My neighbor put me onto a local guy riding around the world. His blog/website where you can follow his trip, is something you should visit. My only critique is his choice of frame. While it is solid and well made, if misfortune befalls him and a tube is bend or damaged, it will be very difficult to repair. I would have chosen a lugged frame which allows for even the most primitive tooling to repair. But then I'm sitting on a couch and the most I'll ride in one sitting is a a touch over 100 miles in one sitting. I won't deny him his daring.
After a morning workout at Z4F, I took Seph to her soccer game. She's getting better and more aware, as are her teammates. They've been playing together for 3 years now as well as being classmates in school. The familiarity and interaction they have off the field helps on game day and in practice. Nobody keeps score at their level but the kids are getting it and definately having fun.
After the game we visited Andy at Yellow Jersey so I could get a 9 speed shifter insert for the Vitus' Sach Ergo. More than a decade ago I was Andy's service manager and I've managed to keep a healthy relationship with him. So much so that Sephie was lucky enough to benefit from his generousity. She had found a pair of lavender waterbottle cages while Andy and I were talking. They were the usual $7 cages, but he said they were left over from the Maxwell Street Days sale and she could have them. That took the sting out of the $35 Campy/Sachs part and $100 Tufo Cross tires. Most of all it made her happy.
I then got to work installing the ToPeak rack on Karen's 7300 FX commuter. It's fully dialed.
So the rest of the day was spent tuning the Vitus. It had survived the trip from Seattle relatively unscathed. A broken deraileur adjuster barrel and broken rear wheel spoke were the only real damages as a result of a helpful sister-in-law's boyfriend. I'd asked the father-in-law to take it to a bike shop for packaging. Mike (the BF of Lori) took the Cannondale box I'd left there, pulled the wheels and seatpost and wedged it in the box. The pedals and handlebars were still on. When Brown dropped it off the rear deraileur was poking out of the box by 3 inches and the kinked housing held the broken barrel. Great. I know he was just trying to help, but dammit, he treated it like a POS (piece of shit) department store bike. That pisses me off more than the damages.
French bikes bring comfort to Fella.
A quick zip over to see Gary at Village Pedaller for a SRAM 9 speed chain made the the Vitus compatible with the Seven and the Serotta. Now all the 700c bikes are 9 speed. I almost feel modern. It was either buy the 9 speed stuff or spend hours on ebay finding 5 speed Regina freewheels for my Mavic and Campy hubs.
1 comment:
Russel don't use no 9-speed stuff for the road bikes. Russell believes it's all wrong. less than 8 is good, 10 is good. 9 is not.
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