Road Cycling Essentials

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The Planet X winter bundle saved my bacon tonight on the way home from work absolutely appalling rain but my feet and hands were warm and dry. The quality of the kit for £20 is immense. I don't have a lot to compare it to but I paid more for lesser quality kit from sports direct when I first started commuting. My colleague who spent more just on a lesser pair of gloves was very impressed.

Each individual component of that bundle is worth £17 in its own right. The gloves are truly excellent I have to say - I switched to my deep winter gloves (Castelli Estremo) in October and truth be told they were too warm (even for me with my appalling circulation), and these Planet-X gloves fit the bill between fingerless and winter gloves perfectly. Well worth double that price.

The rest of the kit is just good quality stuff.
 
the jacket is not bad.. was very warm this morning tho! the weather is so random these days.. one day bang you've got 12c in the morning, then the next is 3c.. WAT.
 
All bikes currently out of action except the RSW with its 16" wheels and Sturmey Archer hub.

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I'm officially broken :(

But I did get 4 scalps :D
 
Got a puncture this morning in the works car park. No bother, I can change it at my desk.

Get the old tyre off, swap the innertube and start putting some air in. Can hear it coming back out as fast as its going in. Spend a few moments scratching my head before realising I'd put the old, punctured tube back in! Whoops.
 
Got a puncture this morning in the works car park. No bother, I can change it at my desk.

Get the old tyre off, swap the innertube and start putting some air in. Can hear it coming back out as fast as its going in. Spend a few moments scratching my head before realising I'd put the old, punctured tube back in! Whoops.

Heh, not done that one yet, but not the worst mistake you can make!

Following my night ride I had a slow puncture on my s/s front tube. I managed to explode 2 tubes by getting them trapped between the rim and tyre and then puncture another by not checking the tyre for the piece of debris that caused the initial puncture! FAIL
 
Got a puncture this morning in the works car park. No bother, I can change it at my desk.

Get the old tyre off, swap the innertube and start putting some air in. Can hear it coming back out as fast as its going in. Spend a few moments scratching my head before realising I'd put the old, punctured tube back in! Whoops.

It could be worse... A mate of mine got a puncture out on a ride, put his spare in and that immediately punctured, then put in his riding buddy's spare in and punctured that as well. Only then did he notice all the broken glass in the tyre, at which point he called his wife to drive up the big hill he was at the top of and take him home!
 
Worst mistake is the one I made last night.

Installed new hydraulic brakes but they were squishy and underpowered so I decided to bleed them. All went swimmingly until I went to plug the system and found I'd lost the lever master cylinder plug somewhere on the floor of my garage. I can't close the system.

To make matters worse I then discovered that I didn't need to bleed them, it turns out the reach adjustment for the levers also adjusts the pad seperation; all I should have done was move the levers back to their start position.

Despite searching my garage floor for an hour until midnight it's lost, but fortunately the good people at Upgrade bikes have sent me a replacement on the promise that I send them some Haribo in return.
 
the worst one I had was a blowout miles away from home(9miles) in heavy rain, wind and I left my headphone at home.. so I pushed my bike for 9 miles in rain during winter at 8pm.. with NO MUSIC.. best experience ever.

I keep on breaking the darn presta valve screw in bits when I need to re-inflate my tyres :(
 
I keep on breaking the darn presta valve screw in bits when I need to re-inflate my tyres :(

I find those bend quite nastily if I ever have cause to use a hand held pump. I've had them where the little valve inner wants to stay down and won't pop up to close the valve, and a couple where the whole valve inner unscrews out of the outer.

Pain in the arse, sometimes, really.
 
Received my £10 garmin mount this morning. For the price it's exceptional. Even has a screw underneath you can adjust the distance from the stem with.

Going to order 5 more one for an eventual N+1 and 4 more as xmas presents. :)
 
Received my £10 garmin mount this morning. For the price it's exceptional. Even has a screw underneath you can adjust the distance from the stem with.

Going to order 5 more one for an eventual N+1 and 4 more as xmas presents. :)

I got mine yesterday. It's almost exact copy of the KCNC one. It doesn't, to my eye, look as nice, but it's better in that the twist connector is plastic. The metal one on the KCNC has been known to damage the fitment on the back of some garmins.
 
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