The Commuting Bike Upgrades

Oy oy. 

 

I haven't talked about this bike for a while and it has evolved a little.  I'm on a blog simplification kick, so I'm gonna post this here instead of on my wrench blog.  

 

At the end of last riding season, I decided to build a dedicated commuting bike for this year.  I like riding the road bike, but quite honestly it I don't get a full workout in the time that I have to ride to and from work.  The ability to coast makes it a little too easy and at 5am I'm not motivated enough to keep pedaling to push the speed and thus the workout value up.  At the end of the day, I'm dogged enough that I don't really feel like hammering home.  Additionally, I shouldn't be riding faster on the bike path since that is't really safe. 

 

The new commuting bike is a fixie.  I took an old MTB frame and put a bunch of old parts on it.  I have a 44 tooth ring on the White Ind. ENO cranks and an Eno rear hub to take up the chain slack.  Most of the other parts are ancient mountain bike stuff. I put 700c wheels on it even though it is designed for 26" wheels.  I used a Paul's BMX brake up front that allows me to line up the brake pads with the larger diameter rim.  It was originally built with flat bars and bar ends. I've got full fenders on the thing and they're great on days like yesterday.

 

I liked this build a lot.  I finally got the gearing right (44x16) so that I could fly down the hills and still have enough power to crank up them too.  Riding the fixie is a lot more of a workout and I'm not really going any faster.... in fact my commute time is a bit longer with the fixie than it was on the road bike. 

 

This week I made a change.  I wanted some more hand positions.  For road bike positioning (very low handlbars so that my back is flatter and I'm a bit more aggressive) makes it a little uncomfortable to just have flat bars.  I like the ability to crank up hills with them, but I needed more variety and the ability to stretch out if I want to. 

 

My pals at Speedgoat hooked me up with some 45cm-wide drop bars that will fit my MTBstem (made by Nitto).  They're AWESOME!  I put some 1980s vintage Dura-Ace brake levers on it so that I can grab the hoods when I'm out of the saddle.  That seemed to work great.  I raised the stem up a hair so that I had a little higher bar since the drop bars stretch me out a little more.  That ended up being almost perfect.  I might go for a slightly shorter stem.  We'll see.

 

I really prefer the feel of the drop bars for almost everything.  The positioning is much more intuitive for me on a road bike.  The one thing I definitely noticed is that they're not as wide as my old flat bars.  As a result I don't have the power up the hills like I did before.  I noticed it a little on the early morning climbs yesterday morning.  I noticed it a TON on the climbs on the way home.  It is going to definitely take more arm strength for me to stomp up the hills with this thing.  I guess that is good.  For now I'll go slower up the climbs but with time I'll hopefully get better technique and stronger upper body. 

 

I'm super happy with how the bike has turned out.  All I need is a basket on the front and I'll be set to go.  That will probably have to wait until I return from vacation in July. :D

 

See you on the trails.

 

Pete