Thursday, October 15, 2009

Exciting Things

Exciting Thing No.1
The new Ragley Rodwell frame - I'm not sure why I'm excited about this, as the chances of my building one up are next to zero. I love the idea behind the frame though, and the attention to detail on it (see the designer's flickr stream for more, here).

The roller above the chainstay bridge allows a bottom pull mech (i.e. a road mech) to be used with the bike's top tube cable routing. The headset mounted cable hanger is also a thing of great beauty, although my personal feeling is that fork crown mounted hangers work better unless you have your bars set up pretty high.

These frames look like they'll build into really nice fat tyred road bikes - ideal for someone wanting to go in that direction but not take the Tourer route that I took with my Surly LHT.

Exciting Thing #2
Regular readers (ha!) may remember my dithering over a folding bike earlier in the year. I finally got a chance to test ride a Brompton last week (an S6L, in case you're wondering) and was impressed by it. Far less twitchy than I'd expected, and a lot of fun to throw around the car park near the bike shop where the test ride took place.

I've decided on an S3L (I do live in Cheshire, after all, so six gears seems like overkill) with a "C" bag as luggage. The bike is being purchased via cyclescheme, and I found out recently that my voucher application has been approved. I have that new bike feeling all over again...

4 comments:

Red Bike said...

Oooo, not one new bike but two!

I'm longing for a fat tyred cyclo-x bike. I'm going to have to longing for a few more months though!

John the Monkey said...

Only one for me (the Brompton).

I couldn't and can't justify buying the Ragley, although if it had been around at the time I was trying to decide between Surly, Dawes and Thorn, it would have turned my head for sure :)

TimP said...

There's an old chap and his wife I see regularly on Bromptons in the village, they really look great bikes. Local shop to me sells Dahons, I'd really like a folder but I don't know how I'd use it yet.

John the Monkey said...

Having ridden mine for a few days now, I can confirm that it's a very fun bike indeed. Folding it is quite good fun too (although care needs to be exercised, I have a honking great blood blister on one finger from trying to do the fold in a suave, slick, knowing what I'm doing sort of manner).

Its another option for the commute for me, mainly, and a hedge against the rumblings that my full size bike may no longer be allowed in the building one day, etc etc.