Tuesday Trippin’ June 1+
We made our trip. We went to Chicago. It was our first post Covid travel for a family graduation. Riding on the way up was limited due to weather. Much of it was weather I would normally be willing to ride in (unless I was going to get in the car and be wet and grimy for 8 hours afterward). We pulled off to look at Kentucky Dam, then rode back and forth across the mile and a half that runs across the top a few times. We were staying in close proximity to the car in case the weather turned ugly again. You couldn’t really call it a ride, but it did break up the sitting and the smell of summer lake water was refreshing. The rain had been so recent that the pavement was still wet with puddles. A surprising number of people had walked large dogs without curbing them. That was not nice, and even the fairly stiff breeze couldn’t carry that competing bad smell away.
In Chicago (more accurately Wheaton) we rode the loop in Waterfall Glen, a nice short ride hills. I was glad to get some hills in.They’ll help prep for the century at the end of the month. On the way home we rode the B & O rail trail and the Ohio River Greenway in Louisville. I’ll write separate posts about those in more detail. It was certainly worthwhile to take the bikes. They provided a nice break from the driving and, while we didn’t get in enough exercise to call it training, at least it wasn’t a total break in training either.
I fell on the Greenway in Louisville. I was going near 0 mph, so the only problem was the road rash, or so I thought. Russ put the chain back on for me, and since the bike was working, I didn’t think to check anything out.
It was the ride after next, back at home when (according to the shop guy) the bent derailleur, hanger apparently turned everything in the vicinity into a crumpled mass. I was planning a “push it as hard as you can” ride, but ended up walking it to the car holding the back end in the air because the tire wouldn’t roll. I was near the bike shop and drove over to see if they still required appointments. No appointments or even masks required anymore. The shop had a lot more bikes than last year, mostly children’s bikes though, and parts are still way limited. Unless I found the right chain on the internet, it would be September before I was riding again. Late September was when they were expecting the right chain to be in stock.
I felt beauty of a back up bike intensely, not just in times like these. Even under more normal conditions, getting back on the road isn’t always immediate. It took away all of the fear that having two different type bikes for the project could be seen as extravagant. I had been thinking of it primarily for the ability to keep up the schedule physically by alternating between the recumbent and the standard bikes, but the ability to keep going mechanically is equally important.
Russ found the chain and it is ordered. With the century in 3 weeks and the build up to project level rides I’m looking hard at the old hybrid now. It wasn’t riding quite right last time I was on it. I loaned it to someone. I think that is what happened to it, but I don’t know what it will take to get it right.
We took the hybrid out yesterday. It is rideable by some standards, but I don’t know what is wrong, I think it is something in the steering or front wheel. The bike is a fairly simple machine, but I don’t know that much about it. If it were a car with a manual transmission and the clutch plate was slipping, I know what that feels like. If I had been the person riding it when it started to have the problem, I might have a guess.
My fear is that it’s something that will get worse if I continue to ride it, going from a less expensive repair to a more expensive repair, or even something that could cause me to have an accident. It could certainly do that through behaving slightly unpredictably, even it it doesn’t happen with a catastrophic failure.
The bike needed a seat post so we could mount a seat. Russ put the Brooks I haven’t been using on it, so we were at the shop yesterday to get the post, but didn’t want to ask someone to look at it until they could test ride it if needed. I’ll take it by for an assessment today, and the chain for the road bike should be in by the 11th. Riding isn’t cancelled, but it will be hard to ride as much as I’d like for a week or more.
The century is in 3 weeks. Unfortunately, a broken bike isn’t a good back-up. And the planned repairs on my primary bike are “just to get it back to the shape it was in”. That wasn’t delivered with a condescending tone, but it was clear that more repairs are on the way. The clarity of goal was to ride as much as possible throughout June while my schedule was more open, for both the project and the century. That’s still the goal. It’s just not going to look quite like I envisioned it.
