{"id":1858,"date":"2016-01-31T20:59:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T20:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.system11.org\/?p=1858"},"modified":"2016-01-31T20:59:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-31T20:59:38","slug":"getting-back-on-a-bike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/?p=1858","title":{"rendered":"Getting back on a bike"},"content":{"rendered":"

This kind of turned into an arcade only blog, but I didn’t really intend for that to happen, I lost a lot of enthusiasm to write a lot because my job wears me out mentally, for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n

Anyway, around the end of last year I ended up having a health scare – fortunately it turns out there’s nothing wrong and it was one bad test result, but I didn’t find that out before essentially turning some of my life upside down (and panicking for 3 weeks).<\/p>\n

Part of it was to get more exercise, so I did a bit of reading up and bought myself a bike, the first one I’ve owned in 20+ years.\u00a0 I picked a hybrid so I can ride it to work but also take it on milder off road paths and so on.<\/p>\n

\"roam1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s a Giant Roam 1, a fairly affordable bike but towards the higher end in the model range so you get nice things like basic front suspension and disc brakes.\u00a0 Being a 2015 model it was heavily discounted since apparently bike people are similar to car people and instantly undervalue whatever isn’t the current revision.<\/p>\n

I added a few upgrades too.\u00a0 The normal saddle is too hard so I got a slightly better one, and the handlebar grips are slightly flared towards the rider to give wrist support, important if like me you’ve ruined your wrists with a life of keyboards (same reason I got suspension).<\/p>\n

Then I found I had no suitable shoes, so ended up buying some Five Ten ones which have grippy rubber soles, and because my feet are quite wide I found the stock pedals were far too small and bought a pair of DMR Vault pedals which made everything feel far better.\u00a0 I also found the stock tyres had zero puncture protection, and after carrying it a mile home on my shoulder one night, bought some nice Continental tyres (Travel Contact Reflex – hence the sides lighting up with the flash).\u00a0 Next were the lights – the ones I bought with the bike weren’t bright enough to ride around unlit parks at night so there’s a Exposure Diablo Mk7 on the front and a Moon Nebula on the back.<\/p>\n

Gets expensive quickly, I hadn’t appreciated how expensive cycling had become these days.<\/p>\n

You know what they say about never forgetting how to ride a bike?\u00a0 Total rubbish.\u00a0 You may remember how to operate one but how to ride actually takes some re-learning, for the first couple of weeks I was wobbling all over the place….<\/p>\n

Having fun now though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This kind of turned into an arcade only blog, but I didn’t really intend for that to happen, I lost a lot of enthusiasm to write a lot because my job wears me out mentally, for all the wrong reasons. Anyway, around the end of last year I ended up having a health scare – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1858"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1860,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions\/1860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}