Tweed Coast Treadly

I rode the Samurai to Cabba Bike Shop this ‘arvo after work to get the front derailleur fitted and also to have the cluster changed to give me a granny gear of 27-12 range. Ahhh! Sextons Hill without any knee pain is what i want! So I will most likely see tomorrow if the reality is what it’s cracked up to be….
hear’s hoping! The Chain was OK for length so I will have a spare 10 speed chain now.

The 105 cluster didn’t come in so Jeff put a 10 speed Ultegra 27-12 on for the same price, thank-you. Some have said I should have used e-Bay but I don’t completely trust main component parts that may be used or faulty rather than as described.. It was only a few extra dollars for a local guarantee.and supporting a shop that I will want to be there for long a while yet especially when I need it in a hurray! Things are fairly quiet in the shop at the moment, after the flurry of activity during the last school holidays. Is it the rain, wind or heat? It might even be the economy!

Let’s see… to participate in the National Ride-2-Work day I decided to commute although I had nowhere to commute to! I was going to test ride my new (second-hand) Shogun cro-mo commuter I have got hold of and put together with some new parts from both Cecil Walker Cycles (Shimano105 2×10 groupset $629) and Cell Bikes ($50 no-name wheelset) with an added bonus of being able to see what time I could anticipate getting to South Tweed from home on this commuter rather than the old Giant Elwood (2007 model).

Well I was enjoying the ride, even the fairly easy Southern climb of Sextons Hill, when the next thing I know I’ve run over one of the bloody new Cat-Eye reflectors at about 80km/hr on the Northern descent and got myself a snake-bite flat on the rear….. so onto fixing that… bugger no tyre levers but I was carrying the spare and repair kit…. searched the side of the road in the debris looking for bits of plastic and metal for a 100 meters and managed finding some make do levers…. but the now rushed repair was not good enough and was later going to have to involve me in replacing the tube on the uphill climb returning back over Sextons Hill… called into South Tweed Bicycles to get the pressure checked but it wouldn’t hold it. that was it! the end of testing the time to do a standard commute…. Changing a tube on both legs with no tyre levers, which I found I need to get the bead off but not back on the 19mm rim! unlike on the Giant Hybrid 25mm rim which I can do with just my hands, on and off.

anyway heres the Shogun with the new 105 groupset….

The Shogun Samurai Commuter

During yesterday’s ride ChrisL and myself were chatting about Wireless Computers and how sometimes they go wacko for no apparent reason. We decided it must be some form of interference. Last night in the early twilight I was traveling on a quiet country gravel road and decided to turn on the strobe of the LED headlight. There being enough light and time to ponder, I noticed the speed indicator start to jump around rising up to 35 kms/hr and at the time I knew I was riding at about 9 kms/hr.

So lets do a test. Switch the light off and the speed goes back to normal. Turn the light on solid and there is no change. Switch to strobe and the speed goes wacko again.

I Repeated the test numerous times with the same results every-time. So if you want to cheat on your stats to yourself just switch on the strobe during a ride. Your average speed will be amazing and the distance you ride will be phenomenal.

Ever Since Thursday Afternoon when the Whole of Tweed and the Tweed Coast has been having trouble with their ADSL connections the internet has become unreliable with flaky connections. I have done a couple of onsite service calls. Heard anicdotal evidence and been suffering with the same up/down close up/down yo-yo connection status with the speed nearly halved. When you get on to the tech departments it is always YOUR fault and there is nothing wrong reported at the exchange! Well I am reporting it F#$% they would appear to be a facist corporation. You are guilty we could never be doing anything wrong and so innocent. We will never admit there is a problem, you must have faulty equipment that just happens to work reliably for days and days and then everybodys stuff just breaks at the same time it wasnt us so it must be you. Now Do this basic troubleshooting crap then repeat it 4 or 5 times because thats all we are trained to say!

What? you were expecting a service that you paid us to deliver, na we are allowed to say we provide a service but deliver whatever we feel like, and to keep your complaints falling on deaf ears we employ people in other countries to answer you complaints, we never get to hear them! So we have nothing to deal with,  ipso-facto It’s just like the big banks. go somewhere else if you don’t like the service! or lack of! We are in the business of making a profit for what was once a public utility company and so F@#& YOU… we no longer are required to serve the community that paid for our creation and development with your taxes. just the shareholders need service and only if they have enough shares to be able to make a noise if they decide to sell! Bring on the bonus for the directors they are doing such a great job give them some more OK

Glad I’ve got that off my chest, as thats all I can do just hollow blow hard noise.

I was told on thursday after being on the phone for service support that I would have to pay for a tech to come and see what the problem was if it wasn’t their fault