My grocery-getter. It's a symphony of squeaks and everyone hears me coming. I pulled it out of a dumpster about 8 years ago, put air in the tires, and have been riding it since.
I'm stressing dogg. I'm concerned about your dedication to the minimalist fixie aesthetic.
Hey man I know I know... practicality keeps getting in the way. I tried full fixie for a day and gave up. Coasting is too fun. Also I couldn't master cool skidz, so like, fuck that.
Not to add to your stress, but I also rock a mountain bike style rear fender sometimes. And I have a rear light that has laser pointers that shine "lane" lines beside/behind the bike. No nipple lasers though, disappointingly.
Looking pretty seriously at one of these atm, change in jobs means I lose the company car but I can finally cycle to work a couple of tmes a week. Any one ride CX here?
Both of those vids are amazing... wow... I need a rewatch to let everything sink in. It's so amazing how humans can get so good at such specific tasks/activities.
Hey DL,
Did you choose a bike? I like the CX idea. Got the speed and feel of a road bike, but you can hop off into the wilderness if your heart desires. Are you thinking of getting into CX races?
I just threw some skinny tires on my bike. It shipped with 28s, and I put on 23s. Wow, such a huge difference. The best part is the quiet ride. Almost no road hum. My freewheel is virtually silent as well, so now when I coast I am basically running silent.
eternal lazer bike lane on some Silver Surfer shit.
I love it. I love all the weirdo bike lights in the wheels too, where they spin up and make patterns and spell out words and shapes.
I like words and shapes and patterns.
Sometimes I can't tell if you're being over the top sarcastic or just bluntly sincere. It doesn't stop me from loving your posts though. Do you miss the mountain bike?
Sometimes I can't tell if you're being over the top sarcastic or just bluntly sincere. It doesn't stop me from loving your posts though. Do you miss the mountain bike?
This is bicycles, man: the whole thing is about riding them around for fun. I loved the precious chalk line-drawer vids, I love weirdos on the bike paths with speakers blasting CCR, I love your lasers. My comments about your over-accessorized fixie are more of a character I guess--the absolutist black'n'white RIGHT WAY TO DO IT Guy. Impossible arguments with insecure assholes. If you like your bike I like your bike.
I am comfortable telling BikeStrut that I did get a new MTB--that Lapierre 527 lanked to above. It's insane. Pure doctorbike status, but I'm too old and uncool to even argue with the naysayers (and, I'm having a ton of fun on it).
VIVE LA FRANCE!
The bike is SO SICK. So sick. So so so so sick. I will get into it if you'd like, but it's on some serious crazy talk. I do miss my old bike, but I sold it to a cool dude for an acceptable price and I've moved on. This new one is like whoa.
just threw some skinny tires on my bike. It shipped with 28s, and I put on 23s. Wow, such a huge difference. The best part is the quiet ride. Almost no road hum. My freewheel is virtually silent as well, so now when I coast I am basically running silent.
I love the ultegra rear freewheel that has no clicks at all. I don't know how it works, but I love the silent coast as well. Tire hum comes more from tread pattern than size. Large slicks are pretty quiet as well. I can't run 23c tires here because the roads are so bad. I was going through an innertube a week every time I hit a pothole. Plus I was always worried about my rims. Now, I'm running 35c tires and I haven't popped a tube yet.I still have plenty of top 5 Strava scores in too, so it's not like they are slow. I run them at about 85-100 psi.
I feel the need to rationalize the bike first (proving that I'm not totally okay with it):
I'd been riding the same bike for a long time. Like seven years on the components and four on the frame.
I have a flip phone and don't drink or eat fancy foods. I am a simple man.
My car gets 50mpg.
I know some people.
Um it has accelerometers on the fork and in the headset, and a cadence sensor in the cranks. That info is fed into a little computer that, depending on the setting you have it in, changes the compression setting of the rear shock. If you're pedaling through roots, you want your bike to react differently than if you're coasting through roots. It does this "100 times a second" or whatever tech nerds always use to impress dentists. It works. It fucking works.
Combined with the 27.5" wheels, this motherfucker is fast as fuck. I'm having to re-learn all my local trails because I'm going faster than normal. It's so rad to be in full-plush DH mode on a trail, soaking up the bumps like most bikes do these days (mobbing--bikes are so good now), and then feel the thing stiffen up instantly when you pedal out of a corner. It's pretty insane.
I was definitely in the market for a new bike, and circumstances arose that allowed me to get this psycho thing. If I were forced to buy a Lapierre, I would get this same one without the brain. It's a perfect bike without it. BUT: the brain makes me laugh.
I'm riding it bone stock, except for the tires. I switched to a tire I'm super familiar with.
27.5 is the truth (not like it matters, as it's the standard now). Fastest 6" bike I've ever ridden. Go buy one!
This is bicycles, man: the whole thing is about riding them around for fun. I loved the precious chalk line-drawer vids, I love weirdos on the bike paths with speakers blasting CCR, I love your lasers. My comments about your over-accessorized fixie are more of a character I guess--the absolutist black'n'white RIGHT WAY TO DO IT Guy. Impossible arguments with insecure assholes. If you like your bike I like your bike.
just threw some skinny tires on my bike. It shipped with 28s, and I put on 23s. Wow, such a huge difference. The best part is the quiet ride. Almost no road hum. My freewheel is virtually silent as well, so now when I coast I am basically running silent.
I love the ultegra rear freewheel that has no clicks at all. I don't know how it works, but I love the silent coast as well. Tire hum comes more from tread pattern than size. Large slicks are pretty quiet as well. I can't run 23c tires here because the roads are so bad. I was going through an innertube a week every time I hit a pothole. Plus I was always worried about my rims. Now, I'm running 35c tires and I haven't popped a tube yet.I still have plenty of top 5 Strava scores in too, so it's not like they are slow. I run them at about 85-100 psi.
'
I ride mountain bikes with some dudes on Profile hubs that sound like chainsaws. You would hate them.
Switching up tire sizes made my city bike way faster with the bigger air volumes soaking up bumps. Did you know a lot of TdF teams are on 28c's the past couple years? Tire's pretty much exactly the same weight, contact patch same area but different shape--allowing the sidewall to give some more support and apparently they're rolling faster. I can believe it.
just threw some skinny tires on my bike. It shipped with 28s, and I put on 23s. Wow, such a huge difference. The best part is the quiet ride. Almost no road hum. My freewheel is virtually silent as well, so now when I coast I am basically running silent.
I love the ultegra rear freewheel that has no clicks at all. I don't know how it works, but I love the silent coast as well. Tire hum comes more from tread pattern than size. Large slicks are pretty quiet as well. I can't run 23c tires here because the roads are so bad. I was going through an innertube a week every time I hit a pothole. Plus I was always worried about my rims. Now, I'm running 35c tires and I haven't popped a tube yet.I still have plenty of top 5 Strava scores in too, so it's not like they are slow. I run them at about 85-100 psi.
'
I ride mountain bikes with some dudes on Profile hubs that sound like chainsaws. You would hate them.
Switching up tire sizes made my city bike way faster with the bigger air volumes soaking up bumps. Did you know a lot of TdF teams are on 28c's the past couple years? Tire's pretty much exactly the same weight, contact patch same area but different shape--allowing the sidewall to give some more support and apparently they're rolling faster. I can believe it.
My SRAM Red was very chainsaw-ish as well.
Randonneur theory is coming back in to play lately. Bigger tires equals less fatigue with no loss of rolling resistance. I wonder what brakes those TdF guys are running? My old Dura Ace brakes were the best I've ever used, but they wouldn't take a tire larger than 25c. I had to sell them. I'm running some long reach Velo Orange brakes now, but they're nowhere as good as the short reach Dura Aces were and I couldn't find anything comparable in a long reach to accommodate the larger tires. My new wheels are two pounds heavier than my old skinny ones, but I have so much more fun on these and I'm no slower on the flat ground. A little hill climbing speed was lost.
I did some research on your LaPierre. Science is cool! So is that bike. Does the auto-adjusting shock work well?
I did some research on your LaPierre. Science is cool! So is that bike. Does the auto-adjusting shock work well?
doggie
it does.
it sounds over the top at first, but when you realize it's just a little servo going between the three modes that are already on an existing shock, it's a little easier to handle. The past ten years MTB suspension has been adjustable like that anyways, just usually mechanically on the fork (my ten-year-old TALAS had 9 clicks of adjustment on travel and 15 on rebound, dials on the top of the fork). I've really left it in the auto mode and just let it do its thing, and it's rad.
Instead of locking out your rear shock at the bottom of a climb, putting it in medium squish for pedal-ey trails, and opening it all the way up on downhills, this thing does that for you. And all the time. I've realized what makes it so fast isn't that it opens up on drops or downhills, but that it tries to become a hardtail ALL THE TIME. Like, any opportunity it has to firm up and put power to the dirt, it will. Whether it's a long climb or two feet between bumps. It's insane.
Combine that with how stiff the rear end is (ayo), the 27.5" wheels, and the fast color blue...it's just so sick so sick so sick brosrsly
just threw some skinny tires on my bike. It shipped with 28s, and I put on 23s. Wow, such a huge difference. The best part is the quiet ride. Almost no road hum. My freewheel is virtually silent as well, so now when I coast I am basically running silent.
I love the ultegra rear freewheel that has no clicks at all. I don't know how it works, but I love the silent coast as well. Tire hum comes more from tread pattern than size. Large slicks are pretty quiet as well. I can't run 23c tires here because the roads are so bad. I was going through an innertube a week every time I hit a pothole. Plus I was always worried about my rims. Now, I'm running 35c tires and I haven't popped a tube yet.I still have plenty of top 5 Strava scores in too, so it's not like they are slow. I run them at about 85-100 psi.
Yeah the reduced road hum is definitely from the tread change more than anything. The 23c tires are basically slicks. I haven't had a problem with flats yet, but I'm pretty careful and my usual commute is on well maintained roads. I don't know if I could fit 35s in my fork, to be honest. But I've kinda thought about my next bike being a fat tire bmx style beast. Fun to ride around parks as well as down sets of stairs downtown. Like an urban mountain bike of sorts.
I think 4 bikes would be ideal. 1. Minimalist Fixie 2. Daily Geared Commuter Road Bike 3. Mountain Bike 4. Fatty Tire BMX
I think 4 bikes would be ideal. 1. Minimalist Fixie 2. Daily Geared Commuter Road Bike 3. Mountain Bike 4. Fatty Tire BMX
Maybe one more... who knows... lol
N+1
I have just talked the wife into letting me buy another bike (more than likely a cx) and have gently hinted I want to get a pk ripper aswel to ride the BMW park with my son, truly is infinite as I have a vintage roadie I want to get back on the road too!
Crabon Hardtail MTB
Mobile Parts-bin of an MTB turned in to rigid commuter on 700c disc wheels
Commuter with front 700c shocks
Bontrager Privater that I've had from new in '97.
Mobile parts-bin of an MTB "For #1 son. When he's old enough to ride an adult-size bike".
We have a small garage and things were getting ridiculous. There are kids bikes and scooters of differing sizes all over the place too. Plus a chest freezer, beer fridge, enough camping gear for a military campaign and enough drills, saws, paint and spare tiles to build a second Taj Mahal. Ladders x 3. Jetwasher. Car service stuff. Boxes of usb cables and adaptors. A treadmill that's been folded up for 5 years. 10 pairs of wellies. Golf clubs. Sledges. Bodyboards. Roofracks. Bass cabs. Wine. It's like a cross between Jenga and Tetris. We need a TARDIS.
Just down to the Bontrager and my hardtail 29er now. 29er is stored at work. #1 son is riding that bike so it doesn't count against my tally
Bontrager was rebuilt as Garage Queen spec and I don't like getting it dirty, reserved for warm-weather commutes.
I have my city bike and I have my mountain bike and I have a bunch of boxes full of parts. Oh and a 24" BMX bike that I'll never ride again (Seattle people I will trade it for a record--that'd be sick!).
Comments
I'm stressing dogg. I'm concerned about your dedication to the minimalist fixie aesthetic.
Perfect.
:beerbang: :bizzo: :face_melt:
Hey man I know I know... practicality keeps getting in the way. I tried full fixie for a day and gave up. Coasting is too fun. Also I couldn't master cool skidz, so like, fuck that.
Not to add to your stress, but I also rock a mountain bike style rear fender sometimes. And I have a rear light that has laser pointers that shine "lane" lines beside/behind the bike. No nipple lasers though, disappointingly.
I changed the handlebars recently:
Can you tell me more about that?
http://www.xfireshop.com/bikelane-laser-safety-rear-light/
dude that thing is nuts!
eternal lazer bike lane on some Silver Surfer shit.
I love it. I love all the weirdo bike lights in the wheels too, where they spin up and make patterns and spell out words and shapes.
I like words and shapes and patterns.
I am tripping.
When that light is green, the battery is charged.
The bike has a battery.
Looking pretty seriously at one of these atm, change in jobs means I lose the company car but I can finally cycle to work a couple of tmes a week. Any one ride CX here?
Even your plug socket is surprised by that.
Hey DL,
Did you choose a bike? I like the CX idea. Got the speed and feel of a road bike, but you can hop off into the wilderness if your heart desires. Are you thinking of getting into CX races?
I just threw some skinny tires on my bike. It shipped with 28s, and I put on 23s. Wow, such a huge difference. The best part is the quiet ride. Almost no road hum. My freewheel is virtually silent as well, so now when I coast I am basically running silent.
Sometimes I can't tell if you're being over the top sarcastic or just bluntly sincere. It doesn't stop me from loving your posts though. Do you miss the mountain bike?
This is bicycles, man: the whole thing is about riding them around for fun. I loved the precious chalk line-drawer vids, I love weirdos on the bike paths with speakers blasting CCR, I love your lasers. My comments about your over-accessorized fixie are more of a character I guess--the absolutist black'n'white RIGHT WAY TO DO IT Guy. Impossible arguments with insecure assholes. If you like your bike I like your bike.
I am comfortable telling BikeStrut that I did get a new MTB--that Lapierre 527 lanked to above. It's insane. Pure doctorbike status, but I'm too old and uncool to even argue with the naysayers (and, I'm having a ton of fun on it).
VIVE LA FRANCE!
The bike is SO SICK. So sick. So so so so sick. I will get into it if you'd like, but it's on some serious crazy talk. I do miss my old bike, but I sold it to a cool dude for an acceptable price and I've moved on. This new one is like whoa.
I love my bike. I don't use the lazzzers that often. Tell me more about your bike from the future!!
I love the ultegra rear freewheel that has no clicks at all. I don't know how it works, but I love the silent coast as well. Tire hum comes more from tread pattern than size. Large slicks are pretty quiet as well. I can't run 23c tires here because the roads are so bad. I was going through an innertube a week every time I hit a pothole. Plus I was always worried about my rims. Now, I'm running 35c tires and I haven't popped a tube yet.I still have plenty of top 5 Strava scores in too, so it's not like they are slow. I run them at about 85-100 psi.
I'd been riding the same bike for a long time. Like seven years on the components and four on the frame.
I have a flip phone and don't drink or eat fancy foods. I am a simple man.
My car gets 50mpg.
I know some people.
Okay.
There's a lot going on.
Um it has accelerometers on the fork and in the headset, and a cadence sensor in the cranks. That info is fed into a little computer that, depending on the setting you have it in, changes the compression setting of the rear shock. If you're pedaling through roots, you want your bike to react differently than if you're coasting through roots. It does this "100 times a second" or whatever tech nerds always use to impress dentists. It works. It fucking works.
Combined with the 27.5" wheels, this motherfucker is fast as fuck. I'm having to re-learn all my local trails because I'm going faster than normal. It's so rad to be in full-plush DH mode on a trail, soaking up the bumps like most bikes do these days (mobbing--bikes are so good now), and then feel the thing stiffen up instantly when you pedal out of a corner. It's pretty insane.
I was definitely in the market for a new bike, and circumstances arose that allowed me to get this psycho thing. If I were forced to buy a Lapierre, I would get this same one without the brain. It's a perfect bike without it. BUT: the brain makes me laugh.
I'm riding it bone stock, except for the tires. I switched to a tire I'm super familiar with.
27.5 is the truth (not like it matters, as it's the standard now). Fastest 6" bike I've ever ridden. Go buy one!
This should replace "the rules".
I ride mountain bikes with some dudes on Profile hubs that sound like chainsaws. You would hate them.
Switching up tire sizes made my city bike way faster with the bigger air volumes soaking up bumps. Did you know a lot of TdF teams are on 28c's the past couple years? Tire's pretty much exactly the same weight, contact patch same area but different shape--allowing the sidewall to give some more support and apparently they're rolling faster. I can believe it.
My SRAM Red was very chainsaw-ish as well.
Randonneur theory is coming back in to play lately. Bigger tires equals less fatigue with no loss of rolling resistance. I wonder what brakes those TdF guys are running? My old Dura Ace brakes were the best I've ever used, but they wouldn't take a tire larger than 25c. I had to sell them. I'm running some long reach Velo Orange brakes now, but they're nowhere as good as the short reach Dura Aces were and I couldn't find anything comparable in a long reach to accommodate the larger tires. My new wheels are two pounds heavier than my old skinny ones, but I have so much more fun on these and I'm no slower on the flat ground. A little hill climbing speed was lost.
I did some research on your LaPierre. Science is cool! So is that bike. Does the auto-adjusting shock work well?
doggie
it does.
it sounds over the top at first, but when you realize it's just a little servo going between the three modes that are already on an existing shock, it's a little easier to handle. The past ten years MTB suspension has been adjustable like that anyways, just usually mechanically on the fork (my ten-year-old TALAS had 9 clicks of adjustment on travel and 15 on rebound, dials on the top of the fork). I've really left it in the auto mode and just let it do its thing, and it's rad.
Instead of locking out your rear shock at the bottom of a climb, putting it in medium squish for pedal-ey trails, and opening it all the way up on downhills, this thing does that for you. And all the time. I've realized what makes it so fast isn't that it opens up on drops or downhills, but that it tries to become a hardtail ALL THE TIME. Like, any opportunity it has to firm up and put power to the dirt, it will. Whether it's a long climb or two feet between bumps. It's insane.
Combine that with how stiff the rear end is (ayo), the 27.5" wheels, and the fast color blue...it's just so sick so sick so sick brosrsly
Yeah the reduced road hum is definitely from the tread change more than anything. The 23c tires are basically slicks. I haven't had a problem with flats yet, but I'm pretty careful and my usual commute is on well maintained roads. I don't know if I could fit 35s in my fork, to be honest. But I've kinda thought about my next bike being a fat tire bmx style beast. Fun to ride around parks as well as down sets of stairs downtown. Like an urban mountain bike of sorts.
I think 4 bikes would be ideal. 1. Minimalist Fixie 2. Daily Geared Commuter Road Bike 3. Mountain Bike 4. Fatty Tire BMX
Maybe one more... who knows... lol
Crabon Hardtail MTB
Mobile Parts-bin of an MTB turned in to rigid commuter on 700c disc wheels
Commuter with front 700c shocks
Bontrager Privater that I've had from new in '97.
Mobile parts-bin of an MTB "For #1 son. When he's old enough to ride an adult-size bike".
We have a small garage and things were getting ridiculous. There are kids bikes and scooters of differing sizes all over the place too. Plus a chest freezer, beer fridge, enough camping gear for a military campaign and enough drills, saws, paint and spare tiles to build a second Taj Mahal. Ladders x 3. Jetwasher. Car service stuff. Boxes of usb cables and adaptors. A treadmill that's been folded up for 5 years. 10 pairs of wellies. Golf clubs. Sledges. Bodyboards. Roofracks. Bass cabs. Wine. It's like a cross between Jenga and Tetris. We need a TARDIS.
Just down to the Bontrager and my hardtail 29er now. 29er is stored at work.
#1 son is riding that bike so it doesn't count against my tally
Bontrager was rebuilt as Garage Queen spec and I don't like getting it dirty, reserved for warm-weather commutes.
Which is about 2 days a year here, so far.
I'm not a bike head like some of you dudes, but it's a nice little ride.
I haven't touched it in 2 years (baby-r)