New Stuff

I have been on a buying spree over the last couple of weeks

 

My first purchase was a new set of weeks for my Synapse. 

Bikes and parts are still a little hard to get but I found a good wheel builder in California Bicycle Wheel Warehouse that made me a set of wheels that matched what I wanted. I like the fact that a person at the company actually emailed me to ask me exactly what type of riding I did and what type of bike I had. We exchanged three or four detailed emails about the different wheel options he thought would work for me. 

I originally wanted a set of Mavic Open Pro wheels but those rims and parts are almost impossible to find. Based on the emails he convinced me that the Blackset Race rims were as good if not slightly better than the Mavic. The have a more aero profile at about the same weight. I went for the 32 spoke wheels for extra durability. They look good but I haven't really ridden many miles on them yet so I will post an update once I have a few hundred miles on them. Hopefully they will be as good as the wheels on my Feather which have at least 25 thousands miles on them without any problems.

I did have to do some maintenance on my Feather as it was skipping gears but that was easily fixed with a new chain and cassette. 

Since I moved I had to find a new bike shop for any repairs I can't handle. Luckily there are two good shops close by one a family owned place and another one that more of a pro shop with higher end bikes and service that bike races would go to. Both seem to do good work. After I got the new chain and cassette at the family owned place I had a problem with my front derailleur of my Synapse so I took it to the pro shop where they cleaned out the gunk in the derailleur and even realigned the rear derailleur. So now both my bikes should be in good shape for the foreseeable future. 

My last purchase was a new pump. I like the Topeka Road Morph that I have but it only lasts a few years and the last one I got was hard to get seated correctly on the presta valves. I did some research and decided to try the Acacia Mini bike pump. The advantage of this pump is that it screws onto the presta valve and has a much better gauge. It's also a nice looking pump AND it fits into the Topeka mounting bracket.

I have been doing a little more riding in the past few weeks as I have been taking a day here and there off from work. This is the best time of the year to ride so I want to take advantage of the good weather and continue finding new routes from my new house. I have been mostly heading east and north. I now have a good 40-50 mile route that goes around Freehold and the outlying parks and ponds. The picture at the top of the post is one of the more scenic spots along the way. I also had a nice ride down to Manasquan to check out the inlet. 

Lastly this past weekend I did a ride to SandyHook from Monmouth Battlefield Park. We had almost perfect weather so instead of just going to the first parking lot and heading home we went halfway up the hook. This meant the ride ended up being almost 70 miles but it was a good day to go for some extra miles.