My route is a combination of pathway and roads, flats and hills, and at this time of year means riding on some roads covered in winter gravel. It also means that on my rides I’m alternatively being buffeted by insane winds, bashed by ice pellets, soaked with rain or scorched by the sun.

Gravel is a pretty significant concern here. Most of the road shoulders are still covered in gravel and other debris left over from the snowy winter season. Road cleaning hasn’t really begun and little pointy bits of rock are on the lookout for nice vulnerable bike tires. So far, the Hutchinson Urban Tour tires have held up admirably. I’ve usually had at least one flat by now but it’s been smooth sailing this past month. The tires have also performed fairly well in the sudden snow and slush surprises we’ve had. I’ve switched to the studded tires a couple of times, but for the most part have ridden safely and successfully with the stock tires.

Comfort and fit-wise, the medium size seems to perfectly fit my 6′.

The hydraulic brakes have worked well. Response is significantly different than the non-hydraulic disc brakes I have on my Kona and Cannondale and whether that’s in a good way or a bad way depends on what you expect. Personally, I prefer non-hydraulic disc brakes. I find them less finnicky in the winter, and good luck trying to do a field repair on your hydraulics… I have Avid BB7s on my Kona and Cannondale and have to say the stopping power is greater than on the Hold Steady. That’s not to say you can’t lock the Hold Steady’s brakes up easily, but there’s a noticeable difference between the two kinds of brakes.

Now to the gearing, which is probably what most of you will be curious about.

The Hold Steady comes with the Shimano Alfine internal 8 speed hub on the rear with a 45 tooth chainring on the front.

I’m not quite sure about the gearing ratios yet. The lowest gear feels like the equivalent of being in the middle chainring and about two down from the lowest on the rear on my Kona. While the hills are certainly doable, I wouldn’t mind some lower gearing on this bike. I really don’t think the gearing is going to be sufficiently low enough for any real winter riding, as you need a good low gear to churn through deep snow or make your way safely through lakes of frozen ice or polished intersections. (Well, I do, anyway…)

In terms of shiftability, this hub works like a charm. I haven’t had any mis-shifts or surprise shifts. Sudden stop / starts don’t pose much of a problem because you can switch into any gear from any gear while stopped.

Fine-tuning the hub is also very simple, and you’ll have to do this eventually if only to accomodate cable stretch. There are two little white pointer lines on the hub. Shifting into fourth gear and turning the barrel adjuster to align the two lines is all it takes — much easier that fiddling with the tuning screws on a derailleur.

Tuning the gears takes seconds using the alignment markers.

Since I started writing this review, I decided to switch the front 45T chainring for a smaller one — a 39T. It’s made a noticeable difference, and in a good way. I did have to lose a link or two off the chain to accomodate the smaller chainring; there’s not quite enough room on the rear dropouts to just slide the rear wheel back. I also had to lose the inner plastic chainring guard which hasn’t caused any problems.

Switching to a smaller 39 tooth chainring brings the gearing down

The old 45 tooth chainring with plastic chainring guard

Tool-wise, the only thing I added to my kit was a 15mm wrench for the rear wheel. Because it’s a horizontal dropout for the rear wheel to keep the chain tension tight, a quick release isn’t installed.

I added a rear rack to the bike for those days when the backpack just won’t fit everything (darn work stuff…) and any rear-disc-compatible rack should work. A standard rack won’t fit, because of the width of the rear wheel’s hub.

Topeak Explorer Tubular rack with disc mounts

While the bike certainly doesn’t fit in the “touring bike” category, all the mounting brazeons are great. The bike has brazeons for a rear rack and mounting points for fenders. The three water bottle cage mounts come in very handy if you’re riding with a little person; after all, they don’t like carrying their own water if dad can carry it for them…

I’ve seen several Hold Steady bikes out and about on my rides to work, including at least two others that park at the bike racks at work. For a good functional, easily maintainable and affordable commuting bike, the MEC Hold Steady seems to be a solid pick.

A few weeks ago I returned my HTC Magic to Rogers under warrantee because it was constantly crashing and freezing. The phone I was given in exchange for my phone was a refurbished one. Naturally, my first thought was, “Oh… a used phone.” I can’t think of any other product I’ve returned under warrantee that was replaced by a used one. Regardless of the OS problems I had with my original phone, it was physically well looked after. Maybe this replacement one was, too, but being given a used phone didn’t leave me with an overly positive experience.

Anyway, over the next few days I spent several hours re-downloading everything, re-configuring everything and setting the phone up the way my previous one was arranged.

All was good.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I tried to email a photo I took with my phone. (I know, a crazy idea… and apparently not something to try with the old and outdated version of the OS on the Rogers Android phones.) It broke something somewhere and my phone’s connection to the Gmail server was cut.

I couldn’t send any emails from the phone; I couldn’t receive any emails on the phone. Trying to send an email resulted in a little red “Sending…” message which never went away. I tried deleting the message in my inbox and in my outbox. Didn’t work. I tried killing the application and the process and restarting. Didn’t work. I tried a soft restart – battery out and restarting the phone. Didn’t work. The little red “Sending…” would not go away and emails would not send or receive.

So, I did some Googling and found it’s a common problem in the old 1.5 version of Android. Hmmmm.

I connected to Rogers Live Technical Support and after a few back and forwards was told the only fix was to do a complete factory reset to re-establish the connection to the Google mail servers. A factory reset means all your applications get deleted, all your settings and configurations are deleted and your phone is essentially returned to its “out of the box” state. I’d be back to where I was a few weeks ago, spending hours rebuilding my phone. Again.

I was not a happy customer…

I decided to do some more Googling and found a solution that literally took a few seconds and successfully fixed the problem. It didn’t involve deleting any apps, it didn’t involve doing a factory reset and it didn’t involve hours and hours of reconfiguration.

The simple fix was to clear a couple of Gmail’s caches on the phone. That was it…

Why Rogers wouldn’t have this solution for such a known issue in their knowledge base was rather baffling. The way they considered resetting my phone and starting from scratch again ‘no big deal’ was very frustrating.

Some solutions can’t be implemented because there are technical limitations. Some things are simply common sense and good customer service. There’s no reason for Rogers customers not to have a more current version of the Android OS on their phones. Other carriers have provided regular upgrades on exactly the same hardware. There are custom ROMs available that people have installed which are working fine (although voiding the phone’s warrantee.) There’s certainly no reason for Rogers not to have solutions to common problems in their support knowledge base and absolutely no reason or excuse for providing the low quality service and support to their customers.

Will they ever “get it”? We can always hope…

SIDE NOTES
The sad fact that Rogers STILL hasn’t upgraded the OS on their Android phones gave birth to a great site (www.iwantmyonepointsix.com) which has generated some good media attention and awareness. However, what’s sadder yet is that the site was created as an attempt to get the 1.6 upgrade (released Sept 09) for Rogers customers, and since then there have been numerous OS upgrades:
• 1.6 – Sept. 2009
• 2.0 – Oct. 2009
• 2.1 – Jan. 2010
• 2.2 – May 2010
• 3.0 – tentatively scheduled for October 2010

Google’s Froyo 2.2 OS for Android devices is making its way into the hands of customers, yet Rogers is still forcing their customers to use the now very-out-of-date 1.5 OS.

If you compare Roger’s handling of this to Kobo’s handling of some of their customer complaints it’s like night and day — complete opposites. Kobo has been very responsive, and has committed to a June 28 rollout of a firmware / OS upgrade to address their issues. That’s just two months after their initial rollout.

Kobo also has a very public presence acknowledging there were issues with how they launched the product and acknowledging that there are some confusing things with their e-readers. I realize there’s a difference in the scope, impact and risk between the two products, but Rogers is treating their customers as if the OS updates are a joke or insignificant issue. They clearly don’t understand that these are not just “telephones”. They are productivity and collaboration devices that are dependent upon their support for the applications that run on these mobile computing platforms.

Can you imagine buying a laptop from a store and having them prevent you from upgrading the OS? We’d still all be running DOS or Mac OS 7.1 if that was the case… When I bought my Magic I specifically asked the Rogers salesperson to confirm that all OS upgrades would be provided in a timely manner. They said yes. I realize the salesperson was probably selling shoes or popcorn the week before and that “timely manner” might be open to interpretation but it’s been over a year and there have been NO upgrades to the OS. I’m still on the original OS that came with the phone at launch… And now with the release of 2.2 we’re even further behind. Key applications and functionality (like Google Goggles, full Google Maps features) for my phone DO NOT WORK because 1.5 doesn’t support them.

I’m not sure whether there’s cause for a class-action lawsuit against Rogers, but they certainly deserve the proverbial smack to their collective executive heads for the way they’re treating their customers.

After a fall off the couch (about a foot and a half) the screen seems to be gibbled. It’s not cracked, but the eink seems to be somewhat confused about whether it’s on or off — very similar to what would happen to an Etch-a-sketch when the display got all messed up.

UPDATE: June 7, 2010: All taken care of. The reader was replaced under warrantee.

This will be an interesting ride as I’ve never ridden with an internally-geared hub before.

Once I’ve put it through a few hundred kilometers I’ll write up a review and post it.

Ingredients

• 2 cups double smoked bacon and/or lardons
• 1/4 lb butter
• 1 cup carrots, diced
• 1 cup celery, diced
• 1 cup onion, diced
• 2 cups potatos, diced (we just use the baby potatoes and half or quarter them)
• 2 cups frozen corn
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tblspn dried or fresh thyme (we use 1/2 tblspn of ground thyme)
• 1 tblspn black pepper (or more if you like it spicy)
• 1 tblspn salt (we don’t add any)
• 1 tblspn dried or fresh parsley
• 1 litre of chicken stock
• 500 ml milk
• 500 ml cream

Directions

• Cook bacon and lardons on high until crispy.
• Lower to medium-high and add butter.
• Add carrots, celery, onions, thyme, salt, pepper and parsley.
• Cook for 5 minutes.
• Mix in flow to make roux and cook for 5 mintues.
• Add chicken stock, let thicken.
• Add milk, let thicken.
• Add cream, let thicken.
• Add corn and potatoes, cook on low simmer for 15 minutes.
• Adjust seasoning with additional salt and pepper if required.