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Large Scale Shops, Small Scale Shops

08.30.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 2 Comments

Guest poster Don Blount wonders which one you prefer?

On a recent Sunday I took my bike to a local store of Performance Bike, the national bicycle company, for a derailleur adjustment.

It is one of two bike shops in my area that I use.

The other, the Bicycle Café, is a small mom and pop shop in nearby Lodi, Calif. I actually prefer this shop, although I use Performance nearly as much.

It’s the difference between a large scale national brand and a small scale local retailer.

It is fair to say Performance serves a general market. The staff there is friendly and helpful. The bike mechanics regularly share knowledge and since my bike is a Performance-brand Scattante CFR Comp I get priority when I come in. (Free adjustments for life!)

The products I purchase are warrantied so that if I do not like them or they do not perform as advertised, they are returnable – no questions asked.

But the staff turns over quickly and sometimes I have to hunt to find a familiar face.

The three-year-old Bicycle Café serves a more specialized market. When I first walked in, the bikes there had names that were totally foreign to me like Campagnolo, Orbea, Time and Guru. That is not too surprising because I was still relatively new to biking.

But this is a place where they make you feel at home. I know the owners, met their kids and see them at a variety of cycling-related functions.

The staff, which has also had some turnover, is helpful and friendly and has never let me know how little I know about biking and how much they do. They too aid me in my search for products and knowledge. Service is impeccable including pickup and drop off of my bike for service. They set up group rides and are actively involved in the cycling community. And the owner is knowledgeable, an encyclopedia of biking information and skills – he builds frames among other things. And I trust him without question when it comes to handling my bike. And I can go there and hang out to talk biking just for the sake of talking about biking.

One of the few things that can be offsetting here is price. Some of their prices are out of my price range. But there aren’t many places I can go where they would allow me to hold a $7,000 bike frame. And it is located a bit out of my usual circle of travel, so it has to be a destination trip.

But I enjoy going to the Bicycle Café when I can, what I thought was a chichi place is quite warm and comfortable. Performance can’t be the same thing — too big, too much volume. But I am still tied to both places by service and bikes. And I will continue to use both as it works for me.

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Categories // Equipment, guest post Tags // bike shop, Blount, guest post

Discontinued Products

08.09.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 1 Comment

I wanted to replace my worn out Vredestein Fortezza SE tire with another exactly like it. It had exhibited excellent ride and wear characteristics during the time I owned it, but eventually it wore out — after well over 3,000 miles — and it was time to retire it.

I had bought it at a Performance store in town, so I headed over there again. But in the aisle with the tires, no Fortezza SE to be found. Performance doesn’t stock them anymore. They’ve got a higher-end Vredestein tire, the TriComp Road, at twice the price of the Fortezza SE. Okay, certainly I could find one somewhere else.

I hit the Vredestein Tire website, and navigated my way past lots of contemporary music and nifty videos to their tire listing. Sure enough, there was the TriComp — but no Fortezza SE. The TriComp looks to be a great tire, with an advertised excellent grip in both wet and dry weather, and very good puncture resistance. But I wondered what had happened to my Fortezza SE.

I gave up, and put a Continental Gatorskin on the back of my bike. I still have a Fortezza SE on the front, and it should be good for another thousand miles or two.

But have you ever noticed that whenever you find a great product, it gets dropped from the company’s product line? Runners know this. When I used to run, I found a great pair of shoes that cushioned my feet and provided excellent support at the same time. I ran in them until the black outer sole wore through. When I went to get a replacement, the line had been discontinued.

The replacement product is always touted as being an improvement, and it just might be.  But very often, it doesn’t work exactly like the item it replaced. Some runners used to buy two or more pair of a favorite shoe, knowing the model would be discontinued, and wanting to make sure they would still be able to enjoy it well into the future.

Or golf clubs. My wife started building up a collection of Ping hybrid clubs several years ago, when we were still regular players. She had two, but when she looked for two others of different lofts to round out her set, she found out that Ping had dropped the G5 line, and added a G10 or something. I was able to find the two additional G5s she needed, but I had to go on EBay to do it, and battle through a couple of different auctions, losing twice, before I was able to land the coveted clubs. What I thought was funny about that was that the G5 had replaced the G3 line just a few years before.

(“What’s the difference between the G5 and the G3?”  “Two.”)

Obviously, some of that goes on in the biking industry too. Bikes, of course, are always changing. My bike is a 2008 Specialized Allez Elite Compact, which means it came with upgraded drive train components — Tiagra front and 105 rear — over the base Allez. The current Allez is offered in six different versions, including an Elite Compact. But the current Elite Compact is different from mine. It has a 10-speed cassette instead of my nine — improvement. Both front and rear are Tiagra — slight downgrade. It also has alloy chainstays and seatpost — mine are carbon fiber. The wheels are probably better than mine. All in all, my four-year-old Allez is a good match for what’s rolling off the Specialized line now.

I know one constant in life is change. But it’s still frustrating when change makes you rethink your cycling situation and moves you in a (slightly) different direction.

Have you ever been flummoxed by the discontinuation of a cycling product you really, really liked?

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Categories // Equipment Tags // Allez, Equipment

Getting My Gear Together

06.14.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 4 Comments

Guest poster Don Blount deals with an issue that affects many of us from time to time…

I usually keep my biking gear in the same places.

Bike in garage.

Seasonal clothes in a closet and out of season items in a storage bench.

Helmet and a few other items such as my Garmin, spare tube and C02 cartridge, plastic bag for my phone, sunglasses and a pouch with key and money on the shelf of a bookcase in my home office. (I use the space that is available and that my wife does not object to me using.)

Of course this makes riding easy. Either the night before a ride I gather what I need and place them in an easily accessible place, such as my kitchen, or the day of a ride I can get what I need quickly and head out the door.

No rummaging, no searching, all aggravation free.

That is except when my system gets changed.

My mother-in-law was coming to visit for a week and would be staying in the home office, which has a day bed. So I moved my gear and other items out of that room and into my bedroom. It made sense, this way I would not need to go into my office during her stay.

And then the next morning I readied for a ride. Kitted up, prepared the bike and then went looking for the rest of my gear – sunglasses, a pouch with key and money, baggie for phone, baggie with spare tube and C02. And could not find them.

Tick, tick, tick. If I did not get out by a certain time I would miss my morning exercise window. After all, this was a workday and I could not just ride later.

I looked all over the bedroom as I was certain I had placed them in there. My wife looked as well and she could not find them. She even offered to go back into the home office and look to see if I had left them there. But we opted not to do that since her mother was still asleep.

Five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Tick, tick, tick, slam.

The window had closed.

So I put my bike away.

I put away my helmet and gloves.

And I unkitted, if that is a word, and then I glanced beneath my wife’s dresser and saw a box that I had moved there the night before. Atop but toward the back of the box were the things I had been looking for. I thought for sure I had looked there. My wife looked there too. They were about two feet from the bed but you had to get down on your hands and knees to see them there. I looked under the bed, I looked under a bench but I had not gotten down to look on top and toward the back of the box.

Oh well.

Now, all of my riding gear is together in a corner of my bedroom. So the next time I plan to ride, I will be able to gather it all, without rummaging or searching and all aggravation free.

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Categories // Equipment, guest post, Odds 'n ends Tags // clothing, helmets, shoes

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