Tag Archives: Bumblebee

Cell Bikes fixie at Chandler Velodrome

My yellow Cell Bikes fixie, which my kids have affectionately named Bumblebee, is currently configured as a track bike.

My Cell Bikes fixies (I have two) have been through many guises, including a singlespeed ridden on the 100 km Brisbane to Gold Coast cycle ride at an average speed of more than 30 km/h, ridden up Mt Coot-tha, and configured as a sit-up town bike with swoopy bars.

Recently I have been using a Cycling Queensland track hire bike to train on Chandler Velodrome in Brisbane, Queensland. I was keen to ride one of my own bikes on the track and had heard of other people riding Cell Bikes fixies on velodromes. I stripped my Cell Bikes fixie of brakes and the water bottle cage, replaced the riser bars with PRO PLT compact drop bars, and put on some 165 mm 144 BCD Andel RSC1 cranks.

I took the bike down to a training session to see whether it would be okay to ride on the track. My main concern was that with a 65 mm bottom bracket drop, the bike is at least 7 mm lower than a typical bunch-start track bike. However, with the shorter cranks, I was able to get enough clearance to ride safely around Chandler Velodrome.

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Chandler Velodrome, being an outdoor 333 metre track, has relatively shallow banking at around 30 degrees for an international standard velodrome. Indoor international standard velodromes are typically 250 metres (or less) and have banking of at least 42 degrees. On the other hand, many regional velodromes in Australia have track banking much shallower than Chandler Velodrome.

My point is, if you are thinking of putting a Cell Bikes fixie on the track, check with your local club first. Depending on the track specifications, and how strict your club is, you may be able to put a Cell Bikes fixie on the track and safely have heaps of fun for not very much money!

Andel RSC1 crankset upgrade for Cell Bikes fixie

I decided to upgrade the cranks on my Cell Bikes fixie because I want to ride this bike on Chandler Velodrome. The original cranks were 170 mm and 130 bcd. I also wanted to be able to swap chainrings with my Wabi Special which has 144 bcd cranks/chainrings, so decided to upgrade the cranks on the Cell Bikes fixie to 165 mm 144 bcd Andel RSC1 cranks. This meant also changing the bottom bracket to a 107 mm Shimano BB-UN55, as well as an assortment of chainrings.

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The complete build list is:

  • Andel RSC1 165 mm 144 bcd crankset (562 grams)
  • Chainring bolts supplied with Andel crankset (21 grams)
  • Shimano BB-UN55 107 mm bottom bracket (288 grams)
  • Generic bottom bracket bolts (27 grams — pair)
  • Kirrawee Cycles BBK 144 bcd chainrings 49 tooth (119 grams), 50 tooth (137 grams) and 51 tooth (124 grams).

 

Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar looking for new tenants

Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar looking for new tenants

Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar looking for new tenants

Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar looking for new tenants

Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar looking for new tenants

I was disappointed to see a lease sign on the Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar today. Unfortunately, the business never really did flourish. If I were a new business owner, what would I do differently?

  • Open early in the morning to tap into people commuting to work. Close early afternoon. Make sure your opening and closing times are clearly stated and you keep to them. Several times we rode by around 7am in the morning looking to stop for a coffee and Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar was not yet open!
  • Offer a reusable travel mug that fits in a cycle bottle cage — cyclists can grab a coffee and keep on riding!
  • Tap into the cycling market — offer some incentives for ride groups to start and finish their rides there.
  • As part of the new lease, get Brisbane City Council to construct some sound barriers between the roadway and the café. It actually was not very pleasant sitting there with peak hour traffic only metres away.
  • Provide some shade in summer — even early morning, if someone has just finished a 40 km ride, they will be looking for some shade.
  • Combine the juice and coffee bar into one booth (they used to be separate booths, meaning both had to be staffed). This will cut your staffing costs, but also allow the other booth to be used for other purposes.
  • Use the spare booth to offer bicycle servicing and tube/tyre/spare part sales — people can drop their bike there on the way to the CBD and pick it up on the way home. Offer loan bikes so that people can complete their ride into the CBD.
  • Employ a great barista! The coffee wasn’t bad, but cyclists are highly mobile so will ride to the café that serves the best coffee, has the best atmosphere, etc.
  • Get some cycling memorabilia and hang it around the place — cyclists love to look at other bikes.

Whoever takes up the new lease, I wish you well. I love to support facilities that support cyclists.

Nudgee Beach by bicycle

I took a ride out to Nudgee Beach today — a 76 km round trip from Yeronga, including a couple of laps of the Nundah Criterium Circuit — on my Cell Bikes singlespeed.

Nudgee Beach seems to be a very popular destination for cyclists, mainly because of the extensive offroad sealed bikeways that can be used to get there. It has taken me three exploratory rides to work out the best way to get from the Brisbane River Loop on to the Kedron-Brook Bikeway, which then links to the Jim Soorley Bikeway and the Moreton Bay Cycleway, before following the Nudgee Road bikeway to Nudgee Beach.

You can explore Brisbane’s bikeways using the cycling layer at Google Maps.

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