memorial day all-paces

 Mostly, you'll want to see the photo album on the FreeWheeler website; it's at this page.

But I took a C ride on the All-Paces yesterday...

... which was mostly memorable to me for two things: Anthony G's beautiful Basso:

 (How many lovely bikes does he have?)

... and the fact that we pulled into Allentown minutes before a parade was to start. We did manage to get through, but I think a number of the locals thought that we were the overture to the symphony that was to follow. (I gotta find an alternate route in case we're a minute later next year...)

We did this route. Afterwards, Paul Kimball pointed out a minor correction that will keep us off the dangerous Robbinsville-Allentown Road (county 526), which I will also incorporate for the future.

(Paul, if you see this: that saddle is the Selle Anatomica.)

(I got ANOTHER flat on the Krakow Monster. I need to review the whole tires/tubes situation on that bike.)

I also got a couple of leads for Ramblin' Wrench/mechanic business. I'm starting to get busy; this may turn into something.

last-of-the-month c+ ride

 

This post sponsored by Ramblin' Wrench, bringing bicycle maintenance to you. Ramblin' Wrench is , of course, me; I met Herb C early at the ride start to give his rear derailleur a quick adjustment, and to talk about how we could raise his riding position a bit. Herb is apparently excessively happy with my work, and promises to write me testimonials, or something. If you are local and need maintenance, or even just a deep-cleaning-and-detailing*, send me an email. Special prices to Princeton FreeWheeler members or for bulk orders.

*Eddie L showed off his ultrasonic cleaner to me a while ago, and I was so smitten I got one myself, which should be delivered soon. So that gunky rear cluster and jockey wheels might not need to be gunky any more. Just sayin'. (I got it as a reward to myself after painting the garage. The garage was an awful job that I didn't want to do, and hated every minute of, but even though it kills me to admit it, it looks far better now and is much more pleasant to work in. I didn't want to do it; TEW wanted me to, so we compromised and I painted the garage. Now I'm glad I did, but do me a favor and don't tell her.)

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The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I like to ride together on the Club events and All-Paces rides, so I post slower rides for those events. A couple of years ago, a few of the riders who came along on those rides suggested they might like to come along with me, so, for a while, I got in the habit of posting a slower, C+-rated ride on the last Sunday of the month. Last year, I wasn't getting takers, so I stopped the practice, but I started again this year, and there seems to be interest.

More pics of Anthony's lovely Marinoni below.

More of that nifty Marinoni Anthony G brought along:

 

Wait; is that a Canadian Maple Leaf near that bottom bracket? Yes; apparently Marinoni decided he could do well in Canada building bikes. The bike is a lovely thing. If I had yonks of garage space (and more money), I'd have a collection of beauties like this.

Heddy B also has a bike worthy of note:

It's a lovely Specialized DI2 something-or-other, "murdered out" in all black (although in the direct sun, there are dichroic hints of green and purple that don't come out in the photos). She's impressed that the Garmin picked up the DI2 system, and they now communicate, so she can see the current gearing on the Garmin. Neat! I wish her gazillions of happy miles on it. ("Because you love it" is a great reason to buy a bike, if you're not spending the mortgage money on it.)

Wait - we also did a ride today! (You knew I'd eventually get to that, didn't you?) I said earlier in this post that there seems to be interest: I had 13 registrants and one who signed in at the start, even though I didn't post the listing until late Friday. 

We did the same route I did last time. One rider saw that we'd actually come in at a C+ pace, and decided it was safe to come along (and then he was ahead of me almost the whole way!) There were only a couple for whom I had some worry about the pace, but the worry was certainly misplaced; I reviewed riders' condition at every stop and several times while we were riding, and everybody was (apparently) keeping up and doing fine, so I have no qualms about the speed on the ride page.

Besides, club president Mike V was along, and didn't bring up any concerns about the pace. (We were having too much fun slandering members who weren't present*.)

*You're less likely to get slandered if you come along.

We stopped at the Blawenburg Bistro...

... where I ran into sometimes-rider Chris K, who talked about how he has gotten so busy and isn't riding much, and is concerned about his condition (Hrmph! Maybe he'll be slow enough that the rest of us can keep up with him!), and where it appears that the Bistro is thriving.

I hope so. TEW and I don't have a great record with favorite coffee-and-junk date places. (And thanks to the riders who contributed to the retirement funds of the Bistro staff by purchasing coffee and bake-y stuff.)

So I'll plan on doing another slower ride at the end of June. Maybe you'll come out?

serious cyclists hate...

 Russ at Path Less Pedaled has this to say:

I think he's right, even though I use cleat pedals and back-pocketed jerseys.

Except for the Crocs. Nobody should ever wear Crocs, on the bike or off. 

(Hrmph. I'll probably be singing the praises of Crocs within six months.)

See the original on Youtube.

after-the-funeral ride

 

The viewing of the body of The Excellent Mother-In-Law was Thursday, and yesterday was the funeral, followed by a certain amount of hanging around with the various relatives and the beginnings of the inevitable, ongoing discussions of property distribution, complicated post-mortem rank and relationship discussions, and the like.

We got home last night, and The Excellent Wife (TEW) agreed to let me do a ride today, so I quick signed up for Laura OLPH's ride from Lambertville today. Four other members came out (besides Laura and me, Ricky G, Peter G, and Lenny G), and as we were getting started, another rider asked if he could hang on with us; we saw no objection. Subsequent discussion elicited that fact that he'd been a FreeWheeler in the 90's, but not since. He also asked about A rides, and had no seatbag and little in his pockets, which suggested he was generally faster than we and we'd probably not see him again, but he was pleasant enough.

Laura picked this route, for which the worst hills between mile 8-10 and 28-30; for much of the rest of the ride we were on the ridge and riding more-or-less flat.

We stopped in Frenchtown, and a number of other riders were out, too.

After Frenchtown, went down 29 for a short hop, then climbed Fairview to get to the top again. Laura's plan was to go down Lower Creek, when she'd heard was open again but not all paved. At the top of Lower Creek:

The part that had been washed out by Ida still is not paved.

... and neither is a substantial section below Covered Bridge Road, although if there had been less rain yesterday, the surface would not have been bad (and we DID all get through today). 

We bombed through the last few miles from Stockton to the CVS lot in Lambertville where we started, with the traffic on 29 reminding us to stay single file, and were back before the heat got awful (and before the Pride Parade in Lambertville affected traffic!).

This ride helped get some of the funerary cobwebs out.

I've put in a last-minute listing for tomorrow; we'll see if I get any takers.

funeral arrangements for the excellent mother-in-law

 

Viewing: 2-4, 6-8pm Thursday May 19, 2022 at Warner-Wozniak Funeral Home, 80 Midland Ave, Wallington, NJ

Funeral: 11am Friday May 20, 2022, at Most Sacred Heart, 127 Paterson Ave, Wallington, NJ

may reconnaissance ride

 

With nothing else planned to do today except for my usual late-afternoon-early-evening shift at the New Brunswick Bike Exchange, I got out on a ride today, partly to get some info. Stuff I learned:

• This route isn't 30 miles, either, although it's a lot closer than this one was.
• When the price is reasonable, I really like bib shorts. I got a pair free from a kind neighbor who got them as part of his business (and he didn't know what to do with 'em, but he knew they were bike-y and that I ride bicycles, and he's interested in maintaining good relations). I like those well enough to ask around and do some searches; I found pairs at (what I consider) reasonable prices from The Black Bibs and Baleaf. I suspect The Black Bibs has slightly more cachet than Baleaf (although neither is gonna mean anything to the All-Rapha-All-The-Time crowd), but the Baleaf shorts have the silicone thingummies in the pants cuffs to hold 'em in place; you can get a similar thing at The Black Bibs, but it's $20 more. When bib shorts were $90, I said no way, but now that they're less than half that, they're right up my alley. (The pad on the Baleaf is not to be sneezed at, either.)
• Porta-potty alert: the porta-potties are back at the Country Classics park on Amsterdam Drive, as well as one at the tennis court at the Amsterdam School on the same road. The toilets at the fields at the Mill Pond Soccer Field were unlocked today, and there is a porta-potty in an adjacent parking lot. So there are now options to the Veteran's Park Arboretum.
• While I'm doing my best to manage my fat-shaming, I am unrepentant about my old-shaming. I keep my jerseys zipped up (despite any heat - I was overdressed today) because nobody wants to look at my scrawny, grey-haired chest (I don't even put zippers in the jerseys I make for myself). I've been shaving my legs because it makes my grey-haired, scarred-up gams a little less awful. (I'm sure I've said it here before: there are looks that are cute in your twenties, and rebellious in your thirties, that are just weird and creepy in your sixties. We patronize a health-food store, and some of my male contemporaries who are customers still adopt the unkempt hippie look; every time I see one of these guys, I give myself another [shorter] haircut.) With a body that looks like mine, I keep it covered and trimmed; it's a public service.
• After getting rained on over the weekend, the front derailleur of the Yellow Maserati was hard-shifting. Now, a few years ago, I worked on a derailleur that had locked up due to grit in the system; it did not respond to mechanical force, but it did respond (well) to the application of penetrating oil. Over the past couple of days, I'd given the Yellow Maserati derailleur the penetrating-oil treatment, and it's responded nicely. Which led me to think: at the Bike Exchange, we get a number of toy-store bikes with twist-shifters on which the front derailleurs barely move. I've been thinking the problem was the cheap shifters (and they are cheap; it's clear the cables are not intended to be replaced), but now I wonder if an application of penetrating oil on the front derailleur pivot points might relieve the problem. It's a hypothesis I intend to test. Maybe I'll remember to post results, although I doubt any of my readers are that interested.

It was a pensive couple of hours.

edison bike tour

 

No club ride today, instead, volunteers from the New Brunswick Bike Exchange (and some others) provided support for the Edison Bike Tour. That's the rogue's gallery, above.

Rumor had it that the route was gonna be 21 miles, but RideWithGPS reports 26 (I had a couple of extra miles before the start, because of course I did). I'd hoped to ride ahead and back to add miles, but that wasn't the way this one worked; the police closed the roads as we all went by, and we had to stay with the peloton (there were kids and other slow riders, so we couldn't all go at our own speeds). 

At one point, a rider had a flat, and I was halfway through getting him going when I was stopped and told to have him and his bike carried by the sag wagon, to be addressed at the stop, because we couldn't allow any more time with the road closed. 

Even with just 26 miles, I was beat, with the constant starting-and-stopping, the slow speed, and the looking out for riders who needed attention. And I'd dressed for the predicted mid-60's-and-rain, not the 82-and-sunny that we actually got!

 I had a couple of nice chats with the support cops (which were among my most successful interactions with the constabulary: all those police, and not one said, "OK, license and registration. Do you know why I stopped you?").

It was fun. I'd do it again...

...but on the way home, the seatbag fell off the bike and got run over in traffic.After the loss of the favorite tire tool (and also the discovery that a pump wasn't working) yesterday, I'm in a foul mood over the need to replace so many bike-y things on which I depend. (I did salvage a good CO2 inflator and some metal tire levers... but a collection of chain quick links, among other things, is gone, gone, gone.) I am exceptionally grumpy about it.

Enough. How about some more pictures?