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

Cadbury is running an ad campaign that’s got an interesting cycling theme to it.

www.thebicyclefactory.ca will see Cadbury build and deliver up to 5,000 bikes to Africa based on UPC entries being entered by consumers.

According to the contest rules, eligible products include “Canadian labeled Dentyne*, Stride*, Cadbury*, Maynards*, Trident*, Bubblicious*, Certs* Chiclets*, Clorets*, Jersey Milk* and Halls*, but excluding some seasonal products.”

There are some pretty nice prizes, including a grand prize trip to Africa.

All in all a pretty sweet deal for just eating some candy…

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

When I woke up at 5:30, it had just started to snow. The weather forecast had called for up to 2 cm (about 1″) of snow – no big deal. However, when I left the house at 7:30, there was almost 25 cm (10″).

The flakes were huge, traffic was at a standstill when the cars weren’t sliding into one another, and cyclists were slowly but surely moving along much faster than the other traffic.

I strapped my little digital camera to my bike and slapped together the following cheesy little video of the day’s bike ride to work.

Read the story.

Morning ride, originally uploaded by elliottzone.

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

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.

Sheldon was recognized around the world as a passionate cyclist who freely provided years of cycling wisdom on his website, http://sheldonbrown.com/harris/

Rest in peace, Sheldon.

For years, I’ve been searching for a good waterproof backpack that will keep my stuff dry during the nasty wet Calgary winters. While a good drybag, or even a garbage bag, can usually keep things dry inside a regular pack, the pack itself will still end up soggy and smelly, and it’s a pain to dump everything into a drybag.

The Dry Shield line from Deuter is a waterproof line, which includes a cycling-specific pack — the DS Bike 18.

The simple yet functional approach Deuter took with this pack helps keep the weight down by eliminating unnecessary bells and whistles. It also helps keep the pack waterproof by minimizing zippers and seams.

The size of the pack (18 L) is at the smaller end, so you might have a tough time fitting in a lot of gear. However, the small size also means it’s a good comfortable pack for cycling.

Because I’m a bit of gear-nut, I tend to carry quite a bit with me. Each morning, I cram the following into my pack:

• A thermos of chai
• A thermos of oatmeal
• Lunch
• Towel
• Office clothes
• Glasses case
• Various USB cables
• First aid kit
• Bike tools
• Spare tube
• Bike pump
• Other misc bits and pieces (multi tool, Gerber knife, mini flashlight, etc, etc.)
• I also often carry my laptop with me.

All this fit into the DS Bike 18, but only just. On really cold days, I also like to carry a down vest, extra thick mittens and fleece pants in case I break down. Unfortunately, there’s no way these will also fit in the pack. However, if you’re not as much as a gear-pig as I am, you shouldn’t have any problem fitting the essentials into the pack.

This pack excelled in the areas I expected it to perform well in — comfort and waterproofness.

One of the biggest problems with using most backpacks for cycling are the thick, pre-curved hip belts that have sprung up over the past few years. They’re great for hiking, but are extremely uncomfortable if you’re on a bike as they dig into your ribs because of the hunched over position.

The DS Bike 18 has a small soft hip belt, with easily accessible mesh pockets on each side. The pockets on the hip belt zip shut. I have a building passkey in one side and a small digital camera in the other side. There’s still room in either pocket for some munchies, Kleenex or other small items.

I have a few other backpacks that have rain covers — probably one of the most useless features on a pack. They might keep some light rain or a brief dusting of snow off the pack, but they certainly don’t keep the pack, or its contents, dry.

The DS Bike 18 easily held up to snow, road-spray and the “shower test”. During a heavy snowfall, snow can accumulate on the top of a pack, quickly soaking into the material. Rain and snow can also fall down between your back and the pack. And last, but not least, a bike tire kicks up a lot of road-spray, soaking the bottom of the pack. Everything inside this pack stayed nice and dry, not only in the snow, but also during two of three shower tests. For these tests, I stuffed the pack full of newspaper, and gave it a five minute shower.

With the first test, even directly under the heavy shower, not a drop of water made it inside the pack.

For the second test, I removed some of the newspaper, and formed a bit of a dent in the top of the pack by pushing it in. The pack still kept things dry after five minutes under the shower.

When I tried a third time, I let the water sit pooled in the dent I’d made, and some water did seep in through the zipper after about 15 minutes. However, unless you leave your pack out in the rain or the snow, the odds of water pooling and staying on the pack are relatively low.

When I first got the pack, one of my initial thoughts was, “What? No helmet holder! What kind of a cycling pack is this?!” Then, as I was exploring the pack, I noticed the words “helmet holder” on one of the hip belt pockets. I wasn’t quite sure how I was expected to put my helmet into a hip pocket, but it quickly became clear that that’s where the helmet holder was stored. The holder quickly clips to the pack and securely holds your helmet in place.

There were a couple of things I didn’t like about the pack.

While the two mesh bottle pockets on each side are quite large, and easy to access while on the bike, the downside to this easy access is that it’s also easy for things to bounce out of the pockets if you’re riding over rough terrain. I lost a couple of granola bars this way — minor, but I’m glad it wasn’t my camera. I stuffed a bandana in over the granola bars after losing them the first time, and that seemed to fix the problem.

The zippered top access seems really small to me. I still put all my clothes into a drybag, as it’s the easiest way to keep them separate from everything else. The small top access makes it tough to stuff the bag of clothes in and take it out – it’s not quite large enough.

The inside accessory pocket gets in the way when trying to pull something out of a full pack. It should have been fixed in place, rather than being a “pocket flap”.

The outside pocket is surprisingly big. At first glance, I thought it was just a small pocket, but I was easily able to put a bike pump, first aid kit, tools, spare tube, Kleenex pack and other bits and pieces in and still have a bit of room left over. Unfortunately, this eats into the inside space of the pack, as the outside pocket is more of an inside pocket with external access.

The last problem I noted was a lack of loops for attaching a blinkie. This certainly isn’t a problem that’s specific to this pack, however, as I’ve yet to find a pack that has a loop that will properly secure a blinkie in place. I did, however, use the helmet cover loops to attach some reflective ribbon, which is a technique I’ve used successfully on a number of packs.

Overall, I was really pleased with the performance of the pack and its simplicity is what helps keep it waterproof. It’s what I’ve been looking for for years. In addition to that it’s always a treat to find a pack that’s comfortable on a bike, let alone designed specifically for that purpose.

Deuter website: http://www.deuter.com