Progress

Not bad for one day. I remembered to put air in my tires this morning, and... get this, I put lube on my chain. The extra air in the tires made for a drastic improvement in overall ride. It had been since mid-July since I last put a pump to valve. They were somewhere between 30-35psi.

This morning's ride was FOGGY. I love riding in the dark and in the fog. I have been riding lately with a Shimano dynohub up front and I stole the Lumotec Oval N Plus light from my wife's bike. If I were going to buy another generator powered light, this would be a repeat buy. I own one of the E6 lights that I have been pleased with, but the LED Lumotec seems brighter. I had the initial experience of the Lumotec from building up the Atlantis for a friend earlier this summer. When it came time to recommend a light to his mom, another vote for the Lumotec. When it came time to build up the wheels and recommend a light for my brother's tandem... Yup, Lumotec. And, finally, when it came time to buy another light for around here, you got it, this is how I wound up with the Lumotec.

The light had been on my wife's bike, but I stole it over the weekend when I worked on the Quickbeam a little. It's dark every morning now when I head out the door, the time of year when I was in need of a real light. So, I threw on a new wheel with one of the Shimano DH-3N71. I built up a couple of wheels with the Shimano version this summer when I found them on blow-out through Nashbar for less than $60 after I took advantage of their frequent 20% off coupons. Incidentally, I have purchased all of my other lighting products from Hiawatha. I have been experiencing trouble with this particularly Shimano hub and am generally not impressed. The drag feels much higher than I recall with my Schmidt (this could be entirely psychological.) The hub I have now makes a frequent grinding noise that is very discomforting.

I have disassembled the hub and can see where the magnets inside appear to contact the hub that revolves around what is the stationary wire wrapped "internal assembly" of the hub. Here is a link to the Shimano exploded diagram if you are really interested. The more that I ride it, the less it seems to make noise. Perhaps it is getting broken in? My vote, if you are going to build up a wheel, go talk with Jim and simply buy the Schmidt. The ONLY thing that Shimano has going for it over the Schmidt in my opinion is the little plug and the ease of unhooking and hooking it back up. The little spades on the Schmidt are a little bit of a pain in the @ss.

The ride home tonight was not as bad as I suspected. Pete was right, traffic moves slow. The thing to watch out for though is that it moves in about every conceivable direction. We will see what it is like tomorrow. Today's rain might have diminished the attendance numbers a bit.

Oh... and I have been conscience of my pedaling... I can pedal MUCH faster up hills with toes pointing down... It's just a standing-climbing-high-cadence thing. Tomorrow if Friday...