your daily bicycle log

Hunter, it was about 85 degrees in London today - the guy in NBS's photo is a mentalist. It's well over 80 degrees now and I'm lying on my bed with a sodding fever - what a day to fall ill.

However, I did managed to complete a three-lap (21 mile) de facto time trial round Richmond Park this morning. It wasn't a proper individual one, cos I did it with the two mates from the Paris ride (so several minutes quicker than we'd have been alone), but we managed 63 and a half minutes at an average speed of just under 20mph which is nothing to a decent rider but we were pretty pleased. I had been wondering why I was struggling with energy and recovery levels but maybe the oncoming sickness was to blame.

Hunter, it was about 85 degrees in London today - the guy in NBS's photo is a mentalist

^ OTM - the air seems to be made up largely of steaming liquid at the moment

FWIW there were also various 'wacky' types riding in tutus / with false arses, although I was disappointed not to see either a top-hatted Victorian gentlemen on a penny farthing or a clown on a unicycle.

i'll stop complaining since i prefer 95 degrees and 20% humidity (Denver) over 85 degree steaming liquid anytime.

get well soon mark.

If it's any consolation I'd like to be in Denver right now, nursing a Fat Tire and anticipating a steak while working out how to get Hunter to take me for a ride.

I just took my first proper bike ride in about 6 years! Shaky at first but I discovered my touch OK! Up from Lee, through Blackheath, and through Greenwich Park to the Royal Observatory. Then I played some cricket.

I got caught in a truly biblical deluge yesterday afternoon; probably the craziest amount of rain I've ever cycled through. It was fun.

I've always fancied cycling round Heathrow Airport so today I gave it a go. I got soaked in a fairly brief but torrential shower in Brentford on the way but the weather turned nice and it didn't matter I was wet (and also my Rapha Sportwool Classic Jersey (TM) dried out beautifully, of course). I kind of like watching planes take off and land so I stopped halfway round the airport and tried to get some decent pics of planes. I managed one.

The journey back was through pretty unremarkable suburbia, but who cares, I had a tailwind, and I briefly knew the joy of cruising at over 30mph, until my lungs basically gave out anyway. 33 miles in the end, just under 2 hours, and I feel pretty pleased all told.

(here's the map - bit tricky to follow but the figure 8 route was Barnes - Mortlake - Kew - Brentford - Hounslow - Heathrow - Cranford - Osterley - St Margarets - Richmond - Barnes. Not a climb in there other than the 150 vertical feet from Richmond Bridge to Richmond Gate.)

Just managed to hit a maximum speed of 40.6 mph on a brief downhill stretch near Loughton. It's not particularly steep, but it's a straight main road so you can just peg it without worrying about what's around the corner. I'm sure they hit much higher speeds coming down the Alps, but for the London/Essex borders that's pretty good going.

Haha I got my bf to meet me for a bike ride on Sat. I picked up my bike in Pros Heights, rode across the Wburg Br for the first time, met him on the West Side of Manhatt. His ride was much shorter but his bike needs mega upkeep work. I seem to have a new project....

One question: What's the best cross-town route from the Wburg to the far west side?? I was a zig-zaging, tunnel-traffic-hitting snarl on Sat.

9th/10th are pretty good, lanes on them at least. Prince has a lane but I've only cycled it in bits and not sure what happens East of 6th Av.

Prince also sucks for unaware pedestrians.

Hmm will keep in mind. Looking at bike maps, I'm thinking Grand most of the way, jogging over to Prince on the far West. Bit further south, but a straighter shot for getting all the way to the Hudson.

Took my girl out on her bike for the first time yesterday. Seems I have done good in terms of design.

http://cottonandsand.com/sandandcotton/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/weird_science.jpg

I rode 68 miles on Saturday and promptly collapsed 20 minutes after finishing (and feeling great). The home leg, 36 miles or so, I did in 2 hours on a cereal bar and a small bottle of water. I'll know better next time.

Fair-weather cyclist that I am, I've got fuck all done this summer. Maybe we'll get a mild autumn.

I made that mistake a couple of summers ago cycling across the new forest. Thinking I would hit a pub or a shop for refuelling, boy was I wrong.

xpost

across the new forest

tearing down all the pubs and quickiemarts to build new forests everywhere SHOCKAH!

y'all may remember my "dya wanna GET SLAMMED" incident while I rode to work a few weeks ago. basically, i passed a guy and he got very emphatically bent out of shape about it.

so yesterday, a different guy passes me at a light on a balloon tire cruiser. leather full sprung seat, leather bar tassles, the works. hes pretty quick, im in no hurry. while this guy is very wussy looking compared to my "get slammed" friend, i figure, "y'know hunter, just go with the flow. don't pass him, ppl will think yr an ahole." so i follow him about 15 meters back for 2 or 3 miles. finally we get to a light, and he stops and looks at me with a mocking grin. "man, you cant even pass a guy on a CRUISER BIKE? that's SAD!" i laugh, "well, you've got 6 lbs of just rubber on that bike, i cant top that." but no, he's really dissing me-- "dude that's sooo weak, what the fuck?" he then turns and pedals off to the right.

i'm like asshole-on-a-bike magnet. this asshole was better than the previous one tho.

even that cant spoil the riding right now tho. its blue skies and 68 degrees. just gorgeous.

that's crazy about the "no-passing" guilt. is it regional? do you do the same thing driving?

no, i never feel guilty about passing cyclists when im driving my car.

I'm considering going on some kind of cycle maintenance course. Last Saturday I punctured (for the second time in a fortnight) in the middle of nowhere and spent a good twenty oily minutes sorting it out (back wheel, not quick release). I decided it was about time I changed my tyres, so rode down to the FW Evans at Canary Wharf the next day and bought some, then spent an oily and windswept forty-five minutes or so changing them over, only to realise later on that I'd put both tyres on backwards (the bike was upside down, I got confused) so I had to spend another oily chunk of time in the evening sorting out my mistake.

After today's ride I decided it was about time to sort out the buckle in my front wheel - it wasn't unrideable, but it entailed a choice between the rim constantly rubbing on the brake blocks, or loosening the brakes more than is sensible to avoid any rubbing. So I got out my spoke key (last used circa 1990), located the buckle, loosened a few spokes on that side and tightened a few on the other, found it wasn't any better, repeated the process, found it wasn't any better, repeated the process, found it wasn't any better, etc., and gave up after about twenty minutes. I took it to a bike shop and the bloke trued it in about two minutes.

Went into central London stupidly early this morning and rode round the Freewheel course (more or less the same as the Tour of Britain circuit from a fortnight ago) before the event officially started. It was quite surreal, because the streets were completed deserted - no vehicles allowed on the roads, but no cyclists either because it was too early for them.

Lovely cycling around with my GF on saturday although I deserve a prize for idiocy. Had to replace a tufo on saturday. Bought a new tyre and tube. Stupidly forgot that my wheels had no rim tape so after two miles I was riding a flat. Luckily the lovely people at mosquito were at hand and not only sold me a new tube an rim tape but fitted it for free whilst I was looking at bathroom fittings. I also got to ogle the beautiful moots and IF bikes they have in there and have resolved if not to get a moots bike, to get one of their rather well designed saddle bags.

Quick spin early Saturday morning, left the house at 9 and went across the Wburg Bridge and around Ave B environs. So nice and cool and not-busy over there, it's like the perfect photo of biking in a city. Need more excuses to do again!

Over in Norway and this town has a Velib type bike scheme although most of the bikes seem to be trashed or missing. Was looking forward to a ride along the lovely fjordside bike trails but no such luck as I couldn't work out how to check out the one good bike.

Had to settle for bike then weights in the hotel gym.

40-mile ride on Saturday in Sussex taking in a couple of savage climbs (the Devil's Dyke and The Bostal nr. Steyning) up the South Downs.

i love my iro, but...

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/urban/soho/soho/

trek made my belt drive 8spd dream a reality. now it just needs drop bars.

i like it. OTM re: drop bars.

definitely buying the 2009 raleigh one way tho

btw im not a drop bar absolutist. for routes less than 6 or 7 mile each way or with heavy traffic id go flats. something to keep my head up and stance compact.

yah the one way is a fantastic combo of aesthetic and practical speccing imo. its like the anti lankstawanksta.

I had to do the best emergency stop of my life to avoid a car who turned across me this morning, but I smacked his rear end so hard with my left hand as he went past that the big muscle at the bottom of my thumb is all swollen and sore. Grr.

Meanwhile, surprising good news for American cycle commuters.

had a lovely country ride on saturday near andover, involving pubs with barrels on the wall with proper mugs with handles for beer and everything. Still overestimating how much distance my girlfriend will put up with. 20 miles is a short ride for me. Not that she is particularly unfit she can kick my arse at running, which I hate, just still unused to biking distance.

Was given some rapha cycling plus fours for my birthday and a rapha overjacket. I am deliriously please but will have gone from a scruff whose last cycle jersey was second hand and £3 on eBay to the sort of ponce who cycles around in matching black rapha gear all in one go.

holy crap, the rubber chain on that trek.

how do you change a flat w/belt drive???

Look at the way the drop out is arranged, the whole thing comes apart.

holy crap, the rubber carbon-composite chain on that trek

the coffee mug replacing water bottle is kinda lol

http://trekroad.typepad.com/trekroad/2008/09/travis-brown-be.html

i think what i really meant was how do you change the belt itself

Afrom what I can see you unscrew the two bolts holding the drop out on slide the wheel forward to rerlease the tension, unscrew the bolts further and the rear triangle will come apart and you can slide the belt out.

ah so.

gotta say pretty much every CX bike I've seen with a belt drive has been pure sex

http://www.carbondrivesystems.com/images/install_big.jpg

thats how spot does it i believe

Open rear triangle (methods vary by manufacturer.)

two days ago, it just poured on me at 52 degrees for 45 minutes.
yesterday it poured on me at 45 degrees.

today, i look west to the mountains, and it is, once again, a black/gray wall of pure malevolence. the forecast said only a 5% chance of rain this morning.

the rongness

Visiting my parents for a few days - have got my old racer back on the road and tried out the new chainset/block (as suggested on the nerdy gear ratios thread I started). Have bought a new saddle as well as the old one seemed to be rotting away. I don't like the side pull brakes on it, so maybe I'll replace them as well, but I'm getting conscious of the amount of money I'm spending on this.

I'm thinking of maybe, maybe, maybe trying to get back into racing again so I've decided to test myself over ten miles and see if it's actually a good idea or not. If I can get under 30 minutes then that's respectable enough (to probably come last in a time trial, but without being an embarrassing distance behind the second last!). So I've been out on a hilly 10-mile circuit the last couple of days: 34.17 on Saturday and 32.25 today (in the rain and wind). That includes a climb of 100m, so it would probably be a bit better on the flat.

82 miles in new paltz yesterday. beautiful, but some brutal climbs. forgot my baselayer, which sucks, considering i sweat like a maniac.

here is the most of the ride i did, did not do this full 114 mile route.

http://www.rapha.cc/continental/index.php?page=495

more stuff here:

http://www.christopherchaput.com/blog/

first truly sub freezing commute this morning, it was beautiful. and now there's space to be found on the bike rack.