Paul Ruinaard

Het hey its Friday. TBH the rot in cycling starts at the top with CSA and the whole PPA Fun ride story. The blazer wearing CSA folks have no real appetite to do anything other than take home their pay. I think many of them last saw a bicycle when they were 15 let alone pedalled one. Until that is fixed then you wont see much happening. Cycling and the rides we have available are amazing. They just do zero other than steal premiums and take up oxygen IMNSHO. Our climate alone menas we ride the whole year. Rides and races are also run by small operators and not well organised (at least some of the big ones are) Again put cycling at the centre rather than charities or some other beneficiaries and then things will start changing. Lobbying etc - make if professionally managed and hire good people - pay them well. Not part time wanna-bees who couldn't hold down a day job or ex cyclists. Its all about expos, charities, all sorts of non cycling related stuff. Rant off.

Re-open the race tracks that used to allow cyclists to train on them - like Kyalami - evening riding was huge leading up to events. Do cycling advocacy in schools and get people involved at grass roots level. If you had to go out to the cradle on a Saturday morning on a good warm summers day you will see road cycling is alive and well. Its because it was safe there at a a time. There are hundreds of people out there running and riding. But events have become over done - seedings complex. roads dangerous and therefore you need to refresh the views. For example - race around Kyalami - all safe. Races in the cradle - still much safer than other places.

absolutely agree with all of these. Stop the padding and gouging of cyclists by sponsors.

further to the comments you will experience the positive of the tandems being much more sociable and generally fun to ride. Also much faster on descents and flats as the wind resistance is the same but the power increased - you can go really fast with two strong people pushing - but you will destroy road cycling bunches if you are too strong - they will either love or hate you. Get disc brakes - you may fit a Medium small frame. My ex wife was 48 Kg and small me 6 feet and large - you can get it fitted. If you do get it right there is nothing quite like the feeling when you are powering a tandem along and i call it"it comes up on the plane". Its poetry - you can hold a big gear at a high speed across a flat and you just zip along. Anyone who doesn't get in to your slip early on is in trouble. I used to love riding the tandem from Caves in the cradle to the circle. Tandems are IMO social machines - you can race seriously and you will get some amazing results if you are competitive and fit. I have races where we averaged 45 kmh. If you are unfit it will quickly expose it and you can be guaranteed that you will have a long day out. Enjoy - i have had two of them - lover them both. FWIW the Cannondales are IMO the Rolls Royce of tandems

More like Specialized's janitor left the keys to the store room open and overnight the big strong dual sus Stumpy boy slipped a portion to that Svelte Roubaix honey he had been eyeing for some time which resulted in a Zebra/Donkey love child. Specialized as the parents love it anyway as they do all their kids but it does need to go to a school for special needs and have some therapy ....

Ha ha yep I get it except anything that bridges a category IMNSHO is a compromise so it does nothing like a specialty bike does. Hit some stutter bumps at speed on an unsuspended gravel bike and see how long you can hold on for. Gravel bikes work on smooth gravel but our roads are soft sand and stutter bumps. FWIW I built and sold a CX bike, have a gravel bike on the trainer as the dual suspension is so much better on any dirt road. The best bike I have right now is an ebike. The MTB rides here are so steep on the way up there’s no way my old overweight IDG is going up the climbs without assistance. And you can then add a huge fork and sticky rubber and you are not worried about rolling resistance. as you can see I am not in tO minimalism and believe in comfort. Gravel bikes are neither fish nor fowl and will die like fat bikes did. Just look at the bike that won the gravel world championship. It was a dual ring road bike.

i think you said it - why would you do that when a cheap MTB hardtail is faster. Gravel is the new fatbike. All they are is marketing to get you to buy another type of bike and accessories to go with it. If you look at it we started with road bikes. then road and MTB. then Hardtail and Dual suspension. Then we went to Fatbikes. Now we are in gravel. So if you have a full set of these you can look out the door in rain and shine, ski resorts and beaches and pick a bike from your quiver which is "ideal" and then get dressed in the appropriate kit. +Baggies for DH MTB. Lycra for XC and Road. Get the right shoes, water bottles, Camelbaks etc. and go ride.... All marketing...

Yep. Just put fatter tyres on road frames, used compact rings (2 x ) and a 34 cluster. Ran 35mm rear tyres. Gravel bikes are neither fish nor fowl. Until you have ridden one over a bad stutter bumped dirt road and shaken your eyeballs out you wont know this. an MTB is better on SA's roads every day of the week. especially on stutter bumps which we have on the majority of our roads. never mind thin tyres on loose sand.

interesting to see world gravel champs bikes using road bike frames and gearing with 35 mm and smaller front tyres. Also 2 x front rings with 34 clusters at the back. Compact rings up front.

Okay I am slow and fat and unfit but checking out local routes. Will check the routes I think the one you mentioned goes across the face of Paarl rock from monument side to Paarl north? Was up there on the motorcycle to try and see if you can get through. Do you need a pass? I am in VDV. Done some of the usual road rides to Franschoek. Keep smiling because it’s so pretty here. This morning’s ride next level

Bwahaha I didn’t think of that. Haven’t smacked my nuts with a fast rising dropper yet. Done other things to get them caught on the saddle when moving back on a drop off but that’s a first. Chuckling at your misfortune…

Aloha where do you ride from in Paarl. I am down here now as well, just moved to Val de vie and wanted to solve the same problem. BTW I fitted by Roubaix with 32 mm gravel tyres on some of the original DT Swiss rims as i ride out of vale de vie and didnt want to risk the narrow sections of the Franschoek road or at leats wanted to have an escape path if need be . Works great. Where do you guys ride gravel?

Ever hooked your loose fitting baggies on your saddle when trying to get far back for a dropoff? I have. Nuff said. Hey you can ride in your wife beater sleeveless vest and all the kit you want but a good bib short that is tight fitting is really also the only thing to use on a muddy day on an MTB, unless you really like getting mud and gravel in your crack 10kms in to a 120km stage. Again i can talk from experience.

listen to this man he speaks with great wisdom

Thats what i said as well.

You are like me. I ask this exact question often and wonder what i am missing in the grand scheme of things. I am moving but in my current housing location in an estate the house prices are in the max R 6m league. However no problems for cars in the R 1,8m to R 3m league to be parked outside. My question is how do astute people who clearly earn a lot of money make th maths work on this. You cant survive - its unsustainable to spend that much on credit. I have however reliably been informed that most of the folks like this are really not doing anything to get any capital gains or pay down debt, they continually hollow out long terms gains from capital appreciation on fixed assets to finance inflation on lifestyle assets and lifestyles (holidays overseas, cars, luxury goods etc). So they just service the debt. Same now with bicycles and the ability to finance them - just roll the credit every two years in to a bigger loan and hope something happens to get vast capital appreciation somewhere. Unfortunately my appetite for risk and luxury goods as well as stress is to low to gamble in this sort of game . Never mind the people who are seriously high rollers in gambling dens - which is also quite common. I have a friend whose capital appreciation on his property took it from R 2m to R 6m in about 12 years. IN my maths he was pretty wealthy. However when he sold he literally got something like R 60k, so was using all that up to finance the lifestyle. He had great credits and went and bought another big place only to draw down the loans to renovate again at a major cost, so now the place is bonded to R 8m and worth R 8m, so he has a big loan he pays (big is understatement) and lives the life of riley... I keep asking myself what i am missing.

Hmm many things - i remember the PC going under $ 1k which was a massive revelation. Tech in general and Moores law etc - the power has steadily increased and the price dropped of all your home goods when compared to what was seen as a luxury. Accessibility to air travel etc etc etc. People commute on aircraft like they used to catch a bus. Macro trends always dictate that luxury goods also have no inherent value so are really just marketing - diamonds, gold, high end cars, watches etc. All of them tell the time, provide transport or some functionality that can be achieved much cheaper. Same with bicycles, which the Europeans get. the same steel or ally framed road bikes that are a third of the price even nicely specced do 99% of the job for the same task. Its us who is easily conned in to believing there is extra value in luxury. You dont need it.

I keep reading about all this stuff and like everything that goes up it has to come down as the demand drops off for whatever reason. Hindsight and experience is a great teacher of the long game in all things, bikes included. Even the chip shortages are easing and in fact there is predicted to be a glut. Watch and wait until oil hits $ 30 per barrel again. Cycles happen. Anyway theres going to be a lot of very expensive bikes that are going to have a very large depreciation when the owners realize they have paid top dollar for something which is essentially the same as the cheap option functionally. Bike ate the high end are laughable in terms of the justification for the prices. Time to reap the whirlwind.

So in the old house i had one side set up with a gas geyser that was used for the guest room and the kitchen. It worked really well, think the geyser was about 16 L , but if you push it as they say it will chew your gas up. The other side of the house had a heat pump and a geyser. All well and good and it worked but it was also quite costly so advice is to do it from new and at the build. A geyser stays hot for a long time if insulated in a blanket BTW so often unless you get 12 hour power cuts like the lords of darkness aka the ANC inflicted on us yesterday (and water was off as well) then the need for gas is limited. Gas went up horrendously recently and it was in short supply so you couldn't get fills, although the 42 kg bottles were easy to get delivered.

FWIW IDT's (or my setup) draws a surprising amount of power and given all the above notes wrt cycling batteries, its not a great idea. Especially with Lead batteries. Right now my inverter trollies are degrading badly because of the continual discharge that they are experiencing. And new 100 AH batteries are over R 3k. Does anyone know if a good charge that does battery conditioning would be able to revive the lead batteries in an inverter trolley? I cant see anything tha would indicate there is a way to fix them and dont want to get in to messy solutions to open them p. They are deteriorating fast.

I have Campy 10 speed Record on my C40 - its 22 years old and still shifts beautifully and with a very re-assuring clunk on the shift. That groupo is absolutely bullet proof.

so in cycling speak you cut your thumb mostly off to justify an inordinately expensive upgrade. Thats your story and thats what you told your wife 😉

https://www.bikeradar.com/features/opinion/future-of-mechanical-groupsets/ nice summary

You can see with the Shimano 105 group the new options don't have any sort of cable offerings at all i.e. you cant buy mechanical groups. It's just what we will need to get used to. Tech moves on and its always better, and more expensive. FWIW I am using 11 speed DI 2 on both road and MTB and the shifting is super slick and simple and it shifts right every time. I only once in three years have had a brain fart and forgotten to charge a battery. Otherwise i couldn't think of not having it. It just makes everything simpler and easier. On the MTB the programmed shifting on the front ring negates the need for multiple shifters, so it even thinks for me. I have the same on the road bike now as well, and asa a result i never manually shift the front ring. Integration with Garmin is also cool and it warns me on the display when there is a chainring shift coming. You try and buy a car today with manual transmission that is better and easier to drive than the new generation car gearboxes. Same argument. You remove complexity and create simpler more integrated systems which operate better together than the older mechanical versions becuas ethey are optimised. Which is why auto boxes are used in F1 and not manual shifts. My 2 cents worth - electronic suspension is the next frontier with terrain sensors altering the damping and pre load - that's a whole new game - but most likely the next real big frontier.

Pay it forward because one day it's you that has the wrong spares and can't fix the bike. Nice to know people still help out.