Mayday Blog Entry

MoveitFred, Al, and Heywood are in here somewhere, in case you were wondering what they do instead of blogging these days.

This will be pretty random shit. Somebody said fair warning. At Wompatuck Tuesday night, Scotty reminded me that I hadn't provided answers to the photo quiz. Oh yeah. The race is Plymouth, Race for the Rock, probably 94 or 95. The field is a combined Cat 3/Junior race. I really think the Hot Tubes kid on the left is Jon Page but Jerry says no way, and Craig, who should probably know, says it's some Roszko brother that I never heard of. BTW, the Sons of Italy guy with just his eyes showing behind me, I'm pretty sure that is Steve. Of course the Cyclonaut is Norton. The guy in yellow (totally obscured) behind me, not sure who that is but the Ringle hub might mean another Link guy, as the Bike Link was Ringle central then. I see some blue on the sleeve though. Way in the back is Bob Steeves in the MBRC kit. I should know the guy in the pink/mauve kit but I don't remember. So there you go. Race for the Rock was a pretty big deal then, with a 50 mile Pro,1,2 affair that always featured the local honchos and some travelers. Way back in the day everyone would already be in the northeast for the Killington SR, and so the following week it would be Martha's Vineyard on Saturday and Race for the Rock on Sunday, both high $$$ races. The Cat 3 race used to be 35 miles, which was huge for a 3 crit back then, and even today for that matter. Good times. I still have an envelope from a $100 Bob Beal prime I got down there.

So Wompatuck - in case you missed it, Dana and some other dudes friggin' clear cut the place. It's amazing. They wiped out about 15 years worth of brush that had been slowly encroaching on the edges of the course. It feels twice as wide now. Of course some of it will grow back in over the summer, but still, it's nice. Not that I got much chance to enjoy it. I went to shake down the new bike, and shake it down I did. After about five laps I was on the front drilling it, sitting on the nose of the saddle when it slipped and tilted badly on a bump. I stopped and bummed tools but the Madone carbon seatmast requires several engineering degrees to understand and sans reading glasses I could not get it right and did not want to f with it unless it was perfect so I retreated to home and the torque wrenches. After getting it all set I got in a nice matinee ride on my Moose Hill mini-circuit Wednesday. Speaking of which, since readership is up and witty content ideas are down, I might start doing a weekly "routesharing" entry to spread my knowledge of the local road network. I'll have to think about how best to do that. I generally use runstoppable.com but that requires membership and most people use the ugly mapmyride so we'll see. I almost jumped way out of character and pre-ordered a Garmin 310 XT today. This looks like a cool device. $400 is a lot of dough but if you run and ride and even swim this does it all. Or at least is does all the stuff I want it to do. I don't need maps...

Today, new cleats on the old shoes. Major hassle for someone like me with fussy feet. I'm trying to go without cants this time too. My shoes are Speedplay-specific, but you may already know that the Speedplay system is pretty stupid. "Don't tighten the screws too much." are the instructions. So what do you do if the cleat still won't stay in place? I used to just use spray 77 on the cants and that would do the trick. This time though it was just stainless shims direct on the carbon soles, and I did not feel like huffing adhesive at 6 am. I tried to go without but the left one would not stay put fore/aft. Then I remembered I bought some "carbon fiber assembly gel." I did not use it on the bike, because I discovered that basically it's vaseline with sand in it, and has a "this stuff will scratch the shit out of your carbon parts" warning on it. No worries for the bottoms of my four year old shoes though. Seems to have worked perfectly. One more chance to test ride before Jiminy.

Last but not least, racing in the Blue Hills Sunday. I've not been to this one the past few years, as I used to go to Glen Swan's awesome Hollenbeck race out in Ithaca after Jiminy, and then last year it was cold and rainy, so I stayed home. This year I signed up though. Not sure how it will work out with angry, hurried metro drivers texting behind the wheel on their way to Dunkin Donuts, but the chance to race right past the building I work in doesn't come every day. Randomness over. Thanks for reading.