As a teacher at London Bike Kitchen, and doing my own bike maintenance work, one of the first things I talk to people about is how much money maintenance can save you. It’s tempting to tell people that cycling is ‘free once you buy the bike,’ but this quickly becomes untrue if you let maintenance problems build up, and let your more expensive components become unduly damaged and worn ahead of time. This is a short blog about the best ways to ruin your bike through lack of maintenance, which hopefully you’d use more in a what not to do sense. But it’s more fun to talk about it this way!
Tag Archives: cycling
Learnings and feelings after 6 months of cycle educating in London
The other day at London Bike Kitchen, where I teach as a freelance tutor, I ran a ‘introduction to maintenance’ class for two people who were several decades older than me. Correspondingly, they probably had in the order of 40 years more of experience regarding riding bikes than I did, since I only really began cycling properly (in the sense of leisure and transportation) in around 2017. Writing this, I’ve been teaching classes like this, or working as a community mechanic, for about 6 months now, and thought a blog post about what I’ve learned and how I’m feeling about it may be interesting to you.
A bikepacking love letter to my army surplus “Gore-tex” bivvy bag
One of the earliest problems any would-be bikepacker has to contend with is which sleeping system is the best. If you’re like me, you don’t have infinite money and storage space to keep stuff in (or to book glamping huts), so you end up picking a compromise solution that hopefully covers all your bases. I’ve had my army surplus bivvy bag for a few years now and it’s one of my favourite things. Supposedly in the military they’re known as the ‘green time machines’ since once you’ve clambered inside, you’ll instantly fall asleep and you’re back on duty before you know it. This is a blog post about why that is and hopefully it sways you to check out this cheap and robust item of gear.
What I learned doing the Dunwich Dynamo on my fixed gear bike
Despite me having been a cyclist in and around London for about 6-7 years, I’d never done the ‘Dun Run’ before. It had coincided with the now sadly discontinued London Orbital Audax (the night of a full moon being particularly good for long rides to spare you cycle lights battery life). But in 2024 the calendar worked out that I could give it a go.
I’d done some longer fixed gear rides before, such as the Audax I did a few years ago before the pandemic, but it had been a bit of a break so the nerves were getting to me a little in the run-up. Luckily, it ended up being a marvellous ride. Hopefully you can learn a bit from this blog post and feel like a fixed gear Dun Run might be the thing for you in 2025.
A permament fix for stuck/broken Suntour Q-Loc suspension fork thru-axles
If you’ve ever owned a Suntour suspension fork, like that on my Voodoo Bizango (which has a Suntour Raidon), you might have already been a bit thrown by the proprietary Suntour thru-axle system, Q-Loc. Unfortunately, Q-Loc is prone to breaking, and then you have a wheel stuck in the fork. This once bit me in the bum quite badly because I’d let my front tubelessly-set-up wheel run out of sealant, and it deflated on a ride and wouldn’t stay up after I reinflated it with my mini pump. I couldn’t get the wheel off to put an inner tube in, so had to resort to public transport.
Getting home I did a lot of online research, many people found they were having the same issue, but the solution as per the bike shops’ advice was to just buy a new Q-Loc axle. Being unhappy to just spend more money on a clearly poor quality component, I found a permanent fix to this problem using a third-party provider, Hexlox. This is a short article on how to find the right replacement for your Suntour fork.
What I learned riding ‘the Purbeck bimble’ aka ‘Purbeckspedition,’ a MTB/gravel and bikepacking route on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset
I’ve just come back from the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, where I re-rode a route I did a few years ago. It’s a really great weekend away so this is a short blog about how to make the most of it and what I learned on the ride (and the camp).
Protecting yourself from skin cancer while cycling
I wear sunscreen/suncream/’SPF’ every day. But I’ve found that cheaper suncreams can be really difficult to live with if you’re doing cycling on a sports basis, especially off road. So this is an article about how I’ve made the best of it and the solutions I’ve arrived at. Hopefully it helps keep you safe.
What I learned: Riding on the ‘old chalk way’ from Tring to Pangbourne
To try and focus my blogs and keep them from being an unstructured mess, I fix them around ‘wins and losses’ from a given ride. This time it’s around a great day out from last Sunday, where I got the train out to Tring from London Euston, and followed a route called ‘the old chalkContinue reading “What I learned: Riding on the ‘old chalk way’ from Tring to Pangbourne”
2 flops and 2 wins at the Pan Celtic Gravel Rally 2024
Last weekend I rented a van with my pal and drove from London to Eryri National Park (Snowdonia) with our tickets for the Pan Celtic Gravel Rally in our pockets. This meant a 19km ‘night stage’ on the evening of the Friday, starting at 2030, and the 136km ‘long’ route the next day starting atContinue reading “2 flops and 2 wins at the Pan Celtic Gravel Rally 2024”
Fixed wheel audaxing might be just the thing for you
When I first started audaxing in 2018, and I got my first brevet card at the registration line, I saw that there were four special categories of riders: Fixed Wheel, Tandem, Recumbent and Tricycle. More on the other three for some other time, but for a lot of people, and certainly, to begin with, me, it will seem like an act of pure masochism to ride big distances fixed. Two years later, I just finished my first fixed wheel 200 audax. What made me change my mind? Well, this is my go at trying to set out why I think fixed riding might be the next big thing for you.
Calum On Wheels 