First Ride (sort of) - What is Working and What isn't

Well alright.  I got back on Mr. Fuji today and took off to enjoy this great day a little bit.  I should mention here that I actually did ride a couple weeks ago when we had an unusually warm spell.  A single day of it, in fact.  I did not have enough air in the new tires and it was as windy as all get out.  I made it all of 5 miles before the cold wind got to me.  But it was a ride, I guess.  It made me realize that all the time I spent over the winter doing absolutely nothing, put me right back at square one.  I am a fool.

But on to today.  It was a beautiful day here in our fine city, but I thought I was going to be too busy to ride. However, this afternoon I found myself with about an hour to spare, so I jumped on the bike and took off for another quick ride.  I got the new tires aired up all proper like and headed out.  I made it all of a mile before I ran into a snag.  I came to an intersection and applied the brakes, and heard an odd thwap-thwap-thwap-thwap, coming from the back wheel.  I thought I had gotten a leaf or something stuck to the rear wheel.  I touch the brakes again, and the sound was still there.  I stopped and inspected the rear wheel and discovered a bulge in my brand new back tire with a flappy piece of rubber torn loose.  I thought I had damaged the tire when I was mounting it.  For a moment I thought I might just take my chances and keep going.  It was just too nice to turn back.  I started off again and noticed that I could actually feel a wobble in the back wheel now.  And it occurred to me that I hadn't brought the cell phone.  If the tire decided to let go completely, it would be a long walk back in the goofy shoes.  So I turned back and headed for home, but not before letting just a little bit of air out of the tire, just to take a little bit of load off the bad spot.

I got back to the garage, and pulled the wheel off the bike and began to dismount the tire.  That is when I figured out what that flappy little piece of rubber was.  It wasn't the tire at all; it was the inner tube!  It had gotten pinched between the wheel and tire when I mounted it a couple weeks ago.  When I finally inflated the tire all the way, some of the pressure must have caused the tube to actually bubble outside the tire, and then when I applied the brakes it tore about a 1" section of the tube right off.  And yet, the tube was pinched between the tire and wheel so well, that it actually continued to hold air!  Crazy.  So I grabbed another tube quick like and had the bike all back together in no time.  So I decided to head back out once again.  This time I took the phone.

I rode up to my usual spot, the North Branch trail  I rode the same short route that I used to ride when I first started last season.  This made for a bit of a short ride, but my time was limited, and I didn't really want to jump into a "big" ride on my first time out.  I ended up with 11 miles on the odometer.  eh...

The Conti 4000's feel nice on the bike and the new stem seems to be pretty nice.  I had no hand pains, no wrist pain, and found that I could ride with very little weight on my arms at all.  However, on the way home I started to feel a little bit of lower back pain.  I'm wondering if moving the bars up and towards me has caused me to be a little too cramped on the bike.  At this point it is really too early on to try adjusting the bike.  It could just be the fact that I've been off the bike for too darn long.  Recollect, that my intention was to move the bars back on the bike a bit, and then move the seat back as well, so that I would essentially end up in the same position on the bike as far as my reach to the bars, but to end up back behind the crank center slightly.  So I may just need to move the seat back a bit more.  But like I said, I'll need to log some more quality seat time before I start moving things around on the bike.

But I came across something on my ride that is seriously NOT working.  Chicago's recycling program is needing some serious work.

For many years Chicago had what they called the Blue Bag Program.  With this program, Chicago residents were to take any recyclable trash and bag it up in blue trash bags.  These trash bags could be thrown in with your regular trash and it would be dumped into the same truck on trash day.  The story was that once the truck unloaded at the dump, the blue bags could be plucked out, torn open and their contents sorted.  Right.  How this was possible once the bags had been repeatedly compacted in the back of dump truck was beyond me, but I just went with it.  It was all the city had to offer, so we did the best we could.  We went so far as to actually sort our recyclables here at home, but at the end of the week, all the blue bags went into the same can and into the same truck.

Well, this year Chicago began rolling out a Blue Can program.  With this program, residents place their recyclables into a blue can that gets picked up on trash day, but they have actually now segregated the truck.  2/3rd's of the truck is for regular land fill trash and 1/3rd is for the blue cans to get dumped into.  This seems like a step in the right direction however, they program is being rolled out slowly, neighborhood by neighborhood.  And ours is down pretty far on the list.  In the meantime, the blue bag program has been discontinued.  The holdover solution is for us to take our recyclables to central locations and drop them off.  One of those central locations is the parking lot where the North Branch trail begins.

Here is a photo of the container where people are to drop off their recyclables:

Not too cool, I've got to say.  Not long ago, when I took our recycling to the collection center closest to our house, I found a similar situation.  I sent an e-mail to our alderman and our site now has two dumpsters.  So, I guess I'll try to figure out who the alderman is up that way and drop them a note as well.  But if Chicago is going to continue to be the world class city that Daley wants it to be, he is going to have to seriously step up efforts to "green" this joint up.  This is just lame.

But I digress.  It was a great day, and it felt GREAT to get back in the saddle again.   Time to start working for that century again.  Cross your fingers. 

Last post November 5, 2008

November 5, 2008.  That is how long it has been.  And, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that it has been just as long since I have turned a pedal.  I had fully intended to put the bike on a trainer over the winter, if for no other reason than to continue tweaking my riding position on the bike in an attempt to get more comfortable.  But alas, that didn't happen.

This isn't to say that I have lost interest.  Actually, as the weather in Chicago has begun hinting around at getting less awful, I have been getting pretty anxious to ride again.  In fact, I brought the road bike into the house last week and dusted it off.  I also installed some new equipment, and re-installed some old equipment which has made me even more antsy to ride.

First, I decided to install yet another handlebar stem.  I had already gone from the OE 110mm stem to a 90mm stem last season.  That made the ride a bit more comfortable for me, but I still ended up with the seat as far forward as I could get it.  On a couple of my last rides, I noticed that if I pushed myself back on my seat a bit with my arms I felt as if I could generate a stronger pedal stroke.  That got me to thinking that maybe having my seat all the way forward, while comfortable for my arms, back and hands, might have me positioned a too far head of the cranks.  So I decided to go down to a 70mm stem and move the seat back a just a bit.  I hope that I will end up in essentially the same position on the bike as far as my reach from the seat to the handle bars, but move my overall position on the bike back a bit.  I also went to a stem with a steep 30 degree rise.  My thinking here is that the slightly more upright position on the bike will be a little more comfortable still for the long rides.  I am definitely getting that century ride done in 2009, so I'm setting the bike up more as a tourer and less as a speed demon.

Along those same lines, I felt that the tires were due for a change.  The bike was wearing the original 700 x 23c Continental Ultra Sports that came on the bike.  I don't think they had many miles put on them by the original owner, and I put less then 400 on them last season, but I thought I could see some cracking in the sidewalls near the beads.  Since tires aren't terribly expensive and can vastly change the bikes handling characteristics, I decided to go ahead and make a swap.  I read tire reviews and opinions until I was blue in the face, and finally settled on a new set of Continental 4000's.  Based on some other things I had read, I decided to go from a 23c tire size to a 25c.  The tires are just slightly more "plump" then the 23c's.  From what I have read, I will probably not notice any significant drag due their increased size, but the ride may be smoothed a bit.  This will be nice for these nasty Chicago streets and will hopefully fend off fatigue to some degree as my distances increase.  I half wished I had taken a few rides on the old tires prior to switching, just to get a better feel, but when they arrived, I just got too excited and mounted them up.

Finally, I re-installed the aerobars that were on the bike when I bought it.  This also goes back to my planning for longer rides.  Especially now that I have raised the bars a bit with the new stem, I thought I might actually make use of the aerobars now and then, just to have another position to ride in from time to time.  And what the heck - they look cool too.

Aside from adding a small top tube mounted bag for snacks, that is about the extent of changes I've made to the bike.  It is leaning against the wall near me right now, calling out to me to be ridden...

Soon we will ride, Mr. Fuji...  Soon we will ride.

One More Ride

Today may have been the last nice day for '08. Rain moves in tomorrow, and the possibility for snow flurries this weekend. So I knew I was riding into work again today. But I decided to take the roadie this time. I was hoping that, after two trips on the Moab, the Fuji would feel effortless, which it did not, mostly due to some pretty gnarly head winds on the way home.

Since I was on the Fuji today, I had to stay on the streets instead of the bike path I've been going on and on about over the past couple of days. This is not quite as peaceful, but the distance is a bit shorter, and I never noticed until today what good drafting partners cars make! When your fighting a head wind and 10 or 15 cars go whizzing by at 45 and 50 mph, you seriously do get pulled right along with the dried leaves. I found myself looking forward to the next batch of cars coming up in my mirror.

I Can't believe I got to ride in short sleeves and shorts in November.

This trip put the bike computer at 360 miles. Figure in the two trips I made on the Moab last Friday and Monday, and one other mtb trip to work a couple weeks ago, and that puts my at right around 420 miles on bikes since I started this blog late this summer. I kind of hoped my speeds would be up a little more by now, and I'd feel a little stronger, but I'm getting there. I need to start working on some other exercises for the rest of the ol' bod over the winter, and I think I'll look into a trainer, just to continue working my lungs and heart a bit as well as just keeping my butt used to being in the saddle. I have some more ideas about how I'd like to adjust my positioning on the bike for next season.

A friend of mine has gotten into the hobby a bit more this year too, and he'd like to join me on this goal of riding at least 1 century in '09. We've decided to start with some shorter charity rides at the beginning of the year, just to get a feel for how these supported rides all work, and then progress to a century ride somewhere around the middle of summer and into early fall. The more the better I say. We'll be reaching some new goals and hopefully contributing to some worthy causes along the way.

• 19.59 miles
• 1' 17"
• 15.9 mph avg.
• 25.6 mph max.

Got This From a Friend This Morning

Good one:

And Again.

Rode the mountain bike into work again today. The weather is just too nice not to. I was planning on doing it again tomorrow, but I did try to push a bit harder today, and as a result, I'm just a little bit sore tonight. With having to get over to vote tomorrow, and pick my beautiful daughter from work, and needing to get her home in time to do her homework so she can watch some of the election coverage, I think I'm going to take tomorrow off the bike. Maybe. Oh. I should bring home dinner too. Again, so we can get into the election biz quicker.

yeah. Tomorrow, I'll drive. Looks like the weather will hold through Wednesday, so I'll ride then. The rain rolls in on Thursday.

Thought of taking the Roadie again, but that dirt path through the forest preserve is just too too nice to exchange for riding in traffic.