The naked xtracycle
I’m planning on doing a R200 this weekend, and, since the weather forecast calls for rain, I’ve installed a new pair of fenders on the bicycle. These fenders are fairly narrow (35mm) and my tires are fairly wide (27mm), so even after carefully installing them (my Trek 1000 is not as hilariously badly proportioned as modern carbon fiber bicycles, but it’s still not built for wide tires and fenders, so the front fender has this large hole carved into it to fit the front brake into; you’d think the Free Radical would have better dimensions, but, no, it comes from a mountain biking background and even though the rear wheel well is wide enough to fit a 28mm tire, it’s not long enough to fit that tire and a fender that comes down to the fender mount at the front of the well. So the rear fender is zip-tied to the upper member of the bridge, right under the Mavic cantilever brake post adjuster that I’ve reworked into a sidepull brake mount) I wanted to take the bicycle out for a short loop to satisfy myself that the fenders wouldn’t immediately fall apart and hurl themselves into my wheels at speed.
So I took the saddlebags and their mounting rails off and went out for a short urban loop of about 10 miles. Oddly enough, when you take 20 pounds off the bicycle (the Trek as pictured weighs just under 30 pounds, as compared to 50 pounds for the fully loaded with saddlebags, lock, toolkit, and purse with camera) the thing becomes noticeably faster; I averaged 16.6mph looping out to 82nd and back, and this was with a fairly unpleasant crosswind for most of the trip; my previous high speed loop was 16.3mph, and that was encouraged by being a little late to a lunch meeting downtown and then having a nice tailwind on the way back. It makes the lure of the <<20pound bicycle seem much more understandable.
Maybe if I win the lottery I’ll hire a framebuilder to make me a nice light titanium xtracycle, then go berserk shopping for ultra-light components to build it up with.