I've started working for a wonderful company, Livelo, based in Sydney, now expanded to Melbourne and our game is performance road bike hire. Cool. My job consists of hanging around really nice looking bikes and keeping them happy, making sure they're clean, looked after, comfortable at all times. I drop them off at hotels and people's houses for people that wanna take them out, and then pick them up after they've spent some time together. I'm kinda like the muscle that makes sure nothing untoward happens…sorta…not really…no that's not it at all. Essentially what I am is a courier.
BUT
That's not the point, the point is my boss Pete is a great guy and was happy for me to swank around on one of our Cannondale Supersix Evo's recently. Di2 equipped no less.
I'd never ridden electric shifters before so this was quite the experience. Rather than getting a feel for the bike, I spent the first 10 km's checking whether anything was actually happening whenever I hit a button. The gear changes were that smooth I had no idea I was even doing them. Needless to say, electric really is a different kettle of fish. If by kettle of fish I mean the difference between that and manual shifting, and also considering the impractical and highly unlikely presence of fish in a kettle to begin with as relating to that of me riding a bicycle. Well that was a confusing sentence and grammatically horrible I'm sure.
HOWEVER
That's not the point.
And I won't tell you about how the bike rides/handles because I'm sure there are hundreds of better qualified cyclists that have written reviews on the topic prior to this going out.
Suffice to say I had a great ride on the thing. I'm not game to tell you where or how far I rode, let's just say I probably didn't need to don the lycra for such a short ride. I did get some milk though which was handy.
ALTERNATIVELY
I took what will probably go down as one of 'the shots' of 2014 in Kerbside photographer magazine. I initially rode straight past this event due to the backlog of traffic I'd navigated before it putting me in a hurried mood. Once past I checked myself, came to my senses and took the following pic:
AMAZING…
No-one was hurt, I saw the two drivers chatting on the side on the road. The only fatality was the rear drivers pride. That is now very, very dead.
For those who don't know, the RACV are who you call when your car has broken down. So basically, this person's saved themselves the cost of a call. Clever.
SUMMARY
- I rode electric shift.
- I liked riding electric shift.
- If you're going to drive into the back of a car, make sure it's one that will no doubt have a spare battery on board to replace the mangled one your car now has.
