The tire experiment

After reading a posting on the C.F. Forum about how comfortable riding on 28mm wide tires is compared to 23mm I ordered myself some wider tires from my local bike shop. Since I'm very satisfied with my Continental Grand Prix's, I ordered these in 28mm. I picked them up from my bike shop yesterday and swapped tires this afternoon.
There was absolutely no problem in the front : the front fork is wide enough to go with even wider tires. The back was another story .... Since 28mm tires are wider, they do not fit between the brake pads when fully inflated. That's no problem, just inflate the tires when the wheels are back in place. So far, so good. After inflating the tires properly, I put the bike back on it wheels and wanted to take it to the front of our house. It sure looked nice, those beefy tires on a road bike ( I do like beefy tires !) But the rear wheel did not move, it was blocked ! No, it wasn't the brake shoes, the rim was free. When I looked a bit closer, I noticed that the rear tire got stuck underneath the rear brake caliper, preventing it from moving at all ! Damn !!!

Plenty of space with the 23mm tire ...

but not so with the 28mm tire !

It is only a matter of maybe 1mm, but as you can see on the second picture, the tire really touches the inner rear brake caliper. I called my local bike shop and explained my problem. They told me that I could try the new Shimano 105 rear brake caliper, which is slightly different in shape and might just be different enough to have the wheel fit. Another solution was to try another brand of 28mm tire, or change them into 25mm tires. I'm gonna take my Z Pro to my bike shop to try out that new 105 brake caliper and let's hope that it will fit !!!

Weekend by the Sea

Last Friday my wife and I left for Nieuwpoort, where a collegue of mine owns an appartment which is available for rent. Since I did not want to limit my bicycle riding to tarmac roads, I took the 700X with me this time.
As usual it was pretty windy near the beach, but that did not stop me from riding my bike. Since it was also my wife's birthday on Monday, I promised her not to leave her alone for more than 2,5 hours a day, which left both of us happy ;-)

The 700X turned out to be the perfect holiday bike, since you can ride it on pretty much every surface. There are several local bike routes on gravel going in all directions, so I always started with a head wind, fighting and struggling to keep my speed not too low and then turning around with a back wind, giving me speeds over 25 mph. Nice !

For the 3rd year in a row there's an art exhibit on the Belgian shore, called beaufort 03. Spread across the seaside cities, several pieces of art are exhibited on or nearby the beach. Now I don't consider myself an art-lover, but I don't mind seeing something nice now and then. I got myself a 03 Beaufort Bicycle Route flyer and went looking for some of the artistic constructions. Some of them really looked like crap to me, others were pretty nice. Anyway, it made it easier for me to decide where to ride my 700X to, since I planned everything in advance.

Some of them in plain wood ....

Others were pretty colorful ....

I even mangaged to ride my bike to France on Friday (Nieuwpoort is not that far from the French border). One thing I noticed immediately is that French car drivers are way more cautious then Belgian drivers ! Although there were no real bike lanes on the French roads, I never felt unsave. Vive la France !

Memorial near the church of Bray-les-Dunes

When returing from my bike ride on Saturday, I noticed that my headset had loosened. I do not carry large size wrenches with me, so I could only tighten the headset by hand. Since bike shops are closed on Sunday and Monday, there was no way to have the headset properly tightened before returning home. And I did not want to stay off the bike for another 2 days .... Luckily for me though, my local bike shop back home is open on Sunday from 10 'til 12 a.m. so I called them and explained my problem. They told me that I could keep riding my bike without a problem as long as I rode my bike on smooth surfaces and avoid riding over cobblestones etc. So thankfully I could keep riding my 700X for another 2 days without any problems. Tomorrow I'll ride my 700X to the bike shop to have the headset fixed.