The first bike I wanted when I walked into a bike store when I was a kid was a Colnago. Expensive taste!

On the brain. One-on Mary, Jones H-Bar and On-One Midge, so many bars to try out!

He’s my new hero. His site (drools). His Blog.

Felt great, the furthest the single speed’s been from home! (I didn’t eat that shit of-course, Jing did though lol).

OK, final update on the single speed for a while. The bike’s finally semi-finished!

Avid BB7 brakes came in today. They were an absolute pleasure to install and the a2Z rear disc caliper mount worked perfectly.

I rode it around the block, it’s awesome. I do miss not having clip ins, would suit the bike a little more perhaps, will just have to try it now that I have a spare set (or 2) of clipless pedals. The steering is damn fast, almost twitchy, but I like it. Brakes aren’t working too great. I assume they need some bedding in/adjustments. Grips are a little strange, chunky, soft, but not sure if I like them or not. Still not used to working hard on a single speed, but I love it, it’s fast and simple.

A few things to do:
– Lighter wheelset to get her into the 9kg’s
– Try to remove tensioner, or at least shorten chain with half link
– Red Chris King headset
– Comfier seat, this one hurts!
– Figure out a sexier way to route rear brake cable

Well, first I find the Hardrock under my house, then I find this under Christina’s house! One mans junk is another mans treasure!!!

Mr Lock was telling me he had an old folding bike which a good friend of his had asked him to store, but never ended up shipping overseas. It was in the shed, in a bag, it’s moved from house to house and they had never opened it. Of-course I was itching to check it out, and that we did.

It’s a Bickerton! The bag was covered in mould and bits of bike were sticking out. We took the folding bike out of the bag and assembled it, took us all of 5 minutes. Funny Christina, her father, sister or mother had never seen the thing before!

It’s awesome, like an old school roadster, light, aluminium frame and alloy parts, 3 gears too. I’m really looking forward to restoring this one. A little TLC will go a long way I’m sure. Photos here.

As always, some hot cars turned up to the JDMST End Of Month Meet (EOMM). More pictures here and here.

OK, so we finally did Manly Dam. It was always going to be tough, but after a nutter weekend on the booze, it was going to be even tougher. Jing came and got me at 9am, my eyes were stinging from severe lack of sleep. We got throught the traffic AOK and even riding from the car to the trail was burning my legs!

The trail starts off through peoples back yards, which feels pretty strange, but then you enter some very tight single trail, and it gets pretty damn technical in places. The 11km trail just got better and better, and more and more challenging as you go along. It’s a super diverse trail with everything you can want. Technical uphill, downhill, fast flowing downhill with jumps, drops, general flatter XC… the works.

Everyone we came across was super friendly. There were also a few volunteer bike riders fixing parts of the trail which I was super impressed with. It’s such an awesome trail. I’d be more than happy to help out.

Jing and I got to ride each others bikes too. I’m pretty sure I made the right purchase with the Reign. It chomped up all the tech downhill and fast downhill stuff. It’s not great at climbing though, which is abit of a bummer. Climbing on the Reign means staying in your seat (no power!) and trying as hard as you can to keep the front from lifting. Jing’s Scott was amazing at out of seat climbing and great in tight technical stuff, just not great on the faster downhill stuff where your wrists would ache and the rear would just jump around a hell of a lot. Having said that, the Scott did manage to do everything the Reign did, albeit a little more un-comfortably.

Photos here. Awesome trail, great ride. Will be back for plenty more, please.

For the Giant Reign. I’ve decided to get rid of the clip ins (save it for a road bike later on) so I got some DMR V8 pedals, in army green of-course :) I also got some Maxxis eXCeption High Rollers which weigh in at 480g/tyre (lighter than the OEM’s 760g/tyre). Weight now comes to 13.64kg.

Little update: New KMC red chain and red non-quick release skewers all around.