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Comparing Bikes

03.21.2014 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

A funny thing happened as I was poking around in my blog analytics. I discovered that the readers of this blog really like bikes. Yeah, amazing, isn’t it? Wait a sec — you’ll see just what I’m getting at.

I can take a look at search terms used to find items on this blog, or search terms that will get people to this blog — whether they want to be here or not And over the last year, the item that keeps coming up as the most searched-for term is: bike comparison.

Back in 2011 I did a blog post on a new bike comparison website. There seemed to be enough interest that I put the site’s link on my home page in the “blogroll.” It keeps drawing the traffic.So much so, that when people search for anything remotely resembling “bike comparison,” they get Bike Noob as one of their returns.

Among most popular search terms to get to this blog are: bike comparison, bicycle comparison, compare bikes, compare bicycles, bike comparison site, bike comparison website, compare road bikes, bike comparison tool, mountain bike comparison tool, bike comparisons, bike compare, road bike comparison, bicycle comparison, bicycle comparison site, bike compare site, bicycle comparison sites — well, you get the idea. Over the past year, these terms have been searched from 32 times (bicycle comparison sites) to 667 times (bike comparison). People are interested in bikes.

Screen Shot 2014-03-21 at 9.52.08 PM

Discovering this most searched-for item led me back to the bike comparison tool site, and I’ve been entering various models of bikes, checking out their stats, seeing how they compare to each other. This could be dangerous. I’m pretty happy with the setup I have now, and the last thing I need to be doing is lusting after a new bike. But, like most folks out there, I just can’t resist.

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Categories // Bikes, Blogging Tags // Bikes

Garage Flats

03.19.2014 by Ray Niekamp // 1 Comment

Boy, I was excited to get out for a rare weekday afternoon ride! I hadn’t been on the bike in several days, and my body was craving for some fresh air and exercise. 

I grabbed the bike and guided it between the garage wall and my car, out to the driveway where I was going to top off the tires with air. But something didn’t quite feel right.

I looked down at the rear tire. It was flat.

That was really odd, because the last time I had been out for a ride, everything was fine. I had no inkling that the tire had been punctured, or even that it was lower at the end of the ride than it was at the start. But there it was.

I took the wheel off the bike, and took it and my flat-fixing gear into the kitchen.

Finding the leak was a problem.  I finally had to submerge the tube in the kitchen sink to discover the telltale trail of bubbles that indicated a tiny hole in the tube.

I patched the tube and got it back on the bike. My afternoon ride had to be cut short — to around only 12 miles. Better than nothing, I suppose.

But if it hadn’t been for the “garage flat,” I could have gotten in something closer to a full hour.

I’m pretty sure the garage didn’t cause the flat. Something punched the tiny hole in the tube out there — on the road. But it was in the chilly air in the garage that the tire deflated, so the garage gets the blame.

I’m hoping that now that spring is just about here, garage flats will disappear until the cold weather returns.

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Categories // tires Tags // flat tire

Thinking About Hills

03.16.2014 by Ray Niekamp // 6 Comments

Anyone who has read Bike Noob knows I’m not much of a hill climber. In fact, if anything, my hill-climbing ability has decreased in the past couple of years — I’m getting older, you know. Yeah, that’s it. (All right — I still haven’t managed to get my weight down to that level where hills are doable — but I think I’ll stick with the age angle.)

But it’s spring, believe it or not (It must be — we’re under our second wind advisory in a week! It was tough out there today!), and as we point toward our nice weather riding (It will come again, I promise), a lot of us will add hills to our training regimens.

Yes, even I climb hills in training. But the hills I climb close to home aren’t anything like the really challenging hills we’ll face on some of our targeted rides.

One that I think I’ll try to handle — maybe in the fall, after I’ve had lots of time to train for it — is Fulton Ranch Road. It’s not too far from Austin, and has been part of the 100-mile version of the Livestrong Ride here. It’s got a grade that I think is just within my abilities, but the problem is, it’s a lot longer than most of the hills around here. To whet your appetite for some warm-weather climbing, here’s a YouTube video of the hill.

But Fulton Ranch Road pales in comparison to the real monster. That’s the Westernport Wall in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. Its 31 percent grade — that’s 31 percent! — is steep enough that the road is closed to motor traffic. But bikers are welcome to take a stab at it. And to make matters worse, the Wall is only part of the story. It comes in the middle of a triathlon! If you can get to the top of the Wall without clipping out and walking, you get a brick with your name incribed added to the rough and uneven surface of the road.

Makes my .4-mile jaunt up Convict Hill look like a walk in the park. Maybe by the end of summer, it will be!

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Categories // training Tags // hills

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