First Ride

Snow has been on the ground here in Ames since the end of November, which is now about three months ago. We repeatedly get snowstorms and sub zero Fahrenheit weather resulting in very little snow melting. The roads have been a mess; they will still have a layer of ice and snow several days after the most recent snowstorm.

Finally, last weekend, we had a period of about a day where the sun cleared the roads and the ice and snow was gone. Of course, this didn't last long as another snowstorm arrived Monday with a slushy mix of three inches of snow. The latest snow left another layer of ice covering sidewalks, bike trails, and streets.

During the brief moment without ice on the roads, I took the new road bike out on the road. The bike is a Trek 1600 SLR. It has an aluminum frame, carbon fiber fork and seatpost, and Shimano 105 and Ultegra components with a 30 speed setup. I'm very impressed with its performance and ride. Power is transfered to the ground very efficiently. I was cruising between 22 and 27 mph while on flat or slightly uphill road. I'm excited to see the performance when I'm not sick and we have good weather (it was 15 degrees when I was riding).

The controls are awesome. New road bikes have shifters built into the brake levers requiring a simple sideways movement of one or two fingers for an indexed shift. Shifting is instant and precise. I added a Cateye Cadence cycle computer, which provides basic speedometer, odometer, and timing functions, and it also displays my cadence (pedaling rpm).

The bike weighs around 20 lbs, which is not super light for a race bike but within a few pounds of the lowest weight bikes available. The cost of removing a few more pounds of weight is spending about four times as much on a carbon fiber frame and other lighter components. Aluminum is fine with me. I'm not ready for carbon fiber due to cost and durability issues.

I will add more details once I get more miles on the bike.