Thursday morning ride…
I got the bottom bracket replaced on my single last night. It’s now back to normal…including the annoying mis-adjustment of the front derailleur. That thing is so touchy…in the middle chain ring where I ride 99.9% of the time, it’s very hard to get the trim set correctly. Especially if you take something off. Now the chain is scraping in the higher gears. That kind of makes sense, because I felt like I was tightening the crank down further than it was originally.
While I had my hands dirty, I pulled the excentric on the tandem to clean and lube it. We’ve got a periodic creaking noise, and I thought it might be coming from there (but it wasn’t). When I put the timing chain back on, I left us 45 degrees out of phase (OOP) to see if that would increase our speed on these morning rides. It didn’t…but it sure felt better to me climbing than we have been. I’m hoping that 45 degrees instead of 90 might make it a little more palatable for Pam. If not, I’ll switch it back in phase after a week.
At one point this morning I had Pam unclip and take her feet off the pedals to see if the creak would go away. It did…so at least I have a starting point to look. I thought I just lubed her seat a few days ago, but I think I’ll start there since it’s the easiest.
It was a pretty nice ride this morning…the sky was pretty overcast to the west but clear to the east and it was 61 degrees again when we set off. Pam had her pants and jacket on, but I was fine with just shorts and jersey.
After dropping Pam off at the house, I grabbed my single and hoofed it on in to work. I’m getting to the point where I really look forward to the commute, and kind of dislike the two days I drive in. I’ve toyed with the idea of giving up the two days of lifting weights and commuting 5 days a week, but I’m not sure I want to do that. For one thing, by the time I restarted the weights this winter, I would have lost a lot of ground, and secondly, I think the weight days serve as “rest” days even though I am still doing some hard physical activities. I may be wrong, but I think that as long as I don’t stress my legs on those days it should count as recovery time.
We’re planning an easy tandem ride this evening. For now, I can bank 37 miles for the day, and if we go back out, those will be bonus miles.
Edit…an evening ride isn’t gonna happen. At 4:00 pm, we’ve had a pretty severe storm pass through, so I doubt if Pam will want to do it. She wanted to come pick me up at work, but I think I’ll be fine to get home. It’s stopped raining here, and moving out to the south.
God bless…
TW
