After replacing my rear wheel, installing new tires and tubes and my GPS unit, I decided to go for a slightly longer haul ride than my test rides. I rode from my home to the Leetsdale Giant Eagle to return several rental DVDs. According to the GPS, roundtrip distance was 9.70 miles. On the downhill portion of the trip, I achieved a new personal speed record; 39.9 mph. The new tires on the bike enabled me to get back up that hill in much less time than my knobby tires did (30 minutes on road tires vs. 45 minutes on knobby tires). Some may ask why I biked it instead of just driving it. The answer is simple really; gas.
My Honda Element achieves real-world fuel mileage of between 20-21 miles per gallon, which is great for a vehicle it’s size, but is still fairly inefficient. To buy 1 gallon of gas these days costs approximately $3.10 per gallon. $3.10/gal * 12 gal. = $37.20 (to fill the 12 gallon tank). At 20 mpg, for me to drive 9.70 miles burns slightly more than one-half gallon of fuel. Burning .5 gallons of gas which costs $3.10/gal. costs me $1.55. So the bottom line is, do I really want to pay $1.55 just for the privilege of being able to return my rental DVDs? Not particularly.
My Trek 800 with mostly all factory original parts has taken quite a beating over the years, from 15-20 mile daily runs through downtown Pittsburgh to offroad adventures with Tesseract. Tesseract had a problem several years ago where the rear sprocket cassette on his rear wheel was failing to engage properly. Rather than pay a lot of money to replace the cassette, he just simply replaced the bike. I was facing a similar situation, the Trek’s rear derailleur was not shifting smoothly and wouldn’t hold some of the middle gears. Fortunately for me, when my parents purchased this bike for me in 1998 or 1999, they also purchased three additional bikes of identical make and model for their use and my brothers. I politely asked my mother if I could swap rear wheels with one of those bicycles. I chose my brothers Trek 800 because it has rarely been used and most of the parts on it are still in brand-new condition and furthermore, he has outgrown it at this point.
Removing the rear wheel is an easy process, as is reattaching it. Before I could attach the new wheel to my bike, I had to mount my new rear tire on it. This was a 5 minute job. Upon mounting the new rear wheel and going for a brief test ride, I noticed that shift quality had drastically improved. I will be updating this post with pictures of the old and new sprockets.
Because my bike’s speedometer/odometer broke and a new one would be in the neighborhood of a $35 USD, I figured that I would adapt my already purchased Garmin GPS60 GPS unit to the task of keeping track of my speed and distance. Additionally, it would have the side effect of allowing me to easily go back the way that I came in case I were to get lost. The bicycle handlebar mount was ordered from amazon.com for $27 USD including shipping. The mount was installed in approximately 2 minutes and I was underway. According to the GPS unit, I achieved a new personal best for downhill speed at 39.9 mph. While I realize that there are bikes out there that can go faster than this, my bike is a relatively heavy Trek 800 mountain bike with road tires on it, so this is fairly good for a mountain bike.
My Trek 800 has lasted me for quite a long time and one of the tires on it was the original equipment that the bike came with. As I was riding home from work on Friday, I realized that the rear tire’s sidewall had three holes in it and the tube was poking through and the front tire needed to at least be reset. I was concerned enough about it that I drove to work on Monday (and will likely have to drive the rest of the week for other unrelated reasons). After work, I headed over to The Ambridge Bike Shop to purchase two new tires, two new tubes and a tire change kit.
This is the old 26″ x 1.95″ tire. Notice how it is worn it is. 800 miles+ would probably do this to any bike tire.
Well, maybe not snow. But rain will not stop me from biking to/from work as evidenced by today. I biked to work as I said that I would do. My clothes and my riding pack were completely soaked but I quickly dried them out in the computer room.
