An oenophile may have an entire wine cellar, but they can only drink one bottle at a time.* Similarly, I have the bicycle equivalent of a wine cellar, but I can only ride one bike at a time.** And the one I’ve been riding lately is this:
[Getting some use out of that triple!]
*[I’m sure oenophiles do in fact drink more than one bottle at a time, but just go with it.]
**[Actually, like any cyclist parent, I have often ridden my own bike whilst wheeling a child’s bike alongside, but just go with it.]
As I’ve probably mentioned, while of course I rotate them in and out, I do try to keep only one bicycle inside my actual living quarters at a time.*** In practice I’m not always successful at this, and will often wind up allowing two or even three to live inside with me.**** But lately I’ve been making a concerted effort to keep it down to a single bike, and most recently it’s been this one, since it doesn’t take up a lot of space, plus I find skinny-tired road bikes particularly well-suited to the sweating season.
Just throw on a jersey and go:
***[I’m only counting my own bikes here. We’ve also started keeping my wife’s bike and my younger son’s bike in the house, too.]
****[JESUS CHRIST WOULD YOU STOP WITH THE GODDAMN FOOTNOTES???]
And yes, I also throw on shorts, but I wanted to spare you another footnote.
Also, further to the recent shoe discussion, while I have come to embrace flat pedals and use them often (flat pedals and sandals are really good for summer riding), I do still prefer clipless pedals when riding sporty road bikes–not because I think it nets me any gains in performance, but just because it feels right for reasons that don’t really matter. But I am down to only one (1) bicycle with traditional single-sided road pedals, and I do find myself wondering if I’m maybe done with them altogether:
Pearl Izumi sent me those fancy shoes last year, and in something stiff and racy like this I doubt very much I could tell the difference between a road pedal and a mountain bike pedal. Yes, theoretically the road pedal would have more cornering clearance, but at this point in my life I’m as likely to enter a criterium as I am to join the rodeo circuit. So I think I may finally commit to two-sided pedals for everything and just put on the fancy shoes when I’m looking for the sensation of Maximum Fredness.
Otherwise, at a fraction of the price, these things have the advantage of sneaker-like walkability:
[How badly do you want to pick that large piece of gravel out of there?]
For some reason I can only find the women’s version on the Pearl Izumi site now, though I’d be surprised if the men’s version and the women’s versions weren’t identical. Or maybe they aren’t. Or maybe there’s only ever been one version and I’ve just been wearing women’s shoes.
Either way it seems like maybe they’ve been discontinued, and I suppose I could just ask Pearl Izumi, but that sounds dangerously adjacent to “work.”
The point is I like the shoes regardless of genderway.
Oh, and if you’re wondering how much heavier the cheap, walkable shoe is than the stiffer, “pro” shoe, here’s how much the cheap shoe weighs:
Sorry, let’s try that again:
Now here’s how much the pro model weighs:
And here’s an old road shoe with a Delta cleat just because:
So basically the difference between the heaviest shoe and the lightest shoe is around 50 grams. So if you want superior walkability at a road shoe weight, simply do one or more of the following:
- Wear shorter socks
- Trim your toenails
- Surgically remove one or more toes
Of course if you’re too much of a “woosie” to ditch some toes you might get part of the way there if you really go to town on those callouses with a pumice stone.
You won’t find great advice like that over at Escape Collective.
Speaking of the Bargain Basement Bike, I found it on the Craig’s Listings, which is almost entirely either crap or people asking way too much for plastic bikes they bought six months ago and never rode, though if you look really hard you might find something like this:
[Not an endorsement, don’t know the seller, don’t know nothing about nothing, but it seemed interesting, that’s all.]
Anyway, as someone who needs to sell bikes and bike stuff from time to time, prefers to do stuff locally, and refuses to use Facebook, I have often longed for an alternative to the aforementioned list, and recently I heard from someone who has created just that:
Here’s the story:
As with the bike, I don’t know nothing about nothing, but it seemed interesting, that’s all.
Maybe next time I’ll give it a try.