Ok

T-Minus 3 weeks!

I unfortunately forgot to start recording the ride on my gps until we were already in the Humber area, as evidenced by the resulting map: https://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/117000

T-Minus 4 weeks.

Good ride today. Hopefully this week will be good. Can't wait to show off the new stallion

i'd be into that. i think pyze said he was up for a ride as well. what say you?

i was thinking out to the spit and back or somesuch.

Nice.. I'll have to use you for some advice as I'll be passing through there before and/or after the SSWCs in August.

t-minus 3 weeks for the start of racing for me as well. yikes! The April races are gonna be awfully messy methinks!

are these the mid-week road crits you were talking about a while ago?

I have to be back at the house for 12:30, meet in a central area and go form there works for me. What time say you?

i dunno, anywhere from 9-10 is fine. what time does i deal open?

I'm in. someone say where and when.

I can be there for 9-9:15. Always go to moonbeam if ideal isn't open.

sounds good to me. 9 at ideal (if it isn't open go to moonbeam), ride out the spit or something, home for lunch sounds like a plan.

t minus 5 months (hey, i wanted to play along!)

(in order)













(Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Bergen, Venice)
plus a cross canada tour, new york, chicago, and hopefully the uk before october.

Ok. see you there.

Well, those start around the beginning of May. The first race is the Uxbridge Icebreaker.

me = jealous. Copenhagen is one of the nicest places I've ever been, especially as a cyclist. I lived in Stockholm for 3 months as well. Great cities.

edit: to join in the club.. I'm doing Vancouver in June, St. John's in July and San Fransico / Napa in August.

I've never ordered from them, but my guess would be shipping wheels would be pretty expensive. I would have recommended CavernMech as the wheel builder to go to, but he closed down his shop. But local might be best. That way if there are issues your roommate can go to see the builder.

If you want to check out a good wheelbuilder... www.wheelbuilder.com
One of my friends has ordered off that site with good results - they know how to build wheels, prices are very, very reasonable and customer service is amazing or so i've heard.

I'll ask about the shipping -

I'd love to go with a local builder, or even build them myself for sure. I had some wheels built at cavern this summer which rode great until the bike was stolen :-(

it seems that given speed and cost are the main concerns of my roommate (doesn't really care if it's the highest performing wheelset) some crap machine built internet wheels seem like the best option unfortunately. Unless I can find some cheap rims and hubs here in ottawa, or even toronto I suppose.

Formula + openpro is pretty affordable AND also happens to be quality/reliable.

To the peeps talking about riding to Niagara, I might be down for that as well. Rob's plan of 'whenever average highs start hitting 20-25' sounds good, as long as it's not a weekend I have a race.

email sent to these guys. I didn't see any prices or anything on the site but i'll keep my fingers crossed. What wheels did your friend get? It seems like they're geared more towards building more high end racing wheels.

Internet wheels are a crap-shoot, IMHO. I ordered some Mike Garcia Aerohead/SpeedCific wheels, and they are rife with issues: tire bead doesn't hook easily and the rear came out of true the first time I used it. I guess the point is that you can't always trust the internets. Next time, I'm definitely gonna build my own or have them done locally. Suggestion: find a good shop in Ottawa and have your wheels built there. If you're concerned about paying full retail at the shop, only order the hubs online. If the rim isn't a perfect extrusion, you'll have no end of headaches with constant truing/tension-balancing, which is a really good reason to avoid online rims.

Yeah, I'm gonna run around as well and talk to my favorite LBS and maybe a few others to see if I can get any deals that'll bring the price of building local down a bit.

I'd like to avoid buying online and building them myself would be fun. If I keep doing builds for friends I'll have about 7 wheels to build by the time april hits.

I've never been to sweden or norway, so i'm super excited for that

this will be my third trip to copenhagen and my second to venice

in norway i'm planning on attending a couple days of the hole in the sky festival
holeinthesky.no

among those playing are Carcass, Municipal Waste and Meshuggah!

I'm going to stick out like a sore thumb.



to get back to the bike talk
the ride in was pretty messy in a few spots today.

If you can learn to build them yourself you'll be way better off. That said, i don't build mine myself as I don't have those type of skills.

In that case it would probably be best to learn to build wheels. I took the first part of a two part workshop last week and lacing the wheels is pretty straightforward - I haven't moved on to tensioning / truing yet so we'll see how that goes this week. Even with lacing; I had a couple of screw ups in the class but laced a second wheel on my own this weekend and it was quick and easy so I get the impression that, like most things, it just gets easier and easier the more you do...

Thanks, Keith, for cutting those spokes for me this weekend! They worked out perfectly as far as I can tell...

I think i'm going to try and build the wheels myself. I built one earlier this year with the help of my LBS and the local co-op, but I could certainly use the practice. Especially when it comes to final tensioning and stressing of the wheels. Does anyone know of any good deals to be had on lower end track hubs (formula/surly) in toronto? I'm going to be in town for a weekend soon.

Also, are the mavic opensports really terrible? They seem like a good deal for a doublewalled eyeleted rim, but don't get talked about much on the boards.