The weather was glorious today – warm, with a bit of a breeze (as ever, it seemed to be anabatic and therefore detrimental to my inbound speed). The heat was also a bit warm for a climb, so I took a detour out to Rocky Mountain Cycles in Llantrisant to grab a new Camelback. If you’re in the area and need a friendly bike shop, then there’s nowhere better – they even filled up the Camelback for me and topped it off with some powder to keep me going. Pretty good job really, as I was out of bananas and hadn’t eaten much before setting out.

Aside from avoiding decorating and other rather dull chores that need to be done around the home, the idea today was to test out the geotagging of the new Blackberry Bold (9000). I wasn’t convinced that it was doing anything when I was out in the States, but it seems I was wrong. It was almost certainly due to the overshadowing of all the tall buildings downtown that was preventing a good lock. Here in sunny Wales, where we’re lucky to see the sky, it’s no problem. I’ll re-edit this later with some of the images tagged for the trip.

Max speed today was down a little on what I might have expected for the route. I’d have thought that I’d have been able to hit 45mph without too much trouble, but it seems that wind resistance was going to spoil that for me on the way back down from peak ride height. The other problem area was 30 miles out on the return leg – I’d forgotten there were a couple of short but annoying climbs on the way back in – and paid the price for it. Oh well, that’s part of the fun.

Track for 26th July 2008

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The bike basics:

Frame tubing – Kona 7005 Aluminum Butted
Fork – Kona Carbon
Headset – FSA Orbit #8BE Integrated
Crankarms – FSA Gossamer MegaExo
Chainrings – 30/39/53
B/B – FSA MegaExo
Pedals – Shimano A520
Chain – Shimano 105
Freewheel – Shimano 105 (12-25, 10spd)
F/D – Shimano 105 Flatbar
R/D – Shimano Ultegra
Shifters – Shimano 105
Handlebar – FSA XC-180 OS flatbar
Stem – FSA OS-150 LX
Grips – Kona Race Light
Brakes – Avid SD 5
Brake – Levers Avid FR 5
Front hub – Mavic Aksium Wheelset
Rear hub – Mavic Aksium Wheelset
Spokes – Mavic Aksium Wheelset
Tires – Continental Ultrasport 700 x 23C
Rims – Mavic Aksium Wheelset
Saddle – Selle Italia X2 Man SE
Seatpost – FSA SL280
Seat clamp – Kona Clamp
Color – White

I went for the 58cm frame given that I’m about 6’1″ – or at least used to be the last time I checked. I still need to make some slight adjustments to the setup as it’s being run in given that I can tell there’s a slight difference in my riding position to the Orange, and it feels a little too upright to be comfortable on longer rides. To be honest, this is probably more due to the fact that I need to stick some bar ends on there which would give me a similar stretch position to that of the setup on my Evo2.

I’d read elsewhere that the saddle was something to replace, but for the life of me I can’t quite see why. If you’re used to being in the saddle, then it performs well and its fairly comfortable. It’s no Gel saddle, so don’t expect Saturday-night-in sofa quality, but it’s far more comfortable than any race saddle I’ve been on.

How fast is it?

Acceleration is better than my expectations. The 7005 frame remains a solid platform to put some power through in a straight line, and it can hold its own against road frames at the lights from experience. Over distance, in comparison to the Evo2, the lighter frame and bigger gears mean that I’m able to sustain a higher average speed over the same distance. Here’s the same route on the two different bikes. As you can see, the PhD was quicker on average, and I wasn’t really pushing it that day.

Kona PhD Speed Profile (mean: 15.1 mph)

Orange EVO2 Speed Profile (mean: 13.6 mph)

What about Vibration?

On the whole the road vibration isn’t all that noticeable on the front end. You can feel the road through the saddle more than you would on fat tyres, but it’s not too distracting. What’s more distracting coming from MTB territory is that all those big hills and patches of debris/crapola you’d normally ride across without thought suddenly become life threatening hotspots on skinny rims.

Anything else on the handling?

Steering is responsive and pretty light – a product of the fact that the bike is ridiculously light in its own right. In fact I’d go as far as to say that it’s pretty frisky if you’re coming from an MTB background. I was out in high winds on the way home from work on the PhD and it felt pretty skittish on the road as I avoided the inevitable Cardiff potholes (actually, it’s probably more accurate to describe them as sink holes)

Gears work OK for around here. I haven’t done Big Hill territory yet (that’s Big Hill in South Wales folks, not Alp d’Huez type Big Hill), but I suspect that the range would be pushing it on the inner front ring. It’s just about comparable to the middle ring of an MTB, so if you use granny gears a lot for climbing long drags, then you’ll probably struggle for a while until your legs get used to the different pace/power output required to drive yourself along.

That bigger outer ring is great on the flat and on the descents too, although for my riding it suits the flat better.

Can you stop as well?

Brakes are pretty good Avid spec. They definitely stop the bike, but as the Kona owner’s manual says, they may not stop *you* – you’ll need to hang on and be ready to shift your weight if you need to decelerate quickly.

So in general, it’s all good.  It suits my commute to work really well, and offers me just enough challenge to make it a different ride home up the hills over my trusty old Orange.  I have, however, one slight problem that I need to deal with at the moment. On the supplied tyres I’ve managed 2 flats already, and have now cut a sizeable chunk out of the rear tyre thanks to Cardiff Council cutting back the Hawthorne hedges around the lanes, and then not bothering to use a road sweeper afterwards [probably a different, outsourced department :-/ ]

I reckon that a pair of Specialized Armadillos should do the trick. More on that when I can take delivery of some new tyres.

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I contacted Cyclestore towards the original ETA and they told me they were still waiting on the arrival of stock. I was OK with that in that new year bikes sometimes take a while to make it to market – particularly when you aren’t buying British. Cyclestore, to their absolute credit, worked really hard to get hold of a bike as soon as possible.

Time ticked by. My birthday came and went. October came and went. Eventually, I decided to check with Kona to see when they were expecting supply.

Now Kona in the UK are distributed by Paligap, who are based over the Channel from me in Avonmouth. After a little detective work, they managed to find a European-based PhD at Kona Europe in Monaco. Around a week later it was shipped to me, via Cyclestore for setup, and was to be delivered by UPS by 22/11 – a week shy of 2 months since I put the order in.

Or at least it should have been delivered by UPS on the 22/11 had managed to get out as far as us, which they singularly failed to do. Live tracking on the UPS website saw the carton out for delivery and then checked back in overnight. It finally arrived on 23/11.

So this is what it looked like after UPS finally got it to me. By all accounts, the FIRST PhD 2008 in the country.

I thought I’d checked the carton over and found it to be OK, but must have been a little over excited. On further inspection (on the other side of the carton) I came across this…

Uh-oh.

Thankfully, on taking the bike out of its packing crate, everything looked to OK. Here’s that quick release skewer that was poking out of the carton (below) – it’s picked up a slight scratch in transit, probably from sliding around in the back of a UPS van. Grrr.

Once assembled, this is the Kona PhD 2008 in all its glory (below). Dig those crazy reflectors!

Once of the main reasons (aside from the fact that they’re the number 1 Kona dealer in the UK) that I went for Cyclestore this time around was the fact that they were offering 10% of the value of the bike in free accessories. I really needed to get a new bag, as the amount of sweat and bacteria in the shoulder straps of my old one would likely cause the UN to come down heavy on me for harbouring a biochemical weapon, and fortunately Cyclestore sell a range of bags from Deuter. I went for a TransAlpine 30L backpack as shown below.

The rest of my booty comprised of a new CatEye rear LED light, a Specialized water bottle to replace one of my aging old bottles on the O2 and a contour headband – the greatest ‘technical accessory’ I’ve ever owned. Remember, at the time of writing, the outside temperature is hovering just above freezing, and the windchill at 36mph on a downhill is significant.

A final inspection revealed that one of the brake levers was slightly bent

Bums.

A quick call to James at Cyclestore sorted things out, even though it meant that they would be out of pocket given that UPS had a signature for the parcel. THAT’s the kind of bike shop you should be doing business with – despite everything over the lack of supply and less than quality service from UPS, Cyclestore and Paligap did not disappoint me in the slightest.

If you’re thinking of going for a Kona, you could do a lot worse than give Cyclestore a call.

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I haven’t seen many reviews for Kona’s top flight hybrid, but know someone who has the 2006 model and think it’s rather swish. Once I get my sweaty palms on it, I’ll do a full review.

My Orange won’t be put out to pasture just yet. Despite what my local bike shop told me, I still think it’s got a few miles left in it yet for XC use. It’s a pity the PACE RC35s on it got a bit flat-spotted on a somewhat amusing fall, although they’re still in pretty good nick otherwise – even after all this time.

Upshot of the story is that although it’s possible to spend an absolute fortune on bikes – in the case of the Orange EVO2 with the Pace forks, it was completely worth it. I have no doubt that I’ll buy another Orange as funding allows, but I suspect the likelihood of me being able to afford either of these babies [1], [2] is pretty remote.

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