June 2008

My dream was watching Moby Dick. Ishmael was narrating the story and the tale was more of a comedy rather than a drama. The only real scene that stands out is watching the white whale frantically circle the ship in the vain hope of generating a whirlpool.

commute stuff

Wednesday was host to a fucking great ride. Only that particular oath is strong enough to underscore how cunting boss it was riding to and from work.

Call me a slowpoke but I discovered more awesomeness regarding gears. While I began my trip my gear was already at 2/7 and it still made me feel like there was absolutely no resistance and my legs were uselessly spinning in space. So I shifted into third gear and completed my commute in 3/6.

The best part was that dratted hill. I shifted down to 3/5 and pedalled up it without breaking a sweat or skipping a beat maintaining a decent speed rather than being reduced to a crawl like I would normally find myself in gear 2/3.

Now there was a bit of an annoyance but it's not a deal breaker when it comes to my commutes on Thursday and Friday. The front derailleur's cable had slipped off its track. I spent some time trying to worry it back into the groove so I could use the second front gear rather than being stuck in the third front gear. No dice. Fortunately I had my camelbak with the allen wrenches and multitool and set about trying to fix it myself by loosening the nut.

Nut got loosened and when I tried to screw it down on the remainder of the cable I got nowhere. Fifteen minutes and black greasy hands later I gave up because there wasn't enough remaining cable to keep everything in line so the nut could be properly tightened once again.

On Saturday I'll just head to King's Chef, get it fixed while having breakfast and I'm pretty darned certain I'm going to finally going to ride into Manitou Springs. Here's hoping my favorite spring is back in service.

ohshi-

Just realized that I have committed a boo-boo with my Wedneday commute. Most of the time I was doing little-little which is a Bad Thing ^(tm). Such shenanigans lead to premature chain wear and other bad things. Also one should never ride big-big either.

It's only going to be twenty miles like this (total of 16 miles commute for Thurs/Fri plus whatever on Saturday) so I'm hoping this isn't going to be deadly to my bicycle.

Now I'm afraid that my legs may be getting too strong for any gear ratio on my bike. Time will tell.

gears

Here's how to understand how I refer to my gears. I don't know of any conventions and I'm simply going by the handy little numbers on my handlebar's gearshifts.

Front gears / back gears

Simple. Thanks for playing.

by the by

I haven't heard anything yet by the time of this upload. I've been checking my voicemail and my email on a regular basis but there's no news.