it's a bird! it's a plane! it's . . .
 

me on my brand spanking new jamis coda

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

I was hoping for a pic of you screaming down the road wearing a big red cape. :D

Wooot !

Oh, btw, this thread is worthless without pics !!!!

Gratz :)

Steel is real. Good choice Tokolosh. Now post pics!

+1 Let's see the new ride!

Where's the picture???

Would tha be the $599. model or the $1,399. model? Pictures are nice but a link with pictures can be even better. A video of you screaming, downhill that is, would be terrific.

... do not forget the superman outfit, or a superman suit bodypaint and a speedo

:( it's a low-tech household, so no pictures in the personal sense. and no superman cape. who needs that when you've got your ansi-lime alert/hhcmf jacket courtesy of jeff and his project-management skills? but here's the manufacturer's page http://www.jamisbikes.com/bikes/06_coda.html. i did comparison-shop for most of the day yesterday in (counts on fingers) 7 other stores, but i couldn't find anything to compete with this one, and only one other store where i really liked the people and felt okay about getting into one of those long-term relationships. and yeah, it did cost me exactly $599 before the taxes.

i got it from ride-on, on main street. honourable mention goes to the bike doctor store on broadway, across from mec. they couldn't find me a bike, but if they'd happened to stock the kind of thing i was looking for they would have found it for me. they were so cool with me and everyone else who came into the store in my two hours there, i'm at least going to get my new commuter bag from them.

edit: anyone who can tell me how to pronounce 'jamis' (for rl bragging purposes) will have my gratitude.

JAM-iss

That bike is almost identical to my retired Bianchi Axis conversion. All it needs is fenders and to be converted to single-speed. :D

Wow!!

Yay tokolosh!!!! That's a puuurty bike :D Enjoy it!

Is that the color you have? (if it comes in other colors in the first place)

http://www.jamisbikes.com/bikes/images/06coda.jpg

there's a girly version that probably just has the colours reversed. but that's the one that i got.

what i should do if i'm going to post pics at all is show you people the thing i've been riding till now. that would speak louder than any words. the bike store kindly offered to give it sanctuary for the night, or i would have left it on the sidewalk for any passing masochist foolish enough to take it home.

Welcome to the Jamis group! Congrats on an excellent bike.

I may be wrong, but I"ve always pronuonced it JAME-is. the folks at my LBS pronounce it that way, too.

I think it's pronounced "ZhA-mee", but I'm just making that up. Personally, I'd just call it a Jammy and leave it at that. Let us know how it rides compared to your old rig!

I've always heard it called "Jay-miss". Congrats on getting the bike I should have bought when I bought my Giant ;).

and how do you guys pronounce linux?

cypress giant was one of the bikes i tested, jeff, and probably the one that i came closest to thinking about. i almost wanted to find something that could give me a nice agonising this-one-or-that-one dilemma, because i was just in that mood to expend hours of thought on biking. it seemed like a really nice bike, but i just didn't like the geometry of it. in terms of riding posture and centre of balance 'feel', the coda was actually the only one that gave me that 'ah, now i'm riding a bike' feeling. it's not that different from the one i've been using, in those respects, just more responsive and (yeah) a bit more harsh. and oh, the fact that when you put more leg into it, you get acceleration :)

only thing on my wish-list for it right now is disc brakes. i can wait.

Heh, the cypress is what I got. It's cushier but it's all junk. I've already replaced the seatpost and seat, and the fork is pretty cheap. The coda was a LOT faster, after about a month of commuting I knew for sure I shoulda gotten that instead :rolleyes:.

Ah well, hindsight. Enjoy yours ;), and have no regrets :D.

Tokolosh, the Jamis is harsher? It's a steel frame so it should be smoother unless your old bike had a suspension. As for the disc brakes, while you wait to upgrade, I suggest replacing the brake pads w/ Koolstops. I have Koolstop salmons and they work great in the rain and when it's dry. And if you need to smooth out the ride, a suspension seat post and a comfy women's saddle might be in order.

well, my old bike probably had a couple of reasons for being softer. first one is that i probably never got it to go fast enough for a bump to hurt. second is the huge fat knobby tires, third is the fact that i was never that vigilant about getting air into them. the whole thing was a lot like driving my old volvo: not completely gutless, but with a kind of stately delay effect in anything you want it to do. for the generic object it is, i guess it was pretty sturdy really.

i rode the coda home in the dark so i couldn't see any rough spots coming, and carrying enough backpack weight to make all the ones i hit really count. there is a bit of suspension in the seat of this one but maybe it needs breaking in? and maybe the saddle needs to be lowered and tilted forward a titch too so i can save myself by standing up a little on the rough spots. i get so sick of people dropping the saddle all the way down that i may have overcompensated there. it was um, making its presence felt. and those are some SKINNY tires! at this point i don't mind the harsh feeling though. see how it goes with a little more time.

funny about the cypress, jeff. that was the impression i got too, but i thought i was just being a silly eye-candy consumer because it's more of a comfort configuration and it just felt kind of twinkie. the area where i took it out had nothing but 40-degree slopes in either direction, so i did quite a lot of gear changing. first it wouldn't go into the biggest ring, and then the chain came off and jammed between the cog and the guide - twice. i put that down to riding it right off the floor without the mechanic fine-tuning it, but the coda didn't give me any of that kind of lip. there just didn't seem to be anything about it that was worth an extra $150. only thing i really liked about the giant was the brakes, and i suppose it was also quite a light bike. couldn't really tell because it didn't seem like the kind of geometry where you can stand on the pedals, but that could just have been me being used to the stance for my old bike. never really got to adjust to that because i had to keep getting off and messing around with the chain.

That's funny you say that Tokolosh because I was wondering if I was just crazy... but I can never seem to stand on the pedals. It just doesn't feel right when I try.

I haven't had any chain-coming-off issues, so that probably was just due to the mechanic not tuning it up. But the front index shifter definitely isn't the greatest... However I usually don't use the largest chainring so I tune it for the smaller two rings and just let it rub a tad on the rare occasions I'm in the largest ring.

And I don't think the cypress is significantly lighter than the coda... Mine certainly isn't any more :D.

The thing I liked about the cypress was that it rode so much softer. However now I've replaced the seat and seat post and the front fork has play in it, so I'm not exactly happy with that choice :rolleyes:.

You can try removing your seat post and looking at the bottom. The suspension seat posts usually have some sort of preload adjustment down there. However given that you're in the same price range as the cypress, I'd imagine your suspension seat post isn't going to be a whole lot better... which means you should toss it in favor of a sprung saddle (like the Brooks B72). When I put that seat on there I had to check if my tires were flat, that's how much better it was than the suspension seat post.

My original seat post just wore out, it got sloppy (like 1/4 inch front-rear play). When I took it apart I discovered that it's just a piece of polyurethane (or some similar material) being compressed by your weight. Which also explains why the ride changes so much when it gets cold out :rolleyes:.

BTW I'm curious when you say your "old bike" are you talking about the electric one? Is the coda a replacement for that one?

i think you're confusing me with someone else - i've never had an electric bike. 'old bike' would be the one i was using all last year. it's a faux-hybrid i bought from one of the sports-gear box stores. but the coda's a replacement for it, yeah. the deal i made with myself this time last year was that if i used that one regularly enough to say i commute by bike, then i could get myself a real one. and now i need it because it's the same old commute plus baseball season and my body has to hold up for a full year :D

i don't know what the explanation is for that can't-stand-on-pedals thing, but i had it with all the comfort/touring/commuter configurations that i tried out. i mean, you can stand up, but you just seem to get taller and move closer to the handlebars. something makes it so that you can't compensate for it by changing the angle of your torso. i mentioned it to the more open-minded and problem-solving bike sellers, but it seemed to make them go blank. just couldn't seem to get anybody to find me the right thing. in retrospect, i think i should have gone into every store and said 'i'm gonna buy that coda just up the road unless you can show me something to change my mind.' it might have put the people i talked to into a closer ballpark for what i was looking for.

Ok sorry my bad, dunno what I was thinking about the electric bike. Someone on here was commuting on one, but I don't know why I thought it was you.

Maybe it's that the comfort configurations have the handlebars closer to the seat (horizontally), for a more upright posture? Not really sure, but you're right... you stand up and you just seem taller and too close to the handlebars. It doesn't really help you be able to put on a lot of acceleration.

Heh I dunno, from what I can tell Jamis occupies a fairly unique niche, in between affordable and expensive and pretty decent quality for your money. I'm not sure you'd have been shown a lot of comparable options.

ditto on the Kookstops. They are great, rain and all. Much better than the stock brake pads.

My Coda came with a suspension seatpost, and I found the saddle to very comfortable. I eventually had to replace the saddle because it got a gash in it and the nasty gel stuff was leaking out, but the I was impressed by the saddle. My new one is a Terry Butterfly, same as I have on my road bike.

But then, I'm relatively light. Heavier folks might have a different take on the Coda seatpost setup.

i think it's longhorn. haven't heard from her for a while though.

that was my impression. but i mentioned that, and dropping the bars to about the same horizontal position i'm used to (just a little below the saddle) didn't help, i know. part of it was also that the bars were all wider than i'm used to on the ones i tried. you're reaching, but you still don't put as much weight on your hands and arms. those wider bars also made the steering feel sloppy. you have to make a larger movement to get the same effect because you're further from the actual rotation point.

the other thing i mentioned to one of them was that it just seems like the hip-to-foot angle is different. it seemed like your thrust has to go slightly forwards, and nothing in my hips or knees liked that. then when you're standing up, you're having to come forward from the saddle and stand over that point where the thrust part of the rotation happens. totally different balance scenario, and you can't let your own weight do some of the work for you. my quads and knees didn't like it at all :D i had them move the saddles forwards as far as they'd go, and it just changed the nature of the problem without really fixing anything. bah.

glad it's not just me.


worth a try though, and then i could come home and say i'd done my due process and really knew that i liked what i got. it would have been fun to find more bikes that i really liked too. that part was a bit disappointing. it was more like work than recreation trying them out.

velogirl, how strong are the coda wheels and tires? i've never had anything so skinny, so i can't help thinking they must be really fragile. even though i know it doesn't necessarily work like that. any input?