The Replacements

In many ways, a bike is just like any other piece of sporting equipment, not just to be thought of as a vehicle.  A tennis racket needs a new grip and new strings every so often.  Your skateboard or your in-line skates need wheels, bearings, and brake surfaces replaced after they wear out.  So, a road bike is not so different.  But like a vehicle, there are many more parts that can be replaced.  First of all, here's a wide angle of the obsession, er, bike:

That's a Trek 5200 Carbon Fiber frame.  Pretty much Lance Armstrong's climbing bike from 3 seasons ago, but much cheaper because the components are 1 class below professional grade.  The whole bike weighs only 18 lbs.  Compare that to the professional bikes that have to at least weigh just over 15 lbs to qualify.  The poor bike doesn't exactly look like this anymore because of wear and tear and because of a spectacular crash (or two).

So, what are the usual replacements on a bike?  The tires are about it.  The tires for road bikes are made by the same guys that make car tires.  You got your Michelins, Continentals, Bridgestones.  I've mainly ridden Continentals, but a buddy found a sweet deal on some Vredesteins, so I'm riding them now.  Tires usually last about 1500 miles or so before having to rotate them, then only another 500 after that.  I've put over 6000 miles on that bike, so I'm on my 3rd pair of tires.  "Wait, wait," I hear you saying, "you said rotate?  There's only two tires there, what are you talking about?"  I'm talking about the rear tire wearing out faster than the front tire because more weight is put on the back tire than the front.  See in the picture above?  Where's that seat?  Right over the back tire and that's usually where my (not so) fat ass hangs out.

Okay, so tires get replaced and the inner tubes when they get flats, but what else?  Like I said, that's about it.  Brake pads usually last about 15,000 miles, so I got another two years before I replace them.  The bike chain needs replacing every so often, but that depends on what you do with your pedals.  If you're a mountain climber or a sprinter, your chain needs to be replaced every season.  Some guys replace them for every race.  I just got my chain replaced during my bike tuneup because I'm a billy goat.  Anything else that needs to get replaced on the bike comes from damaging the bike during, er, radical maneuvers.  See the bike seat above?  Here's what it looks like now:

There's some holes in the back, the leather up front is all stretched out and coming off.  That came from my "radical" maneuver when I tried to become one with the pavement.  Yes, the bike was upside down at some point during my tumble.  So, that had to get replaced because ripped up leather chafes and wears holes in bike shorts in very private places.  So, here's my new close, intimate friend:

He and I like to have 4 or 5 hour conversations about the weather.  Great talks, large vocabulary on that guy.  I also replaced the handlebar tape, so now it's black, just like the seat.  There are other pieces of equipment that need replacing that don't belong to the bike, but they attach to the bike during rides.  That sounds appropriately vague: I'm talking about cycling cleats.  Yes, I've been reduced to talking about shoes on my supposedly manly blog.

Anyway, cleats wear down too because they aren't always clipped onto the pedals; they've got to come down when you stop at lights, or for skunks crossing the road before sunrise, or to keep your balance while you give the finger to some SUV that just cut you off in the middle of an intersection.  But when the cleats push off the ground to get you started again, they scratch the steel.  Here's what a brand new cleat looks like on my shoe:

So shiny!  So new!  Now, here's what those clips look like after 5000 miles:

The steel has been totally worn away in that one corner.  The clip starts out at 1/8 of an inch thick, so think about how long it would take you to take a fork and just scrape it on the asphault in the parking lot until you have no tines.  Now multiply that by two.  That's how much time was required to wear down that clip from pushing off at each stopsign, each stoplight, starting in the parking lot of Griffith Park, the Rose Bowl, my house, my office, etc.  You get the idea.  That's a long time!

So, you might be asking: "How comfortable are those shoes?  Can you walk around in them?"  Well, let me just say I have a new found appreciation for women wearing their high heels, especially you gals who wear the 6 inch variety for your, ...ahem..., work environment.  The shoes are only comfortable while pedaling, that's it.  My kind of cleats also don't have any traction since it's just one flat piece of metal in contact with the ground.  So, what do I do if I have to stop somewhere and walk more than 3 steps away from the bike?  I'm glad you asked that question:

Those rubber covers are called "Coffee House Caps."  Especially designed for walking around cafes while sipping espresso drinks and fueling up for the next 20 miles.  There's a whole cycling culture devoted to finding cyclist friendly coffee houses and riding from cafe to cafe.  You think I'm kidding?  Take a look at these guys:

And these guys:

And this guy:

If you look real close at the shoes, you can see the coffee caps in effect.  I don't know how I do it, but somehow all these blogs become about coffee.  Hmm, coffee...  Uh, gotta go, I, uh, gotta check on something brewing in the kitchen.