James Fell: Lessons From My First High-End, High-Performance Bike

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Money makes the wheels go round. Spend more money, and you’re likely to get faster wheels. I’m not talking about some over-horse-powered-midlife-crisis mobile, but rather two wheels where the power comes from your own legs. The return on investment is going to be higher.For a combination Father’s Day/birthday present to myself, I opted to spend a sizable chunk of cash on as fast a bicycle as my children’s college fund could afford. But I wanted to mortgage their future wisely, so I got expert advice, which I shall now pass on to you. It’s Tour de France time, after all, and who knows what ideas that might put in your head.I wanted to fork out the extra cash for an all carbon-fiber frame because it’s much lighter and has some shock-absorption to it that less expensive aluminum frames lack. The first place I went to look for such a bike was Facebook.There are lots of hardcore cyclists on my friend list, and an important first question to ask was, “Where do I go to buy this new bike?” My Calgary friends voted in droves, and one name came to the fore: SpeedTheory. (They also have a store in Vancouver.)I called ahead and booked an appointment with manager Darcy Bell, and the first thing I told him was my budget. He replied by asking me what I wanted to get out of this new bike. Since I like long rides, he asserted that comfort was important. “It’s always key,” he told me, “but comfort is subjective. It’s very personal.”Note that all these figures are in Canadian dollars, and although we’re pretty much on par with U.S. dollars right now, things are generally more expensive here because… I don’t know… Because we need to be taxed back to the Stone Age to pay for pot-smoking welfare hippies to get free dialysis. Whoa, I got demonically possessed by Rush Limbaugh for a moment. Sorry about that.Anyway, I wore my Pearl Izumi cycling shorts to the store, and the first bike I tried -- locked into a trainer, not outside -- was a Felt F5 with a Shimano 105 groupset. It was pretty good, but certainly different than any bike I’d ever ridden. The cost was $2,399.Next up was the Cervélo RS with a SRAM Rival groupset. I liked the fit better but preferred the way the Shimano 105 shifted. Cost was $2,600. Another one I tried was by a Canadian company, the Argon 18 Krypton, which also had Shimano 105. This bike felt like “the one.” It’s a personal thing, and I believe you’ll know it when it happens. This bike just felt right for me. Darcy told me the Argon is “fantastic bang for your buck,” and that it’s Shimano 105 throughout. They don’t try to hide in cheaper components.I resisted the impulse buy and opted for due diligence. I talked to Roy Wallack, who writes the “Gear” column for the Los Angeles Times and is the author of several books, two of which are about cycling. One of the things Roy told me is that my price range was pretty much perfect, because higher-priced bikes are mostly about shaving off weight.“The most important area to ensure lighter weight are the wheels,” Roy told me, “because it takes more effort to spin a heavier wheel. But as for the rest of it, it just doesn’t make sense for the average guy to fork out thousands more to shave ounces or even grams off a road bike.”This makes sense. You could instead work on dropping a couple of pounds off your belly and have less weight to transport. Either that or order a plate of battery-acid-hellfire chicken wings washed down with draft beer, and you’ll sh*t out several pounds of napalm the next day, although I doubt you’ll feel like spending much time in a bike saddle afterward. Continue Reading

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