Chris will love this! I saw a fixie guy here while on the bus returning from snowboarding. Brikos, Euro-tight black long-sleeve turtleneck shirt, Euro-tight black jeans, black Addidas clipless road shoes, tiny black messenger bag. The bike was a black carbon monocoque Giant track frame with Easton carbon fork and Easton aero time trial bars. HED 3 carbon wheels. All black and riding at night with no lights in traffic with sunglasses? Dork! I couldn’t get my camera out in time to document this atrocity – besides, it was too dark to take a picture of a guy dressed all in black on an all-black bike at night!
(0)Archive for the 'bike' Category
Page 15 of 40
Ow. The middle finger on my weak hand hurts. Jarrel requested I build a wheel for a regular customer, and I guess all the callouses and deadened nerves from years of wheelbuilding have reverted to pre-wrench conditions. Heck, I had a difficult time chopping off all the old spokes since the tendonitis in my left elbow has been acting up since before Kyoto. When was the last time I built a wheel? Was it the set on the Truth? No – there must have been something after that…
(0)It’s not that I didn’t feel motivated to ride this afternoon, but things just didn’t fall into place for some reason. My cardio-pulmonary performance was fine, but everything else felt off-spec. My knees felt a little sore, so I took the climbs out of the ride and just did the flats. My ass hurt from Wednesday’s ride, but when I stood up, my quads didn’t want to do the job. Fatigue? Just not on it? It got dark really fast so I just called it quits and went home. I think the winter malaise is starting already…
D = 12.76 km (7.93-miles), Vavr = 18.7 km/h (11.6-mph), Vmax = 38.6 km/h (24.0-mph), T = 41-minutes
I managed to get home at a reasonable hour today, so I went for a ride, having been off the bike for over a week. Although there was no rain, the sky was hardly clear. This morning was cool, cloudless, and still because of the lack of trade winds, so the volcanic outflow from the South filled the air with a haze that helped trap the day’s heat and create a thick, sweltering afternoon. Ground heating did generate some afternoon cloud cover, but the haze made it difficult to visually differentiate between the sky and the clouds. The light faded quickly and I concluded my ride in darkness.
D = 12.91 km (8.02-miles), Vavr = 19.0 km/h (11.8-mph), Vmax = 37.2 km/h (23.1-mph), T = 41-minutes
My Camelbak Better Bottle cap developed an annoying leak. With the nozzle in the open position, everything works as designed, but when the nozzle is flipped to the closed position, the contents leak out around the nozzle base. I wasn’t quite sure how the mechanics worked, so I took the cap apart with a security Torx bit, and found that instead of a system of seals, the valve utilized what amounted to pinching off the flow like kinking a garden hose. A short section of flexible hose runs between the cap and nozzle, and when the nozzle is flipped down, the hose is bent at a right angle and pinched shut. This is where the failure on mine occurred. The hose developed a perforation where it gets pinched. The paradoxical leakage is from the tube becoming deformed when bent allowing fluid to exit the perforation, whereas when straight, the perforation returns to a static closed position. Continue reading ‘Camelbak Better Bottle Cap Leak’
Chris had some free time on Saturday afternoon, so we put a ride together at the Ditch. Ckucke and JT were unavailable, but Root, Jeff, and Sara made the trip out to Waimanalo. There hadn’t been much rain since mid-week, but the ground was saturated enough that even the intervening clear days didn’t dry up the ground completely. Chris had gone on some crazy all-night hike on Friday evening through Saturday daybreak, so he was taking it easy. Along the climb up to the Ditch junction, a tighty single-speed guy with his full-head DH helmet friend and brand-new-shiny-Trek friend came up the trail. After regaling us with tales of the distant past when he and his friend built all the trails in Waimanalo, he and his buds went down the Ditch, while we continued up Government road to do the side loop. Continue reading ‘Quick and Dirty’
Went out for an easy Friday spin. I took out my keitai to answer a text, but when I put it back in the pocket of my Oakley Ballistic 3.7 shorts, the zipper jammed and I couldn’t close the pocket! I struggled with it until it got dark, then gave up and rode home being careful not to lose my phone. Damn krappy shorts! While trying to unstick the zipper at home later, I discovered that only one of the four zippers on the shorts works properly! WTF!? The waist elastic sucks, the weak fly snaps suck, and whoever designed it must have a crazy long torso, since both the liner short and outer baggy have such a long rise that in order to have the chamois against your perineum and the outer not hanging down to get hooked by the nose of the saddle, the waist ends up above the navel! Erkel MTB action! If the color didn’t rule, I’d toss them in the trash.
D = 13.16 km (8.18-miles), Vavr = 18.0 km/h (11.2-mph), Vmax = 39.3 km/h (24.4-mph), T = 44-minutes
Krap. Got home a little late, took a while to get geared up and out of the house, and talked to my neighbor about my November JAL ticket, so it was already quite dark when I finally rolled at 17:55. The skies were overcast, but aside from a few random drops, no rain fell. I figured this would be a short ride one way or another, so I did some interval sprints and stand climbs to peg the heartrate and get a burn going. The high humidity helped generate an immediate heavy sweat. After my third lap, I saw a wall of grey coming in over the bay from MCBH, so I cut it short and headed home before the squall hit.
D = 11.36 km (7.06-miles), Vavr = 19.8 km/h (12.3-mph), Vmax = 43.3 km/h (26.9-mph), T = 34-minutes
Friday was hot and clear when I got home. My legs were chocked full of lactic acid from the Thursday night BMX ride, so I went out for a little spin to loosen everything up, avoiding any hard exertion on the climbs. For S & G, I counted chickens throughout my ride, but gave up after 40. The sun was dipping behind the Ko’olau crest when I was driving home, so the entire ride was in slowly fading light. Even with the disappearance of the sun, the stifling heat remained.
D = 13.37 km (8.31-miles), Vavr = 18.5 km/h (11.5-mph), Vmax = 45.7 km/h (28.4-mph), T = 43-minutes
Root wandered around the homeless encampments out at the end of Sand Island last week trying to find the new BMX track with no success. I had a little time to kill today, so I spun by the small boat launch facility and found the track. It’s nowhere near done yet, but here are some pictures. The course doubles back on itself three times, so it is pretty long. Some of the jumps are made from some recycled earth with a high gravel content. I don’t know if they plan on covering these with another layer of prime earth, but if they leave it as-is, expect to see some good skin loss on these.