Things That Go Creak In The Night

Okay, who out there has been following the saga of my creaky Renovo?

Hello?

Where did everybody go?

Well, I'll go on anyway just in case if anybody happens to wander by at any point.

Anyway, after swapping wheels and checking bolts and doing all the stuff you're supposed to do when a bike is creaking the sound persisted, and so I essentially just surrendered to it and decided the bike was going to be my new winter beater:

Hey, you may be disappointed that I'm riding a crabon road bike, but you should be positively disgusted that my winter beater is a hand-curated artisanal wooden bicycle from Portland that originally retailed for nearly $10,000.

So that was the state of affairs until just a couple of days ago, when a reader was kind enough to send me a tip:

Apparently, 11 speed Dura Ace cassettes can develop a creak from the rivets that hold the two largest cogs together.

Thinking about it, this made perfect sense.  While the parts on the Renovo are Ultegra, for whatever reason they did send it to me with a Dura Ace cassette.  What's more, that's the only cassette I've ever used on the bike, which would explain why the sound persisted even after a wheel swap.

As it happens, I did have a brand new 105 cassette I'd never gotten around to using, and so this very morning I installed it and went for a ride:

I refuse to declare success after only a single short ride to Central Park, but so far the results are promising.

It was also interesting to ride the Renovo after having ridden my new crabon bike almost exclusively for the past couple weeks.  The crabon bike rides beautifully, and even right out of the box it's easily the lightest bike I've ever owned, which always makes a bike feel faster even if it really isn't.  Still, despite the cheap wheels and Gatorskins I'm currently palping on the Renovo, the bike has a certain preternatural smoothness to it, and while I'm hesitant to ascribe mystical qualities to frame materials I can't help suspecting that there is something special about a bike made out of wood.

Not that I'd tell you to run right out and spend a bunch of money on a bike made out of wood, mind you.  (Not like you could even if you wanted to.)

Another nauseatingly Fredly question I got to ponder was this: Di2, or mechanical?  More specifically, the Renovo has Ultegra Di2, and the new crabon bike has mechanical Dura Ace.  Well, after riding both, I'd have to say if you're trying to decide between one or the other the answer is "yes."  I mean I don't have a bad thing to say about either.  Personally I guess I'd lean towards mechanical, if only because the psychological aspect of having a bike that needs to be charged bothers me, but in practice I've only plugged the thing in maybe three times in the 14 months I had it and even then the battery was maybe half-depleted.  (Plus if you're lazy about changing cables like I am the quality of your mechanical shifting degrades, whereas with Di2 as long as you keep your chain in reasonable shape it's always going to feel like new.)

But hey, as I mentioned, in Portland I rented a bike with Tiagra from River City Cycles and was blown away by how nicely that shifted too, so ultimately all of this is meaningless:

I guess what I'm saying is go find yourself a used wooden frame and some Tiagra and you'll feel like you're floating on air.

Oh, and on the way home from Central Park I saw a hawk:

It swooped by me rather dramatically, but I was only able to get a picture once it alighted on a fire escape a few stories up.

Not as dramatic as the time I saw one grab a pigeon on Avenue A, but pretty good regardless:

I can totally relate to that pigeon.