The London cycle show is on for four days this week. I went down today (yesterday being the press/trade day) to avoid the weekend crowds, but in what bodes well for the UK cycling industry it was a busy day with lots of the general public attending. Now it’s not quite Interbike being at the wrong end of the show circuit all the hot new stuff has been announced already, but getting the chance to see the 2010 bling in the flesh yourself is worth enduring Earls court for (bad ventilation, lack of seating and lousy catering).

Now for my highlights and fuzzy photo’s.

Viva are nice bikes from Denmark, I particularly liked the Duro, but they don’t come cheap.

Ragley bike frames looked really good in the flesh unlike my photo’s, cracking frames for the price, no pork scratching give aways was most disappointing.The Nukeproof stuff Brant has been designing looks good to if not as inovative as he MTB frames.

The street fixies were prominent on a number of big brands stands (all though Specialized only had two restrained Langsters, they seem to have moved on too the next trend with Globe – see further down). In jumping on this band wagon certain manufacturers have gone a bit too cheap with there generic alloy frames both Felt and Pinarello dishing up cheap chunky with disapointing details.

Felt’s Curbside’s chunky chainstays.

Pinarello’s hipster cash in looked like something from my high school welding class.

Doning it right were Colnago whose retro street track frame looked stunning, although it had the price tag to match.

Cooper bikes had a nice range of bikes for an auto-maker, it should be less of a surprise considering BMW turned out some good Mountain bikes. Reviewing the pictures I took the Cooper frames look a lot like Charge frames, are they being built in the same plant or do they share a designer?

Brompton were there with their own workshop putting on a great show, but I was particularly dazzled by the Moultons on anearby stand now in 953.

I was disappointed on the Specialized stand, it all did seem more of the same from them. Then I wandered over to the Globe stand and that was impressive. They seem to have a good design team who have captured the modern utility market needs well. Giant, Trek and Kona may be doing similar work but they were notable in their absence.

The Live 1

Cute, slide your own pic in

The Roll, built for hipsters, but well detailed.

The Haul

Wiggle had a big stand with a lot of Focus bikes. They seemed good value online and getting good review’s and having now seen the quality in the flesh I’d be happy to add them to my shopping list. I was particularly taken by this HT

It’s been long past the four month point were I promised a review of how the Crossbow has fared. With work getting in the way I’ve not had enough time to do as much ridding or writing as I would have liked  and do justice to the bike.

As I’m going to be giving the bike a good work out in the next six weeks over the hills of Exmoor and an actual race I’m going to reserve a full review till then. In the time I’ve had it I can say nothing has broken, the cables have stretched as you would expect and I’ve not had to remove the tyres. as I’ve not had a p******* in that time.

Changes I’ve made to the bike so far are SPD’s, Brooks saddle and a rack for contact point comfort and commuting. Last week I finally got round to fitting the 34tooth inner ring I had mentioned, a much easier job than I envisioned as there was no need to remove the chainset. The FSA 34t was out of stock so I’ve gone with a Stronglight ring, which seems fine, although the OCD in me is dismayed at the mismatching silverness of the ring. More importantly how does it ride? Good in a word, smooth shifts, no extra noise and as you would expect slighter lower gearing helps spin more up the hills and spread the gears. I’m pleased to have it for the hills.  I’ve forgone swapping out the 12-25 cassette for a 12-27 as the gains really don’t seem to justify the out lay on a cassette which only seems available in Ultegra.

Now I have to get back to bicycle tour planning, can anyone recommend a good bicycle friendly youth hostel or B&B in Newquay?

Rollapaluza Halloween Cyclocross

After much shilly shalling I’ve finally signed up for my first cross race. The lack of a race within easy public transport distance and my abysmal fitness have been my excuses for not putting my Ridley Crossbow to good use till now. So I will be rolling it out at the Muddy Hell event being put on by the Rollapaluza guys this Halloween.

So in an attempt to better the results of my last racing outing (DNF in the Hell of the North West Alley Cat) I’ve decided to do some training. Having never raced cyclocross, or done the whole jump on jump of thing I thought I should endeavour to do some research into technique. Now looking on the internet video’s like this one always come up and give me the heebie jeebies with all the crashing. But I dug a little deeper and found a series of video’s with some great training tips. So later this week I’ll be getting out and falling over on some soft grass practicing the whole off on thing.