Professional Cycling

For the not so profi cyclists that don’t have their own mechanic and car with extra parts, lets make a list with a few tools that may come in handy when you’re on the road.

First of all, you need something on your bike to put the tools in. We know a few different places where you can put luggage on your bike, the main places are under your saddle and in your frame.

Most of the bike shops have an big assortment of saddlebags coming in various sizes.

Choose one that is easy to get to, with handy zippers and not too voluminous to stick-out and chafe your thighs. Let your own taste decide what kind of bag/tool holder you like, as long as its small, easy to get to and doesn’t hinder while cycling.

The tools are more important, here is a quick list of what i bring with me on an average ride:

Spare tire, Spoke-spanner, tire lifter, glue, small piece of sandpaper, a bike tool with imbus/chain tool.

When I’m off for a few days, and need to traverse some rougher country, I’ll take some extra spokes with me, just in case….. Today, you wont need to bring a device with which you can change your cassette since the triple almost everybody with a bike that’s older than 2000 will have enough gearing to ride everything that has asphalt on it. If you have a double gear at the front, you might bring some extra crones to change your gears accordingly to the landscape your riding through.

I’m using a Topeak mini tool which carries almost all the things listed above, its good if you have a cycle that is well kept, its of no use if you need it on rusted or corroded parts. Its not that strong and doesn’t give enough leverage to apply a lot of power.

Now, the only thing you need is knowledge of how to change everything on your bike when necessary for this you have lots and lots of books, websites and bicycle stores.

to make it easy, I’ll give a bunch of links to bicycle maintenance with some nice “you-tube” videos.

Repairing spokes

Fixing a broken chain

fixing derailleur problems

Okay, we’ll leave it at this for the moment, just remember that steady maintenance keeps you from getting to soon in too much trouble.

to be continued.

Ever been dreaming of riding the big tour de France cols? Always wanted to know which one is steepest or hardest? which one is best to start with when its your first time? or, which one is ridden most during the tour de France? Here’s a link to a dutch/english site with a lot of cool infomation about the mountains in western Europe.

www.cyclingcols.com

use it to your own pleasure, it helped me planning my tours in the Apls in the past years and gave me a few pretty good hollidays.

enjoy,

There are a lot of ways to explore countries by bicycle, one of the most popular ones is watching the tour the France and let al the professionals ride you through the country. Commentators on television will tell you everything about Cycling, the region, the food and drinks and all to other interesting stuff, you get to see a lot of people along the roads and with a little imagination their cheering for you as well.

that’s the easy way, sit in your arm chair and eat lots of food… you’ll probably get fat, got no condition after the 3 weeks of touring and probably no sun-taint or muscles as well.

It’s better to go touring yourself, you can follow in the tracks of the tour riders and try to ride as much of the tracks as possible from the official tour, ignoring all the highways that had to be shut down for the competition of course, and choosing the more accommodating inland routes in-exchange.

sleep in hotels and use the credit-card for money, maybe ask the wife to follow with the kids in a car and have an whole array of spare-parts on the roof. or…. bring your own little cart which you can hook up behind the rear wheel and cycle yourself, your clothing and spare parts totally self-dependent through anywhere you want to go.

To give you some ideas of cycling routes in Europe, or to help you on the way, here is a link to the European cyclists federation.

try the cycling routes in the middle first, so northern Italy and southern France, good weather, nice people and lots of place to stay.

have fun