I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: salt is bad for your bike’s health. Don’t believe me? Well, then check out the following pictures of Wolfgang. These brakes no longer move by themselves. Hopeless... Okay, not directly salt-related, but anyway Due to my wrist injury, Wolfgang was sitting outside for several weeks and when I tried reactivating him, it was pretty hopeless. The chain was stiff, the front derailleur only moved when being kicked with the foot; and the rear canti brakes didn't reset themselves anymore. So I switched the chain, which also required me to put on a new Shimano XT 11-34 cassette, replaced the Tektro Oryx cantis with an Avid SD7, and replaced some of the brake and shifter cables. Quite annoying, but that's the price you have to pay for riding all year on well-cleared roads in Upstate NY.

Okay, my wrist is no longer fractured, the cast came off 3.5 weeks ago, and thus I’m finally back on the bike. Of course, being in a cast and off the bike for over 2 months took its toll, and the wrist isn’t fully healed yet. So I started slowly, with a 38 km ride into familiar territory: to Taughannock State Park and back. Spring hasn’t arrived in Ithaca yet, and so I had to deal with temperatures of -5°C, cold winds, and at the end of the ride some snow. It felt very good to be back riding, even though my wrist hurt quite a bit when riding in the hoods – riding on the tops seems to work better. I hope this is going to get better soon, as I need to do some serious riding to get back into shape for the season. ...

In the previous post I mentioned that I lost my Sigma BC1606L bike computer. I had always been very satisfied with the computer and replacing it with another model would have been rather costly when adding the price of an extra mount and cadence sensor for my second bike. Getting a replacement, however, appeared to be difficult: The 06-series has been out of production for quite some time now and thus I sent the (German) Sigma customer service an e-mail, asking if they could tell me where to get a replacement. Within a few days, the US distributor Sigma sent me an e-mail and offered to send me a replacement – free of charge! This was a very pleasant surprise. The computer wasn’t terribly expensive in the first place, but this is nonetheless great customer service. If I ever do replace my computer it will most likely be another Sigma. ...

Dear reader, may I offer some good advice? Don’t break your wrist. A month without any blog posts is not due to the fact that I’ve been riding all the time, or to the awful winter weather. No, three-and-a-half weeks ago I broke my left wrist while—not cycling, but snowshoeing. Somewhat ironically, on just that day I had ordered my own pair of snowshoes, as I no longer wanted to rely on Glenn Swan’s generosity in lending me a pair of his. To add loss to injury, I also managed to lose my bike computer while awkwardly trying to bike back home with my broken wrist. While I’m on the way to recovery, biking will still have to wait for at least two more weeks. I tried getting some exercise today on the trainer, but my wrist still can’t support my weight, and riding one-handedly gets old pretty quick. In order to get at least some exercise (and to get to places!) I’ve done a lot of walking, both with and without snowshoes. Once my cast will be removed (March 1), I’ll hopefully be back on the bike, if not for longer rides then at least for running errands and buying groceries. Be safe, Hobbes vs. Boyle ...

“Visit PA” is what is written on Pennsylvania license plates, and last Wednesday I was ready to heed that call and do a bike ride into the Northern Tier of the Quaker State. As per usual, I had a late start due to complete lack of preparation on the previous evening. The planned route was about 130 km and I didn’t mind the fact that I would have to do parts of the ride in the dark. The weather forecast predicted temperatures around and slightly above freezing and possibly even some sunshine in the afternoon. The plan for the ride was to get out to Spencer, head towards Waverly and then turn around, taking a different route. Since NY-34 between Ithaca and Spencer is somewhat annoying to ride on when you go towards Spencer (traffic, narrow shoulders, constant uphill), I decided to take a longer, more strenous, but also much more scenic way to Spencer and then take 34 on the way back. On my newly installed Vittoria tires, I headed out of town towards Buttermilk Falls State Park and then up Sandbank Road. From there I took the very quiet country roads towards Danby, from where I followed NY-96B for a few kilometers. Had it been summer I probably would’ve taken Michigan Hollow Road but I knew that it was a dirt road and I was worried that it might be too snowy. Instead I turned right onto S Danby and the continued on Fisher Settlement Rd. It turned out that most of Fisher Settlement Road is also a dirt road, and a pretty hilly one at that. The road surface was mix of snow and wet dirt but aside from slowing me down it was okay. Just outside of Spencer, Fisher Settlement Road merges with NY-34 and in Spencer Downtown I turned left onto NY-96 towards Candor. On an FLCC Sunday ride earlier this year, I had ridden on Halsey Valley Road, but going the opposite direction. Today I followed Halsey Valley Rd South and then continued on Oak Hill Rd. Oak Hill Road leads all the way into the Susquehanna Valley. On small roads running parallel to the river and NY-17C I finally got into Waverly and after crossing the Southern Tier Expressway I was in Pennsylvania. The part of Pennsylvania I ended up in turned out to be a rather unexciting mix of warehouses, strip malls and lots of scary sounding warning sign about dangerous drivers. I took a longer rest stop at the Sayre McDonalds and refueled with a large coke and fries. I knew that the way back would be shorter, but I still had about 50 km to go. I followed NY-34 out of Waverly, heading north, until after 10 km I turned right unto Dean Creek Road. This turned out to be a very quiet country road, gradually climbing and then descending towards Spencer. In the meantime the sun had set and because the moon wasn’t visible, I rode in almost complete darkness. I’ve really come to enjoy riding in the dark a lot – at least as long as it is on quiet roads. Once in Spencer I quickly contemplated stopping for a cup of coffee at the gas station but the prospect of the rest of the ride being almost all downhill made me continue. Traffic on NY-34 was light but still too much to make the ride in a starry night as pleasant as it could’ve been. After a quick stop at Taste of Thai Express in Ithaca to pick up dinner, I finally arrived back home after seven hours of riding time. A strenous but very enjoyable seven hours. ...

I picked up my new tires last Tuesday and already put almost 200 km on them. Tueoo early for a comprehensive review, but not too early for some first impressions. Sizing and weightDishonesty in tire sizing is a well-known phenomenon in the bike world. In order to be able their tires as especially light-weight manufacturers make them narrower than their designation implies, so your 700x28 c tire might be only 26 mm wide.1 This is definitely true for the Randonneurs. Their measured width on a 19.6 mm Mavic Open Pro rim  is only about 32 mm. The tires' weight as measured on my kitchen scale is fortunately closer to the manufacturer's claim: 472 g vs. 460 g advertised. Rubber and TreadThe rubber is definitely softer than my Michelin Krylions and also a bit softer than my Continental Gatorskins. Tread is rather minimal, as you can see in the picture. Mounting the tires The Randonneur Pro is a folding tire and was reasonable easy to mount. Folding tires tend to be a bit more difficult to mount than wire bead tires because they don't stay in place by themselves. The trick thus is to fix them on the rim in one spot with a zip tie. From there I could easily mount them with two tire levers. Ride qualityI took the tires on a 130 km ride, mostly on the typical wintry salt-water-grime pavement, but also several miles of partly snowy, partly muddy gravel roads. For pressure I followed the Bicycling Quarterly guidelines, i.e. 60 psi in the front and 70 psi in the back. The tires had a surprising amount of traction and the ride quality was nice. The rolling resistance is hard to assess: The moving average on this ride was only 19 km/h, which is fairly slow for me. But if that's due to the tires is unclear. The dirt roads, the hills and my general lack of energy on that day probably contributed more than the tires. But I will keep an eye olin that. ConclusionSo far I'm happy with the tires. I'm annoyed that they are narrower than advertised but since I'm riding mostly on snow-free asphalt roads it probably doesn't matter too much. The main question is how puncture proof the tires will be. Updated will follow. 1 The whole issue gets complicated because of the various tire sizing systems. I have a rough understanding of how they work, but I, for example, still don't understand why 622-35 is the same size as 700x37C, and I have no idea if said tires are 35 or 37 mm wide.

The final numbers for a successful 2010 are in and it time for both the regular monthly and the first annual summary The larger goal of getting to 6000 km by the end of 2010 motivated me to keep my riding up in December, despite increasingly adverse weather. 6000 was still 491 km away at the beginning of the month, and only by December 30th had I reached the magical 6000 km. Most of December’s riding was done on Wolfgang (494 km vs. only 15 km on Gunnar) and the average 16.4 km/day totaled at 509 km – exactly the same value as last month. For the whole year, I rode a total of 6018 km, at an average of 501 km/month or 16.5 km/day. I’m pretty impressed! The only months during which I rode less than 500 km were the wintry ones and July, during which I was traveling. I don’t want to make any predictions for next year, as there are too many life changes ahead. But it’s safe to say that 2010 was an awesome cycling year. I did my first 200 km ride, I rode more than ever, I did my first real road race (and probably my last one, too), I built up and rode the lovely Gunnar, I went on a nice bike weekend in the Adirondacks, and, most importantly, I had loads of fun and no crashes at all! Happy 2011! ...

As reported in the previous post, December has already been a bad month with regards to flats for me, and in the meantime it has gotten only worse. I had to get some stuff to and from campus yesterday, and when riding down our driveway I immediately noticed that Wolfgang had another flat in the rear! While waiting for my new tires (see below), I had put on the Conti Gatorskins in the back—the tire that up to now had never failed me. I fixed the flat this morning and it seems like the tire is worn down enough that a small glass piece could make its way through it. I guess I’ll have to replace the Contis next season. For the winter, however, I ordered a pair of 700x35 Vittoria Randonneur Pro tires. Requirements were: ...

A couple of weeks ago, I found out that Madball were scheduled to play a show at Syracuse’s Westcott Theater in mid-December. Since I haven’t been to a decent show for many months, I thought I could do a little bike/music mini-trip, cycling up to Syracuse on the 14th, seeing the show, spending the night at a cheap motel, and then riding back the next day. I sent out an e-mail to the FLCC listserv and received lots of good advice about route recommendations. So far, so good. Unfortunately, the show was canceled. If I couldn’t have a bike/music experience, I thought I could at least do the bike part and test my new winter gear. Since Syracuse itself is not exactly the most attractive destination and going all the way there and back in one day would have been a bit much, I mapped a route that would combine two of the route suggestion but did not go up all the way into the city. ...