Day 7

Of not touching a bicycle. More accurately, not riding a bicycle. I did a little bit of what could be stretched to call bike maintenance, finally fitting new tires on the Yo Eddy, and dragging the cx bike out of the basement and onto the repair stand. That's as far as I've got though. The MTB is sort of rideable, though the brake pads have about three stops worth of life left in them, and the entire drivetrain, including the crank, should probably be replaced due to old age. The cables are all pretty toasted too, and the low-end Tange fork that replaced the broken Big One Inch original just looks like a poor substitute. Other than all that she's ready to rock. There are just over three weeks until the Pinnacle Challenge and one of my vows this year is to not be getting on the MTB for the first time of the season when leaving the transition area...

Astute readers may note that's also the same weekend as Gloucester, which is why I only threw my name in the hat for Saturday. Even then, your hero clearly did not consider the travel and other logistical challenges involved in racing three different bikes over two days, each far from home on an inflated lodging price holiday/foliage weekend. Gloucester looks close on the map but in reality it's a pain in the ass place to get to. We'll figure something out. More importantly, I'd like to get up to Newport to ride the Pinnacle course a bit before race day, but that's not going to be too easy to work out either. The calendar is full of all kinds of events between now and then, and I've not sorted out which ones will make the cut. And I suppose the cx bike will need to be assembled and ridden once or twice between now and then too. This is like a friggin' job sometimes.

So back to taking a break from the bike. Besides procrastinating about preparing my prehistoric equipment, what else have I been doing? Very little. There was and is some golf to be played. I started running for the season. The Sox are playoff bound, so I have to prepare for that. Then there's wasting time on the internet. Brucie turned me on to Fitzy and townienews.com, which officially renders all nodcasts second-rate wannabee efforts, if they weren't already. I've also been looking around on the Rivendell site. Lots of very cool unique products. And they don't list the weights, so all you gram weenies can save yourselves a few clicks and not even bother. Since we have a bunch of tall guys who read this, here's one for you:



And I'm not blogging about politics and/or the return of Lance Armstrong. Not because I don't care, really. This blog is about not riding my bike. The first few days wasn't so bad. I did not miss it. About the fourth day I started to get this strange, unfamiliar feeling. I think it's called "energy." For the first time in months, I was moving around with ease. The euphoria lasted another day or two. Now I'm getting antsy. I might cave and head out today, but don't worry, no "epic-ing" anytime too soon, just ramping out of the rest week. Bike pics coming, maybe. Thanks for reading a totally pointless post.