Balance of life

In the beginning of this week my bicycle head light got broken. I guess that it needs only changing bulb but it was a good excuse to buy a new better light. The old one was a good light but it was a small, not bright enough and its runtime was still not so good.
So I decided to buy a new one. And this time I wanted a good light that would last many years and almost every condition I would cycle.
So I am now a happy owner of Switchback 2 light. It is very small, LED-based light with Li-ion battery and rapid charger. It should charge just in two hours and give 16h of runtime in low setting, which is enough in the city. At this point (only one ride behind) light seems to be just right purchase. I will post more detailed thoughts later when I have a little bit more experience of it.

Tags: bicycle, light, night
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Winter has finally came to Finland, this week temperature has been below 0°C all the time and the ground looks white. There is still too little snow in the ground but maybe we will get a it more in this winter. At least I hope so.
This week was also first week when there was ice on roads so I changed my studded tires on my bicycle on Monday. So it is officially a winter time now

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It has been a while when I wrote last time. But better late than never…
I had to wait for two weeks for my own bicycle until I got it back from repairing but now I have it and it has all new components. And it is much nicer to cycle than with old components. Or it is just that winter has gone and so is stunned tires, so it is generally much easier to cycle now. Who knows?

I have also cycled quite well with my new bike but still I should bike much more. I have thought that I would cycle this summer about 200km continuously but I have now idea if I am able to do that. This year my longest ride is just 40km so I have to practice until I could ride 200km.

And average speed should be definitely be much more than my regular 18km/h, or biking 200km would take over 10 hours which is just too much. So I have tried to break my speed record on my work travel this week. I tried to get home in half an hour or less but the best time I managed to get is quite exactly half an hour. So I made my new record but did not manage to break my limit. Maybe next week…
But riding home with that speed was much harder than I have thought. And that was about the speed that I would like to ride on 200km ride so I have a long way to go until my shape is good enough.

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My bicycle is broke. It has just too much kilometers behind (about 6500km). I noticed that when I looked my back rim and it was split. So, I took it to service. And there I learned that my bike needs more repair than I have thought, all power transmission components are needed to change.
So now I have no city-bike at the moment so I have to use my father’s bike.

But now I am also a happy owner of a new bicycle, this time my new bike is a real mountain-bike with hydraulic disc brakes etc. And it is a very good bike and brakes are just something much much better than normal V-brakes.

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Luckily I had my spare key to my cycle-lock. I managed to remove broken key part from lock and it opened nicely with my spare key. It is very nice that lock makers make good locks that should be hard to break but keys are made from very weak metal that doesn’t work in Finnish winter.
Now I have to buy a new lock, this time I hope that I will find a lock that has good keys so I can open my lock also in winter time.

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Cold in winter is nice thing but it has some negative points. Normal lock that is meant to use in bike works well but its key is not. For some reason key is made of some cheap metal that doesn’t work in Finnish climate. I was just going to leave home with my bicycle and I was just opening locks like normally. Expect my cable lock was not opened because its key got broken. It just broke in the middle and another part left in the lock.
I just have to try to get that key part out of the lock tomorrow and try my spare key. If that doesn’t work, well… It is going to be fun then.

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