Personal Archives - Page 36 of 103

The centre pull generation,

Posted on August 18, 2013

Today the excellent Thierry at Nevada Sports here in Les Gets gave my Dawes bike a good going over. Tightening the headstock, replacing the chain, replacing the brake blocks, oiling all the pull wires, fixing the broken pannier rack & resetting all the gears.

He mainly specialises in downhill mountain bikes. Fixing with his team about 100 a day giving amazing service & turn around times, broken spokes, air in your brakes, duff suspension forks, broken gears you name it & it will almost certainly get fixed whilst you pop around to the patisserie for a cake & coffee.

What I have noticed whilst hanging out in Thierry’s workshop is that my bike is now an antique with centre pull brakes, Sally’s new bike is side pull as all new bikes are now. Yet when I was a kid all I wanted was a bike with Weinmann centre pulls 🙂 so in 50 years they have had their time been and gone. Kind of makes me feel very old. But here’s the weird thing, derailleur gears are still all the rage, so another childhood dream of having Campag gears (only invented in 1949) can still be fulfilled. But maybe its like my dream of buying a Lotus Elan when I had the chance to buy one I bought a Porsche instead 🙂

Spot the difference?

Posted on August 17, 2013August 17, 2013

Spot the difference?

I thought it would be interesting to compare my two rides to Les Gets. The first ride was in August 2009 where I rode the 767 miles and in the saddle for 72.6 hours over the 10 days it took. This time in August 2013 I travelled 774 miles with 76 hours in the saddle but over 13 days.

The biggest differences are: I’m now 6% older, 4% lighter but now carrying the tent and additional Danube guides etc in the two panniers making the bike weigh a total of 44 kg , in 2009 it was probably about 25kg .

So although my average moving speed has only dropped from 10.6mph to 10.1mph (5%) the actual ground covered each day has gone from 76.7 miles to 59.5 miles a 22% reduction 🙁

For the rest of the journey from here to Zurich and then down the Danube to The Black Sea I’m very tempted to dump the tent etc and revert back to the saddle bag. However we will see….

Here are the tables, click to enlarge:

Cambridge to Les Gets 2013 route

Posted on August 16, 2013August 16, 2013

Using the Adze programme I stitched together all the GPS trails for my ride to Les Gets. Each day is given a different colour. There are a total of 25,471 points over the 761 miles (about 53 yards apart)

Clicking on the map will download a file that you can open in Google Earth taking you through the route in minute detail.

Here is an example taken from Google Earth when I was in Gray, debating whether to stay or carry on.

Day 13 – Final day into Les Gets

Posted on August 16, 2013August 26, 2021

I finally made it to my apartment in Les Gets 13 days after leaving Cambridge & with 76 hours perched on my Brooks B17 saddle. Total distance covered this time 774 miles (1237km) which means when moving I was averaging about 10mph.

The day was very tough for me, as the profile shows:

Strava_Ride___Le_Pont_de_la_Chaux_to_Les_Gets

I’m not going to get any speed prizes though. For the Route des Gets climb I came 295th out of 295 on Strava 🙁

The most humiliating part of the day was when a guy on a Brompton steamed past on me on the climb out of Morez. I was going to ask him how many pedals he broke doing a 200 metre climb – but he was gone..

The most amazing part of the day is that there were NO trucks at all on the N5 mountain pass. Have they been banned? or don’t they like all the roadworks. Whatever the reason it’s a great benefit to we cyclists, the biggest danger was the cars lugging their wide camping trailers.

Here is the Strava for the day:

Strava_Ride___Le_Pont_de_la_Chaux_to_Les_Gets 2

The days pics are here.

And here is an overview of my spreadsheet: