Plugging Holes

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Back in January you may recall I had a SPOG-related incident:

Which left a puddle of SPOG on the bike path:

Well, two months, two blizzards, and who knows how many inches of rain later, the SPOG stain is still there, an enduring testament to the Macbethian indelibility of latex:

Amazing.

Meanwhile, I continue to embrace the SPOG by enjoying regular gravel lunches, or “GRVL LNCHS:”

This involves riding a bicycle that is specifically marketed for riding on gravel upon the gravel for which it is marketed:

And then finding a nice place to sit and eat, which yesterday happened to be the Evil Son of Sam Altar of Sacrifice:

This is a place so deeply and profoundly evil that they even have a newsletter:

…of evil.

As usual, I put my GRVL LNCH in my Bananasack:

See?

“Sack Lunch” indeed:

What a great movie.

Anyway, as I ruminated, I contemplated the view:

As well as the PRJCT GRVL bike:

And as I did I noticed this hole in the lower seat stay for the first time:

“Holy crap!,” I thought. “Is the derailleur cable housing supposed to go through there?” I went to check:

It is!

Goddamn it.

This shouldn’t matter to me because it makes no functional difference whatsoever, and yet it annoys me anyway anyway, kind of like when halfway through your day you notice you missed a belt loop and you can’t relax until manage to slip off to the restroom and re-route it:

Sure, fixing this is only a little bit more involved than fixing your belt, but I really don’t feel like it, so I’m trying to tell myself I bypassed it on purpose in order to arrive at the smoothest possible cable housing arc. Because it seems like it would need to take kind of a tight bend to go through there, doesn’t it?

Speaking of unnecessary undertakings, did the world really need yet another road bike?

Wow, these names keep getting worse and worse. This one just sounds like a medication:

Avona Velum is not for everyone. Call your doctor if you have unexplained changes in behavior, dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, rectal bleeding, wild mood swings, severe depression, profound elation, cherry-scented flatulence, or thoughts of suicide. Elderly patients taking Avona Velum have an increased risk of groinal strain, and should Just Buy A Rivendell Already. Ask your doctor if Avona Velum is for you, then if he says yes, sue him for malpractice.

Though two seconds of popular search engine jockeying seems to indicate that “Avona” refers to water and “Velum” is the membrane on the roof of your mouth, so basically the name means Watery Membrane.

So why is this road bike different from all other road bikes? Because it’s better, that’s why:

This Swiss/German duo wanted to use their collective industry experience to create bikes that were better in real life, not just on paper.

But a lot of brands say that. What makes Avona different? It all comes down to an extreme level of bicycle nerdery, the willingness to test out everything, and a refreshing honesty about what actually matters to everyday riders.

And here’s how they made it better:

How to optimize a bike for performance that actually matters?

In order to optimize a bike for real-world benefits, Avona points out that first you need to analyze what needs to be optimized. The brand based its parameters on real rides and metrics like normalized power, time above Critical Power, and W Prime (your work capacity, sort of like an internal battery for efforts above CP).

Wait.

In order to optimize a bike you first need to analyze what needs to be optimized?

Well fuck me.

Fortunately for anyone who doesn’t want to ride a bike that sounds like it requires a prescription, it turns out most of what needs to be optimized on a bike is stuff you can easily add to the bike you already have:

As a result, the best tires and a waxed chain are non-negotiable for Avona. Every bike will come with a Ceramic Speed waxed chain and low rolling resistance tires. That’s actually a pretty big deal if you want to try a waxed chain since you can simply maintain it with the drip wax lube, rather than having to strip and clean a chain from the factory and then wax it yourself.

Wait.

So instead of waxing your chain, or even buying a chain that’s already waxed, you should…buy a whole new bike that comes with a waxed chain?

Well fuck me.

Before I read that, I would have told you that giving Ceramic Speed over two hundred American Fun Tickets for an ordinary chain with some wax on it was crazy:

But now I understand it’s downright frugal, since the current wisdom is apparently that you shuld buy a whole new bike if you want to try a different chain.

And if you’re wondering whether or not the Avona Humpalot is laterally stiff yet vertically compliant, the answer is yes. But they haven’t figured out a plausible way to lie about it how to quantify its effect on performance yet:

Avona also hit their targets for stiffness and vertical compliance, even though they don’t have a way to yet quantify the impact of vertical compliance on performance.

Uh, three words, Avona:

Scranial Pressure Mapping.

But yes, the Avona Bologna sounds like the ideal bike for your next group ride:

Wow, a douchebag in a BMW? I don’t believe it. Anyway, we’ve all been there, and I’m glad the riders weren’t hurt. Plus, one of them got to show off his bunnyhop skills to a TV audience: