Category: Adventure Cyclist

Smooth as Silk

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
Bike Friday Silk Road Alfine
All folded up and nowhere to go.

I should know better than to tempt fate with posts like that last one.  The Million-Pound Shithammer began its rhythmic rise and fall shortly thereafter, I commenced evasive maneuvers, and next thing you know it’s August and I haven’t posted some useless bit of nonsense for days.

Our tenant in the House Back East™ moved out just in time for one of Herself’s old childhood chums to move in for a short reunion that involved a road trip to Santa Fe. For the womenfolk, naturally, not for Your Humble Narrator, who had chores to perform.

I just wrapped up the last of them about 15 minutes ago — a short video review of a Bike Friday Silk Road Alfine for Adventure Cyclist. I’ve done a couple-three of these things now, and while they’re getting slightly easier, they still take me way outside my comfort zone, because at heart I’m an ink-stained wretch with a radio face and a habit of peppering every conversation with at least five of George Carlin’s fabled Seven Words, especially if I happen to be talking to myself, as is usually the case.

Like writing and cartooning, these two-minute videos are a one-man job. I write the script, shoot and edit the video, do the voiceovers, and serve as the on-camera “talent,” har de har har. If the aliens ever see one of these things, they are certain to write off the planet as a dangerous slum populated by mental defectives who never developed the internal combustion engine.

This last one was something of a rush job — an Aug. 5 deadline somehow became a figment of my imagination, and so I spent the past couple of days playing Quentin Ferrentino. But that’s all over now, the video is shipped, and tomorrow I can get back to my acting career, to wit, acting like a guy who rides a bike.

I’ll go some more a-Rove-ing

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Kona Rove
The Kona Rove is a cyclo-cross-slash-whatever bike, with eyelets for racks and fenders and plenty of clearance for tires forbidden by the UCI.

Some folks hate Mondays. But since I work a weird schedule that mostly shits in my weekends and Wednesdays, I mostly don’t mind ’em.

And yesterday was one of the better Mondays, as the forecast called for 70s and sunny and I had only grocery shopping on the to-do list.

So I dragged ass out of the sack at 7 a.m., enjoyed some java and a piece of toast while surfing disinterestedly for fresh revelations regarding The Cyclist Who Shall Not Be Named, then went for a short run. Yeah, I’m starting that nonsense back up again, and yesterday I managed 20 minutes on grass without collapsing into a weepy heap of exploded joints, synovial fluid and torn tendons.

After elevenses I attached a cyclocomputer and bottle cages to the latest review bike, a Kona Rove (unfortunate moniker, that), and we spent an easy 90 minutes getting acquainted.

The thing I like best about reviewing bikes for Adventure Cyclist — besides cashing the checks, of course — is that I almost always get to play with something entirely new to me. This time it’s the bike itself (never rode a Kona anything) and Hayes disc brakes (Avid, si, Hayes, no).

As usual, I can’t say much about the bike before writing the review, other than to note that it’s steel and green and so what’s not to like?

I’ll ride it again today, and then hunker down for the second presidential debate, God help us all. We have a bottle of Leopold Bros. American Small Batch Whiskey on hand for medicinal purposes, should we start bleeding from the eyes.

Giro today, Mooto mañana

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
The Mooto XYBB
The latest bike in the Adventure Cyclist review chain.

OK, as Giros go, that one did not suck. Props to Ryder Hesjedal for the win — I thought he was gonna lay it down a couple-three times in the final time trial — and to Purito Rodriguez for a much more honorable defense of the maglia rosa than the one he put in yesterday.

Bear Creek
The Bear Creek trail, just east of the Nature Center.

It was an honest-to-God nail-biter and if Al Gore hadn’t invented the Innertubes we’d never have been able to see it live on our computers. Best president we never had, is what.

Post-Giro I went for a hilly, windy shakedown cruise on the latest bike in the Adventure Cyclist review chain, a Moots MootoXYBB that arrived rigged for the Apocalypse with 29×54 rubber, Old Man Mountain racks fore and aft, and titanium everything from stem to stern except for the nifty leather bits from Brooks. Woof. I’d tell you more if you were members of the Adventure Cycling Association.

Tomorrow there will be more of the same, kinda, sorta. Less Giro, as in none, and much more Moots. I need to ride this rascal someplace sexy, where the basements are not full of breaker-tripping dehumidifiers, half a carpet and heavily edited drywall.

Pip pip, cheerio, wot?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

One of my reasons for going to Sin City this year was to ID bicycles that want reviewing in the pages of Adventure Cyclist, and did I come home with a beauty — a Pashley Clubman.

The folks at Pashley have been making bikes for the better part of quite some time — since 1926, to be precise — and they seem to have it more or less dialed in at this point. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a bike draw as many eyeballs as this one has in the short time we’ve spent together. Everybody notices it, even people who couldn’t care less about bicycles. It’s that sharp.

The Clubman reminds me of the bikes I bought when I got back into cycling in the early Eighties: steel frameset, non-aero brake levers, quill stem, eight-speed downtube shifting, 36-spoke wheels, toeclips and straps; a real blast from the past, and clad all in shiny black and silver, too.

I have to swap out the stem before I can put any serious miles on it — I need to get up and out quite a piece to accommodate my geriatric spinal column — and frankly, I can’t wait.

Meanwhile, at least we can gaze fondly upon it. Here are a few pix.