Category: Bike stuff

Cats and flats

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla gets a bit of sack time.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla and I have been enjoying a respite from wall-to-wall politics, with the Donks seemingly in a joyful state of mind along the old campaign trail and the press, or what remains of it, finally noticing in the absence of Joe Biden that it’s the other candidate who is a psycho, serial fabulist, and senile old fool, with one foot in the grave and the other in the nuthouse.

The shit monsoon will resume eventually, of course, once the Cult remembers where it left its copy of the Necronomicon (Classic Comics edition, with a foreword by Lee Atwater):

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Jesus Hitler Mar-a-Lago wgah’nagl fhtagn!”

In the meantime, the cycling has been excellent, albeit a bit toasty with the occasional deluge and explosive decompression to keep us on our toes.

I had a back-tire blowout at speed yesterday — hit a scattering of roadside debris that was deeper and chunkier than it looked, with heavy traffic in the lane and thus no way to dodge it. In an instant I was riding the rim and thought I might take a tumble, but managed to wobble to a stop without bloodshed.

It has been a month of flats, on both Steelman Eurocrosses, the Nobilette, and finally the DBR Prevail TT. That last was the worst, because it rolls on 26mm rubber, which is as fat as the rear triangle can handle. Not much in the way of a rim to ride, is what. I’m lucky it wasn’t the front that went boom or I’d have done likewise immediately afterward.

Could be worse, though. A couple folks got swept down the arroyos during Friday’s flash flood, and one of them didn’t land on his feet.

And now, from our Good News Department: The Ethan Allen dealer at Montgomery and Tramway has been replaced by (wait for it …) a Goodwill store, right behind the Filiberto’s without a sign. Economic development, Duck! City style.

Nothing but blue skies

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
The North Diversion Channel Trail, just below the Osuna-Bear Arroyo connection.

Too bloody much going on lately. Trying to corral my thoughts, if any, has been like chasing jackrabbits through a funhouse with a lacrosse stick, wearing clown shoes and oven mitts. In a word: unproductive.

I won’t bore you with the details. We’re talking First World problems here:

The Soma Double Cross at Elena Gallegos.

Buffing the rough edges out of El Rancho Pendejo in preparation for a houseguest. Stalking the elusive turnip for a promised dish (Whole Foods and Sprouts, nyet; Albertsons, da). Learning that I had failed to acquire the ingredients for another anticipated dish, the promise of which I had not been made aware, and the subsequent acquiring of same. Yet another round of flat-fixing, this time in the garage.

My favorite annoyance was an appointment at the local Apple Store’s Genius Bar, where I expected to be advised in fairly short order to hand over my elderly 15-inch MacBook Pro for a vigorous wash and brushup to resolve its “Apocalypse Now/Ride of the Valkyries” fans issue. There’s either some demonic technical haint in residence or enough hair in the case to build an entirely new cat to keep Miss Mia company. Whichever it is, I ain’t going in there looking for it. That’s what we pay Geniuses for.

But no. What I got was straight out of “Nothing but Blue Skies,” by Thomas McGuane. The scene where Frank Copenhaver and his estranged wife, Gracie, visit a Deadrock restaurant for conversation and something to eat. Conversation they get (Gracie insists). But eats, not so much, as waiters glide past without a glance in their direction, the thundering lunch herd slowly thins, and Frank comes to a rolling boil.

After the place empties out Frank finally takes the bull by the horns, flags down a table-wiping waiter, says they’d like to order.

“I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” replies the waiter.

The Apple Store wasn’t closed. But apparently upon my arrival I had not been properly logged in for my 3:30 appointment, which I did not learn until 4:15, when I was ’bout yay far from knocking over chairs and chasing a Genius through his kitchen.

And now I have another appointment on Tuesday.

So, yeah. That’s the scenic route toward explaining the lack of postage around here lately.

Speaking of scenic routes, the pix are from the rides I’ve been taking lately to keep my blood pressure on simmer as I await service.

The bike lane on Spain in High Desert.

The dog days of summer, part 2

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Doggone it. …

From Wikipedia:

The dog days or dog days of summer are the hot, sultry days of summer. They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius (known colloquially as the “Dog Star”), which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck. (emphasis mine)

So, there I was, JRA, when I heard the squelchy sound of my Nobilette’s front tire going flat despite its sealant-filled inner tube.

I was en route to the meetup for the twice-weekly Geezer Ride, so I pulled over, drew my phone, and texted my fellow graybeards to advise that I had had a mechanical and was returning to base. I had only the one spare tube, Herself was at work, and it had been too hot for one of those long walks home in Sidis from a previous millennium.

When I got back to El Rancho Pendejo and opened the garage door I was reminded that I had all these other bikes hanging around. Thinking I could still catch up with the lads if I took a quick, dirty shortcut over to High Desert via the Embudito trailhead, I grabbed a Steelman Eurocross and did exactly that.

We rode around and about for a while, solving the knotty problems of the world, and as I had been denied some of the early miles I decided to tack on a few at the end, riding two of the brothers home and then picking up Trail 365 at Rebonito Road for a little more dirty fun.

Hanging a 90-degree left onto the bridge at the Piedra Lisa Canyon trailhead south of Candelaria I felt the front tire try to squirm out from under its rim. Judas Priest! Another front flat? Indeed.

Happily, I had thought to reload the saddlebag with a fresh spare tube, so I quickly returned the Steelman to working order and rode home.

Back at the ranch, I took the opportunity to give the Nobilette a fresh goopy tube, which went smoove like butta. But when I tried to do likewise with the Steelman the freshly installed tube refused to inflate for some reason.

Defective tube, maybe? Or pump head clogged with old sealant? I disassembled that, gave it a cursory cleaning (which means cursing while cleaning it), put it back together, and had another go. Still bupkis.

“I should ring up the Fed, tell them I’ve found a solution to their inflation problem,” I muttered. Then I grabbed another tube, one not installed in a tire, and tried pumping it up to see if anything happened.

And something did. The fucking thing exploded, launching huge gobs of yellowish sealant throughout the living room. Because of course I work on my bikes in the living room. That’s where the air conditioning is.

You will recall “The Exorcist?” This made Regan’s eruptions look like a sneeze that missed the Kleenex.

I gave the living room a very cursory cleaning, replaced the Steelman on its hook sans a reloaded front wheel (the pump head apparently perished in the explosion), and — not for the first time — considered taking up bowling.

Freedom

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
White-line fever.

Alissa Bell has a fine piece about becoming a cyclist at The Cycling Independent.

She’s actually been one for quite a spell, and logged plenty of the hard miles, not just in the Benighted States of America but in places some hardcore cyclists will never straddle a top tube, like Vietnam, Egypt, and Sudan.

But Bell says she really started feeling like a cyclist when she began “riding less, but more intentionally.” She continues:

Riding my bike is the closest I’ll ever get to pausing time. As long as I’m in the saddle (or hiking beside if need be) there is time to think, to feel, to let the knots in my mind relax enough that there is hope of untangling them later. Whether for two hours or two months, cycling gives me a break from the relentless pace of a life that’s always been a little too fast for me. 

How does one stop The Machine? By starting another one. Go read the whole piece. It’s liberating.