Friday, August 02, 2019

Aces!

My birthday is near the end of the month, but I've already gotten a gift from a couple of my close friends.

Unlike the stock seat, this is female-specific (I bought a men's frame. And as I leaned, the seat kinda matters in terms of gender) and it matches my bike, with extra splashes of pink and blue (if you know me, you know why I dig hot pink.)

It's the 4th seat for the gray hybrid. I tried the stock for a while, a well-reviewed seat off Amazon, a Pedego memory foam, and now this. I thought the Pedego would work; after all, on the ebike it's super comfy. But I didn't account for the wider seat with a standard pedal position. The Pedego has a very mile crank forward position, about an inch to an inch and a half. It makes the wide front portion of the seat a non-issue, but on my hybrid, that tiny bit of extra seat dug into my thighs and was seriously uncomfortable.

So I put this one on this morning, leaving the new Kinekt seat post in place, made some adjustments, and then took off on a short test ride.

Zero knee pain.

That's mostly from the changes in the seat height, I think, but combined with this seat? It works. At least for the time I was on the bike, five miles, it worked.

The seat definitely needs to be broken in, but my gut says once it does it will be terrific. I didn't feel squirmy until mile 4, and most of where it bothered me can be taken care of my pointing the seat down just a tiny, tiny bit. The rest will come from breaking it in.

It was a good test for the seat post, too. I intentionally rode over a street surface so bumpy that it generally makes my teeth rattle, and the vibrations from it render my side mirror useless. I didn't feel a thing going over it today and had a stellar view of the idiot driver of a car coming up behind me at about 25 over the speed limit.

So far with this bike, I've swapped out the flat bar for the Surly Open Bar, lessening my reach, which helps with my back. Added the rear rack and Topeak tail bag. Kinekt seat post. And now the Terry bike seat. Really, I think the only things I now need are splashes of hot pink to make the bike seat look even better with the gray bike.

I also have a bit of a conundrum now: which bike to ride on any given day. This bike is fun. The Townie is fun. The Pedego is seriously fun, though harder to get my HR up now. What do, what do...

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