Cross-posted on Sydney Cyclist.

It was a very Melbourne-like day, going from sunny to overcast to light rain and back to sunny every 20 minutes. A perfect day to test out my new Shimano Galaxy glasses with Photochromatic lenses.

I’d wanted some new glasses for a while, my BBB Winners have been great but the rubber covering on the arms had started to disintegrate and while I really liked the lens choice I wanted to try something adaptive to save changing lenses during early morning or late afternoon / evening rides.

The first thing I noticed about these glasses is just how light and comfortable they are, when you put them on for the first time inside the lenses are fairly clear and you barely know you are wearing them. Thanks to the rimless design, your visibility is maximised and the top and bottom of the lens, and the shape of the lens means it sits against your face nicely. As I said before, you can hardly tell you have them on.

After putting them on for the first time in the shop, I stepped outside into the bright sunlight to test out the main feature I have to say I was a little underwhelmed. The adaptive lenses are a lot more subtle than I expected, I’ve never owned any adaptive lenses before and I was expecting something not far off Zaphod’s Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, well maybe not quite that black, but something in the realm of the dark lenses on my old glasses. These stay fairly clear and light, but you do find that when you go into the light you’re squinting for a moment, then your eyes relax as the lenses adapt. Unless it’s the placebo effect…. but I do think they are working, if you look closely there is a difference.

So back to the very Melbourne-esque day we were having in Sydney, I rode out of the house and in the direction of Centennial park, it was overcast above my place but it wasn’t long until I rounded a corner and into some Sun. A moment of squinting, then back to comfort. A few minutes later I’m back in clouds, then the rain came. I could still see fine. The rain had cleared by the time I got to the park and started doing some laps, Centennial goes from open sky to tree covered shade in a few places and I never felt like I had the wrong glasses on. A good sign.

Since then I’ve done a couple of rides in very bright sun and they’ve performed well, not as good as specifically dark lenses, but certainly acceptable.

In summary, they are lightweight, very comfortable to wear and adapt to the conditions well. The lens colour change is a lot more subtle that I would have expected, but they do the job. They appear to be well made, have full UV protection and for the price (around the $100 AUD mark) they are great value. They also come with a great travel case and a microfibre bag / cleaning cloth.

I know this is a stupid amount of words to spend on some sunglasses, but I couldn’t find any info online for these (a problem I’ve found before) so I thought I’d help out the next few Google searchers.

It has often been said that Sydney is made up of tribes. This definitely holds true in the cycling world as well. Commuters don’t want to talk to roadies, roadies don’t want to talk to roadies from other clubs, etc etc.

As a result, it can be very hard to find people to ride with, or talk to about bikes. There are a number of forums on the net, some of them even have Australia specific areas however Sydney is never represented there as much as it should be, in part because the camaraderie of Melbourne cyclists mean that they discuss a lot, and Sydneysiders discuss little.

I’ve long wanted to build a site to help this situation a little, the usual excuses stopped me from doing it (you know, working, spending time with my young family, and actually riding my bike etc). Then recently Phil was experimenting with Ning and eventually I went and had a proper look at it too. Ning is the perfect toolset for building what I had in mind, so I really had no reason not to do it.

I present to you, in full Web 2.0 Beta glory : www.sydneycyclist.com

It’s still only a few days old, and things are still being tweaked. But if you are a cyclist in Sydney, please come and join us and say hi!

On the tech side, Ning is an incredibly cool platform – once I’ve spent some more time with it I might do a post from the technology angle.

“Lady 7”. I assume an actual Lady (in the ‘er Ladyship sense). I’ll say it here because you wouldn’t wind down your drivers side window at the lights so we could have an adult conversation.

On a section of road very prone to people stepping out from behind parked cars and people opening doors without looking, riding in the lane is not “how accidents happen” as you advised me by shouting out your passenger window as you illegally passed me. It’s actually how accidents are avoided, even if you felt it held you up 10 seconds for your lunch appointment (it didn’t. We met at the lights remember ?).

Secondly, on pass number two you asked me if my bike was registered. No it isn’t. There isn’t a way for me to do that, nor is it really practical. I’m sorry you don’t like that, maybe you could use your name and influence to find out why. Not that it really matters, your car rego isn’t paying for the road either.

Thirdly. You should be nicer to your fellow human beings. I was standing next to your car a few Kilometers down the road taking this photo before you’d had a chance to order your Chardonnay at Danny’s. Now, I’m not a vengeful person, nor one who breaks the law. But the next guy might decide to put a brick through your window. Your rego is up this month, I know that’s a hot issue for you so it would be annoying to have any hassles with a pink slip too.

A big issue in the bicycle world is supporting your local bike shop versus buying online from eBay sellers or cheap outlets like ProBikeKit.

I won’t rehash the arguments here, I’m sure you can imagine what they are.

Anyway, I need a new helmet. I think at some point I’ve dropped mine and put a bit of a crack in the foam. I happen to like Specialized helmets, they fit my odd shaped head and feel comfortable. Unfortunately they are a little hard to find in Sydney. So rather than calling every bike shop I could find, I did a google for the model I wanted and ended up here at the Bicycle Riders shop website. From what I can tell, Bicycle Riders are a small Brisbane bike shop that have set up an online presence.

They had the helmet I was looking for, but they also have the next model, on special for only $10 more. So I ordered one.

After a slightly longer wait than I would have expected, the helmet arrived today. With no box, just in a postpack. With the helmet straps blackened with dirt. With the “InStrap” adjustment system ground down from a scrape with some hard, brick-like object. With a big gouge out of the foam at the back. I’m guessing it’s been their shop demo model for a while, essentially it’s not a new helmet, and I don’t trust that there isn’t more damage to it.

So I rang them, and very politely explained the problems I had. After being told to wait for thirty seconds, the guy got back on the phone and said “send it back and we’ll refund you”. I was a little stunned by that response, said OK and hung up.

Now I suppose it could have gone worse, he could have told me to shove it. That would have been fun though, I was quite ready for a fight. But he could have said “Sorry mate, it was the only one we had. Is there something else you’d like to swap it for ?”, and we could have gone from there. But he wasn’t interested in keeping me happy in the slightest. I can only imagine they are getting rid of all their grotty demo helmets and figure that anyone who will accept it… great, anyone who doesn’t like it can have their money back.

I know that various people in the bicycle industry see the internet as a major threat to their business, and nobody here wants to compete in a global marketplace, I know that shop staff have their time wasted by people using their retail locations as a way to try on clothes, but DAMN. Do these guys even want to TRY to keep customers (I also realise that I did actually buy this via the internet, but this shop is primarily a bricks and mortar retailer, and doesn’t really count amongst the PBKs and eBay sellers).

Anyway.. I know it’s a rant. I’m cranky. 

UPDATE : Looks like this has a happy ending. I posted the helmet back and the store manager / owner rang me. I had been sent a demo helmet which never should have been sold. He apologised for me being messed about and all is good. Unfortunately they didn’t have any more of that model helmet left, but I have another one on the way with a decent discount. So I’m happy now, but it’s not cool to go deleting blog posts when you think better of it.

Commutebybike brings us a post on this rather unusual machine.

Maybe it's just me but I can't stop thinking about a certain South Park episode. Co-incidence ?

The Google Earth blog has posted up a link to this years Tour stages as a Google Earth KMZ file. This is a great use of GE to preview the terrain that we'll be seeing in July. If you look closely you might even catch some of the Men in Black doing some secret training.

If the wind changes, you'll stay that way.

At least that seems to be the case for Fabian Cancellara.

After some months of procrastination, and a little bit of hassling, my friend Grant bought a bike and has joined the ranks of hardened bike commuters. He's just written an excellent how-to piece on the Futuremakers blog with some good tips on riding to work.

I guess that makes yet another Sydney cycling techie blogger. Must be time for another meetup.

I know I know, it's pretty cheeky for someone in Sydney to complain about the cold, but we've had some chilly mornings lately. I've found myself leaving the house to 6 degrees Celsius a few times. After a few mornings of chilled extremities, I picked up a few things.

Tuff Winter Ultimate Gloves

These are nice and toasty, have some rubber grip on the index and middle fingers to avoid slipping off the brake levers and most importantly, come in a size that fits my hands.

I also have discovered that Tuff also have these very cool retro mesh gloves. I think I might get a pair when it warms up.

I also picked up a pair of Vittoria shoe covers. My shoes are very nicely ventilated, which is great in summer, but not so pleasant in winter. When they are covered up my feet stay at a very comfy temperature. My toes thank me for it.

These, along with leg warmers are keeping me from having an excuse for not riding in the cold. Now I just need to wait for my new lighting system to arrive, but that's a topic for another post.

So Basso has admitted... something, and we can pretty much assume Der Kaiser is guilty too. This begs a rather large question that I haven't seen asked too much.

If WADA and USADA and ASADA and all the other anti doping agencies are doing tests, why the hell aren't they finding this stuff ? As an extension to that, if they can't be trusted to find "stuff", are they finding "not stuff" ? Or are they only finding things when the athletes and their doctors slip up ?