What?

In a strange twist of coincidences and dumb luck, I am now in the possession of a new (to me) geared road bike. I'm not going into the details of attainment, I'll just say it came from a very cool guy down in Raleigh, NC, via my brother. The bike is a carbon framed Litespeed M1 with a SRAM Rival group set and it is an AMAZING ride.  So far I've only logged a few miles around the ol hood, but plan on getting in a good distance ride this weekend. First impressions so far are pretty positive. On my last ride I did about 12 miles and averaged around 18.2 mph. I average about 14 mph riding the same loop on my Surly.  Having more than one gear ratio/choice really makes a big difference. It took a few miles to get used to the SRAM shifters and I still need to figure out how to shift properly and maintain speed on turns. I am hoping that my years of riding a single speed will help with cadence and spin.

     

Duck, NC to Wright Memorial, Kitty Hawk, NC.

Last week I took thursday and friday after the 4th of July off and headed down to my in-laws summer house in Duck, NC. While I was there I got in two rides, the 1st was a 30 mile ride from the house to the Wright Memorial and the 2nd was a 20 mile ride from the house to the Kitty Hawk Woods Coastal Reserve.  It was great to get out and spin even though we were in the middle of a record breaking heat wave. The best part of both rides is that there are so many side roads and dedicated bike paths in and around Southern Shores, Duck, Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk that I only had to cross one main road coming and going. A few pics and gps map of the first ride to the Wright Memorial below.

 

Geared road bike in the works?

I've been doing a lot more road riding lately than mountain biking. The main reason is that it's easier to hop on my road bike and just ride versus having to drive to mtb trails (most of which are at least a 30 minute drive). One of the downfalls of racking up road miles on my Steamroller is that I am becoming blatantly aware of what a huge difference having gears makes. It has nothing to do with ascents and descents, but rather spin and speed.  My regular Sunday morning ride used to just be my buddy Christian and I, both on single speeds. Lately we have been riding with a couple of other guys though who are on geared bikes and keeping up with them can be difficult at times. There usually isn't an issue as long as we stay in the 16-20 mph range. Once they drop down (or is it up?) a few gears though we have to spin like crazy to stay with them. Anything over 24 mph is pretty much impossible to sustain for longer than a mile (at least for me). I thought about increasing my front ring from a 47 to 52 but that seems like a quick fix and will open up a new set of problems.

So, I'm in the market for a geared road bike. I've owned aluminum and very briefly (thanks to a SHITHEAD THIEF) titanium bikes, so I'm pretty confident that I want to go with a steel frame.  The bike that fits my budget, has a decent group set and isn't too bad on the eyes is the Bianchi Imola.  Bianchi wont allow their bikes to be shipped and there isn't a local dealer, so I might have to order it from a shop up in DC and pick it up. More on this later.