Urbanus Magnus

All is well on the bike front, and I've now made it up to the 200km mark. I know, not a lot of riding in three weeks, but I've been completing the final push of school into exams (I finished my Chemistry exam today, yay! Only physics left, which is tomorrow). The tires are wearing well enough, but the compound of the CST Critters is fairly soft, so even gravel skids have worn the rear tread down a *weensy bit*. Just enough so that the "herringbone" pattern imprinted on each of the knobs is barely visible. The Herringbone pattern is wearing away quickly... the skid spots are worse than the above picture. So far, here's what I'm liking: - Off road handling - On road handling! - Overall weight - Load Capability - Comfortable seat/steam/handlebar height and position - Top Tube length is good - Rolling resistance ( Speed!) - Gear range (it hasn't been changed from before ) After about 125km offroad (light trails, gravel, a bit of chip seal road...

The conversion of my tourer from its original MTB-style shifters/brakes and pursuit bars to drops has been underway for a while now. It's pretty-much been converted; the brakes are still a wee finicky and the derailleurs need to be precision-tuned. Out with the old.... This was my Christmas gift; a pair of NOS 8-speed RSX brifters, a Nitto B-115 Rando bar and some cross brakes. I'm not complaining - I was expecting  any  old drop bar, with some bar ends and some generic aero levers, so you can understand my elation! Of note: without a mount-on point for the barrel adjuster for the F. derailleur, I have had to "eye-ball" it, just simply adjusting the pull by loosing and tightening the cable bolt. It works OK, but I *might* need to find another solution.... However, nothing else major has come up on the drive train; the standard MTB parts seem to work fine with the brifters, even meshing well with the old 7-speed cassette in back. I also got a 13/15 cone wr...