very nice!

next week will go to a little island in Pacific which is made of three adjoined volcanoes. One of them has a beautiful crater and road around it - can't wait to ride there. :)

tokyo.digi-joho.com/images/tokyo_islands_pics/hachijoujima.jpg the large one on this picture

@Rilakkuma that sounds like a lot of fun!

Take a bunch of pictures and do a great-place-to-ride post! bicycles.blogoverflow.com/tag/greatplacetoride

I will try to do it, thank you! Can anyone submit ride descriptions there? Actually the place itself is not really a piece of cake to ride, but it is very exotic. Conditions are quite harsh - strong wind, unpredictable Pacific weather and no single place with flat road... I tried it once using different bicycle but it was not good enough on climbs, so this time will take another one. :)

@Rilakkuma you can log into the blog at bicycles.blogoverflow.com/wp-admin. Initially your account won't have any write privileges, but ping me or freiheit (whoever's around) and we can set you up with an account.

@Rilakkuma Yeah, go write a blog post, all the best people do!

Thank you @PeteH @nhinkle !

Just finished whenching, replaced the whole groupset

Record feels like a cosmic ship after Sora

However brakes are somewhat less responsive... On the other hand they do not block wheels which works kinda like ABS

@Rilakkuma Record? That's quite high up the chain isn't it? Is that the equivalent of Ultegra?

Yes, record is just step down from the top which is super record. Not sure about its Shimano equivalent... I'd say Athena is somewhat comparable to Ultegra.

and you changed it all yourself? Good on you.

A very productive Saturday!

almost all of it. Removing crank was more challenging than I expected so I took the bicycle to the shop for it and also got casette set up there. Other work was simpler than I expected - took almost the whole day but it is done.

indeed it is! Mosquitos think so too. Got incredible amount of bites while doing the work :D

Ouch

in the evening when the midday heat dropped a little bit mosquitoes became unbearable so I used Indian burning sticks to keep them away. Quite efficient.

by the way, checked the prices in the shop - adjusting derailleur is worth 4000 yen which is about 40 euros. I did it in two minutes if not less. I guess that's price to ward off those who are just lazy.

It's funny, adjusting a derailleur is one of those things that is "magic"....until you actually do it once and realise it is trivial

just like replacing tires, but even less work involved. :)

I had a heck of a job yesterday trying to remove a crown race. I'm waiting for a removal tool to come, but got fed up. Tried using a hammer and screwdriver, but no luck.

Very annoying. I started off and all I wanted to do was swap out an old ballbearing headset for a cartridge.

Fortunately this is only on my fixie, so I have plenty of other bikes to ride :)

How is it to ride a fixie by the way?

I mean the absence of a freewheel - it scares me away from fixies :)

I like it. It feels nice because it's just your legs, a chain and a wheel.

You need to practise though. The problem is the temptation to coast.

I prefer to ride with clipless pedals on my fixie. That way, when I forget I'm riding fixed, the pedals pull my feet around, and I can recover very quickly.

When you ride a fixed gear with flat pedals, when you forget and start to coast, you have no choice but to take your feet off the pedals until you can slow down enough to put them back on.....

...which renders you out of control for a short while

The biggest problem, when you start, is cornering. With a freewheel you almost always coast when you corner

But it is something, if you do it every day, you soon get used to all this

The bike I have is a "flip-flop" - the wheel has a fixed cog on one side, and a freewheel on the other. I can flip the wheel over and ride either fixed or single speed, according to mood. But mostly I ride fixed.

I should add, I also have front and rear brakes on the bike. I do not rely on the back wheel as a brake. I sometimes use it as a brake, but I don't rely on it.

Is it legal to ride brakeless bikes at all in UK?

fixie sounds fun. They are very mainstream here at the moment so I guess when the craze will settle down I will take one just to try how it feels.

I think the law is 2 independent braking systems, which makes good sense. But one of the systems is allowed be a fixed wheel.

good for you. In Japan riding anything with less than 2 brakes is illegal. :)

There was a bike shop in the centre of London not so long ago called "Tokyo Fixed". Someone told me it has now closed. Shame, it was great for fixed parts.

probably they sold nitto parts - they are good enough.

Possibly the proprietor was Japanese and spotted a gap in the market?

(although if they went bust, possibly not!)

right :D

They were good for the range of parts and the quality. Not so good for price.

...or the owner went back to Tokyo because one can make good amount of money on the fixie craze right now.

Maintaining them is very easy too.

You can't just go and ask for a Sora this or a Record that, but the absence of gears means that a bb is about as complicated as it gets

I guess they are much lighter too

not sure why most fixie riders I see use quite heavy wheels often with fake deep rims

have to leave for a while. See you later! :)

They will be lighter, but there again fixies are generally steel. And most seem to have quite wide tyres, so not necessarily built for speed.

Mine, I ride 23mm tyres.

Later

Maybe it is my avatar? Tonight, for the second time, I've answered a question with what I know is the correct answer, and had the comment "are you sure?".

Last time it was about cleats, and @Mσᶎ and I had some fun with the guy.

Tonight its about spokes, bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/24328/…

you gotta laugh

They don't like the answer, so you get the comment "are you sure you're not bs'ing me?"

I mean, do I look sarcastic?

@PeteH That's totally a sarcastic hobbit(?) grin...

@freiheit darn it, unmasked!

@freiheit actually, it is one of my garden ornaments. When I was a boy, there was a kids; tv show called Bill and Ben, the flowerpot men.

Granted, the title doesn't exactly grab you, but this was the seventies

Anywaym this is Bill. Or Ben. They looked kinda the same.

And if it's on Wikipedia, it must be true! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Pot_Men

Or even bbcworldwide.com/andypandytour (beware garish background!)