Corinne and the kids have been gone for a week now. She went South for a family reunion (and has already been gone for over half the summer). Of course, with gas being the cost it is, I decided against going down. Needless to say, it’s been a largely boring week. Aside from my ride yesterday, it was pretty uneventful.
When school was going full-time, it was easy to have the family gone. I was always busy and not really home that much anyway. Of course, that’s different now. I miss cuddling and kissing my children. As these things usually happen, they may not be home on the day I hoped. They were supposed to be home today, now it may not be until Thursday. So, maybe I’ll take a few bike rides this week or something. I can’t really do anything else to the bikes, because I’ve cleaned and re-cleaned them. Until they come home, I’ll have find some different ways to entertain myself.
Okay, it’s not my dream bike, but a while ago I found this pic and for some reason I thought it was just hilarious. It’s like a mix of three different styles of bikes; a road bike, a time trial bike, and mostly a mountain bike (full suspension no less). So, I hope you enjoy it was much as I did.
Via:
BikeSnobNYC
You know, speed is a funny thing; it’s all about perception. I just ran a DVD back to the local Redbox. On the way back, I decided to take the local jogging trail rather than 13400 South. When at dinner the other night with parents, my step-dad told me that one of his friends lived out this way and that his home backed up against that trail. So, I was looking for it as I rode. Funny thing is that as I was cruising along, I took a peek down at my cyclometer and found that I was cruising at a meager-feeling 22 mph. This got me thinking back to yesterday’s ride and how Ryan was likely the only person to even come close to that. 22 mph on singletrack feels MUCH faster than 22 mph on a road bike. Now, I’ve KNOWN this for quite some time, but for some reason, I REALIZED it today.
So, that got me thinking back to Friday night when I was at Ryan and Brenda’s home. We watched “Seasons,” the new and very epic mountain bike movie by The Collective. At one point, the camera showed a rider’s cyclometer that read 78 kph. Being a complete idiot, I converted kph to mph incorrectly thinking that like an inch-to-centimeter conversion it was 2.5 kilometers per mile rather than 1.6. When I actually calculated it correctly realized that he was slamming along at 48.5 mph; on a mountain bike! That’s insane! So, I got my lesson in speed perception on a bike today. I don’t know why I thought to share this, but…I hope you enjoyed my Sunday side note.
Oh, and I should mention that I found the source of my mystery flats. Over the past two weeks, I have blown out 4 BRAND NEW tubes on the front wheel of my commuter. Yesterday, I thought I’d measure the holes out and sure enough they were all 6″ left of the valve hole. Seems that my rim strip had not been laid in correctly and part of the aluminum rim was exposed. Being completely CHEAP rim strips, they had to be replaced. So, I spent a few dollars on some new FSA strips (I may upgrade to some Velox tape per Ryan’s advice) and amazingly enough, no flat today! Hopefully this combination, along with my new Kevlar-belted tires, will give me thousands of flat-free miles.
I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous. Isn’t this why the rich have accountants? I swear, if this man becomes president, we’re all in trouble.
Links:
McCains Defaulted On Home Taxes For Last Four Years, Newsweek Reports
Today Ryan, Randy and myself headed up to Summit County for a run on a relatively new trail, the flying dog. I met Ryan at 6:30 to do some minor adjustments to my rear wheel and we were off. We picked Randy up a few minutes later and made our way up Parley’s canyon. Parley’s is always an interesting drive because inevitably, there is some idiot driving a diesel pickup that has to show everyone his rig can do 90 mph up the canyon, boat in tow. Of course, diesel pickups are fodder for another post. Anyway, we hit the trail by about 7:40 and were on our way to a great time.
Continue reading ‘Flying Dog’
