get out. while you still can.

So Patty, was the lasagne nice?

So HDT, is the fox in the hole?

Tough ride today. Started out in freezing conditions in Maitland and finished with a 35km dash into a fargin gale. Went to Kooragang to do a local race only to find out it was a round of the Masters Cup today.

After brekky at Leo's it was into that goddamned headwind again. Slowed down to check on the welfare of a teary eyed girl who had missed her bus and was walking along the Pathetic Hwy in the middle of nowhere all by herself, and for a gal who picked a real bad day to have her "first ride in a long while". She looked tired from 1km back!! Never seen anyone with the tired wobbles so bad. She laid a kitten when I cruised up and sed gday, but stoicly opted to complete the last 5km of her ride without assistance. What a gal!

Sorry Kotter, was going to ring and wake you up but you would not have had fun on the ride to Maitland today. Was sheer hell. Sad thing is, I actually enjoyed it.

You pwned that tosser, Hitcho. Top work!

Noice. I've emailed mine to column 8 in the hopes of a bit of community spirit.
Nevertheless, check your PM's

the red squal only squarks in spring.

I'll need photographic evidence of the intercourse, of course

I can't believe that wasn't sensored

Now, where'd I put that beer?

I just found this old picture from 1993 of my ugly old Raleigh. It didn't stay this colour for very long

Man, I thought I was a millionaire when I added the Chorus cranks and Record seatpost to the 600 stuff.

Robbie again in the bunch sprint, he was flying again ! Boonen, pfffftttt !!

fox's coverage wasnt till 9 this morning.. ( golf.... WTF wants to watch golf on TV?? ) so ill have to wait till tonight

as much as i enjoy riding a TT effort, watching one on TV was a bit of a snooze.... bad luck to Rogers, close but oh so far.

Landis cant take a trick either, blown tubes, illegal positions, cracked bars. but of course its a conspiracy isnt it

As opposed to your stunningly attractive Giro helmet???

Thats fine, I was never gonna ride roughly 40km into a strong westerly, would have been fairly quick back though.

did ya fix it?

I'm more concerned by the incredibly tasteful wallpaper.

I only noticed the helmet coz i had to avert my eyes from the wallpaper before the damage became permanent!

Remind me not to post any pictures of me cycling in the 80's. Damn you Profile and Greg Lemond with your fluro yellow!

Quick change of topic. After watching Magnus Backstedt ride this year, I think my aversion to traditional road bikes in my size may be waning.

What's your preference? Option A or Option B? 7 degree slope vs 2 degree.

B.

Option B looks alright to me Thylo.

And old cycling photos are great. I only really started riding for reasons other than transport early
90's but a pink bike with fluro yellow tri-bars and a fluro yellow helmet was okay back then ... ...apparently...

Gotta be B

You're supposed to say 'A'

Well I like A Thylo.

I'd prolly get more aggressive with it tho and change the head and seat tube angles from 72 to 74 or 75, and shorten the seat stays to get a really tight little rear traingle. Fast and twitchy!

[Edit] and before you go thinking I'm mad shortening the seat stays, the bottom of the top tube would almost touch the top of the downtube on my size frame so they'd have to be shorter for me anyways

I'm hoping that's sarcasm, coz that sounds awful.

Tell ya a story. About 8 years ago I used to have a stunningly beautiful bike - A Schwinn Paramount Titanium. It was a gorgeous bike - candy crimson in the front and brushed Ti in the rear. The ride feel of that bike was really nice - like steel except better I got it for a song becasue I was doing some work for Schwinn Japan at the time and managed to do a contra deal.
However, it handled like poo. It had a 74.5 degree head angle and a 72.5 degree seat angle and short stays. I could never get comfortable on it. And I tried too. Put in well over 3000kms on it and just didn't like it. Felt like I was more 'on' the bike rather than 'in' the bike, and the faster you went the worse it got.

So I took a hiatus from the road until I decided to do my Tephra (The orange one in the gallery.) Did lots of homework about geomtery and fit, and went and got fitted up by Kennedy. He got me fitted and I took his suggestions about geometry, took what I thought was valid and discarded the rest and combined that with what I had learned from my independant research.

So what i ended up with is a bike like no other. 73 degree head, 71.5 degree seat. 425mm stays. 605 top tube. No other off-the-peg bike comes close, and it handles really nicely. The faster you go, the better it gets.

Now, for my next bike I'm taking what I've learned from that and modifying it slightly, as well as trying a few different things to see how that affects handling.

- Going from 73 degree head angle to 72.5
- Going from 48mm rake fork to 50mm
- Stays from 425 to 415
- Top tube from 605 to 595, stem from 120 to 130.

I think those changes will make for better slower speed handling without changing it's high speed characteristics. I'm also keen to see how this steering geometry compares to previous and how a slightly more rearward weight bias effects handling.

So basically, you'll never see me on anything with any angles approaching 74-75 degrees. Maybe a track bike if I ever built one, but never on the road.

Being 6ft 3in and 95kgs throws some factors into the mix that you just don't get when you're 5ft 10 and 70kg.

Or shorter

I vote for B