Category: Words

Monday’s stage of the Vuelta was won by Zabel, who managed to get one past Pettachi, which given the latters current form was no mean feat. Meanwhile Richard Virenque (Quick Step-Davitamon) and Sergio Pérez (Labarca 2-Café Baqué) were expelled after using their team cars on a climb. Not much more detail on what happened, but seems a bit harsh on face value. Yesterday was a rest day and today’s 162km stage takes the peloton from Utiel – Cuenca. More from Spain over here.

How much to charge for a spoke to be replaced in a wheel?

A simple question but one that I reckon uncovers a can of worms within the bike retail trade. On a recent discussion suggestions on this topic ranged from the idea that the work should be done for free while a coffee is made for a good and regular customer through to £20 for the half an hour a through job should take (involving taking off tyre, tube and rim tape, loosening the tension on all the spokes, inserting the new spoke, retensioning and truing, stressing the wheel and finally checking the tension and the wheel for being in true, before reassembling it as it was brought in for repair).

The fact that someone thought that they were being ripped off to be asked for £10 for this work just goes to show that people really don’t appreciate the work involved. Now personally I am one for doing most work on my bike myself and after over twelve years fiddling and working on bikes, there isn’t much I can’t do. Building wheels is one thing that getting a second opinion on is something that I’ll consider, because there is much more to it that most people think.

Now I can lace a wheel up, but I don’t have a wheel jig, so I need to find a workshop with a good one before I can consider doing that. The jig I learnt to true wheels on was a French masterpiece of engineering that weighed about 250lbs and was engineered to last. I’ve recently found out that they now fetch £500. You can buy a cheap jig for a tenth of that, but it won’t do the same job to the same accuracy. Accuracy might not seem important, but when you’ve got bikes worth thousands of pounds, then it seems ridiculous to skimp on a tool that allows this expensive equipment to be kept running within the highest levels of precision.

Then there are different levels of skill when it comes to mechanics. This doesn’t have to certificated on paper, often the best mechanics are known only by word of mouth and may never have sat a qualification, but they know the ins and outs of bikes, because they have been working on them for large portions of their lives and it’s become ingrained in them. Any one can attempt to true a wheel, but a wheel can only be trued perfectly by a skilled set of hands.

Skilled workers tend to command a premium price, like specialists in any field if you want their time and experience, you have to pay for it, but you benefit from the investment. Bike shops that don’t charge a minimum service charge for this time and effort are not going to be able to pay their staff a wage that will retain them and stop them from looking for better paid work else where or becoming disillusioned and de-motivated.

Suggesting that work be done for free, just because you are a good and regular customer is like sticking two fingers up and saying fuck you, why should I pay? If you don’t want to pay learn to do the work yourself or get stuffed.

It seems that loads of bike companies are celebrating anniversaries this year, Specialized are 25 and have launched a special Stumpjumper FSR model to commemorate it. Over in Italy Colnago and De Rosa are celebrating 50 years and have also launched top end super bikes to celebrate the occasion, with a spangly Carbon C50 and a rather blue King.

Meanwhile, not being content with his victory in the World Championships last week, Filip Meirhaeghe has ended the season in spectacular style by winning the final World Cup XC race in Kaprun. Yet again he rode an Epic FSR to victory. Specialized are pretty happy…

Meanwhile over in the US, a new national trail access advocacy organization is now forming that promises a more aggressive approach to protecting mountain bike access. What’s more surprising is that some of the movers and shakers of this new group are disaffected IMBA members, and some were even part of IMBA’s leadership.

I have to say, that whilst I appreciate that IMBA UK is still in early days, they’ve cashed my cheque and I haven’t had anything back from them yet. I appreciate what they’re doing but maybe this idea will give them a kick start and get them back on track. Read more in this Dirt Rag article.

There’s a fair few riding fixed gear track bikes around Manchester these days. It has to be said that it is the bike of choice for the discerning courier. There’s more about the black art in this article and a few interesting links.

Advocate of singlespeeding, Big Jonny from Drunkcyclist has been quizzed by Ride Phat and has been given more scope to air his views:

Oh, I get shit from the absolute stupidest people on the planet. All the tired lame-ass rhetoric like, “Support the troops”, “Move to France” and “You shouldn’t criticize the President while we’re at war.” Well, good people are dying because we have an asshole leading the country. I cannot believe how totally fucked up the world had become during the tenure of our current administration. It’s mind boggling the damage one loose cannon Republican can cause.

Read the full interview here.

And finally Halfords only standalone Bikehut store is no more. It’s being converted into a normal Halfords store doinng car bits a pieces as well as bikes. May be a sign of the times for Halfords and the bike trade as a whole.

Dunc told me about this little project yesterday. Apparently a load of the World’s best motorbike riders are well into their cycling too and now manufacturer of very fast red things with engines and two wheels, Ducati, has teamed up with Italian counterparts Bianchi to make a special edition EV3 road bike.

Troy Bayliss and some other bloke called Fogarty (who apparently used to be really good) are already Bianchi owners and riders. Anyway there’s more about it in this press release.

On a similar theme, there’s a rather bizarre motorbike and road bike thing going on over at mountain bike review in their caption competition.

Info about next weekend’s Dusk ’til Dawn race is now up over at Singletrack. Team rothar.com will be there trying to defend a reasonably good placing last year in the pairs category…

Yesterdays stage of the Vuelta was won by Fassa Bortolo’s Alessandro Petacchi, which means the Italian has now clocked up twelve Grand Tours stage victories this year. ‘After the stage, Miguel Martín Perdiguero (Domina Vacanze) echoed the thoughts of many when he said about Petacchi, “Every sprint he has, every sprint he wins. There’s no doubt he is unbeatable this year”‘, read more here.

MBA has a report on the recent World Champs – did you know Filip’s win in the Mens XC is the first title secured on a full susser? There’s more pictures and info on the new Specialized S-Works road bikes, the Tarmac and the Roubaix over at cyclingnews.

Issue 11 of Singletrack is at the printers and should be with subscribers by the beginning of next week. In preparation I’ve given the Information Bureau a bit of a face lift and I reckon it looks better for it.

We’re not worthy.

I think I’ve finally found someone with a greater vision than the Designers Republic and that person is Eric Jordan. His web design company, 2advanced studios is pretty much in a league of its own. If you’ve got a reasonable spec computer with the latest versions of flash and quicktime and are hooked up to broadband then link up to it, version 3 of his site is up here.

Want to look at something cool, then look up either the Oakley or Ford GT40 sites under the portfolio section. Not impressed? Then take a look at the 25 milligrams quicktime movie in the exploratory section. What do other people think?

I can totally appreciate the amount work that must have gone into designing and implementing 2advanced. What do I feel when navigating their site? Inspiration. What’s the best aspect of their site? In my opinion, it’s their explicit use of modularity or classes with timely function calls to create seamless rollover effects. Quite frankly, I have not seen anything else like this! Have you explored their portfolio? 2advanced is the bomb!

Oh and by the way, if you thought that was pretty good, then he’s already moved on, the current version (mark 4) is up here. Again more great stuff if you dig around for it. Now there’s a fair bit of arguing going on about the originality of the work, but as it has been said “talent borrows, genius steals”, so have a look at gmunk and see if you think it’s competition or not.

Anyways, if you like this kinda thing take a look at pixelranger’s work here.

I’d been over to the epic rides site once before, but here’s a link to it. They’ve organised a nice looking event on my birthday. I’d love to do it, it’s just that there’s a few thousand miles separating us. Anyway I’m sure I’ll get some riding done, just maybe not in Arizona.

There’s an interview with photographer Matt Scholl over at Pink Bike and his work can be found here.

Last night a documentary on free running aired on the Tv. Now I’m not a great fan of the Tv, at the moment there’s only about one thing worth watching and that’s the Shield, but this looked pretty good.

What the group of French guys who started the sport do is impressive and indicates their level of skill, ability and talent, but the footage filmed for the documentary used arty camera angles and was a bit of a let down. It didn’t show them doing their thing. For more about free running and some amazing videos check out le parkour.

Anyone want to buy a singlespeed? Anyone? No didn’t think so, so there’s a new addition to the collection, might prove to be a bit more popular. Soon see I suppose.

What’s this all about? I don’t know why he left the US, if things were going so well but Malcolm Elliot is on his way back over there to mix it up.

Now imagine a job where you get paid to ride your bike, show people your favourite trails, help them out when their bike gets trashed and get to do all of this in a warm, sunny part of the world, where you’re near mediterranean seas. Sound alright? Well read this then.

Cheeky adverts and one of the best bike shops websites out there, that’d be wrench science then, doing the biz in Berkeley, California. There’s a lesson to be learnt there.

Oh and there’s a few guys riding around Spain at the moment. Find out what they’re up to here.

I need to produce some flash animations for my research at the moment so it seemed like a good idea to test some out on the site. There’s a new front end entrance page as a result. Click here to take a look.

There is a new Mountain Bike World Champion and that’s Specialized’s Filip Meirhaeghe, who rode his Epic FSR to the finish nearly a full minute quicker than Ryder Hesjedal. Damn good effort and hats off to Specialized for spotting his talent and supporting him for this long. Here’s the full cyclingnews report:

After chasing Ryder Hesjedal (Canada) for most of the day, it was three time bronze medallist and two time silver medallist, Filip Meirhaeghe (Belgium) who took the win today and finally realise his dream of becoming World Champion. Meirhaeghe was very happy with his win. “It’s a dream come true,” he said. “Last year I was so close, only 19 seconds behind Roland (Green), and on the start line today I thought it was going to happen again, so I am really happy now.

On the course that has been described over and over as ultra technical, the men completed 8 laps for a total of 49.3km. Ryder Hesjedal (Canada) put the hammer down early to set the pace for the race, with Roland Green (Canada) and Ralph Naef (Switzerland) hot on his wheels. As the race progressed, Green fell off the pace and the Begians started to make up the 50″ they had lost on Hesjedal as did the two Swiss riders, Naef and Christoph Sauser, who rounded off the top 5 on the course.

For most of the race the front five riders remained the same and it was with almost two laps to go that Meirhaeghe bridged the gap to Hesjedal and the pair rode together for what was to be a very exciting finish. Meirhaeghe’s pace proved too strong for Hesjedal in the last lap and he gradually edged away to eventually finish 46” in front. A very muddy and exhausted looking Hesjedal rolled across the line the take second place in his first attempt in the senior ranks and Paulissen took third place to make it Gold and Bronze for Belgium.

Naef came in to take fourth place, however his teammate Sauser wasn’t so fortunate, flatting in the seventh lap and having to settle for 14th place in the end. Designer of the course, Thomas Frichknecht seemed to be suffering early in the race, perhaps feeling the effect of the marathon last weekend, however came back to take a respectable 11th place and defending champion Roland Green also showed the effect of having been out of racing for most of this season, coming in 19th.

Merihaeghe admitted later, to being nervous that Hesjedal had such a strong lead early in the race. “I didn’t actually realize that Ryder was up there at first because I could only see four riders in front of me and I he wasn’t one of them. All of a sudden I saw him and he had 55 seconds on me so I became a bit worried because a minute lead on this course is a lot. Later though I started to catch up and it was only then that I started to believe in my chances.” In fact even after he had caught Hesjedal, Meirhaeghe didn’t relax. “In the second last lap I took too many risks because I was getting tired and nervous, and I started to make mistakes, so in the last lap I took it a little easier because I wouldn’t have been able to cope if I lost due to a flat tyre.”

Of his choice to use a duel suspension bike, Meirhaeghe had no doubts. “I’m sure it was the right decision, in fact I only came here with this bike, I didn’t even bring a hard tail with me. I have been riding the Epic all year now and we have been working on the weight and I am absolutely sure that the weight is not a disadvantage. I think it was easier to recover from the up hills with the dual suspension.”

Hesjedal was happy with his race despite being so close to the win. “This is my third silver medal, but this is by far the most significant because it’s the elite category and it’s only my first attempt. I felt good all day today but when I heard over the radio that Meirhaeghe was catching me I decided to back off a bit and let him catch me. I wanted to let him catch me and then attack to take his spirits a bit, but he stayed right with me and then I knew that he would be very strong for the finish.”

The men’s cross country race wrapped up the 2003 World Championships in Lugano where a crowd of 25,000 people turned up to view the action on the last day. Many riders will now head to the final World Cup in Kaprun, Austria which will be held next weekend. Some will be there to redeem themselves from bad luck this weekend, especially riders such as Christoph Sauser whose puncture cost him a high placing today.

Britain’s Nick Craig finished only 1 minute and 18 seconds behind Roland Green and picked up 24th Place. Frischi, who won the Marathon category earlier in the week, still managed to come in at 11th.

Day two of the Vuelta. The word is “apart from Igor González de Galdeano (ONCE-Eroski), the candidates for overall victory are looking like Roberto Heras (US Postal) and Oscar Sevilla (Kelme)”. Well that settles that. Any other takers?

In the same event Cipo is out retiring today. More here. Obviously he isn’t a great fan of Spanish cuisine.

Game on! Brant over at on-one now has some fun and games up on his site. It’s pure genius and you’ll no doubt be saying ya’bast’d everytime you hit a solid object. Click here for some inbred action.

The Vuelta kicked off today and the ONCE squad put in a performance that should make the chances of the team riders getting a major new sponsor a bit easier after pipping US Postal by ten seconds. David Millar’s Cofidis team managed a respectable 7th, but could more have been expected of Cipo’s Domina Vancanze team?

Meanwhile over in Switzerland, Steve Peat didn’t make it onto the podium. Guess he’s a few more years to crack that one.

There’s been a fair bit on Shimano’s recent legal action against SRAM, but as this report shows there’s a bit more to it.

Oh and finally there is word of a $6000 limited edition (only 500 are to be made) Lance Armstrong Trek Madone for the coming year…

Monster Eurobike photogallery over at cyclingnews, check it out. There’s more from the show here. Synchros and Voodoo showed that the mighty come back is still possible in the bike world, but unlike onZa they haven’t completely changed their target market.

In/out, in/out (shake it all about). Is Cipo a bit of a shark when it comes to media publicity? Can’t say I blame him for wanting to opt out of the Vuelta to increase his chances of a better show at the Worlds, but then you can’t blame the Spaniards for kicking his outfit out of the race.

The Swiss continue to dominate and now have a new generation of rising stars. Liam Kileen, came close, but as you could say was first loser, just missing out on a podium placing after getting a puncture. The Eclipse tubeless system is the way ahead and if it’s good enough to take Frischi to the top step of the podium, it’s good enough to get taken seriously. I’ve been puncture free since installing it…

Back in the shop today and it was a busy day. Parcels, parcels, parcels and new spangly bikes. It’s good to be back. The 2004 Specialized Enduro range looks stunning. So good in fact that I think I want one! A bit of bike rationalization might have to occur before I can commit to one and that’s not a simply operation.

So the start of a new season in the bike world means new colours and the recreation of old favourites.

Somethings have disappeared completely, others have been back to the drawing board and some are new kids on the block. The latter has just produced a scary flashback. Staunch old favourites continue to do the business and it’s looking like it’s going to be another good year.

I need to get out and ride my bike more.