SRAM PG850 gears

My SRAM PG-850 11-32 cassette (newly cleaned up) weighs in at 274g, including lockring

Today I stripped the gears off the wheel I was using on Mermaid.

I had the 11-32 set, which gave me ratios of 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 26, and 32.
The 11 and 12 are separate gears, each made with a built-in spacer to spread the (high) loading, in order to stop them cutting a notch in the freehub.
The rest of the gears came assembled as a group.
The 11 is a "top" gear, so the grooves for the splines don't go all the way through, while the 12 has fully-cut grooves.

Today, I discovered that the "group" of six gears are actually held together with a very long thin bolt, and a rather small Allen key will unscrew them.

Separating the "group" of six gears has two advantages:
1) I can clean them all properly!
2) I can monkey about with the ratios.

If I was to purchase another set of PG850 gears with a different ratio spread, then I could make up some useful extra combinations.

Say, for example, I bought a 12-26 set.
Well, that contains 12 (presumably a "top" gear), 13 (presumably a "stand alone" gear, like the 12 I already have), 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 26 (presumably with a bolted-together group of 6).

So I could make a couple of new (unavailable) combinations, including two "time trial" "corn cob" sets:
a) 11(top), 12 (single), 13 (single), 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
b) 12 (top), 13 (single), 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

Plus I would have enough parts to build the "official" 12-23 ,"road" set :
12 (top), 13 (single), 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23

Then, of course, there are the "road + granny" sets, where the cassette is build up as a "road" 7-speed, with the addition of a large sprocket in the inside position.
E.g. 11(top), 12 (single), 14, 16, 18, 21, 23, 32
Or 11 (top), 12 (single), 13 (single), 15, 17, 19, 23, 32

There is, of course, a variant of the 11-32 wide ratio set I started with, substituting a few to give:
11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 23, 26, 32

There is, of course, one more set of ratios available from SRAM, and this includes 2 more sizes of sprockets. Whether it is worth buying a cassette just for two new sprocket sizes depends how much the cassette costs (!)
Any way, that cassette comes as an 11-28, and the two new sizes are a 24 and a 28, giving 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 24, 28.

Taking the 11-32 I already have, and buying both the 12-26 and the 11-28 allows a very nice, well-balanced, wide-range cassette to be built:
12 (top), 14, 16, 18, 21, 24, 28, 32. Indeed, this is the same set of ratios as the 9-speed 11-32 offered by SRAM without the 11-tooth sprocket.
 
So there we are.
If I buy another couple of SRAM PG850 cassettes, I can customise my ratios to my little heart's content, as well as having a couple of spare sizes in case some start to show a lot of wear and tear:
11 (top x2), 12 (top and single x2), 13 (single), 14 (x2), 15, 16 (x2), 17, 18 (x2), 19, 21 (x3), 23, 24, 26 (x2), 28, and 32.

Let's see how much (or, more importantly, how little!) I can get that extra pair of PG850 cassettes for!

Kitting out Hoppy for Sportives and Audax/Randoneuring

Hoppy during the testing and adjusting phase that any new bike undergoes to make it suitable for the tasks the rider wishes to perform. Saddle is probably going to get changed again. The original didn't agree with my 50 year-old prostate, and this is a spare saddle I had knocking about in the garage. It is better than the one that came with the bike, but not quite there yet. Not sure about that third bottle holder under the nose of the saddle. Already moved it forwards quite a bit. Still tinkering about, though, But that is the point of testing and adjusting!

So, I have a new bike.
A BTwin Hoprider 300, from Decathlon.

Of course, since it is a "Hoprider" model, the obvious name for it is "Hoppy".
Original, no.
Pretentious?
Well, someone out there has named his bike Buchepalus (you know who you are!), which is either a nasty disease or the name of the horse ridden by Alexander the Great. Hopefully it is the latter.
"Hoppy" it is then.

As you can see in the pic above, Hoppy came with lights and a hub dynamo. Chances are I will swap the front wheel for the 100km (62 miles) charity sportive I am riding in about 5 weeks time. That'll trim the weight by a touch, and even I don't take all day to do 100km! Probably put it back on for the all-nighter Randoneering I fancy doing in late Summer though.
Also in the pic is a very small bar bag (just 2.5 litres) - ok for a few bananas!
I have now got one of those small frame bags - supposedly a litre on each side. Get my jelly babies in one side, and some more food in the other.
The luggage is rounded out with a small nylon tool pouch I found lurking in the garage. Minitool, punctyre kit and a spare tube out to go in alright.
Mudguards will probably come off for the sportive, and likely back on again for the all-nighter. Certainly they will back on by September, and the hub dynamo wheel will be back in by then, at the latest.

The Bars.
Nope, Hoppy did not come with those bars.
Those are the "Humpert Country" bars (North Road -style) that I was using on Mermaid. The grips are the same cork ones I was using before. The shifters and brake levers are the ones that came with Hoppy, however. The bell is a nice, old fashioned, chrome one my father gave me for Christmas last year.
Oh, the "horns".
I thought you'd never ask.
Those "horns" are a pair of bar ends mounted half-way down the bar. If you didn't know that you could do that, you do now!
The "horns" were a bit slippery, so I found a pair of "shortie" grips to go on the ends - nice and rubbery, not those dead hard ones. the shortie grips are the ones actually supplied as standard with Hoppy, but seeing as I am using cork grips instead ...
The grips feel pretty good, too.
The "horns" do two things:
firstly, they provide an alternative riding position, and it is quite a stretch to get to them, so they allow me to stretch my back a bit on long rides. Also gives the wrists and palms a break just to move to a different position;
secondly, in that rather stretched position I can hold an aero tuck for longer. Just right for the odd long decline I encounter around here, where even an unfit old man like me can easily top 65 kph (40 mph).

There is some more tinkering about to be done, though, so Hoppy is very much a "work in progress" at the moment. You can see how Hoppy started life, fresh out of the shipping box, here.

Meet Hoppy, my new bike

After lots of thinking, and talking about it, I finally bought a new bike.

Mermaid was fine in many ways, but suffered from one unalterable deficit.
Mermaid was originally bought for my wife (5'6", 167 cm), while I am a lot taller (6'2", 188cm).
So, really, I needed a bigger frame.

Enter Hoppy, a Hoprider 300 I purchased online from Decathlon, the French sporting goods chain with stores in many European countries (and no doubt beyond).

Hoppy, my new BTwin Hoprider 300, shown with Mermaid