Operation Body Swap: RESULT

Yes, it's done! And yes, it is a complete success. 

Lorelei is the London Town Bike, on the road the whole of this past winter. She's a pleasure to ride and completely reliable, having needed not so much as a brake cable adjustment in the past five months. 

Petra is the Modern Retro Road Bike, on the road for the past two weeks and just a dream to ride. 

Long Term Review: VIKING BROMLEY Singlespeed Mixte

It's now been a year since I purchased this bicycle to take over central London commuting duties. Aside from a couple of problems in the beginning -- the strangest being the left crankarm unscrewing itself while I pedalled, several days running, without any apparent cause and no problems in the past 10 months -- the bike has done rather well. 

Taking stock now, the main problem has been (and continues to be) the brakes. Everything about them is cheap and flimsy. It doesn't help that the braking surface happens to be painted rims. 

N+1 -- or, The London Town Bike Revolving Door

There's a story to be told -- actually, 2-3 stories -- and these will follow in due course but I'll lay the groundwork now with a few announcements: 

Astrid the Viking will be retired before next winter. 

Astrid has done surprisingly well in the role of London Town Bike but she has one fatal weakness and I have another vision for her. This won't be pursued until next winter, at which time I will give a long-term review.

I've acquired another Puch Princess, in astonishingly original condition. (One careful lady owner from new, etc etc.)

In a few weeks' time, she will look somewhat different. (As will Lorelei.)

What Determines "Ride Quality"?

Bicycle frame as architecture

I started writing this post nearly 18 months ago, trying to make sense of what makes a bicycle comfortable to ride. At the time, the particulars of geometry fascinated me. Later that year, my drive to find a bike that would let me ride longer and further without pain led me to having a custom titanium touring frame designed and built, and then a complete bespoke bicycle built up around that. 

After a year with the custom titanium bicycle, I have found myself wondering how much of my satisfaction with this bike is the result of the geometry (and size/shape/proportion) and how much is down to frame material (and tubeset). Would a steel frame made to exactly the same plan have done the job just as well as titanium has? 

Announcing: A Viking Invasion

Yes, I did it:  I ordered a Viking Bromley singlespeed mixte from Parkers of Bolton, taking my chances with buying via mail order. 

Opening the box.
(Is there anything else as exciting as taking
delivery of a big cardboard box
that by its shape and size screams NEW BIKE?!)

If you are thinking of doing the same, here are a few points to consider. 

Combined Ops

What a busy weekend! Hard on the heels of a Friday Night Ride to the Coast (Whitstable edition - one of the nicest ever - dry, not too cold, light tailwind), Adam and his son and I headed off on Sunday to the Headcorn Aerodrome in Kent, for The Military Show & Vintage Aircraft Weekend. 

The main draw for us was the scheduled appearance of the only two airworthy Lancaster bombers (one kept by the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and the other by the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum), reunited here in the UK this summer to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. They were to be based at Biggin Hill airfield for the weekend but scheduled to do fly-bys and aerial displays over airfields all over the South East, including Headcorn. Adam and Sam went down to Eastbourne last Friday for the airshow there, and saw the Lancasters along with a number of other WWII-era aircraft. But Sunday would be my chance to finally see them, too. 

So Far, So Good

As I complete three weeks in my new job in central London, Liesl has completed one week in hers.

The verdict: pretty darn near perfect*. A few rattles from the chaincase (hers, not mine) but otherwise silky smooth and not too heavy. Cruising in third gear, she really moves!

On Thursday, Itsu (the sushi restaurant chain) "saddle cover bombed" all the bikes parked on Charlotte Street to publicise the opening of their new restaurant nearby.

My favourite saddle cover has nearly disintegrated and it's been a gruesomely wet week, so -- even while I maintain my boycott of Itsu due to their sexist advertising -- I'll go ahead and use their new, fairly waterproof, cheery yellow cover. For now.

Friday night and another week over:
Liesl's weekend home at St Pancras International Station. 

 And yes, she still has her bell!

* And I'm loving my new job too. 

London Town Bike Attempt #3: Meet Liesl

With Lucy the Brompton too heavy for trains and too valuable to lock up and Swoopy 'fessing up to a collision history, the job as London Town Bike was vacant again.

Meet Liesl. You may already "know" her if you've looked at the My Bicycle Stable page at the top of the righthand side bar. On the other hand, you don't know her at all.

And neither do I. I've never ridden her before.

Swoopy Is Dead. Long Live Swoopy.

I am sad to announce that Swoopy -- after just a week of life -- is no more.

Swoopy outside St Pancras station

Through a week of commuting, I struggled to figure out why and how Swoopy kept throwing her rear wheel askew, hard into the lefthand chainstay. Nothing we tried made the wheel axle stay in place in the drop out.

Swoopy's wheel strops were sudden and seemingly unprovoked. One minute, we were gliding along, the next we would come to an abrupt wheel-locked halt, with the rear wheel hard fast against the chainstay. Time after time, I loosened off the wheel nuts, re-centred the wheel and re-tightened -- only for it to happen again. Tantalizingly, not immediately -- usually the next day.

We experimented with the position of the axle in the drop-outs. We changed which cog in the cassette the chain ran on and slid the axle hard against the back of the dropouts. No difference... except to add fender rub to the equation.

Then Thursday morning, standing in the shadow of Birkbeck College on Malet Street -- in the rain -- I re-centered the rear wheel yet again and then noticed that the axle was positioned very slightly differently in each rear drop-out. Hmmmm. Had one rear triangle been bent? In other words, had Swoopy been in a crash somewhere in her dark mysterious past?

I got home that evening and told Adam what I'd spotted and my suppositions. He was doubtful -- there had to be another "more likely" i.e. "possible to fix" explanation.

However, Friday came and went with the same problems so I rode her to St Pancras and instead of locking her up for the weekend, rolled her onto the train to Luton, where I bundled her into a taxi and brought her home.

After a thorough investigation, Adam came into the house and announced "you're right; she's bent".

We tossed around a few ideas to change the build in ways that might compensate for the discrepancies in the two rear triangles, but the most obvious is the one that we won't have an opportunity to do in the foreseeable future: build her up a set of singlespeed wheels. And even then, there might still be problems.

So.......... that's the end of Swoopy's brief but glorious life as a London town bike. All a bit sad but at least I'm glad the problem has been diagnosed, as life was a bit bumpy and I just couldn't trust her and that made me sad too.

*******************
Post-script added 10 May:

Adam just read this post and said (with some surprise and even indignation): "Swoopy's not DEAD! She's just gone back into hibernation after being woken briefly from a deep slumber."

A nice way to look at it. She'll wake again one day.

Swoopy Comes In To Land

I've had an old Puch loop-frame mixte frame banging around in the garage several years. I bought it on Ebay. I didn't have any firm plan of how I might build it up into a complete bike. I suspect I bought it on the rebound... feeling some regret that I had resisted the temptation to "liberate" just such a frame (shown above, with more photos here) on my morning commute over the course of one summer.

I then made a serious attempt to pick up this immaculate and original Motobecane mixte on ebay, but gave it up when bidding reached £200.

Then a Puch frame appeared on Ebay, listed by an older chap down on the south coast who commutes into London by Brompton every day. He slung the frame over his shoulder one morning and brought it into town to hand over to me after work in Waterloo station.  Included were the original stem, headset, bottom bracket, brakes (without full cables) and seat post. 

Lucy Meets Yossi (A Nisnas Partnership)

You may recall my last update on Lucy the Brompton ending with mention of "one further modification to be made -- a purely cosmetic one!" 

Well, now I can reveal what it is:  

wooden fenders with steel inlays, beautifully crafted by hand by the

lovely chaps at Nisnas Industries in Israel [click HERE for details!]

** NOW SOLD** My beloved Surly Pacer road bike

UPDATE 13th August 2014:  

The Pacer has finally found a new home and a good one too.

I hope Camilla of Hackney enjoys many happy miles with Robin, as I did. 

Rural Ramble

I was "supposed" to be #ScotTourTraining today but couldn't quite find my get-up-and-go. To be honest, I just didn't fancy donning all the gear for a serious ride.

So I got the mixte out for a pootle round the neighbourhood.

The road heading south out of the village is still flooded in the dip.

Lucy Gets More Gears

I introduced Lucy, my bespoke Brompton, in a previous post, explaining the background to the modifications described here.

All the research on how best to get Lucy some more gears was done last winter and to be honest, I don't remember all the various options that we looked at. In the end, though, we settled on getting a Sturmey-Archer 8-speed conversion kit from Kinetics in Glasgow.

I'd Like You To Meet Lucy

No bones about it, my Brompton is a headturner.

Everyone who sees it loves it -- friends, colleagues, the guys in my local bike shop, people on the street.

I Know What I Like, and I Like What I Know

[Long Post Alert]

As alluded to previously, things have not been Quite Perfect with the drivetrain of my new road bike. So this past weekend, we took a closer look at the gear changing and formulated a plan of what things to try (and in what order) to try and improve it... and I learned a valuable lesson. 

Sometimes the latest kit isn't always better. 

Sometimes it's best to stick with what you know. 

Especially when it works. 

In fairness, I did set out on this Build My Dream Bike journey with the right instincts. My priority was to get absolutely the right frame and to spare no expense on the fork and headset. Everything else, I figured, could be sorted out later. And that is indeed true. 

Unfortunately, after barely more than a month, I have had to admit to making a few mistakes on the drivetrain (gearing) setup. I seem to have got a little distracted and thought "yeah, whatever..." on a few things, letting my trust and confidence in people advising me (which was not misplaced, I do assure you) quell any promptings from my inner Princess (you know, the one with the Pea Problem). I simply didn't pay enough attention to join up the dots of what people were telling me with what I knew from my own experience.

Double The Gears!

My last reports on the renovation of my Puch Princess mixte were back in March: new bars with correct period brake levers, new Brooks saddle, removal of rear rack, new MKS touring pedals with classic French toe clips.

Unfortunately, my experiences with the brake levers were not entirely successful. I like to ride on the hoods, which wasn't the fashion back in the days of so-called non-aero levers. They're just not comfortable on the hands or wrists over a period of time. They had to go.

Custom Enigma Etape Update: Final Set-Up

I think the fit set-up is now pretty much final: 

10mm set-back seatpost has been fitted to accommodate the "sitting further back" effects of the... 

Selle SMP Dynamic saddle

This is a new saddle I've been riding since July, which has completely resolved the intermittent-torture-sessions experienced with previous saddles.

Gratuitous Bike Porn!

I've had another go at taking a photograph of the new Etape that hopefully shows the current position of the handlebars and brake hoods - also the bike's shape and geometry generally. There is still a zero-setback seatpost to be fitted, but otherwise this is feeling really comfortable.

Thanks to Dave of the Yurtville blog for passing on some very useful bike-photography tips!

A Tour and An Introduction

Yesterday, I travelled down to East Sussex to collect my new bike.

Enigma are open only 9am-12.30pm on Saturdays and not all the staff come in that day, but it seemed the only day that Adam would be available to come with me, so I decided not to wait until Monday as originally planned. As it happens, Adam did the Friday Night Ride to the Coast to Whitstable in Kent, then took a series of trains to get to Enigma, arriving at 12.15pm!

As for me, I left home at 6.50am (by taxi as there are no buses from our village that early) and arrived at Polegate station at 9.30am. Paul Smith, the new head of sales who did my fitting and who has been overseeing my build and keeping me updated over the past 2-1/2 months, met me at the station to drive me to the factory.

It was kind of a funny arrival. Paul said "I know you're wanting to see your bike" but took me around the factory on our way up to where it was on the showroom floor. Along the way, he gave me a little tour of all the stages a bike goes through during its construction. While at first I thought "why are we not going straight to my bike?", I quickly began to appreciate that the tour was a form of introduction, building a little suspense but also "preparing" me for what I was going to see when we got there. It was absolutely fascinating to see bikes at every stage and I am very glad Paul took the time to explain each step. That kind of background "briefing" was a great little journey towards meeting my new made-for-me bike.