Orny's Cycling Journal

… the season for a rambling update, because I haven’t shared anything since early September other than turning sixty, which you can read about here. So what has been going on? Let’s see…

As alluded to in my Livestrong Challenge blogpo, Specialized warranty replaced my rear wheel’s carbon rim after a nasty rock strike in the aforementioned ride. Summarizing my feelings about that:

Feeling ballsy

Friday Truancy ride

Tour of Watopia celebration

Zwift PMC group rides resume!

Zwift fondo series returns

• Boy, am I glad I wasn’t running a tubeless setup, because my day would have irrecoverably ended right there. Thanks to my butyl inner tube, I continued riding without getting a flat. I didn’t even notice the break until I got home!
• My first carbon wheel lasted just six months, or about 4,000 KM. That’s disappointing, unacceptable, and bullshit.
• It took Spesh four weeks to replace the rim, which meant I was off the bike for a whole month during peak riding season. I need to remember that I have recourse to my indoor trainer and my folding clown bike.

In other news, I’ve purchased a couple new goodies. First is a cycling jersey from the Buddhist Bicycle Pilgrimage: a two-day northern California ride that I rode back in 2012. Read about that whole trip here.

Of greater impact (pun intended) is my one noteworthy birthday present: an Ekrin Bantam cordless vibrating mini massage gun, nicknamed my “Fun Gun”. I’ve long had lingering calf pain during training season, and addressed it by doing tapotement, a Swedish massage technique that involves rhythmically rapping on the muscle with one’s knuckles. Now I’ve got a portable device that can do that work for me, and so far I adore it.

If nothing else, this has been an excellent year for cycling purchases, as I’ll detail in my usual year-in-review at the end of the month.

On a less satisfactory note, the name decals I crowed about in this post failed miserably by de-laminating. I suspect the Texas heat got ‘em, but the manufacturer asserted that my carbon frame’s coating was still “off-gassing”. We’ll see, as I have reapplied a second set of decals.

And speaking of the heat, it got cold fast! We were in full-on summer mode until October 29th, when a strong cold front blew in and dropped temps from about 22°C to 13°C in about an hour, ushering in certifiably cold nights and cool days. Not ideal for riding the stationary trainer in an unheated garage! But other than that cold snap, the weather’s been pleasantly seasonable.

But that brings us reluctantly back to Zwift and the indoor trainer. Anticipating a warmish Texas autumn, I wanted to avoid the trainer and ride outside as much as possible. But then temperatures dropped, Zwift released some nice new roads, the Pan-Mass Challenge’s online group rides started up again, and Zwift moved the always-tempting “double XP” Tour of Watopia from March to October. So even though the weather was often fine for riding outdoors, I put the bike up on the trainer and started riding indoors again.

This year I rode 19 Tour of Watopia stages (plus two half-stages) totaling 950 KM. In the process I hit XP Levels 57 and 58, with new route badges giving me a head start on the road toward Level 59, which I will achieve this month. This year Zwift only awarded double XP the first time you completed a Tour of Watopia stage, but no one stopped you from almost completing one multiple times! In addition to the usual, regularly-scheduled group rides, this year you could also complete stages on your own schedule as free rides.

Then today – December 3th – I celebrated five years and 25,000 KM on Zwift by repeating one of my very first Zwift rides: their December fondo.

Thanks to my recent riding, I’m feeling strong and have regained all the fitness I lost during that month-long break due to my broken rim.

For the remainder of the year, I’ll be focused on reaching my 8,000 KM distance goal, trying to decide what I’ll do for the 2024 Pan-Mass Challenge, and putting the final touches on my inescapable annual year-in-review blogpo.

I’ve already written (here) about turning my beloved R2-Di2 over to the manufacturer’s warranty team after discovering the frame was cracked. What follows is how my bike warranty claim played out and the introduction of my new riding partner.

Assisted Replacement Program

Specialized looked at my old bike and said the crack looked like impact damage, not a defect; but they still offered me 35% assistance on buying a replacement. That was great news, since bikes over 5 years old (mine was 10) get at best a 20% discount; usually a bike would have to be less than 3 years old to get a 35% discount.

Happily, that discount could be applied to other models. Despite riding Roubaixs for the past 18 years, I’m not very enthused by the newer versions, which have abandoned the performance endurance category that I inhabit. My other options were the aggressive, race-oriented Tarmac or their new lightweight climbing bike, the Æthos, both of which have positive reputations as solid, sporty performers. I would be delighted with either of those.

2023 Pæthos

The big challenge was availability, since the post-Covid bike supply chain is still completely shot. To make the most of my chances, I pared all my criteria down to my two most important factors: at my height, I have to have a large 61cm frame; and to match the equipment and quality level of my old bike, I wanted Shimano Ultegra Di2 electronic shifting.

At first, even this stumped my rep Jack, but a national search yielded a single hit: a 61cm Æthos Expert with Ultegra Di2 sitting in a BikeSource shop in Denver, Colorado.

It took time to coerce BikeSource to part with the bike and then box it up and ship it out, but I was willing to patiently wait it out. Since my last pre-move Zwift ride: my old bike had spent three weeks in a box while we moved from Pittsburgh to Austin; then two weeks at the Trek store before they discovered the chainstay was cracked; two more weeks for evaluation at Specialized’s warranty depot; and a final two weeks to have my new bike packed, shipped, and built up. In the end, I was without a bike for over two months.

However, on 2/23/23 I drove to the Specialized warehouse and test-rode the new beast, then took it home for my first real ride on the new bike!

On one hand, picking the bike up was incredibly sketchy. I had to go to a windowless, unmarked building in Austin’s warehouse district and wait in one of two specific parking spots. I wasn’t allowed to go inside, but after texting, a young man with a bike met me at my car. After he took the bike inside for a couple adjustments, I rode it around the block a couple times as an acceptance test. Then I packed the bike into the trunk and was asked to pay by entering my credit card info at an unfamiliar website that he texted to me. It was the kind of sketchy experience you’d see in a film noir.

On the other hand, the young man – Jack, Specialized’s warranty rep, whom I’d worked with from Day One – had consistently exceeded my expectations. He’d offered a replacement discount that was nearly twice as generous as Specialized’s policy required. He was extremely knowledgeable and flexible, and he quickly found a replacement bike that fulfilled all my requirements, despite the ongoing supply chain disaster in the bike industry. He made the process easy and ensured that I came away happy and still a delighted Specialized customer.

Goodbye R2

Of course, this was also the end of the line for my old bike…

R2-Di2

That bike – my second Specialized Roubaix, which I named R2-Di2 – was supposed to come into my life on April 15th 2013. However, that afternoon was the Boston Marathon, and as I sat in my condo a block from the finish line, two homemade bombs were detonated, killing three people and injuring hundreds. Needless to say, that New Bike Day was delayed by 24 hours and overshadowed by more consequential events. Here are links to that 2013 bike purchase, plus my experience of the bombing, and its Wikipedia article.

In the 10 years since then, R2 carried me for a total of 67,500 km (or 42,000 miles), 45,000 km outdoor, and an additional 22,500 on the indoor trainer. That included five Pan-Mass Challenges: two in Massachusetts in 2013 and my three-day 2014 ride; then, after a five-year hiatus, an indoor Covid PMC in 2020, an outdoor “reimagined” ride in 2021, and a weather-induced mixture of indoor and out in 2022, all taking place in Pittsburgh. Together we ticked off no less than 59 outdoor century+ rides plus 8 more on the indoor trainer.

R2 carried me for more distance and more century+ rides than any other bike I’ve owned. Despite it being my primary bike for longer than any other, I still feel like I could have happily ridden it for another decade. Its ride quality was unsurpassed: a wonderful balance of stiffness and compliance, performance and comfort, that instilled both confidence and ease. From Day One to the end, it felt like the perfect bike for me.

And so our sudden parting had left me stunned and saddened. There was no final ride, no final photograph, nor even time for a lingering glance of appreciation for the best riding companion I’ve ever known. Just a small bag with some parts I’d wanted to salvage. I’ll miss you and mourn you and remember you always, R2.

Hello Pæthos!

But this new bike… Let’s start out with what am I going to name this beastie? After all, names are important to me, as evinced by my previous choices: the Plastic Bullet and R2-Di2.

Specialized named this model the Æthos, which reminded me of ancient Greek words like ‘ethos’ and ‘pathos’. Bringing up the latter’s definition, I found it means “suffering; evoking compassion, pity, or sympathy”. Of course, one’s relationship to suffering is the essential core of both cycling and Buddhism, so the word has particular appeal to me, having written a blogpost about the link between the three as far back as 2003, before I even started practicing meditation!

So in a nod to how suffering is an essential aspect of cycling – and Specialized’s idiosyncratic spelling – my new bike will be known as “Pæthos” (with the long ‘ā’ pronunciation).

Vive la Différence

Now let’s focus on the bike itself. I haven’t ridden anything but a Roubaix since 2005, and the Æthos is a different model serving a different purpose. That’s good for me, because the Roubaix has recently gone from a stiffness-to-weight focused sporty endurance bike into a plush cruiser, compete with a gimmicky shock-absorber mounted to its mamachari-style riser handlebar.

I clearly wanted something racier than the Roubaix’s current generation, and – to my delight – the Æthos provides exactly that. It’s not a back-shattering race bike like the Tarmac, but more of a lightweight hill-climber, with classic round tubes and tastefully understated branding and paint.

Another big way that the new bike will feel different is because bike tech and equipment have changed dramatically in the ten years since I bought my last bike. That is most evident at the back end of the bike. We’ve jumped from 10-speed cassettes to 12, and fitted a long-cage derailleur that can handle a (much easier) 11-34 cassette, when the biggest I could go before was 11-28. Though I’ll be running a (slightly harder) 52-36 on the front, rather than a 50-34, so it all balances out.

Gone are the familiar quick-release skewers keeping the wheels in place, replaced by thru-axles. And I’ve finally had to give up my easy-to-maintain rim brakes, which have been supplanted by heavier but “better” hydraulic disc brakes.

Those disc brakes enable another big change: from alloy wheels with machined aluminum braking surfaces on the rims to all-carbon Roval C38 wheels. And I’m also experiencing deeper rim profiles and tubeless-ready wheels for the first time. I suppose I’ll have to actually try running tubeless at some point, but I’ll save that for a bit further down the road.

So the Æthos incorporates a lot of changes in bike design that have come about over the past decade. Combine that with it being a more performance-oriented model than both the new and old Roubaix models, and I’m expecting it to be a significant upgrade.

First Impressions

As this goes to press, Pæthos has accrued 160 outdoor km (including a 75 km longest ride) and 300 indoor km (including a 100 km longest ride). So after nearly 500 km I think I can verify that the new bike should suit me really well. I haven’t done a century on it yet, but that will come, and I’ll be sure to share my impressions in the inevitable ride report.

Although things didn’t begin very auspiciously: I don’t know whether it was a loose install by Specialized or my own fat fingers while transporting it home, but my gears were stuck in the smaller/easier front chainring for the entirety of my 20 km first ride! Happily, the fix was simply firmly re-attaching the Di2 electronic shifting cable.

Other than that, everything has been absolutely wonderful. I’m comfortable in the saddle and the bike is more eager to climb even the steepest gradients than my legs are. If I had to give up my old bike, the Æthos is exactly what I would have chosen to replace it with.

My few niggles are all minor. Putting the bike onto – and taking it off of – the indoor trainer is a bit more work thanks to the thru-axles. The deeper wheels require a little more attention in high winds. Riding a new bike on unfamiliar roads, I’m really timid descending, but that’s on me and temporary. And I haven’t yet given it a full-power sprint test; again, I’m still un-learning the habit of not sprinting that I picked up due to my old bike’s worn and unreliable chainrings.

But those are overshadowed by the bike’s overall performance and comfort so far. It’s exactly what I wanted: something more sporty and serious than the Roubaix, incorporating current technologies, and able to eat up long miles and help me over the humps when the road tilts skyward. And that’s exactly the kind of bike I need. Pretty darned good, for an emergency replacement during a supply chain collapse!

I hope we have a very long road ahead of us!

Watch on YouTube 15-second Pæthos reveal video!

Pæthos full frontal

Pæthos head tube badge

Pæthos cockpit

Pæthos top tube branding	Pæthos cockpit
Pæthos seat tube & stays	Pæthos drivetrain
Pæthos drivetrain	Pæthos crankset

Last fall, when I kicked off my search for a new bike, it was clear what I wanted: something just like my old bike, but better. The “Plastic Bullet”—a 2006 Specialized Roubaix Expert—had served me very well over the years, and I had nothing to complain about, save that it was showing the signs of age. Because of that, the new version of the Roubaix was at the top of my list when I started thinking about a new bike.

However, a lot has changed since 2006. There are a lot more bikes out there, and I didn’t want to stick with the Roubaix if there was something better to be had. So I decided to shop around and ride a bunch of bikes, exploring new technologies like disc brakes, electronic shifting, SRAM shifters, and so forth.

I tried everything out and enjoyed the process. I test-rode eight bikes, with a collective price tag of $32,300. I learned that I hate disc brakes, SRAM shifters, FSA components, integrated seatposts, and pretty much all bikes manufactured by Trek. On the other hand, I really liked Shimano’s electronic shifting, the Cervelo R5, and Giant Defy Advanced.

But above all, I learned that the Roubaix still seems to be the best all-around bike for me. It fits me and my style of riding well, does a great job absorbing road vibration, and strikes a good balance between ride-all-day comfort and ride-all-out performance.

To make a final decision, I had my LBS bring in a Roubaix that was nearly identical to the one I was looking at. After test riding it, I went home pretty well convinced that I’d be buying the exact same damned bike I bought back in 2006: a Specialized Roubaix Expert. I’d still have to special-order it though, because dealers simply don’t stock bikes my size.

An hour after that test ride, I received an email from the shop, indicating that the following week Specialized would be offering a manufacturer’s discount on that bike: a 20 percent price cut, or a $1,000 savings! Needless to say, I jumped at that. A long two weeks later, I took delivery.

So how is the new bike different from the Plastic Bullet? Aside from being newer, there are really only two significant ways.

One is the Shimano Di2 electronic shifting. I’m pretty excited about that, but I don’t need to say too much about it here, having already written about it in one of my test ride roundups back in September.

The other is that while both bikes are primarily clear-coat over carbon fiber, the new bike has red and white highlights (ironically, those are my high school colors), rather than blue and silver. So the blue tires are gone, and I’ll have some extra work coordinating accessories to match the new color scheme!

Which brings me to the real question: what to name it! This is also a little two-part story.

First, it’s my second Roubaix. To honor that, let’s call it Roubaix-2, or just “R2”.

Second, its most interesting feature is the electronic shifting: Shimano’s “Digital Integrated Intelligence” or Di2.

Put those together and you get the new bike’s moniker. Allow me to introduce you to R2-Di2! The reference to the iconic Star Wars robot is intentional, and appropriate for a bike with electronic shifting. It even makes cool robot noises as the servos shift the derailleurs to change gears!

Having only received it Tuesday, I haven’t got much to say about its riding characteristics just yet. I’ve still got to get it properly fitted and add a bunch of accessories to it before I share any pictures. So it’ll be a few weeks before I have a lot to share, but be patient; those’ll all come in due time.

Of course, saying hello to R2 means saying goodbye to “R1”: the Plastic Bullet. After seven years and 22,000 miles—including seven Pan-Pass Challenges and dozens of century rides—we’ve unrolled an awful lot of road together. It’ll still see the tarmac from time to time—on rainy days or city errands where I don’t want to break out the new bike.

But as of today, she’s second saddle. It’s time to start making a new history of travel adventures with the R2. Stay tuned!