I didn’t sleep well last night, and when I woke up in the morning, I was lying in bed, eyes closed, resting, thinking about the idea of cutting some weight off my S-Works Aethos, which had been around in my mind for a while now.

Currently, it sits at 6.7 kg, which is already below the UCI weight limit, and by no means is it heavy. Yes, I know that.

But it’s an Aethos! At merely 585 grams for a size 56, a 6.7 kg total build is definitely on the heavy end, not to mention my frame size is 52.

I could begin my weight-saving journey with an obvious and inexpensive option: tires (and inner tubes, for that matter).

I’ve been using 32 mm width “winter” tires with cheap but bulky and robust inner tubes, so switching to 30 mm tires with lighter but thinner inner tubes could easily cut down c.a. 300 grams. The decrease in comfort caused by downsizing from 32 mm to 30 mm tires probably isn’t even discernible to me, so it’s a no-brainer.

Cost? Low. Or, you can say, extremely low, compared to other upgrades: about a quarter (USD) per gram.

There’s more: pedals.

I’ve been using a pair of old Look Keo Blade that has seen better days, and recently I’ve been thinking about upgrading to Shimano PD-R9100. The upgrade, as a side effect, cuts another 26 grams, which is not much, at a high cost that is $7+ per gram (even with a good deal I found). But my main goal for changing the pedals is to upgrade, the weight-saving part is only a happy coincidence, so I can justify that price.

After the modifications, it would sit at around 6.3XX kg. To figure out the value of XX, it all comes down to the bike computer mount and the water bottle cages. Yes, I weigh my bike as “functional” weight: with everything you would normally need on - pedals (obviously), bike computer mounts, water bottle cages, etc.

Note 1: Many YouTube videos weigh bikes without pedals, but I’m not one of them.

Note 2: I rarely ride long distances or multi-day trips so I don’t carry spares or mini tools, and that’s why I don’t weigh my bike with them on. It’s my functional weight, and your mileage might differ.

Then I stumbled: I was in bed with my phone searching the hell out of Google but I couldn’t find the weight numbers for my bike computer mount! Normally I’m good with computers and Google searches, but I found nothing. That couldn’t be it. Everybody knows the internet has everything; it must be me who’s wrong.

I was so pissed that I got out of bed immediately, barely having any clothes on, got the bike computer mount off my bike, onto the scale, and wrote the numbers down, all of which happened before my morning coffee.

Then I immediately decided to start a blog on cycling: to write small things like this that either internet doesn’t have or nobody cares.