The Year of the Upgrade
Ok. So it has not been six months. Not yet.
2017 has been the year of the upgrade.
Road bike: upgraded shifters to SRAM Rival ... but kept the 10 speed. My bike doesn't go to eleven yet. Also got Rival brakes. I don't think this counts as an upgrade, but after popping a spoke during a ride in May, I replaced all the spokes on the rear wheel. It had been a while since I laced up a wheel.
Hybrid bike: I finally replaced the original suspension fork with a rigid fork. Got a new headset while I was at it. Also swapped out the triple chainring with a single ring crank. This bike was the beginning of the tinkering bug for me. I laced up a couple of wheels for this bike five or six years ago, and I have been supporting Park Tools ever since. Installing the new fork and crankset are two areas that I can't get my head around. Not having the specialist tools to install the required bearings keeps me from tinkering with these areas. Anyhoo, the rigid fork is a joy. I realized how much the entry level suspension fork annoyed me - when I pedaled hard, the suspension fork would start pogo-ing. The rigid fork does a better job of transferring the energy of pedaling to forward momentum. I still need to tweak the single ring crank. I have been dropping the chain went I shift into the smaller cogs. I will consult with the mechanics at the bike shop to see how to reduce the incidence of dropping the chain.
Karol's bike: replace the stock v-brake arms and brake levers with Avid brake arms and levers. I can adjust them, and they keep the adjustments! Yay!
Laptop: replaced the spinning hard drive with a solid state drive. The computer now starts up significantly faster, and applications, especially Photoshop, start a lot faster. The SSD does not have as much storage capacity (480 GB), but I try not to store anything on the system drive, so hopefully this won't become an issue.
Karol's laptop: not quite so lucky. I got the SSD in, but the Windows 10 update is not going well. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Karol decided to get a new laptop, but it is having some issues, that I hope will be resolved with some shakedown time.
Kid's PC: installed a SSD. Loading Windows 10 as I type this. While I cringed at the price of the Windows 10 license, I realized that I can re-install the OS whenever the machines start bogging down.
House: we are getting new windows and sliding doors.
Yup, 2017 has been the year of the upgrade so far.
2017 has been the year of the upgrade.
Road bike: upgraded shifters to SRAM Rival ... but kept the 10 speed. My bike doesn't go to eleven yet. Also got Rival brakes. I don't think this counts as an upgrade, but after popping a spoke during a ride in May, I replaced all the spokes on the rear wheel. It had been a while since I laced up a wheel.
Hybrid bike: I finally replaced the original suspension fork with a rigid fork. Got a new headset while I was at it. Also swapped out the triple chainring with a single ring crank. This bike was the beginning of the tinkering bug for me. I laced up a couple of wheels for this bike five or six years ago, and I have been supporting Park Tools ever since. Installing the new fork and crankset are two areas that I can't get my head around. Not having the specialist tools to install the required bearings keeps me from tinkering with these areas. Anyhoo, the rigid fork is a joy. I realized how much the entry level suspension fork annoyed me - when I pedaled hard, the suspension fork would start pogo-ing. The rigid fork does a better job of transferring the energy of pedaling to forward momentum. I still need to tweak the single ring crank. I have been dropping the chain went I shift into the smaller cogs. I will consult with the mechanics at the bike shop to see how to reduce the incidence of dropping the chain.
Karol's bike: replace the stock v-brake arms and brake levers with Avid brake arms and levers. I can adjust them, and they keep the adjustments! Yay!
Laptop: replaced the spinning hard drive with a solid state drive. The computer now starts up significantly faster, and applications, especially Photoshop, start a lot faster. The SSD does not have as much storage capacity (480 GB), but I try not to store anything on the system drive, so hopefully this won't become an issue.
Karol's laptop: not quite so lucky. I got the SSD in, but the Windows 10 update is not going well. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Karol decided to get a new laptop, but it is having some issues, that I hope will be resolved with some shakedown time.
Kid's PC: installed a SSD. Loading Windows 10 as I type this. While I cringed at the price of the Windows 10 license, I realized that I can re-install the OS whenever the machines start bogging down.
House: we are getting new windows and sliding doors.
Yup, 2017 has been the year of the upgrade so far.
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