Sunday, August 27, 2006

Mud, Rain, Hills, & Wind

This weekend turned out to be fairly productive for me. Got lots of bone healing sleep as Amber is now referring to it. Got in a 4 hr ride on Sat & a 3 hour on Sun. Did a bunch of yard work on Sat afternoon. The yard actually looks half way descent. Sat afternoon Amber, Mia, & I went & watched the newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Not as good as I thought it would be. I'd say wait for DVD.
You ask what does the title mean? Normally those are things that people say make a ride bad. Not me. I say those are the makings of a good ride. Sat I got to ride through mud while riding through a road closed section. For some strange reason I've been having to do a lot of that lately. Must be the season for road construction. Anyway back to the story. Got a flat in the mud which was interesting since the mud was pretty sketchy had to lean way back & ride the flat front till I hit the pavement, only about a 1/4 mile. Sun I got rained on twice. Not a little stinging rain either. A regular deluge. I was a little worried about the amount of standing water on the road @ one point. But after a 1/2 hour of drenching it quit & I started to dry. Then about 8 miles from home when I was almost dry it did it again. Thus the weekend of riding was put into the semi epic category.
The good thing is this was the second week in a row of quality mileage. Next weekend while everyone is @ Gateway I'll be riding my happy ass down to the lake for the weekend. That be a 6 hour ride boys & girls. If all works out I'm going to ride my happy ass home too.

Today working on building up the SS I ran into a few snafus. All small minor irritants. Not enough headset spacers on hand and chain tension. Though Chain Tension might become a big headache. I remembered reading something online about chain length & cog size. So a quick look on Sheldon Brown's site & I think I might have solved my problem, it will just take a little experimenting. If you haven't been too his site, take a few hours and educate yourself. This guy is a genius with bike tinkering. While looking for my answer I discovered my cross bike has Campy dropouts. So you say. Well I have been thinking about building up my other frame as a crosser & having a single speed crosser as a back up. I now have no excuse because my bike is perfect for SS. Now I need to sandblast my other frame to make it look descent again & build it up basically like I have my current bike.

4 comments:

  1. Your father will be pleased to hear you worked on your yard he came home Friday evening quite worried about you.
    I will have a large pan of lasagna and apple pie waiting for your happy ass when it arrives next weekend. I am sure glad to finally read you might have a happy one after all the P&M you have been doing lately.
    There is also roast lamb with all the trimmings if you are interested.

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  2. What lake are you going to that will take your happy ass 6 hrs to get to?

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  3. Pontiac, Bull Shoals and the door is always open. Give me a few hours notice and there can always be a full sized meal on the table.

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