Hello! My name is Dave and thank you for visiting my Road Cycling website!
I live in southeastern Pennsylvania and love to cycle the rolling hills in my area. I created this site to help new cyclists learn about road cycling and help with some of the equipment and technical aspects. I am learning too, as technology in cycling is constantly improving and evolving.
My day job is Technical support for a medical device company, which allows me to work from my home office most of the time. This means that I have no commute, leaving more time to get out on my bike! I do not work in the cycling industry, but I was an avid cyclist in my youth, having done many bike packing trips with my cousin Doug or my friend Stan.
We would take off for a week or two each year carrying everything in Bike Warehouse Panniers mounted on Blackburn alloy racks.
This included a tent, sleeping bag, clothes, small stove, Sterno, freeze dried food, tools and anything else we needed. This amounted to about 40 pounds each of gear on our already heavy “10 speed” bikes!
This was back in the early 80’s on a budget, so we did not have state of the art equipment. No cycling computers, GPS or cell phones! We loosely planned how many miles to go each day and spent the nights at campgrounds along the way. It was a blast!
We did a lot of training for these trips, riding through Valley Forge National Park, finding hills and even loading the panniers up with heavy books to simulate the weight of all the gear we would be carrying.
This was a time in our lives that we were still living at home and had little in the way of responsibility. These trips are some of my fondest memories of my later teenage years.
Fast forward to a few year ago when my wife took me out to get me a new bike. It had been decades since I did any serious riding, the kids were grown and I got the itch to start up again. We ended up getting me a Trek 8.1 Hybrid, so I could bike the road as well as trails with our casual biking friends.
I quickly learned that cycling has evolved quite a bit since the 80’s! Many things have changed over the past few decades, from bike frame materials to derailleur and drive train terminology. I was hooked and soon, my wife was encouraging me to upgrade to a “real” road bike.
I purchased a Bianchi Impulso 105 and over the next year or so, upgraded it from Shimano 105 components to Shimano Ultegra. Upgraded the wheels to ROL D’Huez and loved my new ride!
After enjoying my Bianchi for a few years, I was riding up a hill with a friend and my chain snapped. I hitched a ride home with a friendly old man with a pickup truck, and my wife took me to the Trek Store for a new chain. While in the store, she said, “Why don’t you look at new bikes?”
They only had 2 road bikes in stock (this was during COVID and no one had any stock) so I test rode a 2021 Trek Domane SL7with Shimano Di2 shifters and immediately knew this was my new bike!
Now I am riding and learning about the newest tech in cycling and sharing it through this website. There are so many cool and exciting products out there I hope we can all learn about them together and enjoy enhancing our cycling!
Please feel free to leave any questions or comments below and I will reply.
Dave
Thanks.