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Monday 26 August 2013

REVIEW London Bikes Shops: Sargent & Co

Rob Sargent: A genius for steel
Bikes shops.
When I was growing up in a tiny village, there was no bike shop but the son of a family we knew 'who could mend a puncture'. Dad didn't have a clue.
Now I live in London in 2013, and after a recent trip to San Francisco and America's 'most cycling city' Portland, Oregon, you better believe it: we Londoners have it good.
In bike shop terms London is a Shangri La, despite the amazing world of the web and the fact that a big box web 'tailer like Chain Reaction can stock hundreds of thousands of parts that even the largest shop could never hope to stock.

But the fact is that bikes are awkward in the mail and there are numerous problems that can be quickly solved by a decent mechanic. Bike shops are blossoming. They are not being killed off by the web. In fact one I know (Micycle, Islington) told me they too order bits and bobs online, when they need one widget and not a hundred, subtly subverting the traditional distributor/wholesale model. I'm sure they're not alone.


One of my favourite all time stores in London is Sargent and Co. in Finsbury Park, founded by Rob Sargent. I pass it daily and keep an eye on his ever-changing window feast of old steel beauties. 

Currently he has a poster in the window. It reads: "You can't buy happiness, but you can buy a bike and that's pretty close." There's also a cheeky sign that says 'No Mountain bikes or 'hybrids''.
Premises at 84 Mountgrove Rd, N5 2LT
So you can see straightaway that Rob has done what you have to do to succeed: focus on one area and do it really well, in this case steel frames and bikes that modern bike shops have almost forgotten how to service. He knows them inside out and has two halves to his business, selling retro-magic bikes and frames and builds, and of course servicing and fixing God Knows What old stuff coming in the door, the 'rescued from the shed but needs a bit of attention' commuter market.
Rob replaced my head set and allowed me to watch

Rob's magnificent cat Cassius sleeps in the window, and when I popped in to get a headset replaced on my Coppi (I had made an appointment on this occasion), it was as relaxed as can possibly be. I set off to buy some coffee for both of us from the Retro Vintage Cafe two doors down, and then we just chatted while Rob expertly did a big job requiring specialist tools. He charged me just £40, and what to charge seemed almost like an afterthought. What a fantastic guy.

Rob Sargent wins my vote for 'favourite bike shop in 2013', partly for defying 'market economics' and riding a different and beautiful wave that's seen a whole sub-culture of low cost, beautiful bikes being restored, re-cycled, re-worked and re-built.

I salute that: it is personal and intimate and friendly in a way that biking culture should be. I am not against the big chains like Evans, who can service other needs (and open very long hours), but they are headed in an opposite direction, getting bigger and bigger, bought out last year by private equity and thus owned and run now by non-cycling bean counters. It is great thing that the formerly humble world of the cycling shop could have matured and stratified to this degree as an entire business sector, but my vote goes to Rob Sargent nonetheless - and of course I love steel road bikes so I am partly expressing my own preferences.

Sunday 25 August 2013

UPDATE: Enigma Ethos Custom Build, £3,000

There have been teething problems with the Enigma Ethos
In my original blog (May 12, 2013) I explained how I'd spent £3,000 acquiring the ultimate commuter/light tourer: a hand-made, custom build, Reynolds 853 from Sussex, England-based titanium and steel specialists Enigma.

Four months in and I've had a few teething problems.

The front brake caliper seemed to be slightly uphappy from an early stage, but only when I noticed strings of fine cotton pealing off the outside wall of the Schwalbe Ultremo DD Double Defense 700x25cc front tyre (not a cheap tyre!), did I realise that the nearside brake block had somehow worked its way above the rim and was lightly scoring the tyre every time I braked.

I was worried, because on inspection I realised there was no more vertical allowance in the caliper arm, and it was not a question of playing with the centering screw or anything like that. In truth, I think this demonstrates that you can't happily get a regular caliper over a 'normal' set of mudguards (in this case SKS narrow/road).

In fairness to Enigma, I think they'd tried desperately hard to keep me all-in with the Shimano 105 groupset, including the regular calipers. Plus, Mark Reilly their meister-frame builder offered to 'tweak the crown' if I could get the bike back to them for a couple of days. That's a big shipping bill or £50+ of diesel and hours of driving so I decided instead to order 57mm drop calipers (colloquially called 'long-drop' calipers).This is the obvious solution and should perhaps have been applied at the build stage.

I replaced the front caliper yesterday and have now ordered a matching back one, not wanting to be with an unmatched pair of brakes. Problem solved - except that to stay with Shimano means going down a groupset to Tiagra, where each caliper weighs 20g more and has a less slick barrel adjuster.

Yesterday, I was talking to Condor owner Grant Young (Grey's Inn Road, London), and he explained that every single time they meet with Campagnolo they ask them to make a long drop brake for the many, many riders who want a mudguard to slip underneath and the clearance for up to 700x28mm tyres (the perfect winter commuting tyre I'd suggest). But they don't.

So Condor commissioned its own brakes and they come in polished silver or black at £60, sold only as pairs (called Pioggio, there's also a lesser pair). Grant claims they are the equal of Shimano 105, but I decided to stick with Tiagra having already taken delivery of the front caliper. 

Another solution is to choose different mudguards - not the Crud RoadRacer 2s that every roadie is now fitting here in the UK, but I'm thinking something more durable for this sort of bike, such as Portland Design Works's aluminium guards (called 'Full Metal Fenders @$120 a pair, see: https://www.ridepdw.com/goods/fenders/full-metal-fenders), which come with special hardware to go around calipers. And they look amazing. Watch this space - I might try these as an experiment.

The next issue is replacement of the now-damaged front tyre, and probably the rear at the same time. But I've examined the front and it's OK for commuting duties until October and then I'll put on something wintry.

The final issue concerns sizing. From day one I felt it slightly large.

I took the bike with me to Sheffield and a Retul bike fit with Chris Last at Planet X (for a TT bike which I subsequently purchased, to be the subject of another blog). He offered to give me a quick check on the Enigma and noted that he'd knock a couple of cms off the stem and bring the saddle back and up, to get the right angles at the knee. Caveat: he was talking road race set-up, whereas this is a utility bike, so we agreed that I should just do what I wanted.

I would emphasize here that Enigma didn't do anything wrong. There are different sizing philosophies and none of them are exactly right. I'd tried to mimic the upright posture of the Focus cross bike, but translating this over into the road-geometry of the Enigma had exaggerated the length of the top tube. 

In the midst of all of this I had surgery for a mild squint which I'd had from birth, which has subtly changed everything and made me more comfortable with a larger saddle-stem vertical drop.

So I am still sorting these elements out. I've got a big spacer above the stem on a steerer tube that I'll need to trim, and am toying with slamming it even lower. Meanwhile, Grant at Condor generously lent me a 100mm stem (versus the 110mm stem fitted by Enigma), so I can mail Enigma the original, colour-matched grey stem, for them to colour match a 100mm replacement.

Costs so far: Set of Tiagra brake calipers from Fawkes in Oldham (via web): £43.68. New stem will cost c£45 (colour matched to frame).

The Reynolds 853 frame: it is fantastic. You should really try to ride one. As such I am not having 'second thoughts' about the bike, although occasionally I miss the cowboy potential of the cross bike, which I abused mercilessly. The Enigma is too nice for that but it makes me feel older than I feel. No wheelies.

UPDATE: Can a vegan diet make you faster as a cyclist?

Bombay Wrap w/ home made plum chutney 25 Aug 13
I said I'd report back on my vegan experiment which began on January 1st, 2013.

I maintained a strict vegan diet for one month, before ending the experiment.

You might think that I then splurged on bacon butties and sausage meat, but I didn't.

I waited to see what would happen and my position six months later is very similar to Brett's (www.zentriathlon.com - a popular podcast series from this likable guy in Texas).

He recently had an interesting conversation with Rich Roll, another ultra guy who's made veganism the basis of a significant business. But Brett just said this: that he can go for days and weeks as a vegan without even consciously trying to, but it's not a strict commitment for him, so much as a life style choice that can bend in the breeze on the occasions when kale smoothies and chick peas are thin on the ground.

In my original blog, I noted that pro-cyclist Dave Zabriskie had reported his fastest season when he threw out most of the meat in his diet, going pesca-vegan - no dairy but a couple of weekly portions of salmon to get those omega fats.

I recently received a press release about a massive, long-term health and mortality piece of research conducted over twenty years over 20,000 subjects, and the winning group for sheer longevity were the pesca-vegans.

If I am faced with various non-vegan alternatives when (say) on a hearty press trip with motoring journalists who wouldn't know the difference between lettuce and spinach, I'll get the fish or the white meat or occasionally a steak - a piece of high quality red meat is better than plumping for a massive plate of fries washed down with beer, to say that you're still vegan.

So that's my position. Overall and no cheating or lying, I'm about 70% plant-based, the rest comprising dairy (I really like a drop of milk in my coffee, for example), fish, and maybe 2 or 3x a month a small amount of meat. I'm heavily indebted to my wife Stephanie, originally from the West Kooteneys, British Columbia, Canada, without whom I think I'd still be in the land of the sausage roll. She just made the Bombay Wrap displayed above. Whole wheat pita; curried hummous; carrots; purple cabbage; coriander; red peppers and home made plum chutney. Fantastic.

The biggest standoput result of my vegan experiment was that I lost weight and felt lean quite quickly. I was already at a racing weight, the experiment beginning in the middle of the Cross season, but by the end I was down to 68kgs and flying (warning: unless you are that mythical beast, a GC contender, do not make the mistake of losing too much weight - having said that half the guys in my club have stomach weight they should NOT be carrying, even if they are still faster than I am on the road). During the experiment I was eating a great deal, so it never felt like a diet. I never even set out to lose weight and in fact didn't need to. It just happened. A by-product of cycling a lot and cutting out meat and dairy.


Saturday 17 August 2013

REVIEW: Rapha City Trousers, RRP£150 (reduced to £100 at time of review)


To Londoners, Rapha needs no introduction. Increasingly that's the case in other cycling meccas from Melbourne to Portland. I personally inspected Rapha's clothing range in River City Cycles, Portland, Oregon, just last week. The only brand that seems to come close for attention to detail and, ahem, pricing, is San Francisco-based Mission Workshop, who focus on clothing and bags.

Rapha is streets ahead of Mission Workshop and has a much larger global brand presence.

It helps that Rapha now appear prominently on Team Sky's kit, because it enforces the sense that no detail is too small to ignore. I know this from experience because Rapha recently mended the shoulder of my five-year-old soft shell jacket, for free (for goodness sakes!). I can't think of any luxury brand anywhere that would honour product back-up for wear and tear so long after purchase. Raise a glass to Rapha and stop quibbling about price. You always, always, get what you pay for and double that for cycling apparel.

But putting one over on gigantic Adidas to win the Sky deal in 2012 doesn't mean that Rapha gets everything right first time, however.

I think these trousers fall into that category.

They are described as 'stylish city riding trousers with clever functionality.' The functionality is beyond dispute. In particular, I noted the durable weight that hit the mat when they arrived in the mail. They exude high quality. The Schoeller fabric is a classic, while the all-important Cordura seat panel will, I predict, outlast conventional cotton chinos by three or four times.

Laura Bowers, who masterminds the UK marketing arm of Rapha, explained to me at length how a cotton fibre unravels under pressure of riding and eventually disintegrates, while Cordura is all but indestructable. She is right. A really thick, £99 pair of Brooks Brothers chinos suddenly developed wear holes on top of my sit bones after less thna one year's commuting. That was a real shock.

Other details such as the one belt loop in a different colour, and hi-viz lining when you roll up a leg, are nice touches.

But my beef with these trousers is that the cut is wrong for the mostly professional, middle class audience who would consider spinning £150 on a pair of commuting trousers. The seat is perfection, but the waist gapes a bit at the back as you ride and sits very low, hipster style, making the gripper band seem superflous. Worse, the leg is cut very slim, so much so that it felt as if I'd returned to high school 'drain-pipe' jeans. Particularly around my thighs, which fully fill the leg to bursting.

I was down in London today and there were a bunch of twenty-something dudes shooting a film. Thin trousers, bare ankles, converse sneakers and plaid shirts. Rapha's city trousers are part of that look, but they are not part of a sensible wardrobe that I would ride to work in and then wear all day behind a desk.

Funny thing is, last Monday I visited the Rapha Cycle Club in the Cow Hollow district of San Francisco, and someone there said that Rapha would be introducing a 'sprinter's cut' version later this year, with a wider leg.

I hope so - but please note here that you don't need to be Sir Chris Hoy to need the more generous cut.

I also notice that Rapha has recently reduced all sizes and colours of this product (beige and navy) to £100 from £150, (www.rapha.cc), suggesting that on this occasion they did get the pricing a bit wrong. It's certainly steep when, as I mentioned earlier, you can buy a luxuriously thick pair of Brooks Brothers chinos for £99.

But the other comparison I'd use is more telling still. There's another UK brand called Rohan, who years ago started applying synthetic tech to conventional jeans, with a travel/adventure/expedition audience in mind. In recent years they've moved into the 'chinos' market, and I've recently been sampling a pair. While not aimed at cyclists, the cut is much better than Rapha's and Rapha could do worse than to buy a pair and copy them.

In summary, these are potentially great trousers that aren't quite there yet, except for a niche audience of whippety thin Shoreditchers. A couple more colours wouldn't hurt either - the beige is very pale and will pick up chain oil stains faster than a backstreet mechanic. Oh, and keep the price below £100, because the Rohans I mentioned cost £57 (reduced to £37 in a sale...).

Richard Lofthouse

Richard Lofthouse