My $500 Shopping Spree at Competitive Cyclist - How would you spend $500?

Today's video is sponsored by

competitive

cyclist

s for this project. They gave me a budget of 500 to

spend

on their site. Today we are going to see what I decided to

spend

my 500 on my friends and I have planned a bike trip. in a couple of weeks in Colorado and we will travel from Silverton to Durango on the Colorado Trail. I have never traveled this segment, but I have been to those towns and I love them and there are many things I need to do. Prepared for this trip I initially put one or two very expensive items in my

shopping

cart and sat in it for a while and thought it was the best way to spend my money and then I thought I don't know. so I looked through everything that the

competitive

cyclist

sells everything that he could use and I started adding it to my cart and then I looked through it and I was like, okay, what do I need?

What

would

be really nice to have that I will never have. I can't afford anything else and what will prepare me for this trip, so I'm excited to show you how I spent my five hundred dollars, half on tools to prepare my bike, tune it up and get it ready for the trip and the other half are components and little things to make this trip possible. Let's get started. Competitive Cyclist is an online retailer and sells bicycles. He rides Santa Cruz Ibis bikes. A lot of different people. They carry components. They carry tools. They make real shipments. quick so let me show you what I have first we'll start with the tools first this is the brilliant article these are Abbey's bike tools hanger alignment guide on Instagram when you search the Toolbox Wars hashtag be careful I do not do it.

I don't recommend doing this, it will suck you in and you will spend thousands of dollars on tools. All the professional bike mechanics show off their shiny tool boxes that they use for every race and almost every person has one of these. wish list for a long time Abby's tools are the best of the best and you pay for them they are very good quality they are handmade in the USA they have some cool features basically this goes here and it tightens that way put it here, unscrew the derailleur and screw it on and you can use this to make sure your derailleur hanger is completely straight in all positions.

I am a coach on our local Nika High School team. I am fixing bent derailleur hanger weekly and I also like to keep my bikes in good shape and even new bikes I always check the derailleur hanger and now I have the ultimate tool to do so so this was a luxury item but I am very excited to finally have a next one, it's another incredible one. tool from Abbey Bike Tools these are TIG welded they are just beautiful and this is the crombie it's basically a cassette tool and it has two sides this is a traditional old style and this one has a little nub for a 12 mil thru axle so that when you put this in your cassette, it aligns and self-centers, you put it in and it's ready to go once again.

These aren't very cheap but I use them all the time especially on my single speeds it will be very useful for putting different gears for my single speeds so I'm very excited that this doesn't have any more sockets on the cassette with a wrench holding that with a chain whip in this hand and everything falls apart. This will make life super easy. and this is the sl and it is hollow and they have a chain whip that slides inside which is great for traveling but for my chain whip I decided to use something different that was not made by abby this is my chain whip this It's made by burst man and I've never heard of it but when I saw it I thought it's cool so basically it's a spring hinge right here if you've never used one of these this is how you remove the cassette. a bike or a bike gear, you open this up, drop it into the cassette and it's ready to go.

Most chain whips are kind of a balancing act and you have to rip them, hold them in the right place and then the cassette moves and then it gets in the wrong position, this will be very easy with these two tools. You should be able to make a single gear change in less than two minutes. This will be super fast so I'm excited to try this. super useful, my next tool is the wolf tooth backpack pliers and this is a tool that I carry with me on the trail. A few weeks ago I left my backpack on the ground and someone else took it, it was stolen and I came back after the trip and I couldn't find it.

All my little things that I take with me on a trip were stolen. This was one of them. I use it enough to miss it on my travels, so I'm replacing it. It has some tools. I show you that it's a tire lever, you open it up and you can put two different types of master links in here. This little part squeezes the valve stems and the part I use the most are these chain breaking pliers if you ever need to break a master link. On the road this is the way to do it. I've even used it at home when I couldn't find my usual master link pliers.

There is also a little spot here where you can use them as little pliers to tighten your valve stem nut so this has proven invaluable to me in the past so I replaced it because I really use this and the last tool is a roll Osprey tool kit to store my tools. I had this in my fanny pack that was stolen and I was so sad because I use it all the time. This is how I keep things organized and make sure I always have everything. It keeps my things from falling everywhere. It is very useful for me so I will use this on my trip.

It's good to replace them. stuff that was stolen by the way, all of these items I will have links to them in the description below and you can purchase them through those links and that will help support the rigid party, it won't cost you anything extra, but it will help me. Competitive Cyclists also decided to give you a 15 discount code for your first order through Competitive Cyclists. There are some exclusions, as always, and they apply, but I really appreciate that they offered you a discount, so at that point I've spent a little over half my budget on tools, but I build enough bikes and work on them a lot, so these tools pay for themselves over and over again and I believe in getting good tools that last a long time while the tools are fun, let's get into it.

Two other items I had left in my budget, this is the Blackburn Outpost Cargo Cage, this is a huge cage to hold anything from a pot to my half-gallon water jug ​​to a tent, and with the packing setup on my bike I can mount it on my forks, I can mount it on my down tube, I can mount it inside the triangle, this opens up a lot of options for carrying things on your bike, so even if you don't have the water bottle mounts , I taped it up like a fork and They zip tie or hose down and have these fancy little grippy straps that will hold things in there, so this is a must have for packing in my opinion bicycles, you can carry many more things with the good, we are.

Until my last post, I've been wanting one of these for a while. This is the Thule Tour luggage rack. I'm short. I have a saddlebag for my dropper post for bike packing, but I'm so short that when I drop the dropper I drop it. I stick it in my rear tire and it rattles my bag so basically I can't use my dropper when I use that bag because it just rubs the tire and a dropper is very important to me even packing the bike in fact I'd rather have a dropper than a front suspension so the seat bag is not a viable way for me to carry things on my bike trips and that's where it comes in, basically this is a rack that fits on the back of any bike , whether it has roof rack mounts or not and let me show you how it works when Thule announced this.

I was very excited. Basically, you hook this to the stays on your seat and there's a couple of stays that adjust it and you change all the angles that your wheel goes into. Here you can. put some light on the back or some reflectors. You can put an elastic cargo net. They sell saddlebags that you can put on the side like a little basket that goes down so you can take saddlebags on the side for this trip. I'll try it with a dry bag on top, but what this allows me to do is put a lot more weight on the back of my bike, usually the front of my bike is overloaded and it's very heavy, it's hard, it's a little bit unbalanced, it's hard to pick up ledges or get over logs and things like that, by being able to put some items on the back of the bike, now it's going to be a lot more balanced and centered, you know, taking some of that heavy weight off the front and putting it on. in the back, so it should ride much better.

My friend Kyle has one of these and he's excited about it and I can't wait to try it because it really opens up a whole new way of transporting things and that's the biggest challenge of cycling. Packing is carrying all the things you need to carry without making the bike ride like a mule. You want to keep it fun and you still want to enjoy the ride and this is my attempt to find a way to do that, so there you have it. This is how I spent my 500. I'm sure you guys

would

spend it differently and I want to know what you would spend 500 on at competitivecyclist.com.

For those of you

shopping

and interested in a discount, use coupon code hardtail15 to save 15. off your first order at competitivecyclist.com I want to say a big thank you to competitive cyclists for collaborating on this project. I'm so excited to try them out on that trip and I want to say a big thank you to my sponsors, you guys are amazing. you are the reason the rigid party exists thanks for watching there is a party in the mountains and you are invited