One Week Later

Saturday marks the one week anniversary of my first ride with Girl Michaelangelo so I decided to go out riding the past couple of days to celebrate. I rode Harris Lake after work yesterday and felt really good on the bike. I took the hills easier than last week and have shaken off some of the rust. I am starting to feel pretty comfortable on the bike but I am still not completely back to where I was before the Gennie tragedy. I still make a lot of little mistakes, the most common being that I try to keep pedaling on my way over obstacles and end up hitting them with my pedal. It is possible that these crankarms are longer than the ones on the Fisher but I suspect that it is just bad technique. I also didn't wreck yesterday which is an improvement over last weeks ride. There was one point where I tried to go over a log and hit my chainring on the log pretty badly but I don't consider this a wreck because I never hit the ground. I thought that I would be able to clear it as I approached but the log was on a slight downhill and the lower ground on the other side skewed my judgment a bit. As I went over the ring hit and stopped the bike completely as I went over the bars and running down the hill. I was impressed that the collision didn't seem to phase the ring or the chain. Excellent work Salsa and Sram respectively. At the end of the day I had done about 14.5 miles, a pretty good day considering the heat.

Today I went out to Crabtree to ride the trails out there. I did one loop around Crabtree and although I felt good on the bike, the trails were pretty boring. I was hoping that since I haven't ridden these trails regularly in six months or more that they would be more fun on the new bike but I am already bored with them on my second trip out there. I will still ride them occasionally and go out there with group rides but I probably will not go out there on a regular basis. One exciting moment on these trails came when I passed the 50 mile mark for this bike on my computer. I figured that this was a small mile stone so when the odometer rolled over to 50.0 I stopped to collect a small nearby stone to keep as the 50 mile milestone stone. Please note that this stone is purely ceremonial and that there have been several other miles on the bike not recorded on the computer. I decided that since I came out here and went through the trouble of getting ready to ride that I should go spin through Umstead for a while to get some miles in for fitness. I ended up riding all of the trails in Umstead that are open to bikes for a total of about 24.5 miles of fireroads and roughly 5.5 miles of trail, for a grand total 30 miles worth of riding today. I really enjoyed the ride through Umstead and it was a good way to show off the new bike. When people see someone as goofy looking as I am come riding down the trail on a bike that just rolled out of a Ninja Turtles movie with a giant Reeses Cup jersey, they know that I mean serious business. The bike handled the fireroads of Umstead pretty well. I was worried about some of the longer hills on a singlespeed but I was able to make them all. There were some sections that tested out my climbing abilites and I may use this as a training route before my next attempt at Old La Honda. The bike tops out at about 15 mph on flat ground with the current gearing but I was able to test out the top speed on a long straight downhill. I think the bike topped out at around 34 mph or so with me doing my best Linus-Gerdemann-descending-Col-de-la-Colombière impression on the way down.

The 50 mile milestone stone.

Todays ride also brought about the first casualty of the new bike. I noticed at one point during the ride that one of my water bottles was shaking a lot and upon further inspection I discovered that the cage has broken on one side. A lot of times I will use a broken part as an excuse to replace it with something better. This is not one of those cases. I tried to zip tie the cage back together but it looks like the other side is close to breaking as well. I am not sure if I will be able to salvage this one. This is a little disappointing because these were the only orange cages that I could find anywhere but I can always get some in another color and paint them myself.

The broken cage

I am starting to think that I may be the only one who really likes the green and orange color scheme. I took the bike to work with me Friday and while chatting with a coworker who saw my helmet sitting at my cube, I mentioned that I brought my bike with me and was planning on riding after work. His only response was "Its not the green one is it?". I guess its ok as long as I like it.