A new ride!

My new bike!

It is a carbon-tubed bike with aluminium lugs and weighs 7.92kg without accessories . I bought the frame on the cheap and built it up with parts new, second-hand or transferred from my previous bike.

Just took it out for a spin...the difference in the feel of the ride was huge. Pedals were so smooth due to the ceramic bearings, and the dampening of the road vibrations were superb. Finally, I experienced the fabled carbon ride, and it was real good.


Falling in love with cycling all over again!

Bike project

My new bike frame! Bought this last season's model on the cheap to build up, and it has been lying on the carpet for 2 weeks already waiting for its parts. I've always liked BMC for its interesting design, and it's really a steal now. Besides, now that BMC has divorced from Easton for its tubes and such, its quality is probably not going to be as good, despite whatever technical jargon they cooked up to convince others that they are doing that for better quality.

So, what's going up on it? Another pair of cheap Soul 3 wheels (the same one on my Fondriest now), a FSA K-wing bars, Enric's Ultegra set on the cheap, and carbon cranks (got to have that la). Want to get the very reliable KMC gold chain again too. Will be transferring my saddle and pedals over because they were good buys and it'll be expensive to replace them, and selling the rest of the Fondriest.

Everything will fall into place next week!

Kite flying

About 3 weeks ago the guys arranged for a kite flying outing, and it was quite nice to try this again after so long. They went out of their way to buy the kites, and there's quite a bit of variety in the ones that they got.

It seems like everyone's hard at work, but I'm a little lazy. My new kite (I forgot to take a picture of it!) was up in no time and was at the end of its tether after a minute. And then it was a problem of 'so how now'...

I hooked it up to my bike brake levers...and it dropped quite soon after....went to retrieved it, got it up a second time, and again the same thing happened when I anchored it down. It seems that my patience for the activity is pretty low...after it is soaring comfortably I can't really stand standing there not doing anything. So I kept it after a while.

It was quite interesting to watch other people's kite actually, these spectacular ones look damn huge with its long trailing tentacles, really nice!

And on a separate occasion - I got my kids down for the Singapore International Kite Festival for CIP, and the variety of kites there is pretty impressive too. There's a massive teddy bear and turtle which are 'inflated' with the wind, but don't really go very high, and a parachute kite with a long line of small kites on its line below it.

Will I try it again? Hm...not a bad day out la, just to be in the outdoors. But it's really freaking hot! Sun protection is mandatory.