simple brain damage? We report, you decide.
Meanwhile, here’s another question for you guys: Anyone gone to compact cranks? I’m so used to riding cyclo-cross bikes with 46/34 or 48/36 chainrings that the standard road-issue 53/39 setup feels a tad burly. And to think I used to snicker at guys who swapped out the 42 for a 39. Oh, the shame.
I have 3 Cannondale road bikes, 2 with 53/39, One with compact Cannondale carbon crankset. To be honest, I like both setups. I never used to run a 39 ring until I had 10 speed in the rear. My older road bikes were mostly Italian with Campy 52/42 SR or NR cranks. In the long run, it’s ALL good. Don’t buy upgrades, RIDE up grades. I used to snicker at a lot of guys before I got older and slower. LOL
By the way, that’s a nice ride you got there, Pat !
Hey, Doug,
Sigh. I hear you. More climbing, less shopping.
And that is kind of a cool ride, isn’t it? DBR really screwed up there. They had Sandvik build two titanium frames — the Prevail TT and the Axis TT mountain bike — that were so damn’ nice that I’ve never needed to buy any others. Just swap out the components from time to time. Whatever happened to planned obsolescence?
That’s the real beauty of bikes Pat, they will never be obsolete. It’s the perfect invention !
I swapped out my 53-39 Record crank for a compact on my beater Cannondale and liked it so much (once I learned to shift from the 50 to the 34) that all my single bikes now have compacts. If you do a gear chart, it gives you a lot more range at the cost of some overlap. I can now run a 12-25 in back for just about every ride near Bomb Town and for hard climbs, such as our ski hill road (averages 8.7% for 3.5 miles, topping at 9k) or Bobcat Pass (at mile 96 of the Red River Century, where the road rises from 8,000 to 10,000 ft), I have an aftermarket 12-27 and 12-28 with Campy-10 spacing. An 11-23 would be nice if I spent more time in the Rio Grande Valley.
Frankly, the smaller cluster in back looks a lot nicer than that frisbee-like 13-29 Chorus cassette and further, having dealt with patellar tendinitis in both knees from back when I imagined I could race, I don’t really give a rat’s ass what others think of my gearing. I can ride the friggin bike.
When you are routinely climbing four mile long 7-10% grades as a geezerly and fredlike 55 year old, efficiency and pain reduction wins out over machodom.
Patrick,
Compact with an 11-28 works great….
Also the nickname we’ve given that route is the “Nun Run” for obvious reasons…
Rush Carter
CS West Bikes
Patrick,
I forgot to mention…. If you want some slowwwww hill climbing come out on Sunday morning for the Sunday Hill Climbing Ride. It is a no-drop social hill climb ride. Sometimes we do the ride you did in reverse….http://www.viethconsulting.com/Calendar/moreinfo.php?eventid=8439
I got tired of flatting out on my rural Wisc runs and went to 700 x25 Conti Gatorskin training tires. They’re a bit slower but have nice road suck. My road bike is a 1991 Trek 2300 with a double ring crank, so I stand my fat ass up on those hills! Patrick, that Prevail TT is sweet.
This old fart jumped on the compact bandwagon this summer, equipping a 20th Anniversary Torelli with Campagnolo Veloce 10 speed stuff instead of my usual triple setup. With 34-29 the low is pretty much the same and I was determined to hold out on the total old-fart option of the triple with the 29 in back yielding a 30-29 low, for at least another season, especially if I could drop a kilo or two (not from the bike, from my fat ass!) VERDICT–for the cycling we do in Italy where you’re rarely on any type of flat road, it’s fine. If you’ve lived with 53/39 chainrings for years (I still like 52/42 but I AM an old fart) the huge jump from 34 to 50 won’t bother you at all.
Back here on the plains of Iowa, I still prefer the 52/42/32 triple, giving me lots of choices with no huge jumps between chainrings for the mostly flattish stuff here plus the 32 or 30 (“Nona” as one of our clients named it, Italian for granny–when it got steep he’d say “Buongiorno Nona!”) for the rare steep climb. Mind you, these are bikes carrying nothing more than two water bottles, a seat pack and my fat butt rather than fully-loaded touring machines. Patrick, what are you running over to get these flat tires? I run 80-90 psi front and rear and have perhaps one flat while covering around 4000 kms each year domestically and even less in Italy in 1500 kms each season since the roads there are free of broken glass for the most part–Italians recycle their wine bottles, very few of ’em end up broken on the ground –and they don’t even have deposits on ’em! Iowa’s farm roads are pretty clean too and thorns are very rare so maybe I’m just fortunate?
“Old DBR”? OLD? My main road bike is a hopped-up 1992 Trek 2100. Its not old, its “classic”. And you’re spending too much time looking at bike porn. Road bike technology stopped evolving(or at least slowed waaayyy down)after the introduction of brake-lever-mounted shifters and carbon forks.
I’ve contemplated going with a smaller set of front rings than the 39-52 I’m using now, but I do still occasionally use the 52 and the 39 still does the trick so far, especially now that I’ve gone to a 25t on the back. The problem with going a little smaller is the relative dearth of options for, say, a 38-48. You can get something, but they aren’t commonly available. Its not a bad idea though. [Warning: Old Fart Alert Ahead] The 52t ring came about because the smallest reliable rear cog you could get was 14t. Nowadays a 12t on the back (even 11t) is readily available, and it allows a significant shrinkage up front.
Hey Jon:
From one Old Fart Vintage Trek Owner to another: Salute’!
Speaking of old, the 20th Anniversary TORELLI I built up was new but not built up since I got it shortly after Torelli’s 20th year which was 2001! Todd from Torelli already teased me about taking so long since they’re working now on something for their 30th anniversary. We’ll never be on the cutting edge, I admit. We bought 9-speed equipped bikes for our rental fleet just as 10 was taking over and added 10-speed bikes to it just as Campagnolo brought out 11-speed.
Okay, who’s the oldest? My primary road bike is a 1980’s Klein Quantum, running Dura Ace 7402, I believe.
Sweet bike. Someday I’ll tell you the story of how it came to grow a replacable derailleur hanger. I found a machinist who liked a challenge.
Personally, I am tired of the arms race on numbers of cassette cogs. When is enough enough?
Hey, K,
I like eight-speed just fine. I have one 10-speed (the Jamis Supernova), one nine-speed (the DBR Prevail TT road bike) and everything else is eight-speed, save for the Voodoo Wazoo, which is a seven-speed-105, single-chainring setup with a bar-end shifter.
You can still get aftermarket STI shifters (BTI is presently out of stock). They’re not bad, but not awesome, sitting at the Sora/Tiagra end of Shimano’s product chain. Frankly, I prefer bar-ends. And those bad boys are in stock, too. Hmm. I should buy up a few of those rascals, ’cause I’m fresh out.
Except for the Six-Thirteen, everything in my stable is now Shimano 9-speed (with the exception of the Redline which is for sale).
I better stock up on some 9-spd bar-ends too before they become as rare as alert drivers.
I keep an ’80’s Bianchi at the in-laws to enjoy riding when we visit each year for a few weeks. 8-speed Campagnolo Ergopower triple bits on it now, replacing the ancient Shimano stuff bolted onto it when I bought it for $50 years ago. Looks (and rides, I bet)a lot like the ROADEO bike Rivendell is selling—lots o’clearance for fat clincher tires (I use his Roly-Poly’s or Challenge’s Paris-Roubaix) for a nice, comfy ride, reasonably snappy road manners for carving curves on descents from the Santa Barbara foothills and low gears to get my fat ass up there in the first place. Don’t know exactly how old the thing is–old enough for long reach brakes but recent enough to have recessed nuts to hold ’em on.
Thanks for the idea, Larry. I have plum run outa room for bikes.
On the other hand, my uncle has a barn on his land in Little Valley, N.Y. When we visited last, I had no bike to ride. I am sure I could stash one over on the East Coast for those visits. Given the price of bicycle air fare, shipping a bike one way makes sense.
We stash bikes in all the places we frequent–in Italy, SB and here at home and I’m thinking about another one for keeping at my father’s place in the near future. As you write, the airline costs are getting up there–we instituted our “Pro-Bike Rental” program in 2004 after a regular client fretted immensely about his missing Colnago. When I asked if he’d consider renting a reasonable-quality, Italian bike equipped with Campagnolo components he replied “Get ’em! Count me in for renting one next year.” His Colnago showed up the next day but we got the bikes in 2005 and he (and lots of others) have rented a Torelli from us each year rather than spend the dough and endure the worry about their own bike arriving on the flight.
http://www.shipbikes.com/HowMuch.aspx
If you are gonna ship a bike somewhere in the US of A, try these guys. I bought a couple of their slick boxes to ship the pair of Bianchi’s back out to SB after an overhaul they badly needed after being stored out there for a few years. These “wedge-o-cheese” things can be shipped FedEx ground for a reasonable price and best of all, when you’re using ’em to leave bikes in places where they might be accidently damaged or otherwise molested/stolen (as in the in-laws garage) all it takes to stash one safely until next time is yanking the front wheel, moving the bars downwards and removing the seat post. No complaints from Mom-in-law about taking up too much space in the garage as the two of ’em stack easily, taking up no more floor space than two conventional (freebie) bike boxes. The ease of showing up, greeting the in-laws and then quickly having the bikes ready to ride makes the cost of the box well worth it! I will for sure get another more these for any future bike-stashing projects.