Category Archives: Product reviews

Product reviews

Are you riding the right bike? How can you tell?

Personal stuff, Product reviews, , ,
bikeilovesmIMG_0296
2 Headlights, 2 taillights, camera, Garmin computer, what, me, geeked out?

Many people, perhaps most, aren’t riding the right bike. Know how you can tell? Could be because you’re not on it right now. Do you look for reasons to ride someplace? Or do you drive because it’s more convenient?

I bring this up because this morning by daughter, who works in our Redwood City store, had to drive to work today (ear infection so she’s been told not to ride, and, unlike me, she’s sensible and does what the doctor says). It would be super-easy to just get in the car with her and go to work, and later drive home. Avoid the 400ft climb home and having to take a shower before dinner.

Umm… no. I’d much rather ride. I feel alive on my bike. It fits great, it feels like it wants to fly with every pedal stroke. My mind is engaged as I share the road with others, whereas in a car I’d be in drone mode.

On my commute home I often tell myself that I’m going to take it easy, but after the first two stop lights you get to are green, it’s inevitably all-systems-go for a fast ride home. My bike expects this. It’s dark, but I’m lit up with two tail lights, two headlights. Cars see me from a distance, and I live for that sound of their tires over bots dots, telling me they’re moving over to give me room. A long day at work and my bike has put me in the zone.

I get home breathless (I live at the end of that 400ft climb) and I’m still breathing hard when I enter the house. My wife asks if I’m OK, and I’m thinking, day after day, this is what I am, this is what my bike and I do, I’m not only OK but I’m alive.

So what is the “right bike?” It’s the bike that you can’t walk past without wanting to get out and ride. It’s the bike that you go out on a 70 mile ride earlier in the day and then later you might be running errands in a car, seeing other bikes on the road, and asking yourself why you’re not out riding. What makes such a bike so special? It’s the way it just seems to become a part of you when you’re on it. The feeling that IronMan gets when he puts on his suit. Maybe it’s super-light, maybe it’s got a custom paint job, maybe you live for that perfectly-shifting gear change you get with electric Di2 shifting.

It doesn’t have to be a fast high-end road bike. It might be a hybrid commuter, or a beautifully-styled cruiser. It could be a kid’s first bike. But I’d be really happy if it’s a Trek (or an Electra if a cruiser) from Chain Reaction, because that means we didn’t just sell a bike… we helped create a happier, healthier bike-person.

So where should you buy your next bike? From us, of course, because this is the dream we live for. If you just want to buy a bike because it’s the thing to do and everyone else has one, and it’s just going to sit around like so many other short-term “seemed like a good idea at the time” things, well, there’s lots of places for that. It would be a failure on my part for that to happen. But if you want to risk a life-changing experience, come to us. That’s what we live for. –Mike Jacoubowsky, Partner, Chain Reaction Bicycles

Disc brakes and evil greedy bike shops

Personal stuff, Product reviews, Shop news

Even in Peru I can’t take my mind off work, kind of natural since work is bikes and cycling is my life. So I’m monitoring a local bike club’s E-list, in which someone was talking about the actual merits of disc brakes on road bikes. It got the reply from someone else below-

The major benefit is helping local bike shops stay afloat by contributing to another profit center. The new hydraulic brakes are more expensive than mere brake pads. It also creates a time filler activity that cyclists can participate in (online shopping) while they’re stuck indoors during periods of rain not too mention the conversational benefits…

I couldn’t let that go, even in Peru, when I should be getting to sleep because we’re catching an early flight home the next morning. My response below-

Not sure if I’m missing a joke or what. If this is a serious note, your local bike shop is likely not deriving profit from the proliferation of new ways to change the basic workings of the bicycle. The cost in inventory is massive beyond belief, the cost in training staff on new technologies considerable, and any profit from selling shiny expensive bike gadgets at the local bike shop level has been eliminated by a playing field that is seriously tilted against the small retailer

Having said that, there remains a need to address the utility of the disc brake in general. I do not believe it’s needed for most road bikes, because most road cyclists aren’t riding in the rain. But for those that do (raising my hand on this one), and especially those that do any real descending, a disc brake has massive advantages over a standard rim brake. Some of this is from added stopping power, but mostly from not having to replace brake pads every two to three rides if you’re doing a lot of descending (for example, my regular Tuesday & Thursday-morning ride, with about 3300ft of climbing/descending) and, perhaps more important, not having to be concerned about having your rim literally explode apart because it’s been ground through by the brake pads. That’s a rain-only phenomenon, caused by the sandpaper-effect of water & grit that grinds away both rubber brake pads and aluminum rims.

Dry weather stopping power really isn’t an issue for any modern well-adjusted standard caliper brake. The only time it might be helpful would be for those who “drag” a brake constantly on a long, steep descent. The person who rides at 20 miles per hour downhill is putting a lot more wear & tear into brake pads and rims than the person doing 40. The simple physics involved show that the higher-speed descender (I’m not talking about reckless high speeds) is having wind resistance do a lot more of the work slowing him or her down than the slower-speed descender, where virtually all of the work is being done by the brake.

Please don’t blame your local bike shop for forcing technology on you that you don’t want. It’s not an evil plot on their part. We’re not smart enough to pull that off. Most of us would long to turn back the clock to simpler times. That doesn’t mean that new technology isn’t often better, bringing new benefits to a wonderful machine. But from the standpoint of who profits from a technological & marketing arms race, it usually isn’t the local retailer.

Ironically, I am increasing the variety of disc-brake models to offer my customers, and am building up a new disc-brake CycloCross/Utility bike for myself… and I might soon be sending out an email to my customers letting them know about the options, which, of course, will feed the idea that I’m getting rich selling people things they don’t need. :-)<

Thanks, Mike Jacoubowsky, Partner, Chain Reaction Bicycles