Another night for heading out on the bike at night. This time, it wasn’t a dirt ride, but one with the road bike.
I was actually breaking and demoing a new Soma Fabrications road bike and I have to say, it rode really, really nice. Downeast is using the bikes for the upcoming Outdoor Demo East that is coming up shortly and we need to get the cables stretched and everything broken in. So I grabbed the bike, took it home and hit the streets with it.
The bike I got to ride was a Soma Smoothie ES, which is a little more layed back comfy frame compared to their race stock Smoothie frame. Paired up with that was a full Sram Rival set with some FSA wheels. Have to say the frame road GREAT for a $500 frame. I was completely suprised how smooth everything was and how stiff it was when it needed to be. For the Sram group, that was the first time on any Sram road gear, and to be honest, was not all that pleased with it. I guess I am just used to other components. With that being said, I only had about 1.5 hours worth of pedal time on it and can’t be sure I don’t like the Sram stuff. I think with a little more “hands on” time, I could convince myself that I like it.
This time of the year is so nice for night riding. The weather was quite warm (about 60 degrees) and the moon was throwing off a TON of light, so I kept the light usage to the minimum, only turning on the lights when cars are getting close. Either way, it was another 1.5ish hours of turning the pedals. No matter how you look at that, there is nothing wrong with that.
