Happy Birthday to Me

Friday, August 19, 2005, at 09:37PM

By Eric Richardson

I bought my new bike today. All summer I've been sort of building toward it, and I've been telling everyone that what I wanted for my birthday was a little money toward its purchase. Well, I don't quite have all the money together yet, but this was the time to buy and I went for it. End of summer just happens to be when the model year transition occurs, so all the 2005 bikes are on sale to make room for the new ones that'll be arriving soon.

Hollywood Pro Bicycles had several different bikes in my size, so today I went test riding. I put a good little workout onto each bike on the streets behind the shop, particularly up and down Las Palmas between Hollywood and Franklin. In the end there was really no contest; for me the best bike was going to be the Devinci Podium.

The Podium was actually the first bike I rode. I took it for a spin and brought it back impressed but ready to do some good comparison riding.

Next up was the Kona Kona, which is a nice looking bike. What really turned me off, though, were the Sora shifters. Coming from a mountain bike all road shifters are a little odd to me. Sora, like a fair number of other road shifters, shifts one direction via the brake lever and the other via a thumb button that's up toward the top of the unit. You can see it in this picture from the Shimano site. When I ride road bars I stay down low on the bars, so shifting via the thumb button I found to require moving my hand around up top and then back down. That was too awkward for me. The rest of the ride aspects of the Kona were fine, but that shifting really wasn't for me. I also felt a little more upright on the Kona, I don't see the frame geometry on the Kona site right now, but I would suspect that the top tube is a little shorter.

My third ride was on a Devinci Apex. Again the ride was ok, and the Tiagra shifters operate via level and a paddle which is what I prefer, but the shifting just wasn't as clean as it was on the Podium. Some of that could be taken care of via tuning the bike up, but the bottom line is that the Tiagra components just aren't as nice as the 105's that are on the Podium.

The fourth ride was a change-up just to feel something totally different. Chris put me on a single-speed Surly Cross Check just to feel the ride of a steel frame. I was more intrigued by the single-speed bit, but then I popped the chain off trying to mash down coming out of a turn, and that took some of the enthusiasm out of it. I think it would take more riding for me to actually feel the difference between the steel and aluminum. What I noticed a lot more was the drag from the wider, slightly knobby tires that were set up on the Surly.

So finally I rode the Podium again. The 105 components shifted like butter. I felt like I was flying uphill on Las Palmas. And more than just speed, the bike had quickness. I was sold. I knew that was the ride I wanted.

What's cool about Devinci is they're a Canadian company that handmakes their bikes. My Podium has an aluminum frame and carbon fork. They make their aluminum frames in Canada, and the bike actually comes with a sheet that tells you the names of the individuals who did each different bit of the build. Granted it's in French so I don't know what a lot of it actually means, but I like that I know the names of the fifteen people who were part of building my bike on May 17th.

Since I actually intend to ride this bike, security is vital. I bring my bike up to the apartment with me, and I don't worry at all about it at JPL, but USC's a tough environment for bikes. I've had a front wheel stolen there, and I know plenty of people whose bikes have been taken. To protect my wheels and seat post I bought a security kit made by Pinhead Components (whose website leaves a lot to be desired). Basically instead of the normal quick release skewers you install these special ones made by Pinhead that can only be opened using a special key that looks like a quick release lever. The one key does all three components, and each key from Pinhead has a little different geometry, so even someone else with the system couldn't get at your stuff.

With those components taken care of, all that's left is locking the bike to something that's not going anywhere. For that I bought a Kryptonite Evo Mini. Kryptonite had their troubles with the whole round key fiasco, but the new locks are designed well and this one's small but thick. I feel pretty confident that no one's going to get the time to actually get through something like this without being noticed.

Tonight (at 10:30 or so) I took my first real ride, a 5.83 mile loop around Downtown and then down to the Del Taco at Figueroa and 28th. I wasn't riding all too hard, but I hit a top speed of 29mph on Flower between 6th and 8th. Most of the time I was just tooling in the middle front chainring because of stop-and-start with lights. My seat did randomly work itself loose and drop down, but I think that's something I can remedy. All in all I'm pretty excited and looking forward to a lot of riding.