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.