{"id":1856,"date":"2012-07-08T22:37:28","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T02:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/?p=1856"},"modified":"2012-07-08T22:37:28","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T02:37:28","slug":"new-wheels-go-for-a-spin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/2012\/07\/08\/new-wheels-go-for-a-spin\/","title":{"rendered":"New Wheels Go for a Spin"},"content":{"rendered":"

So this year I decided to get a new bike.\u00a0 Just as 4 years ago I bought a hybrid because I wanted something faster than my old mountain bike, I wanted to upgrade to something lighter and faster than the hybrid (and that I could take on longer rides).\u00a0 I visited my local bike shop<\/a> (which is partly owned by my neighbor) to look at road bike models, as well as looked for used ones online.\u00a0 One thing I found was that a lot of road bikes don’t have places to screw in bolts for a rack, and I definitely wanted a rack for almost all my trips (but especially for long distance biking).<\/p>\n

I found that there are a few models of bike made especially for touring, which sounded like they were up my alley.\u00a0 I talked to the bike shop guys some more about good touring bikes, and they had an instant recommendation (which some of them ride).\u00a0 They even had one of the previous year’s model in stock that they could give me a discount on.\u00a0 So, I went for it.\u00a0 Here is my new bike, the Specialized Tricross:<\/p>\n

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It’s got a light, aluminum frame, with drop-style handlebars like a road bike.\u00a0 The tires are a bit wider, though, like what you find on a hybrid.\u00a0 It’s got 27 speeds.\u00a0 It basically is good for a lot of different situations.\u00a0 It’s not the speediest bike for road riding, but is a bit more comfortable and durable for long rides, especially if one has to ride on bad pavement or dirt.<\/p>\n

One thing that’s very convenient about the bike is that, for the most part, the brake and shift cables are tucked inside the frame tubes, rather than being suspended on the outside.\u00a0 That allowed me to do things like mount the holder for the locking cable below the crossbar (wrapping it around the vertical tube), rather than putting it just under the seat as I had done on the previous bike (where it kind of got in the way of my rack-top bag).<\/p>\n

I bought the bike right at the beginning of Bay State Bike Week<\/a> in mid-May, and in the middle of the week, took it for its first ride.\u00a0 I had volunteered to help out with the bike commuter breakfast in downtown Northampton, which was that Wednesday.\u00a0 Even though rain was predicted, I rode over to Noho (in misty conditions) to the event, and stayed to help pack up when it was over.\u00a0 It was drizzling by the time I rode to work, but the bike performed nicely, and I did seem to be moving faster than I had on my old bike.\u00a0 By the time I was done for the day at work, the sun was out, and I had a more pleasant ride home (which was definitely a good 10 minutes shorter than it used to take).<\/p>\n

Coming up: the bike gets a longer trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So this year I decided to get a new bike.\u00a0 Just as 4 years ago I bought a hybrid because I wanted something faster than my old mountain bike, I wanted to upgrade to something lighter and faster than the hybrid (and that I could take on longer rides).\u00a0 I visited my local bike shop … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1860,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856\/revisions\/1860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}