This past weekend I picked up a cyclocross bike from my friend Ryan. He’d had this bike for a while, but it was a bit small for him and he’d been wanting to sell it. He heard that I’d been looking for a road-ish bike, and one thing led to another and we met at the Tree Farm for a ride and I went home with a new-to-me bike, an almost stock 2007 Jamis Nova.
That afternoon I picked up a TIMBUK2 Bike Seat Pack XT to hold tools, a Topeak Road MasterBlaster frame pump, added a Garmin mount, fitted my preferred saddle and pedals, and set out for a ride on the Macomb Orchard Trail. It was this ride that really sold me on the bike. Before this I had very little experience with drop bars and bikes with smooth tires, but 23 miles of pavement showed me that this kind of riding can be quite a bit of fun and that I’m extremely glad Ryan sold me this bike.
Over the following two evenings I set about getting familiar with the bike, and ended up giving it a very detailed cleaning, replacing the derailleur housing and cables, and getting everything set up for me. I’ve still got some playing (and a lot of reading) to do with the bar position, but for now I think I’ve got it somewhere that’s comfortable.
As mentioned before, this bike is almost completely stock, with the exception of the tires and front shift/brake lever. At one point the front lever broke, and the shop gave the option of either waiting for a new 105-level component (to match the rest of the bike) to come in, or having it immediately replaced with a Tiagra-level part. The Tiagra part was chosen, so the levers don’t match. The feel for the two is very similar with the hoods being practically identical, and being the front shifter any potential difficulties with a lower-level part don’t concern me.
I’m planning on swapping tires to some Clement X’Plor USH tires that Joe Seidl recommended to me, and whose 35mm width, solid center and file tread sides look quite appealing. While I opted for the cheaper 60 TPI version, I hope (and based on reviews suspect) that these’ll do nicely for mixed pavement and gravel road riding.
Everything is now set up as I want it for a longer ride on the bike, so I’m hoping to get out on a 30-50 mile ride before the weekend is out. If things go as planned, I may try to fit this in Friday evening along with picking up the tires from Trail’s Edge. It looks like I’ll be able to ride from downtown Milford out to Island Lake by way of Kensington Metropark. This might be worth doing, should time permit…
If you’d like to see more photos of this new bike, they can be found here: Jamis Nova.