Monday 10 November 2014

It's a Dogs Life

Can we go now?
What about now...
Sunday evening... Zack the family Jack Russel and myself cruised our way along the river track that runs down past our house. Zack looked up at me in full stride, tongue hanging out of a mouth stretched in a wide doggy grin. Good times!

I'd spent the latter part of the afternoon replacing the singlespeed chain setup on my Ventana with the rebuilt belt driven Rohloff that normally resides there. I had agonized over what I wanted to spend the next month or so riding as I have been enjoying the light, simple SS setup. My Rohloff had been rebuilt after the seals failed during the Tour Divide earlier this year. Chris at Puresports provided excellent followup service and got me up and running again.

It was quite a dilemna deciding what to roll with but I decided that I would prefer a few extra gears for  Le Petite Brevet coming up next month so I'd better get the Rohloff on and some k's onto the new internals before I hit the hills on Banks Peninsula.

Removing the stainless steel SS sprockets and chain I noted that there was very little if any indication of wear on the sprockets. They had only been on for about 6 weeks but with almost 600k on them I thought I would see something. I did fastidiously oil and clean the chain between and sometimes during rides. I would still have thought the grinding climbs I'd undertaken would have taken their toll.

It did give me pause to consider the belt drive I'm running on the Rohloff. While I love the smoothness and practically maintenance free nature, it is an expensive setup. It makes sense using it for events like the Tour Divide and perhaps even our 1200k NZ Brevets where longer duration riding can quickly wear components. For training where I can take more care to maintain it - a chain setup would still work well. This is of course the way most people run their Rohloffs. I guess it's time for a bit of experimentation...

So, back to dogs, bikes and the river track at dusk...

Zacks head hung a little lower on the way back to the house. He let me lead a bit more too. Sitting back on the couch in the lounge, Zack at my feet, excuding contentment I'm sure we were both looking forward to the next ride.



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