Events that transpired on the afternoon of Sunday April 19 have a way of being a thorn in the side more than a week after the fact. To be specific, I was fed up with the tyres I bought at the bike show and had decided that Erin will ultimately get the same Vredestein tyres that are on Alex but in the mean time it made sense to reuse last years tyres on Erin.
Except now I have a pair of pretty decent Vittoria tyres that have an unfortunate tendency to let in glass, metal and anything else that might rip a tube. So I took those Vittorias and put them on the Coppi with a plastic liner that protects the tubes from things that might get past the tyres. Funny how these things work when I resumed riding the Coppi last spring, I hated that bike, it had an antiquated wheel set, awful bar tape, don't even get me started on the group, a bent saddle, and pedals my feet slid off of left right and centre. Not so much anymore, the group is still painfully dated but slowly the Coppi has been improving to the point where the worst part about riding in the rain is not the bike.
Anyway it was a struggle and a half to get the old tyres off. I broke a tyre leaver, my hands were black from mud and whatever else was on the wheels and tyres, it was not my idea of a great maintenance exercise. I gave the old tyers away but I still had a problem, I needed a new tyre leaver. When I went to a shop near my office I saw the perfect lever, for a whole $2.50 which when it comes to tyre levers is about the perfect price (well if anything too expensive) - hence the perfect lever. But while at the store I saw they sold 20 packs of CO2 for $30. I have enough CO2 to last until the rapture or end of season, whichever comes first.
In other unrelated news, as I documented earlier I went for a ride on Saturday (April 25). I burned over 4200 calories while averaging over 27km/h over a +100km distance - not bad considering the wind and I was going solo. It was the first ride of 2009 that I did in shorts and a jersey and nothing else and I now have a farmer tan with ruler straight tan (or burn) lines. I got my fix of the sunshine vitamin and good thing too, just as I was taking Alex apart to give her my usual anal retentive cleaning the sky opened up and dumped buckets and sheets and cats, dogs, lions, tigers, a couple wombats, a gorilla six elephants and a blue whale. It kept raining right through until Sunday morning thus cancelling the BCC ride.
Monday was another beautiful day complete with a 0600 start to my working day (arrived the office at 0550 actually.) So I would like to think that leaving at 1400 is a reasonable proposition. I then went for a fast 40km ride in 80 minutes, or about 30km/h average.
The weather for Tuesday promised, well rain of course! And as I prepared the Coppi for journey to work I discovered the front wheel was flat. After some poking around I found the problem, the rim tape was toasted, it is a used wheel and I did not bother to replace the tape - oops! Another trip to the bike store, more supplies and now yet another, albeit really small, part of the Coppi is new, and shiny red.
At this rate the only part of the Coppi that will still be vintage will be the chain grease, just need to wait many more years and that bike won't have any claim to the champion of champions.
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