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brooks cambium c17 organic light

brooks cambium c17 organic light

it's easter weekend, a time of year that confuses me greatly. for if christmas, ostensibly the celebration of christ's birth, lands on the same date, year in year out, why does the date of easter vary each and every year? the answer to this question, to me at least, does nothing to helpfully explain the situation. if, as those easter sunday church services would have us believe, it is the time of year when christ was crucified and subsequently resurrected, then surely that happened on a specific date?, yet the easter weekend is determined as being the first sunday after the date of the full moon, on or after march 21. thus, if the full moon lands on a sunday, easter will be celebrated on the following sunday.

brooks cambium c17 organic light

all of which seems to have little or nothing to do with the religious aspects thereof. liturgically, easter is related to the begining of spring, despite tomorrow's amstel gold race effectively bringing the spring classics to an end. it is also related to the march equinox in the northern hemisphere, but in relation to the full moon, easter's date is not actually related to the astronomical date of either. and where the heck do easter eggs come into it?

i'm not much one for paying attention to public holidays. granted, christmas is fine because it signals yet another undertaking of the festive 500, but other than that, i'm quite happy to work when there's work to be done, irrespective of bank or public holidays. however, earlier this week, it was pointed out to me that the office would close for so-called good friday; if i went to work, i'd be pretty much on my own all day, which didn't really sound like a lot of fun. so, rather than gain an unwarranted reputation as a workaholic, i thought it best to appear simultaneously prudent and lackadaisical and let the bicycle take me where it would.

the more eagle-eyed amongst you will have perhaps noticed that ardbeg distillery has received scant mention over the preceding months, a fact that i thought it best to remedy on the morning of my easter holiday. so, on a bright, sunny friday morning, i boarded the ritchey logic, and ploughed into a niggling headwind for the 22km ride to the ancestral home. it is salient to the ultimate point of this monologue, that the ritchey had been recently fitted with the latest cambium c17 saddle from brooks, a model that adopts the finest points of the range, namely an organic cotton top over a gum rubber base, but lightens the mood (so to speak), by replacing the more usual metal base with a material brooks refer to as liquid wood.

brooks cambium c17 organic light

this initially conjures up visions of a substance likely to drip all over the top tube, but oddly enough, is neither liquid, nor wood. actually, that statement isn't entirely correct, because according to the saddle makers, liquid wood is a biopolymer composed entirely of waste materials from paper production, itself a material originated from wood-pulp. rather brilliantly, it's entirely biodegradable and lighter than the metal structure it replaces. i confess i am not one of those cyclists who quests after a reduction in weight for its own sake, but if lightness of being arrives as a non-optional extra, what's not to like?

brooks cambium c17 organic light

though my round trip, with a brief stopover at ardbeg, encompassed eighty, wind-strafed kilometres, i cannot tell a fib and aver that this was the first journey undertaken aboard the cambium's organic lightness. it would, however, be safe to relate that it has yet to be ridden on a day without a headwind. while this might hardly be the ideal conditions for a lengthy bike ride, it's situations such as these that help the intrepid reviewer to better assess the veracity of the claims made by the manufacturer as to the potential comfort of their product.

but by way of an early spoiler alert, brooks are correct in their assertions.

slogging into a headwind for the better part of a day's riding is usually one of the finest methods for determining the plushness of that placed under your bum. there's something about the position adopted on the bike to maximise the effort of slogging that has a tendency to poke holes in the avowed comfort of any particular saddle. this is something that has become apparent through practical experience rather than by way of scientific theory, and in this particular case, when those 80 kilometres had been covered, the cambium light was every bit as unnoticeable (and that's a good thing) as had been the case from the off.

brooks cambium c17 organic light

the morning visit to ardbeg distillery also brought an unexpectedly agreeable level of satisfaction that brooks had elected to send the olive green canvas option for review. each of islay's distilleries bears its own corporate colours, from the bright blue of bruichladdich, to the cream and gold of ardnahoe and the almost emerald green of laphroaig, to the more sombre, muted green of ardbeg, one that closely resembles that of the cambium's canvas top. for those without a nearby distillery, the organic light cambium is also available in natural, brick and rust.

i can't say that its incredible lightness of being made any specific inroads to my dervish-like pedal strokes, but there's a certain satisfaction to be gained from the knowledge that a reduction in weight has produced no detrimental lowering of comfort standards. brooks are, by all accounts, the original saddlers to the world's bicyclists, and while downing street in smethwick may no longer be the sole arbiter of its own future (in fact, the cambium range is produced in italy), over the years, they've not only maintained their high standards, but arguably improved them

brooks cambium c17 organic light

saturday 20 april 2019

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