Tuesday, May 08, 2007

A DAY AT THE RACES


    I think it's not fair that we all work 5 days a week and ONLY get 2 days off. That's less time to squeeze in for a ride. Not fair and I know life is unfair.

    With the new job, came new perks. My drive is 40 minutes rather than the hour and 15 minutes of before and that was days with no traffic. With my new job and short commute I gained the option of being able to ride after work. It's a nice perk. I bring my bike to work and jet at 5-5:30 to ride at the closets spot which is about half and hour away. Lately, I can squeeze in 2 hours and like tonight 10 miles. 10 miles and 2 hours seems like, ima snail but lately, I have been taking out a newbie with me or my other friends that have some "ride-time" under there paddy shorts but we do like to stop often, catch out breath, drink a lil water and tease each other. I find that type of riding fun.

    I got some friends racing this year. I'm not a racer nor do I want to compete in any races. With my job, I have deadlines everyday and often it seems like on every hour. I feel like I race to work to get there on time and race to get home or race to get to the park for a after work ride. I don't want to race with something I really enjoy, something that unwinds me after a day at work, something that I look forward to do on the weekends. I just don't need another job, a commitment to do well or compete with others, I don't need to prove myself or with others.

    I do compete with my friends when we ride. I just did it tonight. I just need to be in front, to guide, to warn and just be ahead of everyone. When someone got ahead, i made sure that I somehow, got around them. Maybe tonight I was more of a control freak because I wanted to be able to cover as much ground as possible before it got to dark.

    We all compete with our friends when we ride. We all have our "fast" friends, that when we ride, we need to push ourselves to keep up. I still do it but I get more enjoyment riding with slower people or even newbies. I choose to be slow now and i rather ride with them because in my mind there still taking their time to enjoy and absorb there surroundings (maybe just to survive) and not fly by as a blur.

    Side Note: Cambria is having a tire sale. The tire coupon code is... CBOTIRE7. Save an extra 11% on all tires. Offer can not be combined with any other offer.

happy trails
~dirty bert

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

STAN TO THE RESCUE!

    I need Stan, Stan's tubeless system. I gather some people from work, 3 people and 2 more at the last minute, for a fun group ride at Mercer. Mercer seems to be the best meeting spot during the weekdays, since it is the quickest place to get to after work.
    Well within 15 minutes into our ride, someones tire started to hiss. We all stopped and helped change the tire and as usual we made fun of each other. The ride was good, there was one newbie riding with us, that was doing well and Mercer is a relatively easy place to start mtn. biking and a good place to get back into shape and start the new season.
    On the way back, my rear tire decided to finally go flat. I have been having an everlasting low/flat tire for about 5 months now. i think this has been the longest streak of not having a flat in my rear tire. I gotta say this, I HATE changing my rear tire. There is so much to deal with, aligning the disc with the caliper, then rerouting the chain around the cassette and trying to align the quick release back into the drop-outs AND all doing this with 2 hands. NO f-en way, can i do this by myself. Well anyway, I rode that tire, completely deflated on that rim to long. So long, that the rim nipped or cut into the sidewall.
    When we got back to the parking lot, I had my chance to get some help changing the rear tire. So Jeff kindly, held the bike up for me, while I cursed at the chain, disc and rear derailleur for about 15 minutes. I have learned valuable lessons in changing tires and one of them is to NEVER turn the bike upside down when you have hydraulic brakes. Why, because you will always get air in yer brake lines causing yer brakes to not work properly. AND as you can already tell from this post, that I'm mechanically challenged and can't handle bleeding my brakes, let alone changing my rear tire.
    Well, after I changed the tire, 3 people bailed to go home and ME and 2 others wanted to join me for some more riding on the other side of Mercer. We had a quick pace because at this point the sun just set and I needed to squeeze in a lil more trail time in. We hustled around the trails, stopping very lil but it became dark quickly, than I expected and once again we were out riding the trails in the dark. Thank god, I know the trails, so well and my eye sight is pretty good, well my squinting is excellent. We made it back to the cars by 8:25, with the lightning in the distance.
    I have learned, once again, I seriously need to invest in a couple of things, if I want to keep up riding like this.
  1. Lights: Relatively cheap, under 100 bucks for a system. Any suggestions?
  2. Stan's: I still need tubes but I heard and read this system works.
  3. CO2 Inflation System: Ya still gonna need it, if you are using tubes or No Tubes and it beats killing yer arm for pumping (there's a joke in here somewhere and I'm not gonna touch it)
  4. Tubes: 10 boxes of tubes for 20 bucks, not a bad deal.
I think right now, that would be a good start. I know, them lights can be expensive, especially the HID lights. I think the cheapest i saw them, were for, maybe 300 bucks. LED, here i come! On eBay, you can score Stan's for under 60 bucks.

happy trails
~dirty bert