This is the taillight to have. If someone doesn't see this, then they must be looking the other way. The pulse mode is awesome. Kinda the light equivalent of beep-beep-boosh!

Chf20- at OchsnerSport, worth every centime.

I work on the philosophy that if I have annoyed them, then they have seen me at least

Though I would not advise blinding other road users, which is what my front MTB light would do.

I recently bought a couple of extra rear lights which I found brilliant:

You can read some reviews of what others think here:

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Fi...ht/5360043731/

I bought mine from chain reaction, I have to say they are brilliant, I also use them during the day when it has been foggy.

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Deal Extreme - so last week.

All the cool kids have Lumen Liberators now!

Nah Jekyll, all the cool kids were doing Snow and Moonlight last night!

I totally agree, I also have one of these lights, it's good to hear that they are available locally at a good price, because I got mine outside the country. It is certainly the most attention-grabbing rear light I've ever seen, and certainly fits into the annoying-to-drivers category, but I find that getting hit by a car is rather more annoying, so using it still makes sense. However, I usually don't use that one unless I'm going out for a night ride outside of the city where there will be less traffic to annoy, and the traffic will be travelling faster and may not be expecting to see a cyclist, and I need to make even more of an effort for them to see me. In the city, I use more standard flashers that don't annoy quite so much.

In regards to Sylvain's comments about not only a constant light being required, but also any flashing lights being not allowed, this is certainly true in some countries. In the UK, the law used to be that you could have a flashing light as long as you also had a constant light, but then they changed it so that a flashing light is sufficient. I believe that in some countries in continental northern Europe, where they love their dynamo-powered lights, there are rules against flashing lights. I'm not sure which country adopts which law, but I ignore them all and just use common sense - use as many flashers as you think is necessary to get seen.

If you need to light up the road in front of you, then get something reasonably high-powered, the 10-20 CHF department store models are often not sufficient for this, but if you're just on the roads and light trails then you don't need the crazy-bright ones designed to light up the whole forest when mountain biking that other people have been mentioning.

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Cycling in Switzerland | Photo blog (mostly travel pics from Switzerland)

Does anyone know where I can get a list of time trials in Switzerland? Particularly around the Zurich area. I'm looking for some as part of ironman tri training.

Given how good spartacus is at them, I'd have thought the Swiss would have been really into TT'ing. I'm surprised that there don't seem to be any on datasport.

I know that such TT events are often organized by British cycling clubs, but I don't know of such events being organized here very much. Instead of Datasport, you might try to find websites of local cycling clubs and see if they have anything. However, whenever I've looked at such sights for the clubs around Lausanne, I've never seen any mention of amateur TTs being organized. Please post the info if you do find something.

I haven't heard about any around here either - Sounds like we just need to organize our own EF TT! It would be a fun challenge, and I need to do that for IM training as well

TTs are very rare here. A series of races close to Vevey usually includes one:

http://www.rhonecyclisme.ch/index.php?p=giron_m1

but I wouldn't come from Zurich for it!

Just want to clarify something. The law says

Als Beleuchtung sind ein weißer Scheinwerfer und eine rote Schlussleuchte vorgeschrieben, die auf mindestens 100 m sichtbar sind. Die Ausrüstung kann fest angebracht oder abnehmbar sein.

Zur passiven Beleuchtung muss vorne ein weißer, hinten ein roter Rückstrahler mit je 10 cm² Leuchtfläche befestigt sein. Darüber hinaus sind gelbe Reflektoren an den Pedalen anzubringen.

My understanding is:

1. A front white light and rear red light must be installed. They must be visible from 100 meters away. They can be fixed or removable.

2. Reflectors (=passive Beleuchtung) of more than 10 m2 must be present in the front (white) and back (red). They should be fixed. Yellow reflectors must be on the pedals.

None of these mentions flashing lights. Is this a rumor among english speakers in CH? Can anyone provide the source for this ban?

Sounds like a good idea (especially if there are a few people doing IMCH...)
A series including different distances and profiles (including hill climb...) could be cool. Timing and volunteers would be the issue but i reckon that could be solved cheaply.

i would thank/rep you but i don't think i have enough posts yet!

I briefly thought about trying to organize an EF hill-climb time trial in the autumn (me and my bike are a lot more suited to the hills than the flats). The folks based around Zurich all seem to like Sattelegg, so that could be a good location for it because it is a pretty quiet road. All of the hill-climb TTs I read about in the UK are really short, lasting between about 2 and 5 minutes it seems. I think we need to have this on more of a Swiss scale, and have climbs more in the region of 20 to 45 minutes. Of course, this is all aimed at maximising the chances of me doing well - not only am I better at hills, I am also not much of a sprinter, endurance is more my specialty.

Two summers ago, about half a dozen of us from Lausanne and Montreux who met via EF got together for a very unofficial hill-climb TT up the hill behind Vevey (Mt Pelerin). It was a climb most of us had done a few times before and timed ourselves on, so we made it a requirement that everyone had to set a qualifying time. We then set off in reverse order according to our qualifying times, with the plan being that we would all finish simultaneously at the top if we repeated those times. Of course, the people who had ridden the climb the least had the most opportunity to improve on their personal best, and so did better than those who had ridden it a lot. This allowed the only female in the event to beat all of the boys (after winning a heated sprint for the finish line), but that wasn't even because she started off first, she also had the third-best absolute time. Anyway, this was just a bit of fun, if we organized a proper event then I think a normal TT starting procedure should be used.

BTW, I heard that the reason why there are so many amateur TTs organized in the UK stems from all of the troubles caused by trying to organize regular road races 50-80 years ago there. For a while, I believe there was a ban on all bike racing on the roads in the UK, and therefore they would organize individual time trials, and riders would not wear a number or anything suggesting that they were racing, and so the races could be organized without anyone else know about it. Today, restrictions in the UK regarding organizing a road race are still a lot tougher than in most of continental Europe (e.g., in the UK only police officers can control traffic at intersections and must be paid a lot of money to do so, whereas in places like Belgium the cycling club officials are allowed to traffic control). Therefore, the TT races have continued to be popular in the UK. Other countries never had this initial legal reason to get into organizing TTs, and so have never got into doing so nearly as much as in the UK.

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Cycling in Switzerland | Photo blog (mostly travel pics from Switzerland)

There are actually time trials and hill climbs organised in Switzerland. They are normally organised by clubs and are treated as interclub things though. A friend of mine who is local and used to ride elite would regularly tell me about the events that are on, on any given weekend. I guess through Swiss Cycling or your local cycling club is the best way to find out about them.

I am wondering if you good folk could advise where i can buy replacement brake blocks online? I had a look at the .ch websites Chris lists at the beginning of this thread, but all are in German (i have only English and French ).

I understand that Wiggle.co.uk are now shipping to Switz. Do you think I would have to pay import tax on my Wiggle shopping (obviously, once i get my credit card out to go bike-bits shopping, i think it's unlikely it will just be the brake blocks in my shopping basket)?

Thanking you in advance for your anticipated wise words,
Lysandra

You could try Chain Reaction Cycles.com. They automatically take off the UK VAT when sending to CH. You'll have to pay the swiss VAT and most likely a few swiss post admin fees when the goodies get delivered but if you buy over a certain amount (from memory about £100 worth) the shipping is free (an excuse to get that credit card flexing!). They're usually pretty reliable too.

Nick

I have bought from Wiggle and they deduct the VAT so there is no problem with ordering from them. Ditto with Chain Reaction store, both seem to stock very good products and give great service.

I'm certain that you would be able to order something from bikeimport.ch without too much trouble.

Rennrad is road bike, MTB is.....

Bremsgummi - are cartridge type replacements
Bresschuhe are the standard complete shoe replacement.

Google translate will help you out but to be honest it looks pretty much like any other internet shop so should be quite intuitive. They are trustworthy.

Having said that, why not take a ride down to your local bike shop. With the bike in front of you there won't be any mistakes made and you're not going to be paying much more than the internet prices.

I've never had any problem with getting any European online bike store to ship parts to Switzerland and they all remove the local sales taxes first. Chain Reaction Cycles have the biggest selection and often have the best prices for most things, but there are still some things that I get elsewhere.

You won't pay any import fees if the value is low enough, below around 70 CHF seems to be the cut-off, but there is lots of variability and inconsistencies in this - it has been discussed at length in more general threads about online shopping here. When spending more than this, because different web stores use different shipping methods, the import fees vary widely. For instance, Chain Reaction ships for free if you spend more than 100 pounds, but then for import taxes you have to pay a 30+ CHF flat fee plus the 7.6% sales taxes. When I get orders from bike-components.de in Germany (a lot of their website is available in English as well as in German) then you have to pay about 10 to 30 euros for shipping (depending on the size of the items) but then pay no flat import fee, just the 7.6%.

I once had a web-link to a translation guide specifically for bicycle parts for German:English, but I can't find it now. However, I rarely need it now - although my knowledge of German is very basic, I know a lot of bike-related words and the words that appear on the order forms. They can be useful things to know while living here for buying bike stuff as well as many other things online (most Swiss web-stores are German-only).

Having said all of this, if you decide that a set of brake pads is all you need, then going to your local bike shop would be your best bet. I was recently near Neuchatel and discovered a HUGE bike shop, one of the best I've seen in the country, called Cycles Prof, in St. Blaise (it's on the main road, at the turn-off to the train station, which is only 100 metres away). I plan to go back there and take a good look around their extensive store someday. If your local Athleticum has a bike section then they may also have some decent-quality brake pads, but staff are unlikely to be as helpful as in the local bike shop.

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Cycling in Switzerland | Photo blog (mostly travel pics from Switzerland)

The only part of my German that has improved since I've lived here is my bicycle part vocabulary. A joke with some truth in it. Try this out, it even has Swiss German
http://bemi.free.fr/biciklo/index.ph...=en&lingvo2=de

I concur with the rest. Small single parts buy local, as the total cost will probably be less than the shipping charges and the mysterious Swiss customs admin fees.