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Archives for February 2010

The Chamois Cream Showdown

02.21.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 15 Comments

Guest poster Jeff Hemmel compares two major brands of butt lube.

I’m 40 miles into one of my usual rides and there’s a battle raging in my pants.

The combatants? Two chamois creams, each holding onto their own piece of territory. In this corner, weighing in at $19.99 for an 8 oz. jar is Paceline’s Chamois Butt’r, a pretty common cream found in many bike shops. In the opposite corner, weighing in at a daunting $24 for a 4 oz. tube, is dznuts (pronounced DEEZ-nuts), a premier high-end brand.

Which will take the title in the, uh, end? I’ll let you know as soon as my nether regions finish sorting it out.

Go ahead and laugh, but this is serious testing, from a bona fide professional journalist. Before my ride I had carefully measured out equal amounts of both creams (or just grabbed a two-fingered scoop), applied the creams to specific boundaries of my anatomy (or as specific as you can get when you’re messing with an area you can’t really see), and then got on the bike and rode a precisely measured course (I just go up to this sign, which is about 22.5 miles from home…and turn around).

Why? To find out once and for all if one glob of goo can actually be worth more than twice the price of the other. And yes, let’s face it, just to have the opportunity to say something about Dave Zabriskie’s nuts in print.

One difference between the two products is immediately obvious. Dznuts is a thicker viscosity cream with an almost whipped appearance, where Chamois Butt’r is somewhat lighter, with a shiny, almost watery look to the surface. Apply them and both provide a cooling sensation. On the road they maintained that feeling of coolness, but with subtle differences. Chamois Butter’s sensation was slightly more pronounced, dznuts a little less in your face. (No jokes about the butt-face jump in logic here.) Other than that, however, both seemed to do the job. Late in the ride I did feel like dznuts thickness helped it to stay on slightly better, where the less-thick Chamois Butt’r may have been losing a little of the battle to sweat. The cool sensation of the Chamois Butt’r, however, seemed to last slightly longer than the dznuts, perhaps distracting me a little more from how long I had spent in the saddle. At the end of the day both washed away, from me and my chamois, with soap and water.

The Euro Version of Chamois Butt’r contains menthol, witch hazel, and Brazilian peppertree, but contains mineral oil and a few other ingredients that give a natural ingredients proponent pause. Dznuts relies on tea-tree oil as an anti-bacterial and anti-fungal, Evodia, a Chinese herb, for wound-healing and anti-inflammatory purposes, and Masterwort for its wound-healing and calming properties. It claims a more organic approach, trying to stay as natural as possible.

Why avoid certain products? It’s up for debate. Mineral oil is petroleum-based, however, and has been blamed for doing everything from promoting acne to messing with cell development. It’s also, however, the basis of many baby oils. You’ll just have to make your own call on this issue.

So back to the original question — is one worth twice the price? Probably not. Both get the job done. A lot of dznuts premium probably goes into its fancier, high-end packaging. I do like that it’s a more natural product, however, and I prefer its texture and consistency.

[lasso type=”table” id=”1″ link_id=”2152″]

I said I’d let my nether regions sort things out, and truth be told, my butt has apparently been telling my brain to go for the dznuts, as it’s the cream that’s been seeing the most use since the initial showdown. Once it runs out, however, the butt and the brain will likely have to factor something else into the equation — the wallet — before the next purchase.

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Categories // guest post, Review Tags // chamois cream, guest post, Hemmel, Review

Bike Noob Enters the Terrible Twos

02.18.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 15 Comments

The Terrible Twos

It’s hard to believe, but the Bike Noob blog is two years old today. This calls for a celebration. What do you think of the new look?

Not only a new look, but a new address as well. From now on, we’re simply Bikenoob.com. If you’ve bookmarked bikenoob.wordpress.com, that’s fine — you’ll be redirected. But why not enter the new address, and bookmark the site again?

The Bike Noob name has always drawn comment from friends and readers. Usually, it’s something like, “Hey, you’re not a noob anymore. Time to change the name of the blog.”

Believe me, I’ve considered that.

But I’m not going to change.

Bike Noob is my brand. It gets a lot of recognition from bikers locally and from people in some of the oddest places who run across it. I could change the name, but haven’t come up with anything that has the impact of Bike Noob.

However, over the two years I’ve been writing here, the focus of the blog has been evolving.

It started as a personal journal of a new road biker’s introduction to the sport. It chronicled early long training rides, joining a bike club, falling with clipless pedals — in short, the kinds of things other new bikers might be interested in reading about.

But as I’ve gained experience on the bike, I’ve been branching out and writing on other topics, even including some bike advocacy every now and then, more posts about riding safely, and in general, focusing on how to make road biking more enjoyable.

Besides, as the subhead says — I’m always learning something new. It’s not just me — many of us are noobs. This blog has a lot of loyal readers who are experienced cyclists, but come here for a variety of reasons — information, story-telling style, humor, whatever. I’m grateful that you have latched onto the blog and are staying with it.

For me, Bike Noob is an enjoyable hobby. When I started this, I never imagined it would last two years. But I keep going because every once in awhile, a blog post captures the imagination of readers, and triggers a flurry of commenting and emails. What a kick!

I’m also extremely gratified that two professional journalists have joined the Bike Noob fold as guest posters. Both Jeff Hemmel and Don Blount add different voices to the blog, and the information and stories they share have been an important contribution to the blog’s success.

How do I measure success? My page views are up over a year ago, from about 700 per week to 1,700 per week. Readers are sticking around a little longer, and reading more than one post during a visit. I seem to have regular readers in all 50 United States, and in many countries. Among these is a cadre of loyal readers who check in regularly and add their viewpoints in the comments. In turn, I pay attention to a whole raft of other bike blogs, by reading their RSS feeds.

My learning curve on the bike has been smoothed out by the wonderful feedback I get from readers. Many of you have urged me to keep delivering information that newer bikers can use, and I’m pleased that more experienced bikers seem to enjoy adding their knowledge to the conversation via the comments.

So, there you go. I admit it: I’m not a noob anymore. But as long as I keep learning new things about my favorite pastime, I think the Bike Noob moniker is appropriate.

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Categories // Blogging, Odds 'n ends Tags // blog

What the Hey, I Added a Pump

02.16.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 3 Comments

Guest poster Don Blount makes what, for him, is a major concession.

I finally settled my personal pump vs CO2 debate.

When I first began riding, I went weeks without carrying anything – a pump, CO2, patches or tire levers. I was just lucky, because I didn’t have a flat during this period. I was dumb too. Now, I wouldn’t go anywhere without the basic tire changing implements.

Shortly after I had those tools, I flatted on a hot summer day. It took me more than 20 minutes to change that flat and get the bike rolling again. On that hot summer day, it seemed like forever.

I have had more than my share of flats since and have become proficient at changing them although I’m not as fast as this guy. It takes me about 10 minutes total time to get the flat changed and the bike rolling again. And note that the guy in the video changes the flat in no time but doesn’t look for the cause of the flat.

CO2 is one of the things that I use when changing flats. I like the speed and also the convenience in part because my many of weekday rides come before work when a flat not only cuts my ride short but also shortens my preparation time to get ready for work or another appointment. The faster I change the tire the more likely I am to get to my next stop on time.

Mishaps are of course nerve wracking.

Last October while my wife was out of town I was returning home from a ride. My plan was get a quick shower and change and pick up my then three-year-old daughter at her preschool. I was on schedule, but about a mile from home I flatted.

Hurricane HPV Dual Mini (this is the old pump)

I changed the tube, took out a CO2 cartridge, pushed the nozzle and pssssst, it was a dud. I had two more cartridges. I kept getting a bubble in the tube and bam! overinflated the tube causing it to pop. I had one more tube and one more cartridge. No pump. I had stopped carrying a pump thinking that the CO2 would replace it. Quite frankly I never liked the pump, the few times I had used it, it didn’t work well, in addition to being bulky I wasn’t able to get much air in the tire.

I was already thinking of how long it would take me to push my bike to my daughter’s school in full riding gear.

I got the second tube inflated, mushy but rideable and picked my daughter up on time.

Common sense should’ve told me to look for another pump. Instead I worked on becoming more proficient at using CO2.

For that matter I didn’t think much about adding a pump until a few months ago when I came across that photo of George Hincapie’s training bike and saw that he was carrying a pump.

If one of the world’s top racers had one on his bike, why wouldn’t a recreational roadie? I’m not racing, I’m not hammering and a few extra grams of weight isn’t going to cost me anything.

Blackburn Airstik 2Stage (this is the new pump)

I decided that I should carry a pump, but it had to be the right one – small, affordable and effective. I ended up buying a Blackburn AirStik 2Stage, the one Hincapie was carrying. It is small enough to fit in a jersey pocket, although I mounted it on my bike. And it can get a tire up to riding pressure in about 200 pumps, that was about 90-100 psi. (I tested it.) And the $22 cost, including shipping, was within my budget.

I still carry CO2 and intend to use it as my primary method of inflating flats, especially when I’m short on time. However, having a pump on board provides me with a backup if there is a problem or as an alternative inflation method for those times when I have time.

SPECS Hurricane Blackburn
Length 267 mm 170 mm
MAX. PSI 100 160
Weight 185 g 84g

Don advises that the Maximum PSI figure for the Blackburn may be a little misleading. It can pump 160 psi “only if you’re Hercules,” he says.

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Categories // Accessories Tags // Accessories, CO2, pump

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