05.14.08

As mentioned before, its been a long couple of weeks, and a few interesting notible things happened in the land of bike commuting...

I rode every day last week, which was good, and all but one this week (I did take the weekend off - it was raining saturday anyway). So far I'm just 5 miles sort of 200 miles on the month, and I'll hit that tomorrow.

So highlights of last week...

Saw a woodchuck in Golden Valley...

I had a 'light' day on thursday, as I needed to bring the car in for its spring oil change. That was lucky, actually, since the dealer is pretty close to work, and on my way back after work as I was riding into the parking lot the chain on the salsa broke. Grrrr! but not entirely unexpected.

Friday was a long ride day, as I went to happy hour out in plymouth after work (another 4.5 miles further from work away from home) riding the 80s Commuter. Stayed too late (until 10pm), then had a long, weird ride home in the dark. The Luce Line trail is very dark at night. I was seriously glad for my lights, and equally worried about hitting some kind of animal. At one point I had about 5 deer running along with me...

Monday I did a long extension to the commute on the way home against a serious wind to hit the bike shop and get a chain. Yesterday I put said chain on the Salsa, and this morning on my way to work it was slipping all over the place. GRRRRR! The cluster was also totally shot, so I did the long commute extension again to the LBS and bought a cluster. They were great and popped it on for me, NC, while I waited. Love that shop.

Tomorrow its drop the other car off, then maybe ride with a couple work peoples to lead a bike to work commute for them.

Comments [0]

05.02.08

We're in some kind of weird weather broken record. Nice on wednesday. Turns to crap on thursday. Rains all day friday. Snows friday night into saturday. Saturday cold, windy, wet. Sat night gets nice. Sunday is sweet.

This will be the 4th weekend in a row that has followed this pattern.

Needless to say I didn't ride today, in the 1+ inch of rain that is falling. And the fact that i'm nursing just enough of a cold to make me tired and crabby. Grr. I still don't have proper rain gear for this kind of thing. At least improv is over for M, so I've been given the official word that I can ride any day I choose, no more fetching on tuesday and thursday.

The salsa has been working good. It's a little unbalanced with the bag on the rack, so its a little strange riding but I'm getting used to the difference.

It's been a long week, tho. In fact the next couple of weeks are going to be quite hellish. I hope the weather dries out as riding will likely be my only recreation until the 17th, and maybe until Memorial Day. I'm trying to arrange to ride with someone to the farm on saturday morning and have them dump me in some little town about 40 miles south east of Alexandria. The only trouble with that is that I'm likely to have a headwind if its not raining but we'll just see what the weather is like. I need a good 40 mile slog a couple weeks before the MS150.

If I do that, I'd start out on the Lake Woebegon Trail, and the last 12 or so miles would then be on the Central Lakes Trail. This is the same paved rail bed but it was done two in two chunks with different money. Basically its flat and straight, but thats ok i guess.

Life now is basically coding and riding, without much else.

Comments [0]

04.27.08

So this is the Salsa Super Commuter (shown without the option pannier bag).

As I mentioned before, the fenders & a rack - which finally arrived - were added to the Salsa Friday night, as well as moved the computer over from the Sekai. Actually, I'd already removed the computer from the Sekai when I re-taped the bars and it was just sitting on my desk.

So thats it. I am (hopefully) bike set now for a while.

All the parts went on smoothly enough, though I was a little bit concerned about the length (or lack of it) of the rack. I had to go some pretty funky adjustments to the pannier to get it to secure to the rack without my heal smacking into it. Its a good thing the pannier has a lot of adjustment in its hooks. I don't know if that it standard for panniers (I suspect that it is), but it was not any thought of mine when I bought it.

Again, these are reasons why I hate buying shit on line sometimes. Had I been able to look at this rack in the store, I might have said "hmm, might be a little short", or been able to compare this pannier with others in the same price to make sure they all had adjustments.

In any case, i got lucky and it all worked out ok. I took it for a short ride this afternoon - basically a no-rattle ride. When i do this sort of thing, I like to go ride and make sure nothing makes noise. No fender rubs or vibrations against the tubes; rack bolts are all tight, etc. I hate it when my bike makes noise.

Fucking snow again yesterday and the day before, so I skipped riding for two days. I felt like a sloth. It was totally miserable, really. But still.

I went to Roller Derby last night with the brothers in law, which was freakin' awesome, it was loud and tough and beer-infused. Riding today was good for clearing my head a bit... :-)

Comments [0]

04.18.08

Rode in the rain today. Nice that it was cool otherwise I'd have probably started sweating, too, because of my rain jacket. As it was my feet were the only thing that gave me troubles - canvas all-stars are not the best choice for the rain.

Fortunately it only rained on the way home, not the way in. I need to do something about pants, and maybe shoe covers. Otherwise, it was a good ride.

I saw three other riders out in Golden Valley, odd as hell in great weather, freakin shocking in the rain. Must be the gas prices. Well good.

Speaking of gas prices and all that, today i just posted enough miles to be equivalent to a whole tank of gas (over 280 miles on the year). I know, it's already the middle of April, and I have spent more on my bikes this year than I've saved in gas, but that isn't really the overall point. Its about not burning fuel, not saving money. The money savings, however, are a bonus. Eventually I'll catch up. I've spent about $220 on bike stuff this year, and at the price of gas currently ($3.30), I need to offset by 66.6 gallons. That is EXACTLY 2000 miles.

My original goal was 3000 miles, and I'd still like to push for that, but that is a very difficult goal. 2000, however, should be reachable.

Comments [0]