Bike #1

The first bike I ever owned, and its a Raleigh.

Workcycles Oma

This is one I have seen around quite a lot recently.  Workcycles are based in Amsterdam, they work with bikes and frames made by other companies, in this case Azor.  The bike I have seen is the Oma, and it is one of the most elegant bikes I see in regular everyday use in Manchester.

 

Close-up on the front carrier, sturdily mounted to the downtube

Steering stabiliser, prevents front wheel flopping when parked up with kickstand (available for Yuba Mundo).

Dynamo lights, high quality bottle dynamo powers the front light and the rear.

Those expensive SRAM internal hub gears again.

Funky double panniers, chain guard and dress guard and a B66 saddle too.

And finally, like all good Dutch bikes, a frame-fitting lock.

The bike is amazingly high quality, SRAM internal hub gears and drum brakes, lugged steel frame powder coated in matte black.  I had considered a Workcycles Opa as an alternative to the Pashley Roadster I was intending to buy one day (before I found the Tourist).  I’m sure it would have been a good investment.

Manchester Shots

One of the great things about cycling is that you see things which you wouldn’t have noticed driving.  The other advantage is that you can stop to investigate and take photographs of things without it being problematic.  I recently found these old wintery pictures I took whilst riding around in Manchester and I thought I’d share them here.

The church on St. Ann’s Square (St. Ann’s Church I assume)

No. 1 Deansgate against the clear winter sky

Cross Street, facing back towards Manchester Victoria.  I like that this road is closed to motor traffic, but it means that people tend to step out without looking, so if on a bike, proceed with caution.

The town hall clock tower against the clear sky.  The city council really went nuts with this building when the city expanded in mid 1800s.

Part of China town, the shop on the left corner is Ho’s Bakery which is an excellent place to get some amazing sweet and savoury bakes goodies (Wong’s on Princess Street is also very good).

The gap in the buildings here is to accommodate the last (or first) few hundred metres of the Rochdale Canal.  Also in shot is another tourist visiting from nearby Hyde.

The few hundred meters of canal on this side are much more popular, lined with various bars and nightspots which make up Canal Street.

I wouldn’t have bothered taking these shots of I was in a car, or on the bus.  At least now if anyone reading this is coming to Manchester for the first time, you will know where to go for Chinese baked goods.

September to September; 5,350 km

That’s about 3,325 miles for those of you in the USA, Burma or Liberia.  It is also on a par with LC from Naturally Cycling Manchester.  Last year I did 3,200 km and I am pleased that I have improved upon that this year.  I measure September to September because I got my first odometer in September 2008.  I like having an odometer, it is nice to know how far you have travelled, as it allows you to work out how much further there is to go.  Knowing your speed is a good motivator, it encourages you to keep up a pace and to work out how fast to go to arrive at your destination on time.  It is also a motivator, pushing you to try and go faster than last time when you’re riding down that epic hill (I got the Tourist up to 53.5 km.h^-1 which is pitiful compared to a racer, but a racer it is not).  I use a Cat Eye Micro Wireless, not because I hate wires but because it has a settable odometer, meaning you don’t lose your data after a dead battery. 

It also has the option for being used with two sets of wheels, or in my case two bikes, the Yuba and the Tourist (and previously the Kona and my Revolution Cuillin).  This was a big deal for me, as I like being able to combine my distances covered on each of my bikes (sadly not the Twenty though).

I’d recommend an odometer to anyone, even if you only use it as a clock on your handlebar.

Old Dutch

Before I found the Raleigh Tourist, I came across the Batavus Old Dutch online.  I have recently had the chance to have a proper look at one up close, parked up outside work.  The bike is priced around the £350 mark, which is quite reasonable considering some of the components on the bike.  On closer inspection however, some of the component choices of the Batavus are quite baffling.

The bike has the usual mudguards, chain case, skirt guard, rack and dynamo lights you would expect from this kind of bike.  The saddle appears to be a pretty basic affair, the frame is nicely lugged, although I think that the seat tube angle is a bit steep for this kind of bike.

The Old Dutch comes with a SRAM 3 speed internal hub gear with coaster brake.  It is odd to see SRAM internal hub gears on a bike in this price range because of the three main manufacturers of internal hub gears (Sturmey Archer and Shimano being the other two), SRAM are by far and away the most expensive.

Presumably because of the expensive rear hub, Batavus decided to cut corners on the front-end of the bike:

The front end of the bike has a rather uncharacteristic calliper brake instead of a drum brake, and the dynamo is a bottle dynamo rather than a hub dynamo.  I am curious as to why Batavus would choose such an expensive rear hub only to pair it with such low-end components on the front.  For the same money as this set up they could have used a Sturmey-Archer or Shimano 3-speed coaster brake hub on the rear wheel and a Sturmey drum brake and dynamo hub on the front (or a Shimano roller brake and dynamo hub if they wanted to go down the Shimano route).

Having seen one of these bikes up close, I am quite glad I ended up finding the Raleigh Tourist instead.

Trek jumping on the long-tail bandwagon

Joining the ranks of Kona and Surly, Trek is the latest mainstream bike manufacturer to jump onto the long-tail bike bandwagon with this, the Transport+.  Anything which gets the cargo bike concept out there to a wider audience is definitely a good thing.  First impressions suggest this bike will have the weight capacity below that of the Yuba, with the frame being of aluminium construction, but with similar side-rails to the Yuba.  Oddly, these side-rails are positioned in a manner which encourages loads to be placed largely behind the rear axle, which leads to sketchy handling in the Yuba Mundo.  At this stage it is not clear if this is intentional or a bit of a design oversight.  What makes this bike stand out from its contemporaries is the 350W rear-wheel hub motor and the cleverly under-rack mounted battery pack (including a rear light).  The electric-assist which comes as standard in the Transport+ could open up the cargo bike concept to a wider, less tree-trunk legged audience.

In other news, electric assist may also be coming soon to this modernised take on the Bakfiets called the Urban Arrow.  Cleverly, the electric assist powers the cranks, so the motor is able to make use of the gearing integrated into the rear wheel hub.  Currently at the prototype stage, the final model is hoped to have a single-piece resin box and hub-dynamo driven lighting.

Credit for both of these finds must be given to Bicycle Design, another of the blogs I check every so often.  Although a lot of the posts are of concept bikes which are completely impractical, these two really stood out to me.  I hope they both end up making it to market.

Grocery run

I think this one tops my last big grocery run.  Amongst the shopping I ended up with quite a few heavy items, only realising how bad it was when the trolley’s handling started to get a bit sketchy.  The heavy items included; 24 cans of Pepsi Max, 8 cans of chopped tomatoes, 4 cans of beans, 10 kg of cat litter, 2 kg of cat food, 3 litres of cooking oil, 2 kg of potatoes, 2 kg of oven chips.  I totted the total weight to be at least 35 kg (that is about 5 and a half stone to you non-metric dinosaurs, and 77 lbs to American readers) which is the most I’ve carried for quite some time.  The ride back was actually very easy; the extra weight providing a pleasant momentum once moving.  All in all a good workout.

Here is the Yuba loaded up and ready to go.  The gentleman in the shot is hauling a respectable amount of stuff in a backpack on a fixie, impressive considering the impracticality of the arrangement.

I also saw this Mailstar parked up at the supermarket, secured only with the rear-wheel lock.  I wonder why Royal Mail wanted the bike to have a 26 inch front wheel and a 700C rear wheel.  I wonder if it makes the bike more likely to flip under hard braking when there is cargo in the basket.

I hope this weather reprieve lasts a while longer, I’ve been enjoying the novelty of actually wanting to go outside again.