Lev and Che wearing their rubbers!

On Wednesday afternoon, I received my new bike. I cycled back to SQ, rammed down some food and cycled to spinning.

However on the way back – mostly uphill – not all was well: the front gears weren’t changing happily, the rear brake disc was rubbing constantly against its pad and the rear wheel appeared to knock against something once per revolution.

So I took the bike back to the co-op as soon as I could on Thursday morning. The co-op person I spoke to apologised, said he’d get it sorted and would speak to a manager. He asked when I’d return to pick up the bike. I said 4pm and left them to deal with new bike. I got back to the coop just on 4 but my bike wasn’t ready – apparently too many other folk had turned up needing repairs. (Not best pleased with this reasoning!)

About 4:10 I received my bike back for a test run. The rear brake was obviously sorted and the front gears were much better. They didn’t change completely smoothly when going uphill but I was told (and have since read elsewhere) that deraillieur gears don’t change smoothly when going uphill. (Chains require some slack to lift up and over the gear teeth but won’t be slack if when cycling uphill.)

So I cycled back to SQ with fixed bike, almost happy. However nearing SQ, the bike ceased being able to freewheel – there were nasty crouching sounds as the chain lifted off the rear gears in mechanical pain and severe chain slap. I phoned the bike co-op who told me to get the bike back – the phone-answerer readily agreed there shouldn’t be problems with a new bike.

It turned out a bit of wire from the road had caught between the rear gear cassette and the spoke protector: the co-op had to remove the cassette to get it out. (I have the tools to do this for Vilior but not for new bike – yet!) While I was waiting, I picked up a couple of chain-stay protectors so I could ask which was better. The mechanic recommended that using an old inner-tube and zip ties was far better, offered me a tube and ties, and then to do it himself (which has reversed my grump against the co-op). 15 minutes later, the new bike chain-stay had been protected rather like this.

And this has helped me settle on new bike’s name! Because been a bit of a PITA to all and sundry, yet is dark, fast and sleek, wears a home-made prophylactic and leans to the left (due to the frozen left shoulder – I need to adjust the handlebars a bit to allow for this), I give you Lev Davidovitch!

Lev sporting Vaudes

Lev naked!

By the way, this was the second entry when searching for ‘lev davidovitch’. That’s scary…

Yesterday I tried a Revolution Country Explorer. The gear and brake shifters are in combined units:

• pull the levers conventionally to brake
• fingers push the levers inboard to change down* (i.e. easier to pedal but shorter distance travelled for each pedal revolution)
• thumb presses a wee nub to change up

*This is true for the left shifter which controls the rear gears. I can’t recall which way the right shifter goes. Whatever, gear changes were slick and didn’t require letting go of the handlebars.

The disk brakes lived up to advertised stopping performance. The rear rack took my current panniers. There was a good torque/power feel in the mid range (i.e. middle front gear, which is the same as Vilior’s larger front gear). If my legs were stronger, which will come in time (I hope), there will be mile-eating ease in the top range. The bike felt solid underneath me and the slightly wider rims handled the corrugated-horror road surfaces around Whitehouse Loan with ease.

Even better, there are a few 2011 models in my size still available. The bike co-op is trying to get rid of them prior to the arrival of the 2012 models. (Better still, the 2011 models are black while the 2012 models are bright red. Politics aside, for bikes black is the cooler colour!)

So taking advantage of this weekend’s 15% discount (on top of an old-model reduction), I’ve ordered Vilior’s replacement at a cost of just over £430. You could spend £300 more and still get less bike. He’ll arrive on Wednesday afternoon. I’m quite pleased.

Now I really need to settle on a name for new bike!

Today I started thinking about a replacement for Vilior. Appropriately enough, the Edinburgh Bike Co-op offering that most suits my wishes is a Revolution Country Explorer.

Why is this appropriate? Vilior is (I can’t bring myself to type ‘was’) an Edinburgh Cycle Co-op ‘Country’ made of Reynolds 770 steel tubing. ‘Revolution’ is EBC’s brand and the Country series are still made of Reynolds tubing.

So today I removed Vilior’s front pannier rack so that the bike co-op could fit it to whatever I buy. I’ve never used it – the purchase of front panniers has always been put off by more immediate needs. However I just couldn’t bring myself to remove lights, iPhone carrier etc yet. Not without a last photo…

Meanwhile’s here’s why I’m about to spend over £600. Vilior cost £50!

Well, old age and Edinburgh’s acne-like road surfaces have finally done for Vilior. I lifted him onto the stand tonight to do some routine maintenance and discovered that the top tube (crossbar) has snapped just behind where it’s brazed to the head tube.

I’ve had Vilior since second or third year at St Andrews, i.e. at least 25 years and so over half my life. He’s done well, he’s carried loads, he’s carried me, he’s sat out in whatever the weather could throw at him, he’s put up with me maintaining him inexpertly and infrequently, all without complaint. (How could a mere machine complain? Anything that’s been in contact with my arse has ways of communicating its condition, I assure you.)

He’s been a comfort in a very real sense – thanks to my frozen shoulder, the only time I’m conscious and not in pain is when I’m cycling or spinning (which is cycling without actually travelling). He’s been my freedom from the tedium of walking and the tyranny of timetables. We’ve sweated and sworn together – the most recent time being last weekend when we cycled from the centre of Birmingham to my parents’ house in Worcester. (30 miles in 3 hours, but carrying a fair load of clothes and IT kit.)

And now he’s gone. His front forks and head tube might be recycled into a part of a trailer for a new bike. His front pannier rack can be re-used, as can his lights, iPhone carrier, bell and other features. Maybe I can learn to love a new bike, but that won’t stop me missing Vilior and all the miles we’ve done together.

While, I’m not a fan of animal experimentation, the news that flies drown their sorrows too intrigued me.

… was π-day.

Not quite sure if I like this.

Seen in a shop window on Leith Walk.

Here’s a close-up.

I mentioned earlier that Iggy has a hard disk dedicated to virtual machine disk images. Here’s a screenshot showing all the the virtual machines running. (The bottom right quadrant shows screen-sharing (VNC) into my hackintoshed slaptop as it installs Adobe Creative Suite. Behind all of this is SheepShaver, a classic MacOS emulator running on Iggy.)

They don’t slow Iggy at all now that he has 13 GB of RAM. (He originally had just 3 GB. This was OK for running one VM but any more slowed Iggy to a painful crawl.)

Truly, you can never be too young (which explains this), too sexy or have too much RAM.