Cycling in the tropics

There are some advantages to cycling in the tropics versus other places: there is no snow here and it rarely gets cold, never too cold to ride……… I can’t think of any others.

The humidity is usually up in the upper half of the scale and this has differing effects. I have a Brooks leather saddle and had Brooks leather bar tape. Those “in the know” say to never get the leather seat wet. If it is going to rain, use a plastic seat cover or plastic bag to keep the seat dry. Personally, in the tropics I sweat like a pig. Do pigs really sweat a lot? So if I am riding at all, my seat is wet. This has caused some cracking of the leather in a line in front of the rivets. So far, there has been no mold build-up in the seat in the months the bike is idle while I am out of the country in the summer. This is not the case with the handlebar tape. When I returned in August after being gone for only 6 weeks, the bar tape showed a thin coating of a whitish mold that was easily cleaned off with some no-name leather cream. This got rid of the look, but soon enough after I started riding again the tape started to disintegrate. It came apart like an old rotten cloth. It has since been replaced with a plastic tape.

Another problem with the tape is unrelated to the climate. I have drop bars on my bike and they came with a cork wrap that is spongier and softer than the straight plastic tape or even the leather bar tape. I added to that by putting the leather tape on top of the cork tape. It was much more comfortable this way but had a few problems. Because the bar was already wrapped with cork, it had a larger diameter necessitating more of the leather tape to cover the same linear distance. It would have been nice if the tape had been about a foot or two longer. Also, before we had bar-end shifters, we started wrapping the tape near the stem and finished by rolling it out past the end of the bar and tucking it inthen capping the bar-end. With bar-end shifters and leather tape that is thicker, that process is not available. Now the wrap is started at the bar end and wrapped toward stem. The problem comes when you end the wrap. Since the tape itself only has a small strip of double stick tape on the back, the end needs to have another piece of tape wrap around the end to keep it from unraveling. This is something that we would have considered unacceptable in the past. This is also not bullet-proof and works better if some other accessory like a GPS, Phone holder, or bell is also clamped around it.

Another problem of the tropics depends on what your bike is made of. I have never heard of carbon fiber rusting like CroMoly steel does, but aluminum will oxidize also. Any scratch harming the integrity of the paint seal subjects the frame to the possibility of rust. My Surly LHT is only two and a half years old yet has a few spots that would take years in another environment. There are a few different applications for rust proofing the inside of a bike. The need of this practice is debated in many forums, but seeing how quickly the outside of my bike started to rust makes me think that were I to remain here I would definitely do it to mine. In Arizona where I live my other life, the air is dry and exposed steel takes a long time to get the rust we get here in southern Taiwan overnight.

Lights are not affected by the humidity as much as by the rain that can happen in any environment. My tail light/turn indicator will sometimes change modes in the rain as well as render itself unable to be turned off.

One advantage to rain in the tropics is that usually the temperature stays warm. Wearing rain gear won’t keep you dry as your sweat will equal the rain. The only time I would wear a raincoat in the rain is as a windbreaker or in a typhoon. I just finished a tem day tour of Taiwan during which I saw zero rain. I even slipped in to my home city the only dry afternoon in a week before and a week after, including a typhoon. We were praying for a little relief rain but only got humidity.

New Parts

Last spring I bought a Pletscher two legged kickstand from someone on the Surly bike forum. I installed it late this summer on my return to Taiwan. There was a lot of discussion for and against this model and kickstands in general. Some complain that there should be a kickstand plate built into the bike, some say it should never have a kickstand and every degree in between. Mine, I believe, came with an extra adapter that helped avoid crushing the chain stays when clamping on the stand. I put it on and had no problems other than it was too long. While visiting my friend the Giant Bike Shop owner, we took it off and cut it to a more manageable length and now it works great. Oh, I did have to change one more thing: When I clamped it I managed to clamp the rear derailleur cable as well. It doesn’t shift as well that way….. I fixed that and now it’s fine. On my ten day trip I used it probably 95% of the time I parked it. Front wheel flop needs to be addressed, but it is easier to find something to control that than to find something to lean the bike against. It also makes a fairly good repair stand for working on the back wheel. The only problem is that the left peddle hits the stand on the way around. It will go past, but it still hits it harder than I would like. Maybe an adjustment would fix it.