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.

Then, something strange happened – the Kona started to become my daily ride. The cheapest, ugliest bike I’ve ever bought became my (almost) favourite bike.

It’s the perfect commuter bike — it’s inexpensive (I paid about $400 new), has front and rear disc brakes, 700mm road wheels and being painted a rather metallic minty green, it’s hardly a theft magnet.

Most of the components on this Kona are low end and will get replaced with better stuff as they wear out. However, there were a couple of additional changes I made to improve the daily ride.

Pedals

The first thing I changed were the pedals. I have Crank Brothers Eggbeaters on my other bikes, so it only made sense to add them to the Kona. It was a little strange that the backup bike now had the nicest pedals, but at least I could hop on without having to worry about changing shoes as well.

Rear rack

It’s been years since I rode with a rear rack, as I could never find a good one that would fit nicely on either of my other bikes. Because of the disc brakes, your choices for racks are limited, and even within those there are some good ones and some not so good ones.

Eventually, I settled on a Topeak Explorer Tubular rack with the disc mounts. It fits nicely, installs relatively easily and has good mounting points for my panniers.

Handlebars and riser stem

There was nothing really wrong with the stock flat bars that came with the bike, but they didn’t give me enough hand positions for comfort.

So, I added a set of Salsa Bell Lap cyclocross drop bars, which also required different shifters and brake levers because of the bar’s different tube size. I found a set of Shimano bar-end shifters and went to work swapping things around. After a few hours work and lots of derailleur and brake finessing, it was ready.

I didn’t like it.

The bike is fairly short (front to back) for me and I felt really scrunched when I was riding. Adding a longer stem didn’t help either, and I started getting some nasty back aches. Off came the drops and back on went the flat bars. And off came the bar end shifters and road levers… grr…

I started looking around at tri-bars, but didn’t like the prices and they’re not really (IMHO) a good commuting bar. I also discounted the Titec H-bar simply because of the price. Eventually I landed on a set of Norco trekking bars, also known as butterfly bars. They were cheap — about 1/5 the price of the drop bars I bought — and I could use the original shifters and brake levers.

I loved these bars, but my knees didn’t. Again, because the bike is fairly short and because the trekking bar setup brings the shifters closer to you, my knees would hit the shift levers ever time I got up in the pedals.

A bit of fine tuning on the angle of the bars and the addition of a longer stem and a stem riser helped solve the problem, and I’m now a huge fan of the trekking bars.

Brake upgrade

The Kona Dew Plus came with Hayes MX4 manual disc brakes. They are okay, but when the time came to replace the pads, I found out the pads weren’t overly cheap at any of the LBSs.

Looking online for pads, I stumbled across some Avid BB7s on sale at Performance Bike. They were half the cost they were locally, and only $10 more per brake than simply getting new pads for the MX4s. I have the BB7s on my Cannondale and love them. The ones on sale also had larger rotors than the stock Hayes ones, which means better cooling and better stopping power.

One of the things I’ve always liked about the Avid BB7s is how easy it is to install them. Within about half an hour both front and rear ones were installed and tuned. Sweet!

What’s next?

I’m trying to keep in mind that this There are always things to upgrade on a bike. (Or at least I can always find an excuse to upgrade things.)

Next on the list is:

• An upgrade to the rear derailleur
• A better chain
• Winter tires (Schwalbe Winter Marathon) – this will be my first try with studded 700mm tires

Teaching kids how to ride a bike is easy, but how many parents teach their kids how to ride safely?

There are plenty of websites that provide good safety information for parents to pass along, but none of them are as creepy as the one produced by the Highway Safety Division of Virginia in 1972.

Thanks to Comics With Problems, you can view the comic that features Danny and the Demoncycle – a quaint story about a little boy who wreaks havoc on his neigbourhood with his unsafe cycling.

• Not something I would ever wear without also wearing a mask…
• Really expensive
• Just not what I’m looking for (not enough pockets, etc.)

However, I came across a great post on easily hacking some existing pants and making your own pair.

So… why knickers?

Spandex cycling shorts are great on hot days but have a number of drawbacks on not-so-warm days. Then there’s the “stuff” — cell phone, card key for the parkade at work, digital camera, munchies… Stuffing all these into a pair of spandex shorts would probably earn you some strange looks, not to mention it would be rather uncomfortable (and potentially hazardous to your health.)

Basically, the DIY knickers are a pair of hacked BDUs, and I know I’ve got some kicking around somewhere.  They’re perfect for the job and are significantly less than buying a “real” pair of cycling knickers.

If you don’t have any BDUs, check out bdu.com and look in their clearance section. You can get a pair for as little as $13.  Try finding some good cycling shorts with pockets at your LBS for that price…

Once you’ve got them, or something similar, follow these simple steps:

http://addicted2wow.blogspot.com/2008/03/diy-knickers-part-1.html

However, fastening a small camera to your bike can be as easy as attaching it to a small tripod that’s strapped to your handlebars.

The small Gorillapod is a quick and easy way of wrapping your camera to just about anything, whether it’s a backpack strap, handlebars or your buddy’s helmet. While the Gorillapod is an extremely versatile tripod overall, for cycling pics it works best on smooth pathways in dry weather. In rough terrain or wet weather, it tends to slip and bounce around too much.

Another tripod option is the UCO Ultrapod. This is an extremely lightweight tripod, with an included velcro strap that makes it easy to quickly lash it to your bike. The ball and socket swivel makes it easy to adjust the angle once it’s attached to your bike, although the Gorillapod is easier to adjust while on the move.

Lastly, if you’ve got a few spare parts kicking around in your bike-bits-box, the folks over at Photojojo have a cheap but functional solution for building your own bike mount.

Morning ride, originally uploaded by elliottzone.

Some days, the ride to work just plain ol’ sucks…

Early in the construction of the new buildings at Heritage Park, the old pathway was torn up and a number of temporary pathway sections were put in and taken out as construction progressed.

The old pathway was good. It cut across the old tram tracks, and was relatively smooth and straight as it took you from the reservoir to the Eagle Ridge residential area.

Early on, I expressed a couple of concerns to Heritage Park that the new pathway section they’d put in place was going to cause some potential safety issues on the pathway, as it was right between the new buildings and the new parking lots. After parking, all the people were being fed onto the pathway system without any notification they were on a section of the city pathway, and not a Heritage Park pathway. I was told that was just a temporary solution. I asked to see an electronic copy of the proposed final pathway, as that section is a key piece of the commuter route from the S.W. but was never sent anything.

So, now the new pathway is in place. Instead of a relatively straight section, there are now 8 bollards, 5 sharp turns and 6 intersections with other roads, pathway intersects and crosswalks. Two bollards are placed right in the middle of the arc of a curve. One of the sharp turns has a nicely landscaped “pit” at the arc — if you don’t notice the sudden turn, you’re going to end up in the pit. Bollards also spread large groups of pedestrians and runners out across the entire pathway, as they split and flow around the obstruction.

This new pathway is probably one of the most dangerous and poorly planned sections of pathway infrastructure I’ve seen in the city, and I’m amazed that the Parks & Rec department even approved it.

As a regular cycle commuter and a long time family season’s pass holder at Heritage Park, I’m also quite disappointed that the park’s executive team only considered what was ideal for the park, and not for the thousands of other people who use the city pathway on a regular basis.

Here’s a short video of that section.

While toothbrushes are great for scrubbing the smaller, fiddly areas on a bike, even the “hard” brushes aren’t really up to scrubbing off months of grease and road gunk.

As I stood and stared at my road-schlop-encrusted mountain bike this weekend, I started to mentally prepare myself for the task. I had my bottles of environmentally-friendly degreaser to my left, my shop-grade paper towels to my right and my legions of splayed old toothbrushes behind me.

Just before I was about to start, my wife (who spends her days scraping and cleaning plaque-encrusted teeth) asked, “would a denture brush work better?” Since neither of us wear dentures, my response was, “Uhhh… I dunno. Maybe? What’s a denture brush?”

Well, I’ll tell ya… denture brushes are like mega-toothbrushes with a horn. They’re also the perfect schlop-encrusted bike cleaning tool. This pastel blue little baby scrubbed six months of hardened crud off the chain, the derailleurs, the freewheel, the cranks, the wheels and the frame. And, it’s still ready for more. The little horn-brush on the end worked perfectly for cleaning around the derailleur high/low set screws, and the thick hard bristles easily held up to all the freewheel and cog teeth.

Now, I can’t wait until the next cleaning (which, like in the dental world, only happens about every six months…) because I’ll be ready!

Of course, now that my dentally-wife had this wonderful idea, she’ll probably come up with some other bright idea, like using floss on the freewheel teeth…

The brush collection

Denture brush closeup

Derailleur cleaning

While I don’t really have room in the driveway for an airplane, I do have a number of bikes. T9 works extremely well as a long lasting and multi-weather lubricant for bike chains.

According to the Boeshield folks, “Road cyclists can get about 300+ miles (500Km) per application.  In wet weather riding reapply after half that distance.  For off road riding reapply after one quarter that distance, more frequently if conditions require.  For best performance, ‘apply tonight, ride tomorrow’. ”

Lee Valley now carries the Boeshield T9 in both a bottle and aerosol can.  The bottles are great, as they don’t take up much room in your pack, and a little goes a long way.

I’m looking forward to trying this lubricant in the winter, as Boeing states the T9 lubricant excels in damp environments.

For more info, visit the Boeshield Canada site, or Lee Valley Tools’ site.

Riding to work, originally uploaded by elliottzone.

There are some days when it feels like my ride will never end…

Slogging through the snow can be challenging at times, especially when it’s -25C outside, dark, windy and just plain ol’ not fun.

But, I just remind myself the alternates are to pay $26 / day to park my truck downtown, or take Calgary Transit. Transit is terrible in Calgary, so it’s always a last resort…

One snowflake by itself is a thing of beauty. When they all gang up on you, however, I’m always reminded that “there’s strength in numbers”.

Darn snowflakes…