Monthly Archives: August 2017

Product Review: Livelo Bicycle Hire Sydney and the Swift Ultravox

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Dear Rouleurs,

A few weeks ago MMT hired a roadbike through Livelo in Sydney.  MMT has been threatening to hire a bike in Sydney for years.  He last attempted this at Easter time this year, but had his cunning plan foiled by YAFF.  MMT tried, at short notice and in vain, to book a zippy Canyon via RCC in Sydney.  So rather than give up on the idea, MMT tried Livelo.  Here’s their pretty logo.

Livelo have been around awhile.  MMT can first remember seeing a flyer for this company a few years ago.  The service seems to have experienced impressive growth, as its now possible to to hire a road bike in Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Sydney and Gold Coast. They also hire bikes out overseas, in London, Singapore, Geneva and Auckland. Its interesting how their booking site is now listed with a .co.uk domain now.

The company encourages prospective clients to sign up and create profile.  The profile contains your personal details, but more usefully, your fitting measurements for the bike.  The company also has an app.  MMT downloaded and installed it.  The app is basically a container for presenting the website and honestly seemed pretty slow to render pages.  However, Livelo get lots of credit for at least making the effort.

The great thing about Livelo is that they deliver and collect from your door.  As MMT was staying close the CBD in Sydney, there wasn’t a delivery charge.  The delivery guy turned up in van with the bike right on time. And when MMT writes ‘the delivery guy’, he means the company owner/founder Peter Barnes. Unfortunately MMT’s Sydney address was literally just the wrong side of Camperdown, which meant a small $20 fee.  MMT rented the bike for the weekend, which meant a Friday evening drop-off and Sunday afternoon collection.

Unfortunately, MMT didn’t get to ride a top of the line Colnago, but rather a zippy SWIFT.  Now stupidly, MMT managed not to take a photo of the bike…epic fail to quote a nearby Gen-Y co-worker. However it looked a lot this one. Apparently this bike is called a Swift Carbon Di2 Ultravox.  Which makes me wonder how SWIFT didn’t get sued by the management company of 1980’s glam-pop band Ultravox.

After riding on a Trek Domane for nearly 8 months, the Swift was an absolute bone rattler by comparison.  It had a super stiff frame, accelerated very quickly and cornered beautifully, but MMT felt every bump through the saddle, from his Coccyx to up to his jaw bone. This wasn’t helped by bike being fitted with some rather worn 23 mm tyres.  MMT would have have preferred 25 mm or 28 mm.

MMT learned later that these could have been fitted, on request….D’oh.  Oh well, next rental  MMT will remember to request them.  Also the handlebar tape was the really thin stuff that the pros prefer, rather than some spongy 2.5 mm tape.  This would have kept some of the road vibration out of MMT’s hands.

This aside, it was super quick.  OMG, MMT was drafting triathletes doing circle work in Centennial Park.  MMT loves the look of shock one of these guys has, when they realise a) they have wheelsucker and b) they can’t shake MMT off.  Superb 🙂  On MMT’s second ride, the route took in some hills around Clovelly.  The Swift loves hills, it felt so much more responsive and easier to pedal than the Domane.

The other big positive experience from this rental experience was the shifting.  MMT has and is very ‘old school’ about drive trains.  MMT’s Domane is fitted with cable driven Shimano Ultegra shifters and these work just fine thanks very much.  However, the same group set with Di2 technology is so ridiculously smooth.  The only catch being that the shifting is the opposite way round and takes a little neuro-rewiring in your brain to get used to it.

So what’s MMT’s score?  Well for Livelo MMT awards 4 and 1/2 happy Marvs out of 5 and for the Swift Carbon Ultravox 4 happy Marvs out of 5.

Until next time, ride safe

Marv

To Lycra or not to lycra…apologies to Shakespeare

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Dear Roulers,

Way back in 2015, I stumbled across a series of cartoons by a very funny cyclist called Dave Walker here’s the link.  Mr Walker has been very busy and published a book of his work.  As means of avoiding a law suit for plagiarism, this blog entry is a shameless plug for his book. Now depending on how ‘old school’ you are, you can either walk into your nearest bookstore and take pot luck or find it on Amazon.

Now the reason for the plug. I was walking down the stairs to my employer’s locker room, when I passed a fellow MAMIL going out for a run.  No big deal, except for the really suspect choice of tight lycra shorts and top.  Most runners I know tend to go for the light weight short and tank top combination.  The choice of clothing was not helped by the MAMIL’s middle age spread, which MMT can happily report was significantly worse than his own.

Strictly speaking, MMT is throwing stones inside the glass house here and MMT is not wishing this runner into an early grave either.  This MAMIL should be wholeheartedly applauded for his endeavours.  Nevertheless, it wasn’t a great look.  Possibly a Rocky style tracksuit may have been more flattering.  However, it was this chance encounter that made me think of Mr Walker’s take on the inappropriate wearing of lyrca.

MMT says ‘chapeau’ Mr Walker.  MMT adds that lyrca should never worn on public transport, unless its accompanied by a bicycle.  Similarly, any male tendency to ‘spreading’ should be resisted.

Until next time, ride safe,

Marv

Marv’s July Bike Log

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Dear Rouleurs,

July was a much better month for cycling around Melbourne and happily MMT wasn’t too badly messed about YAFF in the form of  Laryngitis.  The highlight of the month was the two rides he had in Sydney in late July.  Unfortunately, RCC Sydney didn’t have a spare bike on short notice.  So instead, MMT turned to Livelo, which provided a very serviceable SWIFT.  More on that next blog.

This meant I exceeded my monthly target by a solid 130 km.  However the overall total yearly total is still 704 km ahead of yearly target.  That’s about 6 weeks in terms of time.  So here’s my usual graphs.  As you can see a week was lost at the start, and daily totals were much lower than last month.

Weirdly, while the monthly kilometres was up, MMT’s average suffer score fell again, May (46), June (39) and then in July (36).  MMT suspects that skipping Thursday speedfests with RCCMEL might have something to do with it.

My ride log is found here.

Until next blog, ride safe.

Marv

‘Chapeau’, Monsieur Bling !!!!

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Dear Rouleurs…Goddamit….

MMT’s mind is doing a mean impersonation of a cement mixer, rolling over and over the gunk of his employer’s latest corporate restructure. Worst still the wind has been blowing its proverbial’s off, providing shiver inducing head winds on MMT’s normal ride routes.  MMT is so sick of both these things.  So in amongst the hype of new ways of sacking people, ahem, the Tour de France concluded.

And what a race it was.  MMT can remember reading a book about the history of the TDF, where Henri Desgrange described his ideal TDF as a race where only one cyclist finished and was declared the winner.  Fortunately this year’s race didn’t come close to that apocalyptic standard.  However, of the 198 starters, only 167 finished.  The chaos of Stage 9 alone, resulted in 11 rouleurs either DNF or outside the time cut-off.

Chris Froome cemented his reputation of being the greatest drug free cyclist post world war II. But for MMT, the stand out performer was Australia’ s own Michael Matthews, the 2017 winner of the Green Jersey.  Rather have MMT wax on lyrically about, the man they call Bling here’s a plagiarised copy of what that great cycling tome, Melbourne’s Sun Herald had to say.

MMT can’t really improve that.  Except to say ‘chapeau’.

Until next time, ride safe

Marv