Random updates on cycling…
Water: apparently water is wet. Specifically, I hadn’t realised how wet fog was until I rode to work yesterday… Visibility was down to about 150 meters, and I ended up having to take my glasses off to ride so that I could see where I was going. When I got to work there was water beading on my eyelashes. Today it rained just before I rode to work (but not during the ride thankfully), which was more the water I am used to.
Wheels and tyres: which brings me onto wheels and tyres. I have basically bald tyres on the mountain bike. I suspect that the current tyres, which came with the bike, are very soft rubber. They only lasted about 1,500 km which I suspect is a bit low. I’m thinking that it’s time to get new tyres so I can actually stop in the wet, but I need some advice… Here’s what I need in tyres:
- Good wet weather performance on hard surfaces like concrete
- Ok performance on sand / very fine gravel (10% of my commute is on such a surface)
- Not too knobbly, as I am riding mainly on those hard surfaces
- Cheapish, around the $30 USD per tyre point?
Any recommendations people? I also suspect my front wheel is slightly out of true. Is that the sort of thing I should do before getting new tyres fitted?
Computers: finally, I think I want a computer which doesn’t need adjustment every time I put my front wheel on (once a day basically) so that it lines up properly. Backlight would also be ok. I can get a “wireless” computer with backlight from Amazon for about $30 USD… Is the wirelessness of it going to suck? I assume it means a lot more batteries to change.