The Raleigh Oakland Reviewed Part 3

Raleigh Oakland 6500 km done

I’ve now had the Raleigh Oakland for seven months and I’ve been doing an average of around 1000 km a month on it, slowed up a little for the last few weeks but I’ve now done more than 6500 km. This winter has been very mild and I have been able to keep cycling away. 
  
In my previous reviews I wrote about the poor quality of the chainwheels. Well things got worse since then and the chain began to slip badly, so I decided to overhaul the entire drive system. I replaced the chainwheels, cassette and chain with new parts. 
  
The chain was long overdue a change and in future I will pay more attention to its condition and make a greater effort to keep it cleaned and lubed. Hopefully this will extend its life. The chainwheels and cassette were a problem from I first rode the bike. In the early weeks I changed gear hard and with the power full on and this caused some chipping of the teeth. I am changing gear carefully with the new gears and expect to get at least 12,000 and maybe 15,000 km out of the new set. 
  
All new parts were purchased from my local Raleigh dealer Clarkes of Cavan, where I bought the bike. They had the chain and cassette in stock, the chainwheels they had to order, which took a week. The chainwheels cost 28 euro, the cassette 13 euro and the chain 10 euro. I also changed the brake blocks, which cost 3 euro, got them in ALDI on special offer last year. Total cost of new parts 54 euro, added to the 360 euro I’d spent already and the bike has so far cost me 414 euro. 
  
I also stripped, cleaned and regreased the pedals. I had to fiddle about with the brakes to get them working properly. In all it took me about 4 hours to complete all the work, but a lot of time was lost learning as I went. 
  
I took the Oakland out for a 30 km run after the service and she is running like new. Apart from the drive train, the brake blocks, the back wheel and the bottom bracket all the components have been on it since the day I bought it and are all working well. 
  
This bike is my main personal transport and my main leisure transport. Right now it is running perfectly and I’m looking forward to the next 6500 km. The tyres are beginning to show signs of wear but I reckon there is a few thousand km in them yet. 
  
The days are beginning to get longer and I’m starting to wonder where me and the Oakland might go touring this summer. I’m thinking of Clifden on the west coast.

Old chain on top, note the stretch.

Oakland Reviewed Part 1

Oakland Reviewed Part 2
Oakland Reviewed Part 4
Oakland Reviewed Part 5
Oakland Reviewed Part 6

Kelly Kettle for Cycle Touring

The Trekker

Before the summer comes I am going to buy the smallest model of the Kelly Kettle, “the Trekker”, as my bike touring kettle. No problem getting fuel for the Kelly Kettle, it will burn any solid fuel. If no suitable solid fuel is available, some rolled up paper and cheap veg oil will work. The kettle comes with stove, frying pan, saucepan and carrier bag, all in it weights 0.76kg. As a solo bike tourer this small kettle is an ideal size and weight.

With dry fuel it's as fast as an electric kettle or a gas hob for cooking. It can be set up quickly and water boiled in a few minutes, it’s perfect to brew up that quick mug of coffee at the beauty spot. It’s possible to be packed up and back on the road in 15 minutes.

A major drawback with a lot of camping stoves is that only one thing can be cooked at a time. The Kelly kettle can be boiled and with the pot stand the saucepan (or frying pan) can be used at the same time. A simple pasta meal will take 15 minutes to cook. A super fast breakfast of coffee and porridge can be ready in about 5 minutes.

Once lit it will stay lit even in very windy conditions, in fact if the vents are turned into a strong wind it will cook at super fast speed. A quality Irish made product, priced at £54.25 sterling (+ carriage) from the Kelly Kettle Company in Co Mayo. It gets my vote as the best cooker for the solo cycling tourer.

Aluminium 'Trekker' Kelly Kettle® - Complete Kit

Product Dimensions:

Kettle Height .......27cm / 10.6 inches (packed)

Kettle Diameter....14cm / 5.5 inches

Kettle Capacity.....20oz (UK) / 0.57ltr

Pot Capacity........ 15oz (UK) / 0.43ltr

Kit Weight............1.63lb / 0.76kg

Two or more cyclists touring together would be better with the big model

Aluminum 'Base Camp' Kelly Kettle® - Complete Kit

£ 59.95

Product Dimensions:

Kettle Height ....... 34cm / 13 inches (packed)

Kettle Diameter....18.5cm / 7.3 inches (widest point at rim of fire base)

Kettle Capacity.....53oz (UK)/ 1.5ltr

Pot Capacity........ 30oz / 0.85ltr

Kit Weight............2.73lb / 1.24kg

Road Bike Versus Hybrid

In the English speaking world cycling is mainly a sporting subculture, dominated by fast moving, lycra clad young men on road bikes. I read several cycling forums on the Web and I have read many threads where someone asks for advise about a commuting bike. This will immediately draw a chorus of posters dismissing hybrid bikes as worthless and advising a road bike as the only worthwhile option.

The Raleigh Oakland

For my own information I decided to test the difference in a hybrid and road bike. My hybrid is an inexpensive, steel framed Raleigh Oakland. It weights about 15.5 kg and runs on 700 x 28 c tyres. My road bike is an inexpensive, aluminum framed Carrera TDF. It weights about 11.7 kgs and runs on 700 x 23 c tyres.

The course I choose was flat and gently rolling, valley and bogland. On both runs there was a cross wind. I decided to measure the distance I could travel in an hour, doing a sustainable pace, a pace that I could keep going at all day. A pace at which I did not break a sweat.

On the road bike I traveled 19.95 km (12.4 miles) in one hour, on the hybrid I covered 18.99 km (11.8) miles in one hour. Over the course of one hour the difference was just over 1 km. In a race this would be a huge margin, but in a commute it's nothing. The lycra clad commuter would probably loose more time changing out of their cycling clothes than I would cycling that last kilometre.

The Carrera TDF

The hybrid is a more comfortable, rugged and stable bike to ride. I much prefer the upright riding position. It is equipped with a chain guard, mud guards, mud flaps, a rear rack and a handlebar bag. Best of all you can comfortably ride it in ordinary clothes. It is practical everyday transport. If I wanted a bike to commute to work every day I would go with the hybrid rather than the road bike.

Now if I wanted to go racing the road bike and the lycra would be best.

Carrera TDF

Frame - 6061 aluminum

Tyres - 700 x 23c Kenda road tyres

Number of Gears - 16

Approximate Weight (KG) - 11.7

Raleigh Oakland

Frame - Chromoly Steel

Tyres - 700 x 28c trekking tyres

Number of Gears - 18

Approximate Weight (KG) – 16.5 kg (including accessories)

DIY Bike Servicing

I am slowly teaching myself to be a bike mechanic. In the seven months since I bought my Raleigh Oakland I have done all the servicing. I have been learning the rudiments of servicing bikes. If you have no experience in working with hand tools it will take a while to master bike maintenance but if you have any aptitude for manual labour you will soon get it.

Raleigh Oakland

I studied diesel engines in college, bikes are much easier than engined vehicles. The working parts (with a few exceptions, like hub gears) are all open. Unlike an engined vehicle it’s usually easy to figure out what is wrong with a bike and how to fix it.

After that you need a good reference book, a basic set of tools, decent workspace, lots of practice, a willingness to get your hands dirty and a desire to learn. YouTube is an invaluable resource for the apprentice bike mechanic. If you only service your own bike you only need to master the components on one machine, a professional mechanic must master a vast range of  different bike components.

In my local bike shop a full service costs a minimum of 175 euros. Parts and extra labour will cost more. It has to be booked a week in advance, left in the shop and collected. I do about 1000 km a month on my Oakland, on rough rural roads, in all weathers. To keep it running in top form, would need at least two services as year. I am saving around 400 euros in labour every year.

Because I can do all the little ongoing servicing jobs my bike is always running in tip top condition. In the event of a breakdown, with a modest tool kit and a few spare parts I can do most roadside repairs and make it home under my own steam.

The Haynes Manual

My Bible

Halford' Tool Kit

The Signal to Noise Ratio

When I was a child in rural Ireland in the late 1960s one thing I learned very young was to shut up when adults were listening to the news, on TV or radio. Adults would listen attentively and without comment until the news was over. Then they would discuss the stories, both national and international. It was part of the ritual of daily life in that society.

My uncle told me a story about my maternal grandfather, a Cavan farmer. In 1937 my uncle asked him about the rising tensions between Japan and the USA. My grandfather had a very clear grasp of the strategic significance of the Japanese carrier fleet and its likely impact in any future war. As things turned out this Cavan farmer had a better grasp of the matter than the commander of the US Pacific fleet.

In modern Ireland we have access to a bewildering array of information, multiple radio channels, newspapers, twenty four hour news feeds and the internet. We have a much higher standard of education and yet many adults are so distracted by all the worthless noise that they have no idea what is going on in the world. As Neil Postman once wrote they are “amusing themselves to death”.

Until Irish television was launched in 1961 (a few months after this community first got mains electricity) news came from  the radio. Radio news went back to the mid 1920s. By the 1930s battery powered valve radios were common household items. To conserve power they were switched on for the news and then switched off. The only exception to this rule was when the Cavan football team were in a big match.

Radio batteries were imported into Ireland and the outbreak of the Battle of the Atlantic in September 1939 cut off the supply. A local man Patrick McCabe developed a radio battery and made them in a small workshop. His battery used a readily available sauce bottle to make the individual cells. He mounted a collection of cells in a shallow wooden box.

No one can tell me how he charged them but he must have had some kind of hand or pedal powered generator. It was primitive but it worked and it kept the communities radios working until 1945 when batteries were again available in the shops.

In the future we are going to need people like Patrick McCabe, creative technicians and mechanics to improvise things like batteries and keep essential communications systems running. Who knows what kind of communications we will be able to maintain in the coming decades but radio will almost certainly continue to play a key role.

I often wonder about the enormous amounts of energy consumed by the modern Internet, by the huge server farms that keep Facebook and YouTube running. When we are several decades past peak oil will we have the power to spare to run servers full of worthless photos and banal videos. Or will we have to scale back our communications systems and decide what is important information and what is useless noise.

When the Lights Go Out

If you are completely dependent on mains electricity to run your house and have made absolutely no preparations for coping without it, a power cut can be a very difficult time. It's no fun to sit in the dark, without any entertainment, no way to cook, trying to stay warm and thinking about how the present sucks. But with a little preparations a power cut, even an extended one is nothing to fear.

The single greatest asset in a power cut is a solid fuel heating system. It will allow you to cook simple meals like soups and stews, to boil water and to space heat. A fireplace will do the job but any kind of stove is a lot better. If your house has no solid fuel option, think strongly about retro-fitting it, if you can. If an external metal fluepipe can be fitted to the house, this may make it possible to install a stove. Obviously always keep a supply of fuel in reserve for power cuts.

Candles are good for light, and produce about 80 watts of heat each. They are however expensive and are a serious fire risk, especially around children. For light the easiest, cheapest and more reliable option are wind-up LED camping lanterns. If you make sure to keep them charged you have a ready source of light once the power goes out. If you forget to keep them charged you have to do some work, but the work will warm you and you will have light. An LED head torch for everyone in the house would also be good. Very easy on power and puts the light right where you need it.

The ultimate accessory to get through a short power cut is a power pack, usually used by motorists for emergency power and compressor. They will supply a small amount of DC current. For household back up buy one with an inverter which will also produce the AC current used by household appliances. The more you spend the more powerful an inverter you get. But a power pack is a very small reserve and it’s best used for running small appliances like a coffee grinder or small TV. Do a lot of heavy work with it and you will have no power very quickly.

To get through a power cut in style requires more than meeting your physical needs, you must also boost morale. Keeps books and board games in stock. In many modern households PC, consoles and TV often mean entertainment is a solitary pursuit. In a power cut most of these entertainment systems are dead. Learn how to play a musical instrument or tell a good story. Have some of your favourite chemical stimulant in stock, in my case whiskey. It's amazing the way a good source of heat, a bowl of soup, a few shots of whiskey and a singsong can lift morale.

The last time we had a power cut it lasted about 3 hours. We got the backup lights going, threw more logs on the stove, cracked open a bottle of whiskey, got the guitars out and ended up telling the kids stories about their great grand parents. It was a great night and I still remember it fondly. In fact I was sorry when the power came back and the kids went back to their xboxs and TVs. There is a kind of magic telling stories in a dimly lit room.





Wind up Lamp

Head lamp

Power Pack