Riding more road.

Riding around town Sunday literally rode my bike into my LBS. Here is Joe doing a quick de-tune of my miss-tune. They take great care of my bike neglect, and part replacement and great advice. Around 35 years ago I bought a French Road bike here, and bunches more followed.

My congested basement. I've been working on these 4 ladies. These are my main rides. From biggest to smallest they are FatTire, HardTail, Cycle Cross, and Road Bike.



Road a pushed pace on pavement tonight for 75 minutes, plenty of hills in this town to make it fun. Lights front and rear were needed to finish. I guy in a pick up truck actually turned around and pulled up next to me to comment on how bright my head light was. Go MajicShine. Picture of Eagle Point Park, which is closed for the season. I had her all to myself except for several sightings of deer running around.

Thinking I will take this Thursday off work, and try the Hard Tail with 2.5 Big Earl tires and see if the trails are dry and drained enough to get some miles in. Been spending a lot of time on the saddle this winter but the MPH has been slow.

The loneliest girl in town is my Roller Bike, with the FatTire buy this winter I could ride outside in the snow pretty much when I wanted to and for the first time in a long long time I never rode the rollers this winter at all. Money well spent.

So no fella in da cella this winter.



Time for night night. C'ya,

Dave

Mothers don't let your babies grow up to be bicycle riders.

The early morning sun comes roaring through the small opening in the shades and floods the bedroom with beacon light brightness. It is 6 something a.m. I cannot sleep any longer, I lay there and try. I know more sleep for me is well needed, would help my cycling, so thinks my self cycled center thoughts. I sneak out of bed, this is more sun then I have seen in weeks, I have the day, my bike leans against the dining room table ready to please.


The first thing I check as I get to my feet, is "What is sore" "Is anything injured" With my first step I notice the bones in my left foot feel a little sore, but that's OK I know that will work itself out, and I understand why it is so. After thousands and thousands of pedal revolutions yesterday on 58 year old feet, what can I expect? Shoulders are the same, both sore, but tolerable, I had half dozen hard crashes this winter usually landing on one of my shoulders, I have been waiting for this to leave, but like winter in Iowa, it is hanging around longer then appreciated.


Hands and forearms are stiff, but that will loosen up. I have not rode drop bars all winter, and now in the last few weeks I have put a few hundreds of miles riding drop bars which require a complete different muscle/tendon combination, and my body is still adjusting.


I sit at the dining room desk, and check out Weather.com. Next to me is the dining room table with my bike of choice for today leaning against it and a few removed bicycle parts, and the tools required to have done so still sitting there from last night's repairs. It is going to be 39 degrees and sunny today. I think I can do a river route ride on my cycle cross this morning and perhaps ride my abandoned road bike in the afternoon, on ice free roads if I stick to the beaten paths. This bike has not been rode in months and months. Last year in late summer, and fall, I was driven to complete 100 dirt metric Cs and rode exclusively my Cycle Cross. I didn't 'waste' days riding that wouldn't end up in a dirt century. My road bike sat, deserted. The time jam got crazy with all that as I was very driven to complete.



My second cup of coffee is half finished; my caffeinated brain cells only heighten this urge to roam the roads on two wheels. I will wait for Birgit to wake first, before I leave, to say good bye. We have every other Sunday off together; she tolerates all this with a smile and encouragement. My mom would always tell me, "Your lucky David" and now my sister Dawn let's me know this also. They are right.

I hear footsteps upstairs. Time to find my 'stuff' get dressed, pick out what to wear, get ready, get riding.

I would not change this, if I could. I know this is all finite. Someday the body will not get up and go where the mind tells it to go. I will deal with that when the times comes. But for now,  the road and my thoughts are mine, to roam in spirit, soul, and body, on top of a bicycle.

Lata,
DAve.

Turning the pedals.

Packed up the Hard Tail with the studs and headed out of town. Rode through some back trails to get out to the snow mobile trails. Check this sink hole out. I put the red warning tape up last year. I need to add some more. I know of at least one rider that went down hard here, in the spring with all the brush it becomes more camouflaged.

There were sections I had to push the bike. The 2.3 Studded tires have zero floatation if the snow gets deep. I thought once I got to where the snow mobiles roam it would be hard packed enough to ride. WRONG!!!

I had to bust butt to keep moving. My tires would punch through the ice crust and would spin out as I moved ahead sometimes down to 3 mph.
I thought I would attach my camera to the rear rack and make a short movie of the rear tire sliding out and spinning. BAD IDEA!!!
The camera popped off and the bungee cord holding the camera rolled around with the tire and yanked  the rear derailleur upwards. Looking the damage over, I didn't know if I could get back and be able to pedal. I had forgotten my multi tool, and there was no cell phone service to dial 1-800 Sag Wagon. I pushed the derailleur down and it popped back into place, however now I was skipping gears. UGGG!!! But I'm moving forward and I'm loving it, just being out here.

Saw this skeletal remains of a Chupacbra. Or something. I just know it has seen it's better days.

The bike was running poorly, I was 15 miles from home now, and my speed wasn't getting to 5 mph on the 'good' parts of the trail.
So I took the next county road outta of here, and wandered back home on gravel roads which road quite well.

 Mud, grit, and ice in my drive train will co$t me again.

What can I say, arrived home, there was 2 hours of daylight left. So I repaired a front flat on the Cycle Cross and rode the paved streets of Dubuque. Rode through cemeteries, parks, and river front. Bike felt zippy after the dragging myself attached to a bike through the trails.

I didn't want to take my light weight road bike out. Not with the 25 cc 120 psi slick tires. A square foot of frost can send you flying followed by a face plant

So for now the 35 CC knobby tires of the CX will be my ride tomorrow too. I will ride places in town. Visit my LBS for a tad, and talk about parts and repairs.
Don't know why I love this. Riding that is. The evening has a different feel to it. Knowing tomorrow, it's Sunday, and I am free to saddle up.

Thank you for visiting.
DAve

Parents do you know where your children are??

WARNING TO PARENTS

If your child is hungry, and tired and stops late on the way home to visit and you feed em this is what happens. That is my son Joshua on the right. I covered them both up. They fell asleep in Josh's old room. Pitty my dog was actually purchased by Josh with his first pay check about 8 years ago with out my permission. Pitty is still here. Josh has since moved out. I let him  them sleep, set an alarm clock so he would get up for work early and he was gone when I got up.

I flated for the first time this year, I saw the green slime starting to ooze out, and hoped it would seal, it didn't my ride was almost home, so didn't repair.

Working on my road bike, replaced front wheel and chain. Notice wear hole indicator, the rim sidewall is gone. Back on the road again. It's fun, riding pavement, zippy.

Tomorrows ride is going to be on rutted, slushy, half frozen, icy snow mobile trails. Will ride the Trek Hard Tail with the studs.

It's going to be fun. I promise ya. Yahoooo.

Ya'lll come back now,
Dave.

RUSH RUSH RUSH

I wanted an hour and half of daylight to ride the roads after work. Rushed the pace to get on the bike after work and got a great ride in, I did. My road bike is still waiting on a front  wheel, and a new chain. I rode my Cycle Cross about town, road riding is a zippery style, pace is faster, maneuvering in automobile traffic can be a bit sporting at times, but it is a great ride.
Looking forward to getting my lighter road bike back on the road.
This weekend looks promising, not sure of what and where I'll ride, but ride I will.

Spent the remainder of the evening tweaking, and tuning on my CX bike. Joe from my LBS locakbikeshop offered to come up and see why I can only get 9 gear shifts on 10 speed rear derailleur, I said let me try and get it, before I gotta get a home visit. Good man, that Joe.

Last Friday news paper reporter phoned me and asked me for commentary about my friend and winter biking extraordinaire Lance Andre. http://www.thonline.com/multimedia/?id=3722

Lance just finished 8th at the Iditatrod 350 miles of snow bicycling in Alaska.

Piera Damonte has passed through the 4th check point at 160 miles competing in Iditarod. She is somewhere out there in the Alaska wilderness pedaling. I got to ride a bit with Piera earlier this year, it was her first ride on her Pugsly Fat Tire. She had congratulated on my 100 dirt metrics last year. So small in comparsion to riding in the Iditarod. She is an endurance machine. Keep pedaling Piera,

I think I stayed up past my bedtime, gottta go, making us stop and sleep wasn't my idea, God did this to us to make us slow down, stop, and rest. I suppose it is a good idea, but if I could do without I would.

lata
Dave

Winter your all bark and no bite these days.

Just about finished with my Trec  XC XO2 ride. It is going to end up about 8 Big Bens to replace all the parts the gravel rides wore out last year. Rear wheel is close to 5 Big Bens. Bontrager Race X lite wheel is $pendy.

Next in line to over haul out of my neglected bike bin is my Trek road bike which won't be near as $pendy. Will however need to replace the front wheel.

Here is a picture of my old jockey wheel and a new one. As you can see I rode her past the point one should. Well with new rear wheel, free hub, chain, ring gear, derailleur, cables, cable housing, bar wraps, brake hoods, my ride is gonna glide.

Ok enough of the mechanics of this and that. Great ride tonight after work. Sort of a 'first' for the year. Entire ride after work with no head lights, on pavement, no studded tires, no bar covers, I think, winter, your bluff has been called you go away now.

Squeezing the last bit of daylight out of tonight's ride. 

Ok I'm ready to get tomorrow's work day out of the way, and get back on two wheels.

LAta,
DAve

Weapons of mass destruction and other thoughts while turning the pedals

Today's riding was two part. Rode around town mid morning, came home and ate. As a general rule of thumb I eat 2.5 Xs every calorie burned. Keeps all the fat cells happy. Then late afternoon, early evening rode out on the snow mobile trails. The trails were perfect for riding, unlike yesterday. Multiple snow mobiles have packed and crunched down the ice. I need to do some night riding out here this coming work week.

Seems where ever I rode today, that is where I would find myself. No matter how hard I tried to get away from me. Even here in the Cemetery, here I am.

Riding around Dubuque's industrial side.














Here is Dubuque's shot tower. Weapons of mass destruction. Built in 1856. Lead was melted on top and dropped down through screens to form lead shot. This supplied lead shot for the Civil War which ended up inside a lot of people. I don't think bullets belong there.

It's kinna an uncomfortable feeling, riding alone, in the woods, just about dark, and you can hear about 5 dogs running along side you, but you can't see them, barking, large dog barking sound, seemingly angrily. You wonder are they reverting back to their primal ways, running with the pack, hunting down food. [gulp!!]
I stopped, I could see their shadows moving. I yelled at them, they barked back. I saw a pole stuck in the ground to hold a reflector for snow mobile traffic. I thought if I had to, I could use that for a weapon. Then they all vanished and so did my groundless fears.

That ends my weekend. enjoyed all the miles spent on a bicycle. Much snow and ice and a few near crashes. Life is good. Hope you got to play some too.

Dave

A boy and his bike ride.

One of those bestests of rides. Around 15 degrees, I pedaled downtown first to drop off a borrowed cable housing cutter at my Local Bike Shop. I have a cable cutter but this high end cable housing will not cut clean without a cable housing cutter.  I ordered my own.
My feet were cold even with double wool socks on so I headed back home first before going snow mobile trail riding and put my shoe covers on also.

The trails were beautiful today, snow was frozen hard so I could ride on top the crust most of the time. I rode 40 miles and didn't see another human being, not a skier, runner, snow mobile or bicyclist.  A few times my rear tire would punch through a ice shelf and the ice rut would try and suck my rear tire off the rim. It was like putting on the brakes and was fun trying to power out of it and get back on top of the snow.


 I wheeled around a corner and then down this slight incline and then I said "OH $#1+ " This picture is from the reverse direction. I made the split second decision to not try and stop or I would probably dump the bike and these are steel beams and that is creek below. Dumping the bike here probably meant either splitting my bean open, drowning, or freezing to death or perhaps all three. Having front shocks helped carry my momentum up and over the gap, my heart rate pegged on my Heart Monitor when the support plank started to slide on me. Afterwards I enjoyed the adrenaline rush. YaHoo.

other then that incident and  a few slide outs on ice patches well hidden under a light snow covering I had a relatively safe journey.

Now yesterday LorFlor asked the question below on my blog commentary,

"Sometimes I wonder how many scars you have from your obsession.
~Lorflor"

My answer is, "Nope L, I never biff as you can see by the picture below."  :-)

Just kidd'n yeap flopping over goes with the year round riding. These knocks came when a large stick popped in between my spokes at around 15 mph and locked my front tire flipping me into the air and onto a face plant. I got me a good headache out of this.

and now it's time to boogie woogie all the way home

My baby girl Melissa turns 30 today, now she's all growed up and has her own, and she's still my baby girl. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MELISSA

Now as they used to say on the Mickey Mouse show, "now it's time to say goodbye."

Dave

All work and no ride makes Dave a ____________.

Oh HI!!!, my name is Dave and I have this blog thing going, and ride a bike.

Been working a bunch this week, and overhauling, repairing and pimping my rides in the evenings.

After a short review of my XC Trek XO2 I determined I plumb wore her out last year. Thousands of mile of grit, gravel and grind had taken it's toll.
Replacing the chain, cassette, free hub, ring gear, wraps, cables, rear derailleur, brake hoods, and cable housings. My chain was over a link longer then a new one, gears on my ring gear were like shark teeth, and razor sharp. It works well to have a LBS, (local bike shop) great advice, loaned tools and even a house visit offers. Next is my road bike, going to need close to the same level of attention.

I wish it was this easy to replace my old wore out drive train. 

 Changed Stem on my Hard Tail to this adjustable one, allows me to raise the handlebars to take the strain off of shoulders and allow a more up right seat position for snow riding control .

I got a call tonight from a News Reporter he wanted my commentary on one of my friends  and his up and coming very big race. I won't mention any names until the article comes out but all I can say  is GO LANCE A. GO. IDITATROD Tomorrow 350 miles of snow cycling in Alaska.

Oh and my only claim, to fame, doing a training run with Lance late fall and he asked me several times to slow down 
I'm just saying........

I tried to keep this a secret but I can not hold it in any longer. Sorry Lance, but after you place high in Iditarod you'll forget that awful day.

So with no further ado, she's ready and so am I, for a weekend of
riding, I hope the Hard Tail with studs is the right choice of ride for the trails, I'm thinkin with the colder temps I won't need the FatTire and will be able to ride on top of the frozen trails.

Drinking a beer(s) sleep soon and anxious to ride when the sun comes up.

Dave

Studs only, rain, and lots of ice.

Worked 15 hours yesterday, wasn't planning on that, but as part of the project we had to reroute some power lines, thus killing power to a couple of large buildings. It did not go as planned and we could not leave until power was restored. OK but that is enough shop talk
But anyways it was to supposed to be an icy rain all day today and after working all those hours I said I wasn't going to work today. So the irony here, ok, hypocrisy is now I could plan on bicycling in this icy rain.

Rode out from home, through some back trails that had not been ridden since last November I suspect. The snow got deeper in the woods and ended up pushing my bike for a mile and an half. As much as I love riding the bike, the inverse is how I feel about pushing a bike. It just isn't right.

This kind of biking is for studs only. Geeesh no, not me, my tires.

My 'water proof jacket,' and 'water proof pants' had given up trying to do their job and the icy rain was winning out.  I was soaked to the bone. Seems nothing can keep out the rain if you are there long enough.

I saw no one out here cept for one runner and her dog, running on the ice. The rain was pouring now, and as I passed I said, "Beautiful day, eh?" and it was.
Seems sometimes no matter how much a fellow might love riding a bike there is sometimes in a ride that all you want to do is get off the bike and get home. My hands were numb from being soaked and semi froze.

I did not want to push my bike again like I did on the way out, so that left me with riding the edge of a highway with no shoulder. I had a blinkie on back and hoped everyone would see it, and put the pedal to the medal to get off this road. I had a 4 hour ride, and looking forward to doing er again.

So back to work again tomorrow, but it pays the bills.
laTA,
DAve.