Friday Thoughts

Thursday's ride home had to be in some of the worst conditions that I've ever ridden my bike. Thunder-snow, sleet, rain, and blasting headwinds. There's nothing that can be done about the weather. Waterproof raingear is a good idea, at least in theory. I remained warm, but wouldn't call it comfortable or anything close to "dry."

I find myself second-guessing my level of sanity for my planned last "training" ride before TransIowa. The roads are sloppy and slushy, more rain and snow is in the forecast and the temperatures are supposed to dip to as low as the mid 20's. Honestly, I would much rather sleep in on Saturday morning. If I knew that things were the way they are, I would like to go do the Ragnarök on Saturday.

I will go for a ride in the unpleasantness of o-dark early. I haven't quite figured out where I will go, but I will go far. I have certainly decided not to go ride around Lake Pepin because I am not fond of the idea of being so far from home in anticipated poor weather conditions. I think that I will ride a large loop up and down the Saint Croix River valley searching for hills to abuse myself.
This week has been a bit crazy. My wife and older daughter left Wednesday morning for a field trip for school. They are anticipated to return home Friday evening. I have been trying to hold down work, continue to ride, be a good dad. I've continued to get up before 5am, prepare breakfast, lunch for my daughter, and make breakfast. Get myself ready, get my daughter ready, get her to school and get myself to work.

If the weather were better, I had hopes of delivering my daughter to school with the trail-a-bike. Instead, I've cheated and delivered her in the minivan to pre-schoolday "friendship-Connection." I have then returned the minivan to the garage and ridden my bike to work.
There have been a couple of projects going on in the basement laboratory too. A couple of years ago while still employed part-time at the bike shop, I purchased one of the Trek KDZ10000 road bikes. This is a little 24" wheeled kid's road bike. My younger daughter (8 1/2) is now the perfect size to ride this bike. This little bike was poorly outfitted from Trek with STI shifters. Not only are the brake levers too large to adequately grasp with such small hands, but shifting is just short of impossible. I swapped out the brake levers for the Cane Creek compact levers and installed bar-end shifters. Sure, it's a lot of money to spend on a bike, but I am an admitted bike nerd. Both Alison and I look forward to doing some riding together.

Thursday night, I finally got around to rebuilding my front wheel for my Quickbeam with the replacement Velocity Dyad that I picked up last Friday. I noticed today on the ride to work that the front end of the bike feels different. Not in a bad day, but there feels to be a bit more weight to the wheel and the bike handles differently around corners.

Happy Friday, we'll see how tomorrow goes.