I moved back to Thailand in 2003 and am currently 44. I started riding seriously (more than 500 miles per year) about 4 years ago when I decided that the 2-3 miles of swimming per week was not enough to slow my downhill slide. I had the usual reasons - weather is too hot, need to spend more times with the kids, work and traffic in Bangkok takes so much time, partially-torn ACL...
I currently ride about 400-500 miles a month, all on the weekends. My usual ride on Saturday and Sunday are 60-70 mile rides, non-stop, solo, in 3-4 hours on a popular riding loop adjacent to the south runway of Souvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. The 90-95 F 70 % humidity heat does not bother me as much, as long as I am moving and drinking at least 1 L per hour and temps do not exceed 99 F.
My first real bike was a Cannondale Quick CX Ultra, a hybrid bike, that I pushed to 40 miles before deciding to get a road bike.
My first road bike was the 2011 Lynskey Helix OS that I now have about 10,000 km on. It is certainly a sweet Ti ride, especially with the ENVE carbon bits and the wide-rim HED. C2 wheels. Since this is weight weenies, it is a 7.1 kg bike with the heavy training wheels.
Helix OS Side
My second road bike, the 2012 Lynskey R330, is totally Don Erwin's (Lynskey's sales manager) fault because he made me such a great offer. I have now set it up as a training/long distance/varied terrain bike and got a SRAM Quarq power meter. I only have 2000 km on it. This is a 7.8 kg bike.
R330 Side
My newest road bike is a fully-custom Parlee Z1. I spent almost six months getting the geometry to what I think I wanted in a "stage racer" bike on a Juteau-Cantin test bike rig. We tried several bike geometry dimensions based on the Lynskey's geometry and based on the fitter's, Andy Clark's, and Parlee's recommendations. This is an internal wiring and battery 9070 DI2 bike with Cannondale SISL2 Spiderring crank and eeBrakes, ENVE parts, and ENVE 3.4 tubular wheels. The custom geometry is 72 degree 12.5 cm front tube, 6 degree 53.5 cm top tube, 74 degree 52 cm seat tube, and 41.5 cm chain stay. This is a 6.4 kg bike with everything, including a heavy Selle SMP saddle, 25c Arenberg tubular rear tire, 23c Carbon black front tire, Garmin 800 computer, two bottle cages, and an uncut seat tube.
Parlee Z1
I just figured out how to link images from Flickr. Cheers.
Mark
