New Bike
I’ve recently re-bought a bicycle, yes the last one was stolen after a month of owning it. 😕 It’s taken me 3 months to gain the confidence to purchase another. Granted this one is most likely was stolen from someone else, well the parts were made up from various other stolen bikes. It’s a hard monster to beat but let’s just see it as it is, I bought a much cheaper bike with superior parts to my last bike. However, let’s just say it’s bit of a “project”, I will need to change quite a few bits and pieces on it:
- The suspension requires a little looking at
- The tyres would need a looking at, I’m not happy riding knobby tyres around the city.
- The rear brake is cable (and feels like a drumb brake then suddenly locks up), the front is hydraulic (which bites nicely).
- The paint… well as it’s inarguably stolen the frame was painted grey, I was thinking I might as well embrace it and paint it myself to something else a little better than the bodge paint job they’ve done on it.
Suffice to say, there’s a few things I will look at doing on it little by little, I ultimately don’t want it stolen and that’s my biggest concern.
Tibidabo 002
Last time I cycled up to Tibidabo (4 months ago) I followed google maps on the shortest route there, which took me up a 45 degree slope for a while, before hitting a flight of stairs (which today I found out was 437 stairs long). I recall at the time almost dying a few times over carrying the bike up the stairs.
This time around I decided to do it the not-so-short-route in order to cycle up. So it has been over 4 months since I last did it, I’ve not been riding at all lately, most of my work places are out of Barcelona and has me riding my motorcycle everywhere. Which is my lame excuse for why it took me so long. However, I have decided to try doing this cycle consistently and see how my time improves. 🙂
The Ride
Well the bike to me is very new, I’ve ridden it one other time which was a few days ago with my friend Vidal who was visiting. So today’s ride which was 22km round trip got me familiar with the bike. It handles very nicely and is considerably lighter than my previous bike.
So the ride itself was interesting, as I headed out of my neighbourhood into Sarria, with old buildings tight alley and colourful facades. Beyond that I headed through some further cobbled roads, passed the main gyratory road around the north of Barcelona, and then suddenly I was greeted by resting horses (unattended). Before I knew it I was winding up round the road heading to Vallvidrera with my tongue out, finally I got to the village, by this point I’d been overtaken by several other road-bike cyclists in their lycras and gimmicks, I didn’t feel bad by this at all.
I passed the point where the stairs I had previous climbed up me with the road I was riding, I met a couple of runners who had just made it to the top, we chatted a little while and they told me that there is 437 stairs! Imagine I hauled my 14kg bike up +400 stairs after riding for a mile at 45 degrees. Phew!!
The weather at the top was certainly cooler, and certainly quite dead no huge crowds (maybe because it was midday Friday). Strava informed me I had moved for 1 hour and 13 minutes by the time I got to the top. I sat down at the restaurant at the top, ordered a drink, rested up and shot off again. The downhill certainly was a lot more fun! Total moving time was 1 hour and 35 minutes, yup ~20 minutes home!
