I love bikes, I love my bikes, however, my bikes can also be those bratty little kids you want to put into a headlock, give them a couple big noogies, and follow it up with a wet-willy! Since I got the new TT bike I rebuilt my Van Dessel as a road bike and it's been mainly my power bike on the CompuTrainer. The seatpost clamp has always been dumb on that bike. Close tri-geek buddies who have traveled with me to races can attest that it's given me some grief. It's dumb. VD designed a frame with a slightly larger (2mm) than standard seatpost. So if you go with a standard post then you have to crank down on it, which puts a lot of strain on the frame. At some point in 2005 the frame started to crack in that area, but has been holding until now.
Last Tuesday I'm 20-mins into my ride and "CRACK!". What a nice lovely sound the bike just made followed with the dropping of my saddle. The internal metal of the clamp within the frame completely shattered. So in the last month the bike has seen a cracked deraullur hanger and now this. Nothing another trip to Lowe's can solve. Since I don't care what the frame looks like there's now a nice fatty bolt, nut, and washer going through the frame to snug up the seatpost. Mission complete, but I don't know how much more time the ol' VD has left. She's just gotta hang on until the end of the 2009 season. After that my Sugaaa Momma (aka wife with job...he he) arrives and perhaps I could swing a new road setup. Until then, HOLD ON YOU LITTLE BEE-OTCH!!!
OK, on to the new Giant TT bike. Last year I used some cash I made from my little software app to purchase some new kickass Easton DeltaForce TT drops. They're all carbon, they're sexy, and they're 100+ grams lighter than the VisionTech drops I had prior. Well, I installed them on the VD back in it's days and they kept slipping at the stem. They slipped enough where the bars got slightly chewed up. I tried everything at the time then eventually gave up. Well, those $200 bars just sat in my little bike shop and the guilt factor was building. I finally decided to give it another try. I did some research and found that using a little piece of aluminum oxide sandpaper would keep them from slipping. So I tried that and they still slipped. Then I changed out the bolts in my Syntace F99 stem and reversed the side the sand is on and Viola! That took care of it. I got over a 100-miles on them in the last couple of days and no slip. I think the guilt is starting to wear off. We'll see.
So I think that's everything other than blowing a tire on my ride yesterday. No big deal of course since that happens to everyone, but it was another thing to think about. I had to order some new tires that can handle some of the debris around here, which is just another slight adjustment in my new bike surroundings.
Ok, final thing. I'm two weeks out from perhaps the toughest and longest ride I've ever done. I'm biking with some of the Boise Aeros from Boise up to Stanley. This is a 130-mile trip with well over 20,000ft of climbing with the elevation topping out around 7300ft. I'm pretty pumped to take it on and also a little nerveous. One cool thing is Kate is helping out that weekend and will drive with us in case we need anything. So she'll throw the doogies in with her and we'll spend the night up in Stanley when it's done. We then have a nice long trail run scheduled the next day. Should be a great time and I'll tell ya all about it when it's done. It should be beautiful (follow link) so we'll take plenty of pics.
Later gators,
Drew.
