Dawes SST-AL Pictorial Review

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On Friday the thirteenth of February I received my tax refund. At 11am that morning I placed my order for the Dawes SST-AL (52cm) from bikdesdirect for $359.99 USD delivered. I was looking for a way to rekindle my interest in cycling, which had fallen off some in the past couple of years. I figured riding fixed could do the trick. Since it had been 10 years since I last bought a bicycle (my road bike), I was pretty excited about getting another bike. At 11:40 I received a UPS tracking number. Bonus points for the quick shipping!

My budget for the bike ran about $500, so right after ordering the Dawes I went to ebay and picked up a Cateye Strada wireless cycle computer, and a cheap pair of Wellgo 823 clipless pedals. The bike comes with clips and straps, but since I already ride a pair of Wellgos on my road bike I decided to get the same for this bike so I could be sure I could use my only pair of cycling shoes with both bikes.

I had it shipped to my office. I ordered it the Friday of Presidents Day weekend, so with their 5-day shipping estimate I figured it would be at best Thursday or Friday of the following week when the bike arrived. I was stoked when it arrived at my office on Tuesday(!) morning at 9:30. That's a little under 4 days for delivery, across a holiday weekend. The bike got to me so quickly that I had to wait a few more days to get my clipless pedals and cycle computer. The box was in pretty good shape, so I wasn't worried about the condition of the contents.

The thing felt pretty light. Opening the box was a pretty good wrestling match; once it was open, I could see everything tucked tightly into place.

The seatpost is a Kalloy Micro Adjust 27.2x300mm in black, mounted with a nondescript black saddle. Since I already had a Fizik Pave' saddle on hand, I've been using it in place of the stock saddle while riding.

The wheels looked nice, and the packing job was thorough, with cardboard, foam, and clear plastic taped or zip tied in place to protect all the shiny aluminum of the frame and the black components. I admit that when I placed the order I was concerned about the level of care that would be used in packing. Everything came through just fine. There was the seatpost and saddle, a parts box, and the mass of the frame and wheels. The rear was already installed, while the front was zipped in place. Interestingly, the front also had the left crank slid in place between the spokes. It made for a solidly packed mass with little room to move around. That's good, since there's no one to inspect the bikes between the factory and the customer.

The parts box had the pedals, the 17-tooth freewheel (the 18-tooth fixed cog was installed), and a rear brake and brake lever with cable and housing. Also included was a laughable "owners manual" with a few pages of (very) generic content.

The welds are not especially pretty, but that's something I was willing to accept for the deeply discounted price at bikesdirect. The axles were covered to prevent them punching through the sides of the box. I took a good look at the rims and other components before beginning to assemble the bike.

The headset is a Cane Creek -- I was glad of that, though I'm sure it's low-end Cane Creek. The whole head tube was loose on arrival, but there was no apparent harm in that. Contrary to what you may have heard on the web, the Dawes stickers are all under the clear coat. The only sticker on top is that "Made in Taiwan" sticker on the head tube.

Here's a shot of the welds where the top tube and seat tube meet up with the head tube. Keep in mind that this is a 52cm, so everything pretty much runs together here.

With the handlebars in place and the headset tightened down it was starting to look like a bicycle. Initially I left in the full complement of spacers. I've taken about half of them out while adjusting my fit. The handlebars are 44cm C-C, which is a full 6cm wider than the bars on my road bike, and likely too wide for anyone who buys a 52cm frame.

I bolted on the front wheel and installed the seatpost and the clips and straps, and voila, it's a track bike. There's no toe overlap at this frame size, and there's plenty of clearance in back for fenders, with braze-ons for racks and two water bottles. I didn't put on the rear brake right away, but of course this bike has cable guides on the frame, so I was sure I would install it soon. In this picture everything is still stock. At this point I was ready to go for my first ride.

The clips and straps took me back to my high school days. Everything on the bike was pretty tight. The only thing that slipped was the rear cog when I backpedaled to slow down. For the rest of the ride I stuck to the front brake for stopping. We're a little too close to winter here still, so the 30F temps and light drizzle meant the first ride was short.

Since I didn't have any track-bike specific tools yet, I tightened the cog by standing on the pedals. I carefully used a hammer and nailset to tighten the lockring, which tightened about a quarter turn. The crank and all other parts were already all the way tightened down. Since I bought the bike mail order, I've been trying to be nice to my LBS by going there to buy a lockring tool and a chain whip, as well as a Topeak bag mounted under the saddle to carry my spare tube, 15mm wrench, and multitool.

I have a day job and the days are still short, so I can only ride on the weekends, but right now I have about 70 miles on the bike, including a couple of rides of 20 to 25 miles. This picture shows my bike as it looks now after a few modifications. The provided rear brake is installed, and a few new components have been swapped in. As I mentioned before, I already had a Fizik saddle I intended to use, and my clipless pedals and cycle computer arrived from the land of ebay. I knew the handlebars were silly wide, and after I road it a few times I realized that I missed the hand positions afforded by brake hoods. So I returned to ebay where I picked up a 40cm Nitto Noodle handlebar, some Tektro R200 aero brake levers, and Cinelli macro-splash cork tape. My LBS had the 38g Bontrager composite water bottle cage. Now the bike really felt like it was mine. I was amused, after I thought about it, to realize how closely the setup of the Dawes mirrored the setup of my regular road bike. So far I'm pretty happy, but I'm still making adjustments to the fit to find the most comfortable position.

Many thanks to the fixed gear folks over at bikeforums.net where I lurked for about 6 weeks prior to ordering the Dawes, and where I continue to find inspiration.

I need to put some more miles into this setup to be sure it's right, but I find it more comfortable than the stock parts. I'm a roadie by nature, and most of my rides are 20-40 miles on flat to rolling hills. My only shorter rides are tooling around town with my kids.

Riding and working on the bike has been an education in fixedness. On my road bike my cadence is generally 90+ ... on the fixed gear, particularly on hills or into the wind, I'm forced to generate a lot of force at lower cadences. It's a different kind of workout.

As delivered, the rear wheel fits at the tight end of the track ends. There's some kind of black, protective plastic on the right chainstay.

The stem is solid but uninspiring. It's 110mm; I may swap that out for a 90mm soon.

And here's a closeup look at the Tektro R200 aero brake levers I switched to. They're heavier than the cross levers that came with, but I like riding on the hoods. Since I'm on a budget I wanted cheap, and I knew the Tektro levers would work with the stock Tektro brakes. A note for anyone else considering this upgrade -- I needed new brake cables and housing because the existing ones weren't long enough. The hoods mount far enough out on the bars to make both cables several centimeters too short. I did keep the stock rear brake cable and cut it down to use as the front brake cable so that I only had to purchase (again at the LBS) a new cable for the rear.

I live in a town of 1800 people in the middle of Illinois corn and soybean fields. All of my riding is on blacktop chip and seal roads. I don't ride in the winter, so I'm just getting used to being back in the saddle. This makes it hard to compare the comfort of the Dawes vs. my road bike, which I still haven't ridden since early December.

The 48x18 gearing is good while I'm learning to ride fixed, but I may knock that rear cog down to around 16 teeth to increase my top end. I haven't made up my mind yet whether that will cause me trouble in the open on a windy day. Give it a couple of months and the corn will be over my head on both sides of the road, and that will help some with the wind. Bikesdirect states that the crank length varies based on frame size; these cranks are 170mm. If a future edition of this bike comes with a carbon fork, that would be a nice enhancement over the current design. I hesitate to add an aftermarket carbon fork due to the cost.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments; I'll try to answer them. I'll also come back with an update that gives the full list of changed components with their costs.

Shortness Of Time

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.

-- Seneca (BC 3-65 AD), Roman philosopher, dramatist, statesman

Even Trash

Even trash has become worthless.

-- Tian Wengui, who collects refuse for recycling in Beijing, New York Times, 12 March 2009

A Little Worried

We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.

-- Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, New York Times, 14 March 2009

Madoff

As the years went by I realized this day, and my arrest, would inevitably come.

-- Bernard L. Madoff, pleading guilty to a Ponzi scheme allegedly involving $64 Billion, New York Times, 13 March 2009

Spam Nation II

A year ago today I complimented Google for their ability to filter spam, and griped about the roughly 350 pieces of spam that went into my GMail spam folder on a daily basis. At that time, I had 10,251 messages in my spam folder, and I was receiving spam every 4 minutes, 12 seconds.

I don't know whether we're winning the spam wars, or perhaps Google is doing some upstream spam filtering, but my spam folder currently stands at 1324 messages, an average of just over 44 messages per day, or one every 32 minutes, 37 seconds. That's about an eight-fold improvement, and now I can actually check my spam folder for false positives again!

donald appleman / cerl

The following events all occurred on March 12, 1974 --

* Donna Gail Manson, 19, disappeared from the campus of Evergreen State College, the second of "Son of Sam" Ted Bundy's 28 murder victims.

* John Lennon got into a tiff with a photographer at The Troubador in LA.

* Goldie Hawn was filming "Shampoo".

* Lt. William Calley was freed on bail pending an appeal of his convictions for murdering Vietnamese civilians at My Lai 6 years earlier.

* Paul & Susan Newman were spotted in Beverly Hills at Dan Tana's.

* NASA's Mars 6 spacecraft reached Mars where a descent module broadcast the first data returned from the atmosphere of Mars, for 224 seconds, before crashing into the surface.

* My first PLATO signon, donald appleman/cerl was created for me by Bill Golden.

Competition Of Ideas

The problem of freedom in America is that of maintaining a competition of ideas, and you do not achieve that by silencing one brand of idea.

-- Max Lerner (1902-1992), American journalist and educator

Public Opinion

Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics. ... I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feelings of the mass of the people at all, but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities -- politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts: people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent.

-- George F. Kennan (16 February 1904 - 17 March 2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian

Loyal Opposition

I'm the, as I said, loyal opposition. And both words, I think, are operative.

-- Senator John McCain (R-AZ), New York Times, 7 March 2009

Defense

The media should be the first line of defense against charlatans and con artists. Instead, they are the conduit for every claim that activists dream up.

-- Terence Corcoran

Captain Asphalt

I'm Captain Asphalt.

-- Timothy J. Gilchrist, newly appointed stimulus czar for New York State, NY Times, 5 March 2009

Money Talks

That money talks
  I'll not deny,
I heard it once:
  It said, "Goodbye."

-- Richard Armour (1906-1988), American poet and author

Anthropologist

Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don't make sense.

-- John Leonard (1939-02-25 - 2008-11-05), American literary, TV, film and cultural critic, "Books of the Times", The New York Times, 23 September 1982

True Value

Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.

-- Bob Wells, American editor for Windows and .NET Magazine

Save The Earth?

Myth: we have to save the earth. Frankly, the earth doesn't need to be saved. Nature doesn't give a hoot if human beings are here or not. The planet has survived cataclysmic and catastrophic changes for millions upon millions of years. Over that time, it is widely believed, 99 percent of all species have come and gone while the planet has remained. Saving the environment is really about saving our environment - making it safe for ourselves, our children, and the world as we know it. If more people saw the issue as one of saving themselves, we would probably see increased motivation and commitment to actually do so.

-- Robert M. Lilienfeld (1953-), management consultant and author, and William L. Rathje (1945-), archaeologist and author

Weekend Planning

Weekend planning is a prime time to apply the Deathbed Priority Test: On your deathbed, will you wish you'd spent more prime weekend hours grocery shopping or walking in the woods with your kids?

-- Louise Lague, psychoblogger

Relish The Joys

There is nothing like a cancer bout to make one relish the joys of being alive.

-- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on her return to the bench following cancer treatment, 23 February 2009

Panic

This is a panic in the way of the fine 19th-century panics, where we all run around like headless chickens.

-- R. Jeremy Grantham, chairman of a Boston investment firm, New York Times, 25 October 2008

Irrational

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

-- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British economist, quoted in The Politics of Public Fund Investing: How to Modify Wall Street to Fit Main Street (2006) by Ben Finkelstein

Nationalize

It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring. I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do.

-- Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, Financial Times, February 2009

Bad Apples

To date, the banks have stuck their heads in the sand and demanded that they be paid the price of good apples for bad apples.

-- Lynn E. Turner, former chief accountant for the Securities and Exchange Commission, on setting a value on assets the United States might buy in its banking rescue plan, New York Times, 2 February 2009

Natural Proclivity

The natural proclivity of democratic governments is to pursue public policies which concentrate benefits on the well-organized and well-informed, and disperse the costs on the unorganized and ill-informed.

-- Peter Boettke (1960-), American economist

Dawes SST-Al

OK, it's been 10 years since the last time I bought a bicycle. So, this year I spent a sliver of my tax refund on a new fixed-gear bike.

You can see marketing pics here --

    http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/dawes/sst_al.htm

I've never owned a fixed-gear before, so this should be an interesting experiment. Although I only ordered it on Friday, with a promise of delivery within 5-7 shipping days, UPS brought it to my office this morning at 9:30am; that's about 2 shipping days, tops, with the holiday.

Now I just need to assemble it and ride it.

Honesty In Government

We will have to try things we've never tried before. We will make mistakes.

-- Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, outlining a sweeping overhaul and expansion of the bank rescue program, New York Times, 11 February 2009

Pages For All Ages

Wherever in the world the little room of literature has been closed, sooner or later the walls have come tumbling down.

-- Salman Rushdie, From The Quotable Book Lover (Lyons Press), Quote-of-the-Day on the website of Pages For All Ages bookstore, where today begins a liquidation sale after over 20 years in business

Too Profound

I feel most deeply that this whole question of Creation is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton! Let each man hope and believe what he can.

-- Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1882), British naturalist, London Illustrated News, 21 April 1862

Settle The Quarrel

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.

-- Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 - 15 April 1865), 16th President of the United States, speech to Illinois legislature, January 1837

Not Units But Fractions

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.

-- Dr. Thomas Woodrow Wilson (12/28/1856 - 2/3/1924), 28th President of the United States, annual address, American Bar Association, Chattanooga (31 August 1910)

Renewal

I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look.

-- President Ronald Reagan, 1st inaugural address, 20 January 1981

Crisis

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.

-- Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's Chief of Staff, Wall Street Journal's CEO Council, November 2008

Like It Or Not

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.

-- Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), British Biologist, Educator