The Ghosts of Cycling Past

  It's 10am, I'm done riding and I am soaking wet. My shoes are full of water. I had no intention of riding today. No intention to the extent that I dumped all of my cycling clothes into the washer and turned the knob. After all, it is supposed to rain today - all day. And, I had forgotten The Rules.

  For whatever reason I woke up earlier than usual today and flicked on the morning news. According to weatherlady it was going to start raining at any moment so I put on a pot of coffee and made breakfast. About an hour later I'm on my second cup of coffee and have yet to see any signs of precipitation. The weather radar showed a perfect little gap in the green directly over my neighborhood. 

"Shit. I could've gone for a quick ride if I had known the rain was going to hold out," I grumbled to myself.

"It's still not raining, and so what if it does? So what if you get wet?" Rule #9 chimed in, "it's 73 degrees, technically it's still summer. You used to ride in the rain all the time."

"Yeah, but my clothes are in the washer and I had bacon and fried eggs for breakfast. Do you know how well bacon and eggs are going to sit after 20+ miles?" I asked.

"Oh my God! HTFU!" Rule #5 interjected, "go get your old shorts out of the closet, yes, the ones with the hole in them and grab that jersey you never wear because you think it makes you look fat and go for an effing ride!"

  Then I remembered running into a former Texas French Bread rider yesterday. I haven't seen the guy in years, but he is still wicked-fast on a mountain bike.

"Wow! You must have put on fifteen pounds or so since I've last seen you," he said, poking me in side. 

"It's more like thirty," I confessed.

"Well, you must be riding fairly often because you're able to keep up with me," he said. 

"Yeah, but not as much as I used to," I replied and began listing all of the excuses: injury, working out of town, record heat wave, etc. And, for every excuse he had a solution: more stretching, weight room at hotel, ride at night.

We rode on for a bit discussing bikes, politics, exercising and chicks with cute butts before he had to peel off and head for home. I put in another fifteen miles before stopping for the day.

  So, I grabbed the thread-bare shorts, pulled on the jersey that gathers too much at the bottom, and ran out the door with my bike. I didn't even bother to turn off the TV or set the alarm. I just went. Of course it started raining almost immediately, but I didn't care. I rode fifteen miles in the pouring rain and loved every minute of it. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Photo Credit: Wendy Harman

Winter Riding Gear

   I hate being cold. You'll never hear me complain about a 100+ degree summer day. I might remark upon it, such as "Man, it was HOT outside today," but I'll never complain about it. I will, however, complain bitterly about being bitterly cold. And by bitterly cold I mean anything under 85 degrees. In fact I make no distinction between 30, 40 or 50 degrees - they are all lumped into the same category: cold. It's kinda like my microwave, which only has an "on" button, it's either on or off with nothing in between.

   My definition of cold means I dress the same whether the conditions outside are considered mild or snowing. I made the little man below out of clothes to illustrate what my winter riding gear entails. I start with a base layer such as a long sleeved shirt and tall socks. Then I pull on a pair of tights, or leg warmers (it's much easier to put on the socks first since tights have an elastic band around the bottom.)  Next comes the bib shorts over the tights and a pair of low cut socks. Then I usually put on a short sleeved jersey followed by a long sleeved one. Cap it off with a helmet liner (beanie) and a pair of full fingered gloves and I'm ready to head out the door.

   While the layers above may seem like over kill, they are just that: layers.  This means I can easily lose sections of clothing as the ride progresses and temperatures warm, but I usually end the ride dressed the same as when I started. I don't mind being (almost) uncomfortably hot when the alternative means numb fingers or toes. Comment below and let me know what's your "go to" layering system when the weather turns colder?

An Intermittent Creaking Sound

   A couple of weeks ago I noticed a creaking noise coming from the left side of my drive train, so I did what I normally do - I ignored it.  And it went away.  And then it came back.  The noise appeared to come from the area where the left crank arm attaches to the spindle and progressively got worse.  So I tried spitting water on the crankarm as I pedaled along and that seemed to make it happy.  I figured there must have been some dust or sweat-crud lodged in a crease somewhere.  However, the noise kept returning.  It was then that I noticed that the left crankbolt had come loose and upon tightening it down the noise went away.  Several times the creaking resumed and I found that I was having to tighten the crankbolt every 15 miles or so.  (Luckily the crankarm also has "pinch bolts" that hold it on as well.)  Finally the noise became constant whether the crankbolt was loose or not and I began to suspect it was going to be rooted in the bottom bracket.
   As I rode along muttering profanities and dreading the impending trip to the bike mechanic I thought of one last "user friendly" repair (if you count ignoring and spitting water as actual "repairs") that I could try.  I removed the spindle cap from the pedal body, applied a couple of drops of chain lube and Viola!  No more noise.  

   So, what I thought was going to be an expensive bottom bracket repair actually ended up being a creaky pedal and it helped me discover a potentially dangerous situation involving the crankbolt.  A torque wrench should solve that problem.

Cycling Milestones

   I've reached a couple of milestones on the road bike recently.  

Road Tube vs. Mountain Tube

   My first "rite of passage" was a flat tire.  As someone who has over twenty years of mountain biking experience I've had lots of flats, but this was the first time I had ever had a flat on a road bike.  I haven't ridden a road bike (think English Racer) since I was probably thirteen or so. While the concept of patching an innertube is the same there are some subtle differences.  First and foremost was the brake release.  I actually had to ask the Bike Noob how to release the tension on the brakes in order to remove the wheel.  It turns out that road bikes have a lever on the brake assembly, whereas my mountain bikes either have disc brakes or the cable unhooks from a slot.  The next difference was/is that the tubes are really skinny.  My patch was almost wider than the tube.  Once I got the tire patched and returned to the bike I realized that my mini-pump wasn't getting a good "bite" on the valve stem and it kept "popping off" the stem every couple of seconds.  Fortunately I had purchased a couple of CO2 cartridges and dispenser at the time I got the bike.  I had heard various comments about how hard it was to reach the necessary PSI for a road tire with a mini-pump.  Which led me to milestone #2, using CO2 for the first time.  I was really apprehensive about inflating tire with the CO2 cartridge since I wasn't sure how hard it was to puncture the seal, and whether the tire would explode or all of the gas would leak out before I could get the tire inflated.  Needless to say everything went smoothly and the tire inflated in less than a second. I really felt empowered and am now totally hooked on CO2, though I still carry the mini-pump just in case.


   Perhaps the next milestone I reached was a "real" road ride, and by real I don't mean noodling around the neighborhood.  Instead, I'm referring to the open highway.  I was amazed at how hard roadies have to concentrate while riding in traffic.  Naturally you have to pay attention to keep from getting ran over, I have to do that on the mountain bike as well.  But roadies also have to literally watch the pavement in front of them since they don't have the shock absorbers and 2 inch wide tires that mountain bikes have.  When I'm riding the road bike I have to be very alert for things such as drainage grates, cracks in the road, expansion joints and missing valve covers and such.  These things can dump you off your bike in a heart beat and when you are riding less than a couple of feet from a moving vehicle it can even be deadly.  And so we come to milestone #4, getting passed by car while in the same lane.  There is only a brief stretch of road on my route (about 500 feet) where the shoulder disappears and I'm forced to share the lane with 65 mph traffic whizzing by.  It's a white knuckle affair and I really don't like doing it, but it's really brief, and traffic is very light on Sunday mornings. I wouldn't be caught dead trying to navigate that section of SH 45 during peak hours.


So, what, if any, milestones have you met in the pursuit of your hobby/sport? I'd love to hear your experiences...