A bit late, to be sure, but we’re getting them. The lawn likes the weather, as do the flowers, but I’d just as soon have sunny and 70, thanks all the same. Getting your vitamin D from the pharmacy just isn’t the same somehow.
I need to log some serious miles between now and May, too. I’m signed up for some extra duty at VeloNews.com, helping with coverage of the Giro d’Italia and the Amgen Tour of California. This always sounds like a good idea (more money) but rarely is (more work). If I wanted to work, I’d get a job.
However, as Herself reminds me loudly and frequently, somebody around here spent a ton of money on bike parts recently, and the piper must be paid. Maybe I could institute a “Barter for Bike Parts” program. Y’know, trade a Rhode Island Red for some SRAM Red. I hear this sort of thing is all the rage in certain circles.
SRAM Apex — a double with an invisible granny gear.
SRAM is getting plenty of love these days for its Apex road group, which is aimed at the casual cyclist (or masters fatty) who might otherwise choose a triple-chainring setup for high-country cycling.
Lennard Zinn of VeloNews and Joe Lindsey of Bicycling, neither of whom needs any performance advantages in the hills, have both ridden the Apex, which features a compact crankset (50/34), a rear derailleur that can accommodate an 11-32 cassette, dual-pivot brakes that can handle 700×28 tires, and a price that undercuts Shimano 105 by $500 if bought as an aftermarket option. Expect to see Apex hit the streets in the next couple months on $1,500 bikes from Trek, Cannondale and the rest of the usual suspects.
Both Zinn and Lindsey were complimentary in their reviews, noting that weight is reduced and shifting improved when compared with a triple setup. And Lindsey tagged Apex as part of a trend that he dubbed “the return of ‘real’ road bikes for real riders.”
“I’ve said before (and will again) that having the ProTour drive bike design isn’t an unalloyed positive,” he continues. “The products that largely result from top-level racing prize light weight and power transfer over ease of maintenance and comfort, and aren’t really reflective of the way most people ride.”
Well said. Dope fiends with too much blood in their blood and less body fat than a rattlesnake’s skeleton mostly don’t need a 34×32. But I do, sometimes. Sure beats getting off and walking the steep bits, especially in those silly-ass road shoes that make a guy mince and prance like a transvestite who hasn’t quite gotten his spike heels dialed in.
The Apex is hardly revolutionary, nuts-and-bolts-wise — cyclo-crossers and geezers have been cobbling together similar setups for years, since nobody bothered to offer one as a gruppo. In the bad old days we were stuck with 48/38 chainrings, but with the rise of the 110mm BCD crank things got very different very quickly.
I once had an eight-speed titanium Voodoo Loa ’cross bike that sported a Ritchey Logic 48/34 crank, a Shimano XT rear derailleur and an 11-30 cassette. Most of my ’cross bikes these days have low ends of 34×28, though the Jamis has a nasty 36×26 combo that hurt my legs the other day exploring in Sondermann Park. And my buddy Dennis the Menace uses an XT rear derailleur on his Surly Cross Check so he can run an 11-30 cassette, which comes in handy when dicking around on the single-track in Palmer Park.
But a guy mostly can’t buy a weirdo setup like that off the rack. Until now.
Frankly, the thing I found most surprising about the Apex reviews, not having bought a road bike in 16 years, is that it’s all like New Wave and shit to have brake calipers that can accommodate 700×28 tires — assuming that you can shoehorn those fat bastards into your plastic-fantastic frameset. The old Shimano 600 stoppers on my ti’ DBR could do that way back in 1994, when I was still rocking a 53×39 up front and a 12-21 behind. How time flies, etc.
Now if someone would only bring back eight-speed. …
A wheelset from Rivendell Bicycle Works arrives with a little something extra.
This will come as a surprise to you, I’m sure, but I am something of a curmudgeon. Show me a silver lining, I will show you the black cloud that envelops it. Remember your Arthur Schopenhauer (as interpreted by Ed Abbey): “A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.”
That said, today I had a reason to smile. It didn’t quite hurt my face. About 10 days ago, after some back and forth via e-mail with hoops-master Rich Lesnik at Rivendell Bicycle Works, I had ordered a set of handbuilt touring wheels — LX hubs, Velocity Synergy rims, DT Swiss 14/15g spokes, nickel-plated brass nipples, the works.
Rich was patient and helpful in answering a series of silly questions, which is always nice for the person asking them. But when the wheels arrived today, I found I’d scored a couple bonuses despite my reputation for being able to transform every molehill into a mountain with a single well-honed groan.
First, I was awarded a discount, which I had not sought and did not expect, the economy being what it is. Second, I received a membership and subscription to the Rivendell Reader (issue 42 includes a couple of good Maynard Hershon reads, Samuel Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and some tips for remounting a dropped chain without mucking up your mitts).
And finally, the box that the wheels shipped in was ornamented by a cartoon drawn by the fabled Pineapple Bob himself. Go ahead, try not to smile. I dare you.
Judas Priest. Fabian Cancellara is a horse. And all those dudes who wouldn’t work in the first chase with Tom Boonen are horse’s asses. Racing for second? The honor of being first loser? Puh-leeze. Has Tomeke made a bunch of enemies all of a sudden? He can’t be boinking all their teen-age sisters.
Or maybe all that Peruvian marching powder has stripped the insulation from his cranial wiring, because he did say something spectacularly dim post-race for a guy who’s won Paris-Roubaix three times.
“I had just done some attacks of my own and was sitting at the back of the group trying to feed and keeping a check on the riders behind us,” said Boonen. “And then Cancellara just went.”
Indeed he did. And I never once saw him pay a single bit of attention to the riders behind him.
Nice day. I abdicated all professional duties and rode the creekside trail south until it dead-ended at someone’s pasture, just east of the Fort Carson exit off Interstate 25. It made for a rolling, 36-mile round trip from the DogHaus. Headwind out, tailwind back. Doesn’t get any better than that.
By the way, in case I haven’t mentioned it, my Nobilette cyclo-cross bike rocks. Sucker flat disappeared under me as I was riding it today. I felt as though I’d copped a ride on Aladdin’s magic carpet.
Herself and I had a couple buddies over for snacks and wine afterward and as usual we agreed that the body politic is afflicted with boils in dire need of lancing. But none of us has health care that’s worth a shit, and we can’t afford to catch anything, so we’ll leave the doctoring to someone else.
Hey, look, a shiny object! Is that iPhone 4.0 or Steve Jobs’ wiener in my ear?
Mad Blog Media 