Today, after a whole days rain with zero let up, I decided
to get my lovingly loaned Munoura ‘Hypermag’ set-up in the lounge (thank you
Uncle John for the loan!). For those of
you not acquainted with the joys of cycle training devices, the Hypermag ‘has been
developed as the most silent indoor bicycle trainer in the world with adopting
Minoura’s special technical knowledge for over 12 years such as thicker plastic
material, alloy die-casting outer case and high-level machined unique
full-circle magnet’ (yes, this is lifted straight from the poorly translated
instruction manual from Japan).
Choosing a day when my partner was away (as the only place
to install said machine was in the lounge by the dining table – hence making
the dining experience in the house with more than 2 of us a little intimate
(unless you have a ‘thing’ about bicycle trainers)), I decided to install my
old Trek mountain bike on the trainer so I had something to train on on days
like today when the weather was really too bad to go ‘proper’ road cycling (ie.
10% possibility of rain upwards ..) and leaving my beautiful ‘Pearly E White’
Condor Italia for those fair weathered rides…
What looked like a simple installation turned out to be very
challenging, to put it mildly. Despite
my Master’s Degree (OK OK in computing .. which proved to be useless when it
came to cycle trainers) and a detailed diagram of how to assemble the trainer,
the combination of the M6 bolt, Knob bolt, flat washer, hub clamping handle,
load level adjusting dial, drive roller, flywheel, U-leg etc etc ..got me very
perplexed. I got to a stage where I was
questioning if I had the thing turned around the right way to start with,
whether it should actually be attached to the front wheel and not the back and
whether it should actually be hung from the ceiling. After a few hours of deliberation I did
manage to work 80% of it out (without phoning my Uncle which was going to be
the last resort as I can hear him chuckle now!) and installed the bike on the
training machine. By this time my
partner had arrived home and I assured her that this was ‘the most silent
indoor bicycle trainer in the world’ (blah blah from the manual) and she would
not even notice it was there. To
reassure her I sat on the bike and proceeded to peddle and the noise .. well,
it made my very old washing machine sound like the hum of butterflies
wings. I think the neighbours started
banging on the wall .. I then realised
that the machine was not adjusted properly.
Now I have sorted it out, although we cannot invite anyone
around to eat at the table, all is well.. and the hot dinner plates, now on our
laps at night in lieu of the table, have – as I said to my partner – actually
helped save us on our heating bills.
Every cloud and all that …..
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