Blah Blah

I haven't gotten to ride as much as I would like the past two weeks.  I realize a lot of my posts start off that way, but here's how my last two weeks have gone.

Video/Photography work
Endurance Sport Expo that took up over 10hrs of my day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday
More work and then rain





I did manage to get a ride in last Monday with Drew and Anna.  We left from the shop on our CX bikes and headed to Betzwood.  On the way down I almost rear ended a school bus doing 40mph.  Good news about that was that I learned that if I'm terrified enough, I can lock up the rear wheel for 20ft.

When we got to Betzwood, I tried hopping a section of roots that I hop every single time I'm there, and I got more height than distance and landed with all of my weight on the handles bars.  After a horrific noise, I pulled over and readjusted my bar so it was level, and not 2 inches slammed down.  I haven't even checked to see if I FUBAR'd my rim.

The second lap we did there, Drew managed to get a vine between his Force rear derailleur and his frame and it sent the whole thing into his spokes.  Our ride was done.  His rear hanger was bent to shit and the back of his derailleur was cracked in half.  It took Anna and him an hour and a half to walk out of the park.

That was the only ride I did until yesterday.  Instead of driving to the shop and riding, I rode to the shop and got an extra 14 miles and 1000ft of climbing in.  I was a little slower than normal, but I was riding better than I thought I was going to.  I plan on getting back to a more regular riding schedule this week.

As for the anorexic bike project, I've got a few things going on.  After the horrific bar noise on my cross bike, I'm thinking I'm going to take the FSA K-Force bar from that bike and if it passes a crack inspection, I'm going to throw it on the Allez, and the tubby alloy FSA bar on the Allez will go on the Guru.  The claimed weight difference is 75g (210g for the carbon bar, 285g for the alloy) so, while there is a weight savings, I'm making the change because I've had three close calls with the carbon bar on the cross bike and I don't want to keep pushing my luck.

I also got a set of bolt on skewers for the Allez.  Isaac ordered the Mt version for his bike and the road for mine.  His weigh in at 32g for the pair.  They claim to weigh 26g for the road, but I doubt the 5mm difference in length will add up to 6g.  However, 32g is still ridiculously light, and I have one steel training skewer on there, and it is just a porker.

Tubes and tires are next on the list, then saddle, stem and seat collar.  Then it's time to save for a new set of wheels.  I'm also going to be adding a touch of weight to improve front end shifting.  Apparently, some braze-on mounts on some bikes doen't work very well with Rival and Force braze-on FD's.  SRAM has a little aluminum wedge with two holes drilled into it that are supposed to tilt the bottom of the cage down a little and fix the problem.  My bike was shifting perfectly fine until the last PowerAdvantage class I did when it just went to shit for no reason.  I have to be extra careful when sifting now or else I'll drop my chain.  This little wedge had better work.