On Wear and Tear

Sorry if I'm not 100% Compos mentis today, I'm afraid I had to work until 3am in the data centre and then by the time I got everything sorted for the day it was 5am and time to get ready for work. In short, besides a few cat naps I've stolen (at my desk at work, on a pile of empty boxes in the data centre, etc.) I basically am running on the 5 hours of shut-eye I managed to sneak in the night before last. Being an IT guy and trying to be... well anything else, is damn near impossible.

So here is a random thought, Dragonwave makes Microwave relays used to telecomunications, Dragonwave is Canadain and their sales were down massively, blamed on cancelled orders from their biggest customer. (I know Wind Mobile uses Dragonwave, I wonder, are the Egyptians pulling the plug on their Canadian foray?) Anyway none of the above has pretty much anything to do with anything. I just read about Dragonwave this morning in the business section of the paper and have been wondering about Wind, there is a lot of evidence that starting a mobile teleco in Canada is damn near impossible and I think Wind is near dead proof of my point.

Now as for wear and tear. I had a chance, while in the data centre to think about my ride. On Friday July 2 I put brand new Verdestein Fortezza Tricomp tyres on Jordan and the next day rode to Rochester NY. Well yesterday, July 14, I noticed that the back tyre was really starting to wear down. Now there is a rule of thumb in cycling, after 1000km, switch the front tyre with the rear tyre because the front will hardly have any wear, and the rear will be almost spent, after another 1000km, throw both tyres out and put on a fresh pair. How could it be that these tyres were already almost half spent after just 12 days? So I added up all the mileage I've ridden since July 2, here it is:

1. July 3: 285km (almost to Rochester NY)
2. July 4: 178km (rode around Rochester then home from Niagara Falls)
3. July 7: 75km (rode to and from work)
4. July 8: 100km (rode to and from work and did the Thursday night hills ride)
5. July 10: 64km (ITT and warm-up for ITT)
6. July 11: 155km (BCC Sunday ride)
7. July 14: 75km (rode to and from work)

Total: 932km. Well I guess it's a case of little wonder my tyres are nearly half spent, they are 93% of the way to a rotation. In fact, by the time I get home from work today, since I rode in, I will be due for a tyre rotation. Damn, 1000km in less than two weeks, there are months when I don't drive 1000km!

Oh, in case anyone is wondering, the other consumable is the chain, usually about 3000 to 4000km, get a chain wear gauge from your local bike shop if you don't already have one and check the wear... I guess in my case every two weeks!