Bike Noob

Because I'm Always Learning Something New

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Partners

The Roundtail Bike

11.08.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

Nowadays, I find that comfort on my bike is the most important thing I can aspire to. Perhaps that’s because I’ve spent so much uncomfortable time in the saddle. (Oh, and speaking of saddles, that Forte I put on the bike a few weeks ago is working out nicely. Who’d a thunk?)

So when I came across this oddball design this week, I had to stop for a closer look. It’s called the Roundtail, and instead of having a diamond-shaped frame, it uses two circular rings in the rear. They’re supposed to dissipate road vibrations before they make it up to the rider’s derriere.

Inventor Lou Tortola and the Roundtail bike.

The Roundtail is the brainchild of Lou Tortola of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He claims it absorbs 60 times more road vibrations than a standard double diamond frame. I don’t know anything about bike geometry, but if one can get past the bizarre look, I can see that there can be some relief in the design. Despite the rings, the frames are sized traditionally.

Here’s a YouTube video showing the Roundtail out on a ride.

The frame reportedly retails for $2,000. That’s just the frame, mind you. I’m not endorsing the Roundtail — I don’t know enough about it yet. But it will be interesting to see if the design takes off.

Like this:

Like Loading...

Categories // Bikes Tags // Bikes

An Urban Bike For the Road

10.23.2011 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

Way back in 1992, we decided we’d like to do some biking. There was one hitch: My wife, Pat, had a 10-speed Schwinn road bike, but hated it. Her back hurt when she bent over the bars, she never did get the hang of shifting the gears, and it was clear that doing anything over a couple miles would end badly. The answer, of course, was to buy a new bike.

We hit several bike shops in the area, and came up with a hybrid — a Trek 700. It served her well for its intended purpose. We didn’t ride much in town, but did throw our bikes in the trunk of the car and drove to the paved bike trails in southeastern Minnesota. Here, we could ride for miles — safely — and Pat did just fine on the hybrid.

The Trek 700. Pat still rides this three times a week. (Click to enlarge.)

Fast forward 15 years. Pat was president of a local professional organization that sponsored one of the big organized rides around Austin: the Hill Country Ride for AIDS. It was a 50-mile ride, but Pat figured that as president, she should step up, so she started going on training rides with a group of AIDS ride organizers. Her bike-savvy friends pointed out all manner of problems with her bike: The 38mm tires were too wide to go fast (a popular misconception), she needed clipless pedals to add power to her pedal stroke, she really needed a road bike, etc., etc.

Pat rejected the road bike idea, but went to the LBS on a shopping spree. She got Look Keo pedals, 28mm tires, and had them put on a taller stem that put her in an even more upright riding position to take pressure off her arthritic hip. She completed the 50-miler on that bike, and when I saw that, I figured I could do it too. That’s when the Bike Noob really started biking.

The six-speed freewheel (brand new this week) works with a triple chainring and twist grip shifters. The tall stem is evident in the picture at right.

We just had the six-speed freewheel replaced and a new chain put on. “It’s like a brand new bike,” Pat said. Earlier this year, I replaced her worn tires with a brand I’d never heard of before — fyxation. They bill themselves as a company that caters to urban bikers, and their Sessions model of tire has a puncture-resistant diamond tread. Pat’s flatted only once on these — they’re terrific tires.

The distinctive diamond tread of the fyxation tires is visible here, as are the cantilever brakes.
The Look Keo pedals ("I've never seen these on a hybrid before," said our bike mechanic) and the Specialized Dolce gel saddle ("It's okay," says Pat).

Pat is still on the same bike. She’s got a repertoire of neighborhood rides of nine, 12, and 16 miles, and will occasionally join me on an organized ride where she can do 30 miles or so.  It’s her main form of exercise, and exercise is the main reason she rides.

Pat reaches the top on a ride in the Texas Hill Country.

For people who are leery of taking up biking because of the bent-over riding position, this could be the answer. As you get more experience, a few tweaks will let you stretch your riding limits. Who knows? You might even decide to take the plunge and upgrade to a road bike anyway. The next bike purchase in this house will not be for me — it’ll be for Pat.

Like this:

Like Loading...

Categories // Bikes Tags // Bikes, hybrid

Biking 1964

06.23.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 10 Comments

I call this blog “Bike Noob” with tongue firmly in cheek, because I doubt many of us are truly noobs on the bike. We had them as kids, didn’t we?

When I was growing up, my best friend  was a guy named Steve. He lived up at the end of our block. We did everything together, including bike riding. He recently sent me a picture he’d dug out of an old photo album. Suburban Chicago, we think about 1964.

Click to embiggen.

Yep, that’s the Noob on the left, in all of his 13-year-old geekiness. I’m perched atop a Royce-Union three-speed, what we used to call a “racer” bike, because they were so sleek and light and fast compared to…well, compared to the Huffy my friend Steve is on.

Cable routing seems to be an issue for me, although I was blithely unaware of it at the time. The prominent white cable that swoops down and back leads from the headlight to a rear wheel-mounted generator — the kind that spins against the tire sidewall to power the light. It worked great, too. That light threw a nice bright beam. The shifters were twist grip. It would be a fun bike to have today, for toodling around town.

You’ll notice Steve is no slouch either when it comes to lighting. His Huffy has dual headlamps mounted at the end of his frame tank. Very stylish, in a 1960s Detroit Iron kind of way.

Two highlights of our bicycling occur to me.

We raced. Oh, yes. We’d go over to an elementary school a couple of blocks away, and race our bikes on the asphalt playground, using the borders of the two basketball courts as our “track.” Because the space around and between the courts was pretty narrow, we had a special rule: The lead bike picks the route. You could take a Figure-8 around the courts, or a big circle. You could go clockwise or counterclockwise. This made it imperative to pass whenever possible, or you wouldn’t have any idea which way the other guy was going to turn. At least once every race, one of us would lose control and crash. Helmets? Never heard of ’em.

About this time, we also got adventurous and made regular trips to a discount department store that always had good prices on model cars and such. The store was two towns away from ours, and we charted a route through back streets and side streets, until finally coming out on a busy thorofare about a mile from the store. The trip was about five miles one way. I even recall a challenging hill on our route. We’d fly down it on the way out, but have to struggle up it, carrying our purchases, on the way back.

I never really stopped biking. Sure, there was the hiatus after getting my drivers’ license. But I had two bikes during my college years (both of which were stolen from me) that I rode to class and took on excursions out into the country on weekends. My wife got me a Raleigh ten-speed for my 30th birthday, and we did some riding on bike trails throughout our adult lives. It was only with the purchase of my current bike that I threw myself into “serious” cycling. But I’m still learning.

Like this:

Like Loading...

Categories // Bikes, cycling Tags // 10-speed

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • …
  • 17
  • Next Page »

Get Email Updates

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 257 other subscribers

Categories

  • Accessories
  • Bike fit
  • Bikes
  • Blogging
  • Books
  • clubs
  • Cold weather
  • Community
  • Commuting
  • Components
  • crash
  • cycling
  • Equipment
  • Favorite rides
  • fitness
  • food
  • guest post
  • Heat
  • Injury
  • logs
  • Maintenance
  • Mental
  • Nutrition
  • Odds 'n ends
  • People
  • Poll
  • Racing
  • Records & stats
  • Review
  • Rides
  • running
  • Safety
  • soreness
  • Specialized
  • Technique
  • Technology
  • Tips
  • tires
  • training
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Partners

Recent Posts

  • Getting Back on the Bike: Road Cycling Tips for Older Cyclists
  • Are BCAAs and EAAs Good for Cycling?
  • How to Fix Numb Toes When Cycling
  • How to Find and Vet a Bike Club
  • Celebrate Pearl Izumi with Big Savings in the Memorial Day Sale

Categories

  • Accessories
  • Bike fit
  • Bikes
  • Blogging
  • Books
  • clubs
  • Cold weather
  • Community
  • Commuting
  • Components
  • crash
  • cycling
  • Equipment
  • Favorite rides
  • fitness
  • food
  • guest post
  • Heat
  • Injury
  • logs
  • Maintenance
  • Mental
  • Nutrition
  • Odds 'n ends
  • People
  • Poll
  • Racing
  • Records & stats
  • Review
  • Rides
  • running
  • Safety
  • soreness
  • Specialized
  • Technique
  • Technology
  • Tips
  • tires
  • training
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized

Archives

  • May 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • March 2022
  • October 2020
  • November 2018
  • May 2018
  • September 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • January 2016
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008

Copyright © 2026 · Modern Studio Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Go to mobile version
%d