you can also turn left at the bottom of russel hill and do repeats on poplar/russel hill, it's a pretty tough hill & fun to go back down

i did that a few times yesterday and i'm in pain today

i think i'm going to try the donut once it gets a little warmer, we can always try it together and if we get droped it's not a big deal, just finnish it anyways, since we're fairly both close to the start point

Is there a way to properly install a cog and lockring without a chainwhip and a lockring tool? Or should i just bring to a shop? How much do they charge for this?

I got some hills in today, and a bit of a loop after. There are a lot of good ones in the humber valley! Street names that end in "view" or "heights" or "crest" tend to be good ones, and they tend to be low traffic fancy neighbourhoods too.

This is the route I did today

If they charge you more than Free-99, then it's a scam.

you can rotafix to get the cog on but you'd need some kind of tool for the lockring (I've seen people use needlenose pliers but I wouldn't). It's worth buying a lockring tool IMO

EDIT: You can borrow mine if you're downtown tomorrow

Thanks for the offer, but i think i might also need to get a link off the chain, so i might as well go to a shop i guess...and kergin, wut?

I'm sayin' they shouldn't charge a dime for what amounts to 2 seconds of work.

I asked urbane cyclist and they said $10. Not bad i guess. However when i get there i might buy the lockring/chainwhip combo for $55.

Have you guys heard about the "Toronto Paris-Roubaix"?

http://labicisquadra.com/hellofthenorth.html
http://bicyclespecialties.blogspot.c...challenge.html

Seems great/painful. Me and two other guys would like to go but lack a car. Anybody interested?

You could go to Bike Pirates, its free to use, they have the tools there and you can do it yourself.

This is bad-ass. I would chip in for gas.

Agreed, sounds like a fun ride - that's a have-daughter weekend for me though, and there's no way I'd take my Rob Roy fixed on that, and my road bike probably isn't upto much offroady/trail riding.

Musselman Lake is nice, in fact, it's really beautiful there. The original ride upto Sutton sounded like fun, too - I've been upto Sutton/Jackson's Point and back before, but that was on paved roads - still a nice run and pretty scenery in the summer/sunny months.

If your name is kergin, we charge $50

If you go to have a lazy day ride then I guess it could be fun. It is affectionately called "Hell of the North" for a reason. I have seen some pretty talented riders get totally crushed in previous years versions of this event. If you are looking for fun...look elsewhere. If you are looking for a very challenging ride/race where at the end everyone is saying to each other " that was the most brutal race I have ever done" than this is the ride for you.

Firstly if you take your bike to a shop...never expect anything to be free. If you are a regular customer and the shop is relatively quiet then maybe a freebie is a reasonable expectation. And if you can take the wheel off a bike, remove cog and lockring, grease said lockring and cog, tighten lockring and cog and then put the wheel back on the bike with proper chain tension in 2 seconds, you sir are the fastest bike mechanic in the known universe.

Oh i'm not expecting free service, $10 i guess is reasonable. The only thing i need is to put a cog and lockring on the hub, i bought a new wheelset so there is nothing to remove, plus i can install the wheel myself later. And looks like only soma makes black cogs larger than 16t, but the only place i found them is from an online shop that charges $20US to ship it...it's an all black deepv and i wanted a black cog to go along with it, i guess not.

EAI

lots of places in toronto carry them, nice cogs

Why do you need a soma cog? Dura ace are black as well.

dura ace only go up to 16t

Checked urbane and they are selling them for $75 :eek:

Yeah 16t is their largest. I actually have a cheap black 16t cog, forgot the brand, but i have a 48 chainring and i want more than 1 skid patch. Actually if anyone wants it for free let me know, don't think i'll use it.

That's the superstar cog, which is silver anyways. The deluxe one is black and a lot cheaper.

Very nice thanks for the info, i guess i'll take one of these. So what is a good shop to get fixed maintenance? I don't want to go to some LBS where the mechanics don't deal with fixed bikes often and go home and strip the hub or something.

There`s nothing to maintain really. I`d go to Urbane if I needed something, but really there`s not much work to be done on a fixed, and certainly nothing that isn`t easy to learn yourself.

Get yourself a chain breaker, some tire levers, a lockring tool, a 15mm wrench and a set of allen keys and you can tackle just about anything that`s likely to come up

hahahaha fun stuff, got the frame mount for the Go Pro... here's the in between the cranks view hanging below the BB on the down tube. The camera is maybe .5 inch behind the forward edge of the crank ring. The video angle makes for a nice sensation of speed, exactly unlike the the boring, sooo slow helmet view. New angles to follow in the days to come.

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/6817/picture2hti.png

That's awesome, post some videos.