Bike Stuff

On these pages are some stuff related to my bike experiences. I seem to be mechanic for our family's collection of bikes. A few years as our kids got older and didn't need the parental taxi services so much I started biking around a bit on a mountain bike and the my wife got me into road cycling. Eventually I was cajoled to getting out on my old 80's 12 speed.  The came the Christchurch Earthquakes and as my local Gym closed I started biking more. Christchurch is flat but with the port hills which you cant really go up without hitting slopes of around 10 degrees so I upgraded to a modern bike with a wider range of gears. In student days I'd used cycling to get around but that's all but no we enter the occasional "all comers" race - the goal is to finish respectably.

Fixing a bent or buckled rim

We seem to have had a few bent rims on our bikes in the last coupe of years. There's not a lot of advice out there on straightening a rim, most of it is don't try. Sometimes yo may not have a choice as need to get the bike rideable or just you don't want to pay for a new rim. Well I've successfully straightened a couple so here is a story of my experiences and some thoughts hat may help you.

Chain wear trial:

After purchasing a new road bike in May 2011 I managed to get in over a thousand kilometers over the winter and spring which if you know the winter here in Christchurch is pretty good if you are not really dedicated and prepared to wrap yourself up well.  I then discovered I had neglected my chain and it had stretched quite a lot for such a short distance. So I ended up buying three brands of chain and alternately run them for 200km and then cleaned and measure them. This page contains the results as they develop.

Grape Ride 2012

2012 was our second time on the Grape Ride, a 101km race in Marlborough at the top on New Zealand's South Island. At a time of around 4 hours we will never make the Olympics but it's a great scenic ride.  The best bit for scenery is between Picton and Havelock. For this section I had a small camera mounted on my handlebars and the result is split up and loaded onto Youtube.

Warmshowers

Couch surfing for Cycle Tourers, this page has more info about us on the warmshowers network