the much loved Whella and Jamis resting after a blasting on Singapore's pavements
The Jamis has been hitting tarmac a lot lately , cause i want to avoid injury this semester and partly cause i fear expensive repairs ever since the last time the Bkt Timah trail laid waste to my Wiemann Zac rims.
And so, i've been all the way to the Marina area and back , and done the NUS-NTU route thrice (twice with roomie) and blasted the 10 clicks of clear open road on Lim Chu Kang.
Hardly the best use of a mountain bike, but oh well.....
Roomie got back yesterday and then we decided to chucks work and just take a ride. Mainly cause Whella's casette was wacked (one sprocket had broken off after 5 years of hardship).
Found a replacement at a shop in Clementi. Twas a SR Suntour , but very decent quality, and so we made the repair.
I must stop and say at this point, people in the west of singapore are generally quitegrumpy and carry this aura of hardship and depression around them. And they infect the mood of others with it.
The shopkeeper was grumpy , his assistant was grumpy, even the damn popiah lady we bought a snack from was grumpy.
Sad to say this was reflected on the popiah which was a pretty sad looking thing indeed.
Damn.
Oh well, at least we got Whella up and running and we made it to NUS, saw Ming Han (an old A lvl pal from KL) and even dropped in on bro to say hi. Nice.
And then we hit Vivo...
At this point we were so pumped up and were like..,
"Yo! Lets do this! Lets push all the way home and ride in like conquerers of Troy to hall"
and then things went wrong.......
ouch
Yeah, that came out near NUS
know what? When we went back to get the bikes today, I stopped by at a nearby cycle shop specialising in Santa Cruz bikes and asked about second hand LX-es.
I FREAKING GOT ONE!!!! For only SGD 45!!!!
The original price for a new one is 70 and mine was from a Santa Cruz bike whose owner upgraded to the top end XTR Shimano parts when he made the purchase. I haggled and brought the price down from SGD55.
Hehe, its soooo damn smooth compared to the old Alivio!
Cheers from a very satisfied,
Matrix
The Jamis has been hitting tarmac a lot lately , cause i want to avoid injury this semester and partly cause i fear expensive repairs ever since the last time the Bkt Timah trail laid waste to my Wiemann Zac rims.
And so, i've been all the way to the Marina area and back , and done the NUS-NTU route thrice (twice with roomie) and blasted the 10 clicks of clear open road on Lim Chu Kang.
Hardly the best use of a mountain bike, but oh well.....
Roomie got back yesterday and then we decided to chucks work and just take a ride. Mainly cause Whella's casette was wacked (one sprocket had broken off after 5 years of hardship).
Found a replacement at a shop in Clementi. Twas a SR Suntour , but very decent quality, and so we made the repair.
I must stop and say at this point, people in the west of singapore are generally quitegrumpy and carry this aura of hardship and depression around them. And they infect the mood of others with it.
The shopkeeper was grumpy , his assistant was grumpy, even the damn popiah lady we bought a snack from was grumpy.
Sad to say this was reflected on the popiah which was a pretty sad looking thing indeed.
Damn.
Oh well, at least we got Whella up and running and we made it to NUS, saw Ming Han (an old A lvl pal from KL) and even dropped in on bro to say hi. Nice.
And then we hit Vivo...
At this point we were so pumped up and were like..,
"Yo! Lets do this! Lets push all the way home and ride in like conquerers of Troy to hall"
and then things went wrong.......
ouch
Yeah, that came out near NUSWhella had a mind of its own. The bike was soo damn good and smart, she had progressed from handling terrain and riding awesomely to slowly bankrupting my roomie. The pedals were apparently loose and slowly ate away at the thread in the crankset, totalling them.
And so we were stranded near NUS and i desperately called Wenyan for taxi numbers.
At this point heartbreak and money loss, having crippled roomie's soul had started to get to me and we decided to save money and wheel the bikes as far as we could until around 8.30 pm to avoid the blasted 30% peak hour taxi charges.
And so we were stranded near NUS and i desperately called Wenyan for taxi numbers.
At this point heartbreak and money loss, having crippled roomie's soul had started to get to me and we decided to save money and wheel the bikes as far as we could until around 8.30 pm to avoid the blasted 30% peak hour taxi charges.
It was far.....
We reached Clementi Avenue West around 8.20pm, then decided to try our luck and made for the bikeshop with the grumpy towkay.
IT WAS FREAKING OPEN!!!! ( generally astonishing cause most bike shops close by 8pm)
Grumpy man allowed us to leave the bikes there overnight and he'd fix it tomorrow.
Allow me to digress a bit. The Jamis came with a stock Shiman Alivio rear derailleur. For non cyclists, its the mechanism which changes the rear gears for you. Expensive ones have are made of better materials and use better springs, and the Alivio is considered a decent, but not quite the top end stuff.
Now, Audrey (uni mate) owns a GT with an Alivio setup and apparently her read d was a bit wonky and I , wanting to upgrade to an LX , offered to sell my Alivio if i could find a decently priced LX.
We reached Clementi Avenue West around 8.20pm, then decided to try our luck and made for the bikeshop with the grumpy towkay.
IT WAS FREAKING OPEN!!!! ( generally astonishing cause most bike shops close by 8pm)
Grumpy man allowed us to leave the bikes there overnight and he'd fix it tomorrow.
Allow me to digress a bit. The Jamis came with a stock Shiman Alivio rear derailleur. For non cyclists, its the mechanism which changes the rear gears for you. Expensive ones have are made of better materials and use better springs, and the Alivio is considered a decent, but not quite the top end stuff.
Now, Audrey (uni mate) owns a GT with an Alivio setup and apparently her read d was a bit wonky and I , wanting to upgrade to an LX , offered to sell my Alivio if i could find a decently priced LX.
know what? When we went back to get the bikes today, I stopped by at a nearby cycle shop specialising in Santa Cruz bikes and asked about second hand LX-es.
I FREAKING GOT ONE!!!! For only SGD 45!!!!
The original price for a new one is 70 and mine was from a Santa Cruz bike whose owner upgraded to the top end XTR Shimano parts when he made the purchase. I haggled and brought the price down from SGD55.
Hehe, its soooo damn smooth compared to the old Alivio!
Cheers from a very satisfied,
Matrix
|