Since moving to Seremban, I’ve been riding with the awesome people of Perpatih Cycling Club. They ride both offroad and on road. And most of them own proper bikes for both types of riding. While riding on the road for night rides, they’d take out their road bikes and zip along the tarmac and LEKAS highway (while it was still okay) and I’m on a 26er with slicks. Sluggish due to the weight, and my fitness of course.
It took me quite some time to come to terms with an undeniable truth: the best experiences are with using proper tools. I have been subscribing to the notion of MTBs are do-it-all machines. Yes, they are. But do-it-alls are jack of all trades, master of none. Except for this case, they are excellent offroad machines. While they can be converted to a touring rig or for riding on tarmac, there are trade-offs. With trade-offs, the full capacity is not being realised to be enjoyed. And that’s what I think I’ve been missing out on.
So with this, I decided to get myself a road bike. With a decent budget, I set out to get a full carbon fibre road bike. After visiting many shops, I stepped into Cyclomotion Wangsa Maju and asked for a CF road bike. They told me that they’ve sold out during their recent sale. One of the guys in the shop suggested another bike that they’re clearing out if I’m interested in. The other guy mentioned that that one is with a titanium frame, not CF as what I wanted. My eyebrows lifted up and my sloppy shoulders were upright and I asked for the bike details. Long story short, a few weeks later I got myself a Charge Skewer Ti bike with 11 speed Ultegra 6800 groupset from them. I’m not going to reveal the price I paid, but its retail was RM11.8k.
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| Charge Skewer Ti - with stock parts, Jan 2017 |
It has been more than 4 years now. At the time of writing, data from Strava shows that I’ve been clocking 17,880km on the road bike while the Troll has only seen 995km of riding. Granted, the Troll is an offroad rig, of course it wouldn’t go as far. Both are fun bikes, but I guess the Skewer makes cycling more accessible for me. Plus the fact that cycling on tarmac doesn’t require much time for post ride cleaning, even after riding in the rain.
:)
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t take in one and ditch another. I do still enjoy offroad outings, but most of time (at least for now) I enjoy riding on road much more. Again, it is more accessible. I had once taken Troll riding up Bukit Putus just for the fun of it. It turns out that it is no fun at all. Its place is not on the tarmac, I learned. A mountain bike shines offroad covered in mud splatters and whatnots. Cycling on the road is best experienced on a road bike. It is that simple.
Of course, just like mountain bikes, there are different types of road bikes for different disciplines of cycling on the tarmac (touring, Audax/randonneuring, TT, racing, etc.). We’ll talk about that later if I’m up for it.
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| Jan 2021, with some upgrades |
Ride on!
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