VecchioJo's blog

You know you're a cyclist when you’re asked to an evening’s dinner at a house that’s some distance away and you immediately wonder if it’s rideable.

In an attempt to get at least some press coverage at the Tour De France départ Footon-Servetto unveils it's Women's Team.
 

We're happily freewheeling skittish down a rubbly farmtrack on our cyclo-cross bikes when a brace of burly mountainbikes speed past us, I think one of them might have even "hooned" as he overtook. That's enough for the red mist to descend and all of a sudden the game's afoot, we follow our spirits, crank hard three times on the pedals and follow their wheels down the rocky, rutted greasy descent, gently muttering the 'cross bike mantra of "don'tpuncture, don'tpuncture, don'tpuncture, don'tpuncture, don'tpuncture, don'tpuncture, don'tpuncture..." under our breaths all the way down. The look on the mountainbikers faces as we reach the bottom and they look round to see us right on their arses, smiling, to instantly overhaul them on the following climb with cheery, almost gay hello's makes it worth the pinball hanging on.

    Which is why we do it.

    Obviously.

So, who in this particularly strained loaf-based analogy is going to be the tasty meat in this Sunday's sandwich, who's going to be the limp lettuce and will Hincapie be the dollop of mayonnaise that drops out and makes a sad mess on your shirt. Again.
 

Hidden Di2 cables - lovely.

    It's the last weekend in March and I guess it's happened enough times now to be a diary-bookmark tradition - the "Happy 100". A time to celebrate the changing of the clocks and the hopeful start of Spring by cracking off a swift hundred with friends round the lanes of Sussex. That's miles not kilometres, we have no patience for fake centuries here.

Right then, we're the world's leading bike magazine, because it says so on the cover, even though we're aware that it doesn't actually mean anything it sounds pretty good.

Over a decade of different bikes with one constant, when it just works there's no need to change.

Ahead spacers above the stem?
Say it ain't so Ernesto, say it ain't so.

Now then, if you're going to make a big thing about your new bike and splurge it about with posh photos and big magazine adverts it makes sense to pay attention to the finer details, especially if the bike is flagshipping your custom-build programme where tending to minutiae might count for something. Admittedly you've done a good job ensuring everything is eye-wateringly matching, the saddle's level, the bottom of the handlebars is nicely the same angle as the top-tube, and the quick-release levers are even pointing the correct way, but then you go and trip-up when it comes to the chain.