Category: cycling

I currently smell bad, mud is stuck to every major part of my body, and I feel very content. I’m also amazed at just how much water the skin on my head can wick from the rest of my body, only to sweat it out. (Yes, I have a big head and it is really oily and sweats a whole lot.)

Tonight my brother-in-law Craig and I met up at the Stony Creek mountain bike trails, as he’d just acquired a new-to-him bike and we wanted to do some riding. Not far into the trail we happened to run into the folks who were doing the regular Wednesday Night MMBA ride and tagged along with them. As we’d hit up The Pines earlier, we ended up covering all of the single track in the park, pretty much none of which Craig had been on before.

The ride was pretty uneventful and fun, and Craig seemed to do quite well for his first time on them with that bike. I almost fell once on The Pines when learning just how slippery mud is, but that wasn’t a huge deal. The mud after that just meant that both my bike and I regularly got sprayed with lumps.

After finishing up about 9.5 miles in the mountain bike trails Craig headed home and I took off to ride over to the still-under-construction Skills Park so that I could see it and hoping to meet up with Nick / Dirt. I’d been told that there were people there working on it this evening, but everyone had already left so I took a few minutes to down half a Clif bar (I was feeling a bit faint) and then headed back to the car and home.

Total distance today was about 14.5 miles, with more than 2/3 of that being off road, and primarily single track. I feel good.

As mentioned yesterday I had hoped to ride 50 miles today and I did. My bike computer, which I believe to be fairly accurate, logged 50.73 miles by the time I returned out to my house. The GPS logged distances are over 50 miles as well.

(Brian) met up at my house and set out towards the Paint Creek Trail, turned back 6.5 miles from Lake Orion, then wound our way back to my house. We were originally going to ride down Schoenherr to Dodge Park then to Metro Beach then back (a combination of these two rides: 1, 2), but the rather high temperatures (~91°F when we left) made us want to ride somewhere with shade.

After getting back to my house and racking up 30-some miles, Brian headed home.

I had to ship a package (an iSight Tripod Adapter) at the post office, so I strapped it to the back of my bike and headed off to the post office. After shipping the package I decided to keep heading west down 22 Mile, and I ended up riding through River Bends Park for a while, including along the trail where I’d scraped up my leg. Winding my way home I added on a few more miles taking routes in and out of subdivisions, ending up right near my neighborhood right as the bike computer tripped the 50.00 mark.

All in all it was a good ride. There weren’t any close calls with cars, I didn’t fall, and while the weather was hot it didn’t rain. The only problem I had was that my shirt, saturated with sweat, kept rubbing on my nipples, eventually giving me a case of what seems to be known as Jogger’s Nipple. When I first viewed the Wikipedia article it was lacking a photo, so I took one of my very sore, inflamed nipple and posted it, releasing it under CC. My hosting of the photo is here, the copy in Wikipedia’s stores is here, and it’s been embedded in the article.

There weren’t too many out of the ordinary things along the route, except for this giant inflatable monster holding a sign reading “CONGRATS MINI GOOCH” (as seen above) which was out in front of a house hosting a party.

The ride was long enough that the KML file from the ride won’t display all at once in Google Earth, so here it is broken up into two files:

· Everything before the post office stop. (View in Google Maps)
· Post office stop and back home. (View in Google Maps)

Today Brian () and I met up at Dodge Park to ride over to Metro Beach. We ended up riding to Metro Beach and back, then Brian headed back home and I rode into the Dodge Park, did an end to end ride of that, then back to my car for a drive home. I was fairly comfortable throughout most of the ride, but I did end up with a bit of sunburn on my arms and a head spotted with slight tan / burn from the vents in the helmet.

The final result, per my bike’s computer, is 41.29 Miles. This ride really wasn’t very difficult. The wind and gradual hills weren’t the most fun, and crossing Gratiot and Schoenherr feel risky, but it was quite nice overall. It’s also a completely different feeling from mountain biking, which seems to be more about huge bursts of output followed by nice rolling breaks as opposed to a few hours of relatively consistent pace.

Here is the KMZ: 24-May-2008_partial.kmz. Unfortunately the batteries in the GPS gave out about 1/4 of the way back from Metro Beach, so it’s only a partial plot. It still illustrates the route between the parks, though. The batteries had reflected 3/4 charge when I left the house, but clearly that didn’t represent how long they would last.

Next time I do this route I think I’ll just leave from home and go to Metro Beach and back. That should push it to a 50 mile ride.

I’m scheduled to go for a ride on paved trails today around 2pm, so yesterday I spent some time putting the Continental TravelContact 26 x 1.75″ tires back on my bike. While this isn’t normally too difficult, the combination of the steel wire in the bead, the rubber, and the anodized aluminum sometimes makes it a bit difficult to do. I’ve also run into problems with getting certain tires seated properly in the bead during inflation, which I’d normally solve by inflating the tire near the max, and rolling it with my hands or going for a short ride to work it into place.

Normally I was just able to muscle the tire over the rim or finesse it into the bead, but I wanted something easier. I’d read that applying things like soapy water or Schwable Easy Fit to the rim and tire make everything slide into place more easily, but I didn’t want to worry about mixing the soapy water correctly (and having to wash it off) or finding another product.

In the Seating the Tire portion of Sheldon Brown’s article on Flat Tires he mentions that he uses spray window cleaner for lubricating the bead. I grabbed my old bottle of Target’s blue glass cleaner, spritzed a bit in between the rim and the bead, and started inflating the tire. At around 25 psi I looked at the bead and noticed that part of the bead wasn’t in the rim properly. I kept inflating, and just below 55 psi (these tires are recommended for 55 psi with a maximum of 85 psi) I felt a little thump in the tire and it’d wholly seated itself, no manual coaxing required.

I also tried using some window / glass cleaner when fitting the tire over the rim and although the extra slipperyness was a bit of a hassle at times, it helped. Then after the wheel was put back together I just grabbed a cloth and wiped off the extra cleaner, using it to clean up the rim.

I’d definitely suggest that others give this a try if they need a bit of help seating a tire. Also, if you have an interest in bikes and haven’t given them a read yet, check out Sheldon Brown’s articles on tires and flat tires.

This is what happens when there is a thin layer of trail colored dirt covering the bottom of a downhill area, right in the area I need to turn at. Oops!

I was heading down a slight, maybe 20′ hill, which has a 90 degree right turn at the bottom, then immediately crosses a partially buried corrugated metal drain pipe. The center of the pipe is nicely covered and smooth to ride over, so I aim for this area. I’ve ridden down this a number of times in the past, but this time a portion of the bottom of the hill was very sandy, with a slight covering of dirt over it. As I was starting my turn on this the bike slid a bit, and I instead pointed at the mud just beyond the wholly exposed end of the drain pipe.

When the front wheel hit the mud it too slid, and I went falling / sliding on some mixed dirt and gravel. Thankfully I didn’t hit the drainpipe like the edge of my seat did, otherwise I might have a bit more than a skinned knee / shin. Thankfully it didn’t hurt at the time, and now it’s only a mild (but widespread) sting caused by a whole bunch of parallel scratches. And yes, that large clump at the top is a blood / dirt clot.

I’d also fallen two other times today causing other mild scratches, but these were because I was being dumb and trying to climb over ~5″ logs while going way too slow.

All in all, it was a nice ride today. and I headed off from my house, down 22 Mile to River Bends Park, back through the normal trail and a bunch of the (very narrow) single track, then up to Ryan, back to Shelby Road, down 21 Mile, through a subdivision, then back down 22 Mile to my house. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get a bunch more riding in, and then maybe a Dodge Park to Metro Beach and back ride on Saturday morning.

UPDATE: If you happen to want it, today’s KMZ is here: 22-May-2008.kmz. Unfortunately something somehow glitched and made it look as if one of the points on my route was at 19 Mile and Ryan, quite a ways from where I really was.
Oh, and the damage to the seat helps answer the possibly-selling-the-bike question. I think I’ll keep the bike and do what I can to work with it. My torso is longer than normal for someone with 30″ legs (I’m made weird, or something), and pedal reach is just fine, so I think (hope) that just a bit of tweaking will help things out. Maybe something like On-One’s Mary could help as well.

After doing a bunch of riding at Stony Creek with a group of seven others last night, I’m really thinking that my bike is a bit too big. Looking at the posture of others and feeling quite stretched out at times, I’m thinking that what I have just isn’t right for me.

So, what to do? I don’t think I can move the seat up much more and the stem is already pretty short (38.1mm), and one can’t really shorten a frame.

I’m thinking that I should probably sell the bike and either buy or build another one with a more appropriately sized frame. Seeing as I paid $797 for the bike after tax and it only has 400 miles on it and is well cared for, I’m thinking that $700 would be a fair price. I wonder if I could get that amount for it, and how it would / should be sold?

That also brings up the question of a replacement. I’m not sure if I’d want to get another built up bike, and if so where I should go? Seeing as the person at Fraser Bicycle and Fitness had fitted me to a 21″ frame, I’m not sure if I’d want to go back there either.

Looking at parts makes me think that something like a Surly Karate Monkey frame, fork with lockout, Avid BB7 mechanical disc brakes, and some Shimano Deore XT drivetrain parts would be nice. Wheels / tires could be sorted out a bit later, but might be a bit strange to work out being as the frame is designed for 29″ stuff.

I just don’t know what to do.

So, I have a 21″ bike frame. After trying out ‘s 19″ briefly around the parking lot here, I can’t help but think that my frame is a bit too large for me. It seems to fit and it’s not bad, but I almost think that it could be better.

Then again, I’m shaped kinda weird. I have relatively short legs for my long torso. Pants that I buy typically have a 30″ inseam (and they hang a bit), but I’m about 5’9″ – 5’10”.

Maybe my next bike should just be custom fitted / have a custom frame.