Saturday, May 21, 2011

The Great Bicycle Weigh-in

True to form for two 5-year-olds, Cons and I decided to go to Higher Gear to weigh our bikes. We stopped by Cons's house to replace his seat with a new, lighter one, as he has had the seat since Christmas and had meant to install it. Rich also came to be the witness and we installed the seat. Cons removed one of the two water-bottle cages because Ionly have one, but I made sure he put the bolts back in the frame as I have all 4 bolts.

When Cons, Rich and I got to HG Wilmette, Fred, the chief mechanic, was out to lunch. The lady behind the countrer sensed this was something so silly that Fred should probably not miss it, so she called him, and Fred showed up within minutes. The verdict? First the scale showed Cons's bike to be 13.15 pounds, but it also showed my bike to be 13.15 pounds on Thursday...it seems to be a zero-ing issue with that particular Park digital scale. We reset it and started making measurements that made sense. Cons's bike was 14 pounds even; mine was 14.02 pounds. The difference was 0.02 pounds, about 10 grams, or the weight of three pennies. (Interestingly, my bike weighed 14 pounds two days ago on the same scale...it must have gotten dirty.) So my bike is officially heavier than Cons's bike, but only after the seat-change.

Obviously we are not taking ourselves seriously, and nobody wants to start drilling holes in his bike just to make it lighter. It is great to have a light bike only if it is strong as well. That said, do we REALLY need both wheels and brakes?

1 comment:

  1. I am thinking that in order to get close to your bike weight, I need to figure out how to get rid of the rear wheel/tire/tube/cassette.

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