Week in review
Sometimes life gets in the way of posting things here. Long time readers know it takes me an agonizingly long time to turn out an entry between my dyslexic poor typing and ADD. There’s no such thing as dashing off a quick entry for me. So when life gets busy, entries stop.
Snow tires off, snow tires on, snow tires off
Two weeks ago, the snows came off. Riding was wonderful. A week ago Friday, they went back on for the big St. Patrick’s Day Nor’easter. We got 8–10 inches of snow overnight. Out of around 100 attending, Tude and I were the only people who rode our bikes to the the bike club’s First Ride, Swap Meet, and Pot Luck Dinner. Tude, the ride leader and three others were the only ones who went on the 14 mile First Ride.
I didn’t plan to buy anything at the swap meet. I’d budgeted only for my membership renewal and a club jersey. I missed out on a couple of things that would have been nice. C’est la vie.
Only at a bicycling club pot luck dinner would you have seen so much “bad” fattening food scarfed up by so many people, knowing it wouldn’t make a dent in either their waistline or their arteries. Cholesterol (and not the good kind) ruled the day for dinner, and for dessert, well I had large portions of eight (count ‘em!) different chocolate-containing desserts.
There was peanut butter pie, brownies, chocolate layer cake, something sort of like Rice Krispie squares, but with chocolate. There was homemade fudge, store-bought non-pariels and two other things that I can’t remember a week later. And that was just the chocolate desserts.
Afterwards there were more awards given out, plans for the year were gone over and we voted on a new club logo. The colors in the one I liked exactly match Yellow Bike. And it was the one aproved by membership.
I copied the 2007 CD to my PC when I got home. Along the way I discovered on it a promotional video for the Saturn Rochester Twilight Criterium coming up in just three months. It’s about 3½ minutes, 18 MB download and plays in Quicktime. It sure makes sleepy old Rochesterville look exciting.
The snow tires came back off on Monday and the bike felt light and fast again. It felt so good that I rode too hard all week. It was only after a nice 25 mile ride today that my legs feel any better.
New convert
During the winter, a friend and talked about getting her a bike when the weather broke. When I heard about Women’s Night at the annual spring open house at Park Ave Bike Shop, I asked if she’d like me to go with her. We met there after work this past Friday.
Two-and-a-half hours later, she walked out with a brand new Trek 7300 WSD and a whole bag of accessories.
It was fun at times. At other times frustrating, overwhelming and frightening. The latter was when she was selecting and trying on several jerseys and things. I felt entirely unwelcome as a man in the women’s clothing section on Women’s Night.
Anyway, she called earlier this evening to tell me how happy she is with the bike and tell me about some of her rides.
Now I have to get her to join the bike club.
Tour de Dog Poo
I waited for the sun to come out this afternoon before heading out for my first ride on the bike paths for the year. There was still some snow in the perpetually-shaded portions. And tons of dog poo. There were piles roughly every 100 feet for 20 of the 25 miles I rode. The remaining five miles were on the street.
I’m not sure how I avoided it all. There certainly isn’t any dog poo stink in the living room tonight, so I surely must have missed it all. It was a major distraction that almost spoiled the ride. I didn’t let it.
I did my usual 25-mile out-and-back course on the Riverway, Canalway (west of the river) and the Greenway. I expected more cyclists, but I guess 45°F in March is still a little too cold or a little too early for most people. Even so, the two or three dozen cyclists I came across, were all happy looking.
For me, I was happy to be out and riding where I didn’t have to stop every minute or two. The absence of cars is nice too, but it’s the being able to just keep riding that makes the bike paths so enjoyable.
Coming up
Back home tonight I re-recabled Yellow Bike in preparation to take it back to Full Moon Vista tomorrow afternoon. The part I’ve been waiting for is finally in.
Being that it’s the first time I’ve cabled a bike, I went at it figuring I’d have to do it twice anyway. Finishing up after the second crack at it, I’m really pleased with how nice it turned-out. The first time through, I didn’t trim the housing for the shift cables, and I left the brake cable housings a little long too. I got them all run and the brakes and rear dérailleur adjusted and working just fine. In fact, the RD shifts so well I almost can’t stop playing with it.
I couldn’t do much with the front dérailleur since the crankset is too far outboard because the wrong bottom bracket was installed. I think it was mostly communications that caused it. Shimano switched from the traditional square taper bottom bracket to something they invented and named Octalink. Then they came out with Octalink II for mountain bikes.
Except for the Sora road group, road groups use Octalink I, mountain groups use Octalink II. The difference between them is the length of the splines. You can fit a crank of either type on either bottom bracket. If you mismatch them though, the crank sits too far outboard.
When I dropped off Yellow Bike in February, I distinctly said Sora and Octalink, meaning to distinguish it from the square-taper Sora bottom bracket that was being removed. I didn’t say one or two. Yellow Bike came back with an Octalink I bottom bracket for the 105 road group. Nice unit, wrong spline length. It’s taken a month to get an Octalink II unit here. I’m dropping the bike off tomorrow to have it installed.
I may have the bike back tomorrow as well. I’ll be at the shop for a while because…
I’m finally going clipless.
I’ve picked out shoes and clipless pedals for both bikes. Bike gets a rather pricey set of M545 double-sided SPD/platform pedals. Either side can be used as either SPD or platform. In traffic, I don’t want to have to worry about which side is up or which shoes I’m wearing. Either side works with regular shoes or cleated bike shoes.
Yellow Bike gets a cheaper set of M520 single-sided SPD pedals. This particular set was marked-down because they were take-offs from another bike.
For shoes, I’m starting with a set of Nike mountain bike shoes. Most of my cycling is for transportation. I need to be able to walk when I get there. That means mountain bike shoes. Later on I’ll also get a set of road shoes. There was a recent thread on bikeforums.net that explained the differences in a way that made sense to me, and it convinced me that I should also have a pair of road shoes. I hadn’t budgeted for two pairs of shoes (nor for quite so expensive a set of pedals for bike), so it’ll be a few weeks before I get those.
Reading
I’m currently reading the several Metal Cowboy books by Joe Kurmaskie. They each contain several short tales from his years of touring the world by bicycle. I enjoy his wry sense of humor and like the way he puts things.
I think I’ll get back to that right now.
