Author: Seth's Bike Hacks
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This is my fleet, the squad, whatever you want to call it. These are all the bikes that live at my house, and actually they all fit in this impossibly small closet. So if you live in a city like I do, and have a tiny place, you can still have a shitload of bikes with a little creativity. It’s a huge pain to get them in and out, but it’s worth it. So let’s start with the road bike which you haven’t seen much of yet. It’s a 2003 Litespeed Antares, which is aluminum with a carbon chainstay and fork. Litespeed is known for titanium, so an aluminum litespeed is not so common. This bike has a Campagnolo Centaur groupset, which I guess you could compare to Shimano 105 parts. People who love Campi say that it’s better, and that “while shimano is wearing out, campi is wearing in”. I don’t know if this 100% true, but the drivetrain on this bike is remarkably smooth. I used to be way more into road biking, but it’s too structured for me. Maybe I’ll find some fun things to do on this bike and make a video in 2016. The mountain bike is my Trek 4 series, which has all sorts of upgrades. I get comments all the time asking me why I don’t have a better mountain bike. Usually it’s not in an insulting way, it’s more like, they genuinely feel sorry for me, and that I deserve a better bike. I don’t want a new bike. I’m 100% satisfied with this bike right now. It runs smooth, it’s lightweight, and most importantly it survives the things I do with it. I even like the way it looks. I have a dropper seat post which lets you adjust your saddle height on the fly. So I can be at full ride height, hauling ass and then decide to drop it down and get real aggressive. It’s a game changer. A lot of people also ask me if I clip in, and on this bike I generally do not. In the rare event that I enter a local race, I do switch to SPD pedals and clip in because it’s better for going fast and maintaining a good spin. The rest of the time, I just keep it gangster and run these platform pedals. Speaking of riding like a straight G, this Inspired Fourplay is awesome for that. This is considered a street trials bike, so it’s designed for mountain bike trials with a little bit of BMX thrown into the mix. You know…going off jumps, doing wallrides, more fluid riding than traditional mountain bike trials. Make no mistake though, this is NOT a bmx, it does not feel anything like a dirt jump bike, and it’s pretty far removed from a mountain bike. The trials geometry really lends itself to balancing, hopping, and getting up on the rear wheel. It feels like nothing else. The thing that sucks about this bike is that you can’t really ride it anywhere, the gearing is just too low. So, I don’t ride my inspired fourplay as much as I’d like. This is my newest bike, the SE Everyday, which is a BMX I got for around $300. That puts it at the very entry level of BMX bikes. It’s much better than what you’d find at a department store or walmart, but it’s still not considered high end by any means. It’s been holding up great, but I haven’t had any nasty falls on it yet, so time will tell how it holds up. Like any decent BMX bike it has a pretty burly crankset, a steel frame, and a compact drivetrain. The saddle is built into the seatpost, which is common on the cheaper bikes. Like a trials bike, the saddle isn’t designed for sitting, it’s more for stabilizing yourself and keeping the top tube from smashing your taint. More to come on this bike in the new BMX series I’m working on. This here is my fiancé’s bike. It’s an SE Lager, which is a decent single speed bike, great for cruising around town. When you get into single speed bikes, they’re basically unisex. Women’s bikes used to have these lower top tubes which made them easier to ride while wearing a dress, and I guess it made them easier to mount and dismount. This is just not relevant in 2015, in fact most women would be insulted by the prospect of having a special frame that was easier to mount. So, this bike has a ladies saddle and pink grips. Girly enough. Last but not lease we have my Panasonic road bike, which was made in 1989. This bike has by far the smoothest ride of anything I own, and that’s mostly because it’s heavy and made of steel. Steel is known for having great dampening qualities. It flexes a little bit, in a good way. I like this bike for those reasons, and I generally use it for transportation, bar hopping, or going to the beach. The bike turns a lot of heads, and I get a lot of comments on it, think of it like a classic car that you take out on the weekends. So, that’s the squad as of the very end of 2015. I’m always switching things up, so I’ll do another fleet bike check every now and again to keep things up to date. Now I just need to get all these freaking bikes back into my closet here. I’ll give you an abbreviated version of what that entails.