The anticipated volcanic haze rolled in as expected on Wednesday morning, and by the afternoon, it was almost sensibly thick. Even with the South wind, the clouds lingered around the tall peaks of the Koolaus and jockeyed for position with the sun, which was still high in the sky when I got home. With the clouds and vog, there was an odd lingering twilight. Right off the bat, I had a shifting issue. I’ve had this before: Everything indexes correctly, but he rear won’t drop into the smallest cassette cog. It was fine on the previous ride. The cable tension was correct, so I busted out a screwdriver and cranked the outer limit screw out nearly a full turn. After that, all was good. How that kind of gross misadjustment can occur without human interaction is beyond me. The derailleur and hanger weren’t visibly bent, and most perplexingly, everything else was OK. Next time I take the bike by the shop, I have to check if maybe a shift housing strand is migrating out and sticking out of the housing end cap and interfering with something. Continue reading ‘Hazy Days’
Archive for the 'bike' Category
Page 31 of 40
Two ditch rides in 24 hours and a Monday training ride were a good test for the newly installed Hope bottom bracket. There was a perceptible decrease in rotational drag over the OEM bottom bracket. Since the Hope has all-metal interfaces from the cranks to the frame, there should be a more solid feel and less flex than the OEM, although this is probably not something that can be felt by even the most sensitive rider. The bottom bracket held adjustment through the nearly 50 km of riding. It was quiet and creak-free.
Thumbs-up!
I’ll raise my initial assessment to Highly Recommended.
I was planning on working on the FJ80 a little on Monday after work, but when I got home, the sun was brilliant and the weather exceptional. The bike called out to me. Since Whistler is coming up, I tried ramping up the distance, but there is only so much that I can do in my regular training loop. I’ll probably have to start venturing further a field to get beyond 20 km. Still, the scenery is nice, even if it is repetitive.
D = 19.62 km (12.19-miles), Vavr = 20.4 km/h (12.7 mph), Vmax = 39.4 km/h (24.5 mph), T = 57-minutes
What? Not enough torture on Friday night? It was Saturday afternoon, and I found myself stuck in weekend merge traffic on Kalanianaole to meet Jeff, Sara, Doctor Paul, Danny, and Root at Ditch for another ride. There was the brief out-of-context spectacle of kanban-musume hawking Mothers’ Day roses on the roadside by the stables to distract my attention from the impending leg pain and monkey-butt on the upcoming ride. This was the second time we would ride this trail in 24 hours! Continue reading ‘Déjà vu’
Since a lot of us had plans over the weekend with Muthas’ Day and all (don’t give me no jibber-jabber, fool!), We came up with the idea of a Friday after-work evening-into-night ride. Jeff and I had talked about just such a ride earlier in the week, and when Chris mentioned plans on both weekend days, the idea came to fruition. The calls and emails went out on Thursday afternoon and on Friday after work we met up in Pohakupu by the fountain. Chris sadly had to back out at the last moment, but Jeff, Sara, JT, and I arrived for the evening torture-fest. JT was sporting new Shimano XT cranks, Hope bottom bracket, and stiff new shoes. I had my new Hope bottom bracket installed too. Root called and said he was running late and suggested we begin without him, but we had already moved the meeting time back half-an-hour to accommodate his quitting time, so by Heck we were going to wait for him! Root showed up around sunset, and we rolled out. The twilight climb up Kalanianaole was a good warm-up for the instant intensity once we turned off the old highway into the trail network. Continue reading ‘Good Intentions’
Designed for all current Shimano-compatible Hollowtech II outboard-bearing-style cranksets, this new bottom bracket from Hope offers a salient technological upgrade from the factory bearings with a bit of added style. At the heart of the matter are Swiss INA cartridge bearings custom-made for Hope. Offered in conventional hardened stainless steel and ceramic coated, these bearings are a definite step up in quality from the original OEM bearings. The bearings are set in machined aluminum cups, anodized in a variety of colors. The bearings actually sit slightly recessed in the cups and are covered by plastic labyrinth shields that run in grooves cut in the inside edges of the rims of the cups. The center water sleeve is also machined from aluminum, unlike the plastic common to the majority of OEM bottom brackets. The aluminum sleeve is indeed nice, but it is probably heavier than a plastic one. O-rings seal the sleeve as in the OEM Shimano. Sizing conforms to the Shimano standard: After switching this one in for the factory one that came with my XT crankset, no front derailleur adjustment was required. Continue reading ‘Hope Technologies UK Bottom Bracket’
Saturday was rainy just around ride time, so the ride was called. Of course it cleared up soon thereafter and turned sunny and blue. Sunday was better, but the group was thinned out. Jeff and Sara went surfing, Chris was preparing for Chase’s first year baby luau, Ckucke was off-island, and JT was busy scatolizing. That left Root and me. While I was waiting at the trailhead and playing with a wandering dog, he called. He was already late and I expected him to cancel out or something. He was just running late. I thought I heard him say “we”, which made me think that maybe JT had at the last minute decided to join the ride. It would explain the delay. This of course wasn’t the case: It was just wishful thinking. Continue reading ‘Ronery Ride’
I’ve been getting some decent distance on my training rides, but I haven’t really been working on intensity recently. I did a lot of power training and cardiac/pulmonary training before the Whistler MTB trip, and I also ramp up the training before every snowboard season. The climbs on the past few Ditch rides have been kicking my ass, so I decided to throw in some sprints yesterday. I sprinted from one end of WCC to the other, then recovered on the way back. Lather, rinse, repeat. Pain. Pegged heartrate. Woo-hoo! I did that until failure then cruised home to change my oil.
D = 16.51 km (10.26-miles), Vavr = 20.0 km/h (12.4 mph), Vmax = 41.8 km/h (26.0 mph), T = 49-minutes
JT was out sick and Chris was “baking brownies” (is that some kind of euphemism for something?), so they missed this Sunday’s ride. Considering the heavy sweating they had to endure on last week’s ride, this one would have put them over the top. The skies were overcast, and the forecast return of the Easterlies did not come to pass. Dr. Paul joined Jeff, Sara, Ckucke, Root, and me for the humid torment. The Albizia trees were still going off, so my allergies fired up immediately. We did the enhanced loop like last week, but futzed around a little more on the upper Kalanianaole side – mostly climbing up to the view points and backtracking. Nobody wanted to go “down” anything because of the prospect of climbing back up. The cardiac arrest climb was as heinous as usual, but it didn’t feel like I was literally going to die at the top like last time. Root got a service call from his job while we were recovering at the tree. It was that kaiten sushi chain asking, “how come we can’t print?” We dropped back down to the ditch via the flailing fat guy singletrack, and did the inner loop and side loop. Continue reading ‘Sweaty Ride (aka, Poopy Ride)’
It was overcast on Wednesday, but not threatening rain like on Monday, so I went out for a spin. The eye-candy level was higher than average. The two weeks off the bike when the weather was bad made last Saturday’s ride punishing, so I wanted to turn in some distance during the week to bring the conditioning back up. I would have kept on riding if I had clear lenses. The Rampage tires climbed slip-free up the Chicken Trail backwards. No problems on the loose leaves or rolly branches. Some kids have put up some pallets in the moonscape area as an airsoft battlefield. I hope I can ride again on Friday…
D = 17.48 km (10.86-miles), Vavr = 18.3 km/h (11.3 mph), Vmax = 42.6 km/h (26.5 mph), T = 57-minutes