Her we are it's summer again. Even though it's the last week of school, the kids are home due to a teacher strike(really bad timing on their part...and there's no end in sight....) which makes it hard to get a ride in even to work.
Soooo, I'm still on the road bike kick. This morning I got up early enough to get a 40min ride before the wife was off to work. 6:30 am is really not too bad on the streets of Quincy. It's obvious which way the traffic 's flowing, so I mainly go the opposite way....but I am finding that I am really terrified of cars(and pavement in general).....
My Ted is still on the stand, waiting till I can take it to a friend's house and borrow their derailleur-hanger tool. Shifting is not right, even though I replaced the rear der., chain, and cassette, all at once, basically. The chain first, of course, which didn't like the old cassette, so next the cassette, and it was good for a coupla rides, till I wacked the derailleur on 'something'....all I know is that I remember that whatever it was, it hit hard enough to cause me to think, 'oops!, hanger's bent again'..
Weird, I just can't place that moment. Only I know that it happened.
Anyways, I still used that for an excuse to orderup a new SRAM X-7 from Dave's and install it correctly, only to find that shifting still sucks.....
So that's why I'm riding the road bike. Besides the fact that it does feel good, to get a 40-70 min ride in and not even have to check for ticks, nevermind shower, and then get on with the day......
Of course all this road bike blah blah is only basic maintenance, to keep the legs and heart in shape for my next mountain bike ride. I'd never go 'that way', after all this IS mountain bike church!
I'm hoping to get a few good Sundays to shoot up to Maine, NH, or VT to ride with buddies there. And there's always our Killington/Rochester VT vacation to go exploring the Green Mountains........
Anyways, I'm hard-pressed to find an open spot on the calendar to ride with my friends on the trail. Summer does that. The good thing is, that I do have more time to ride with the kids. They're still not totally into the trail thing, though I think my daughter really likes it. I'm really afraid to push her, I don't wanna break her.....after all she's a ballerina, pianist, violinist, trumpeter, soccer player, and scholar even before she has time to ride. But it's in her blood.
Stephen just figured out how to use his plastic '1080' skate ramp to get air with his 16" bmx bike, and really gets a charge out of it....he also owns 2 20" mountain bikes and a 24" Gary Fisher with a front shock.....but he just loves that little racer....it's all about control...and when his little friends are being taken down by their 50-pound Target bikes with gyros and huge-ass pegs 'cause they can't keep em upright, Stephen just keeps on spinnin'!...
So that's my intro to summer. Less trail riding with my friends, more quality time with the kids....but still time for an early Sunday ride or roadtrip to somewhere for an all day epic.....Just like Maine's license motto--'The Way Life Should Be'.
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Yeah, Season here just began.. My Thoemus got some hard rides allready, last wednesday on the Val-de-Travers evening race got mud-stained, as I was dripping almost for 3 miles on mud (for a 8 Mile run). This took me more than an hour to do so and it was such a f.. pain, that I decided to go this wednesday again. Gotta get in shape for Vacation ! Last Saturday eventually we had Kids day at our bike school with a nice treasure hunt (though the treasure was a tiny Mars-bar in a Postal-Office duty box) but the kids loved it. The problem was, that we had somme google-earth printouts and we were supposed to check the treasure hiding place on it...most trails were not on that stupid map.. (believe anyway that google is using 5yeard old maps so we don't see any WMD's in Iraq..)so not telling ya that some of the places were hard to find. Well everyone got spoiled afterthat around a nice fire with swiss sausages and german icecream.. a treat;-)
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