Some notes from my first ride of 2018 in Ottawa -
In the week before Easter, I completed cleaning and reassembling the Raven after the looong flight home to Ottawa from Queensland. Reckoning that I was no longer in danger from acres of Australian glass, I swapped out the Marathon Supremes for Compass Naches Pass 26 x 1.8 tires, and made a couple of shakedown rides, totalling about 70 kms. With a long list of household maintenance chores and less-than-encouraging weather—the last two weeks of March have been cold, with daytime highs at most just above freezing, and nightly lows in the minus teens—I haven’t had much spare time for cycling.
A week ago, I rode south along the Rideau River to the little village of Manotick, an enjoyable 2½ hours there and back. The Rideau River is the basis of the northern section of the Rideau Canal, which stretches from Kingston on Lake Ontario to Ottawa. It’s a good-sized but gentle stream, flowing more or less south to north, falling into the Ottawa River just east of the centre of the city. Manotick, once a village and now a southern suburb of the city, was built a century and a half ago around rapids and a grist mill, like so many small agricultural centres in Ontario. The Rideau often floods its banks, but this year, the water levels are more manageable, the cold March weather easing the runoff from melting snow.
In the central part of the city, just south of the Experimental Farm and Carleton University, the Hog’s Back Falls are a pretty sight – see photo #1 below. Twenty kms further south, in Manotick itself, a bend in the river is a resting spot for Canada geese on their annual trek north. When I was there, a big V of migrating birds had just landed, some fifty or so, gossiping and grumbling as they do about the headwinds and unseasonable cold. They a reassuring sight and their honking overhead is still an evocative reminder--almost magical, for all its familiarity—that spring really is coming. (See #s 2 & 3 below.)
I had a decent chili-with-garlic bread for lunch at the Creekside Bar and Grill, and headed home for another round of maintenance bits and pieces. The Compass tires have very supple sidewalls, and roll soooo smoothly, that even facing a headwind, I am in my 11th gear much of the time. In recent years, since Manotick has “graduated” from pretty wee village to Desirable Suburb, the old two-lane highway leading to it has been upgraded, and now has paved shoulders for most of its length. This means that we cyclists now have a north-south route allowing us to leave or enter Ottawa without having to share a lane with motor traffic. I was pleased to see that there was very little trash or sharp pokey things along the roadside, as well.
Taking a short cut through the Experimental Farm, a a couple of kms from home, though, my front wheel went squirrelly, and my expensive trick Compass tire went slowly flat. Dang! I stopped in the lee of the wind beside a whitewashed barn wall and changed the tube. There was no obvious cut in either the tire casing or the tube. This was the 2nd flat this spring, however—I had had a very slow (overnight) leak a few days earlier, after a short 30-minute ride to and from the Farm. Maybe the saying about Alfa Romeos, back in the day, applies to Compass tires as well?—“Fast but fragile.” My experience is limited to the 26 x 1.8 Naches Pass tires, but this March I have had two flats in 60-some suburban kms. Combined with one puncture (on the rear) in 200 kms past summer, that gives me three in less than 300 kms. None of the punctures was catastrophic for either the tires’ tread or their inner casing (in fact, I have not been able to see any damage at all), and the Schwalbe Superlight tubes showed only pinholes. Still, a flat every hundred kms or less in a PITA.
What then, I wonder, is a “reasonable” standard of durability? (Helpful answers do not include, "How long is a piece of string?")
- My three Schwalbe Supremes (26 x 1.6), by comparison, have together done about 9,000 kms since October 2014, with the only puncture being one in Australia in late February this year. (Earlier in 2014, two Schwalbe Supremes succumbed to sidewall abrasions and cuts within six months. In September 2014, a tire specialist in Berlin told me it was probably just bad luck. My experience since then suggests he was right.)
- I’ll continue to use the Compass tires for day rides, for a while at least, so see if it’s just more bad luck.
- But for touring, I’ll stick with the Supremes. These still have some good mileage left on them.
One final tech note on the Raven’s FSA Orbit XL II headset: When I reassembled my forks after unpacking my Raven from its air journey halfway around the world, I inadvertently mounted the upper bearing cage upside down. This made it impossible to get to fit the bearings properly. My local bike shop advised me to check if the race was mounted upside down.
FSA/America sent me an exploded diagram by return email within about 2 minutes of my asking for one. The diagram is attached below (#4). Look closely at component #3, the upper bearing cage, and you’ll see that the
radiused edge of the cage should be on the
downward side.
I had taken the precaution of holding headset components 1, 2, and 3 together with a ziptie, along the neighbouring spacers, T-bars and stem. Inevitably, a few escaped when I unhooked the ziptie. In the future, I’ll know, rather than guessing, which side of the bearing cage belongs where.
Best wishes for springtime sun and gentle winds!
