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

Read the story.

Brian Pincott, alderman for ward 11, also a year-round bicycle commuter, recently introduced a motion at a city council meeting to raise the priority level for snow removal from bike lanes. The motion was passed unanimously.

To read more, see the story on FFWD.