On New Rides and Old Rides

First order of business, the pictures.

Dan and I spent much of Friday night building my carbon fibre beauty. The result, before we were even done was so gorgeous that Dan declared that my bike looked sick. Which to be honest is about the first time I have had something good enough that someone who is an expert in the field, gave such a stamp of approval. (No, not calling her sick, but saying it with admiration.)

I still need a name, Dan suggested Helga, I am vetoing that suggestion. Other ideas are welcome.

In other news, I went for a ride on Saturday with the Beaches Cycle Club, there are no pictures of me. It was the long distance steady state ride, 170km. As I had to go to the store on Saturday for some final tweaks of the new bike I turned around early, which was a good thing. I was riding Amy (the old Roubaix) when the rear tube blew out just West of Dixie. The good news, I did the entire change myself, QB did hold up my saddle for me and Dan lent his moral support (mostly of the "move faster" variety), which was helpful, but it is always a relief to know, in a crunch I can change a tube on the side of the road with nothing but the parts I carry around. (So much for walking to the nearest gas station, eh!)

Sunday I rode my new bike for the first time. She was not exactly a dream to ride, everything felt sluggish, I thought maybe I needed some rest, or perhaps I was just short of red blood from the last donation. After about 65km of struggling, well on the way home actually, I realised my problem. My brakes were tightened down so much that they were rubbing even when not engaged, I disengaged the calipers and I went from struggling to keep up with the pack to being a lead rider the rest of the way.

That is good exercise actually, donate blood then tighten your brakes or skate axles, now go as fast as you can!

In other news Lesley and I went to Niagara-on-the-Lake, which I have decided is such a pretty place that I would like to organize some sort of ride from the Beach to NotL for the Holiday (Civic Day) coming up on Monday. It is only 135km one way from my home to NotL, whats 270km among friends?

Finally mapmyride.com is starting to really piss me off, I cannot load my GPS data onto their site anymore, it keeps saying there are no routes or waypoints on my Garmin which is not at all correct and their site is agonizingly slow. However it turns out I can display what I did on Sunday, I loaded it directly into Google Maps, just click here to see. Or you can see the group photo below, notice how my back was turned... oops!