Cycling blog

I ride tubes, but usually don’t carry a spare. Okay, I’ve said it. No, really, 99% of the time pre-glued patch kit is enough for me. I become so lazy, I’ve even stopped to dismount the wheel from the bike and get only pierced portion of the tube out. It looks like this:

For some reason I prefer to have my tool bag as lightweight as possible so I can put it into a back pocket. I have all necessary tools with me, but spare tube is just taking too much space. Of course this only works because The Netherlands is a such develop country, that cycle paths are perfect almost everywhere. The only time I really needed a replacement tube was when I had a puncture very near the valve and patch didn’t not work there well enough.

When I bought my all-rounder Sensa Fermo SL I can’t help but notice that braking sucks. This is aluminium cyclocross bike from 2016 with Shimano 105 shifting. But for the breaks they’ve used cheaper Promax-something cantilevers.

First thing that I tried was to replace pads. These brakes use V-Brake pads. Also, there is a very tight clearance for a tyre fit. So I found some Kool Stop Thinlines to do the work.

“Why I rode so little by a seaside this year?” - stroke me one day, so I planned this ride which turned out to be absolutely magnificent. What I usually do - put my bike in the trunk, drive to some quiet location and then do a circle enjoying the views as much as I can from under the sweat in my eyes. Let’s start with a spoiler.

Here is GPX for you to follow my steps:

So you need to pump a wheel? This is easy, but you need to get several things right. Also you may want to think about why is it go flat in the first place. Check out the very end of the article for that.

What you will need:

Well, most surely you will need a pump. It need to have correct type of socket for your valve. Luckily, there are just two and most common floor bicycle pump have them both onboard.

I cycle like 99.9% of the time in The Netherlands and was looking forward to my first ever England trip with excitement. How adventurous this would be? Could I tackle all those hills? Should I take just one spare tube or two at least?

Well, first surprise (apart from pouring rain and 6-point Beaufort scaled wind) was how steep the hills actually are, how narrow the roads and how bloody muddy out there it was.

Is it a good idea after all? Well I always wanted one and this was actually my first ever road bike.

There are lots of vintage steel bikes for sale in The Netherlands. They come in most variety of conditions. There are sad half-dead ones (vastly popular amongst most hip of the hipsters of Amsterdam). There are museum grade ones in perfect state. Old hip people ride them on long distance cycle roads. And then of course a great variety of in-betweens.

Hi. I my name is Andy and I live in The Netherlands. I do cycle here a lot. I also repair and upgrade my bicycles myself.

I decided to start this website and tell about my cycling-life, share some knowledge that I learned, links to the websites I like and maybe provide you with some online tools (I do programming for a living). I hope someone will find it interesting.