Day 2: I made beans and greens and sausage soup and cooked chicken adobo for the next night’s dinner while the sun got lower and lower on the horizon. We ate and finished at 7:36 (exactly sunset – which is why I noticed the time). I had remembered to throw my lights on the charger when I got home so I had plenty of juice to cruise around in circles in the fire department parking lot for 20 minutes and try to take photos of my monkeylectric lights until my camera ran out of batteries. I got a lot of pretty good shots. Even though I was wearing super warm gloves the wind was just ripping the body head away from me. The fire department is on top of a hill so there’s plenty of wind up there. Also with the gloves on it was hard to actually push the right button. I kept accidentally turning off the camera instead.

I did figure 8′s for a while and notice that I have a preference for turning left. Right just feels way more awkward, like I have less control, almost like writing with the wrong hand. I’ve been trying to pay attention to my body asymmetries for the past couple of weeks to try to figure out why I’m having issues with my right hip. I don’t know if this one is particularly notable… however I’m noting it, just because.

Did another longish ride today. 53 miles. I felt a lot better than last week. I rode south almost to Dresden past lots of wineries and vineyards. Then I climbed back up on to the land between the lakes and rode back home past farms and wild turkeys and horses that thought I should give them my apricots. I didn’t. Horses will pretty much drop dead over anything. For such big strong critters they seem to have pretty useless digestive tracts.

On my way through Geneva, a pickup truck with a giant dog in the back passed me. I didn’t know the giant dog was there until it stood up with it’s front paws on the top of the cab and it was barking at me like crazy. It startled me and I think I might have loudly strung together a few words that might have been deemed offensive by some. or many.

A few miles later I passed a bar where the truck was parked with the dog tied to it. It was excited to have another opportunity to let me know that it would like to gnaw off my legs.

A few miles after that the truck passed me again and the dog was still excited to see me. I definitely prefer being chased by dogs in trucks to dogs on the ground.

I passed a tractor that was probably going about 13 or 14 mph. Not a big achievement, I suppose, but somehow the Breaking Away music was playing in my head. Of course he caught right back up to me because of this lovely little little bit of terrain.

He wouldn't have caught up to me if it weren't for those meddling kids... I mean valleys.

Somehow when I realized I was in the last quarter of the ride and I still had a ton of energy and felt good I was almost involuntarily sprinting. I kept thinking who’s legs are these? These are definitely not my legs.

I’ve been training to do a Century Ride, on (or near) my birthday in May. I need to wear myself out so I don’t think about being old.

I did 30 miles 2 weeks ago, 45 miles last week, 54 miles on Saturday. I overshot a little on the last one. I was supposed to do 53. It was a little rough at the end but not too bad. I feel like I’m in a better place with climbing though I could be a lot faster. I think, by better place, I just mean I can climb without thinking about the top of the hill and how I’m not there yet. I just keep pedaling.

Someone looked at my elevations on daily mile and commented that my last ride had a lot of climbing and that surprised me because I didn’t remember a lot of climbing. Mainly I remember tearing downhill on 96 going north for almost 10 miles. The shoulder was so smooth and so wide and the cars were not menacing even though it was a main drag. I think it’s the only time in my riding life I’ve ever been able to go that far, that fast, without a stop sign or a climb.

We’ll see how I feel about climbing when I do the Canandaigua Lake loop next. Those hills on the west side of the lake are pretty brutal. If I can finish that loop and feel like I didn’t just barely survive I’ll do a dance. It won’t be pretty, but I’ll do it.

This last ride bumped my eddington number up to 27. It was also the second longest ride I’ve ever done. Which I guess is cool but it almost seems lame because I talk about bikes and riding all the time. It makes me feel a little like I’m full of crap. Which I may be.

It took me a long time to talk myself into going for a ride on Sunday. When I finally went out to get my bike I discovered the rear tire was flat. I was annoyed and whined a lot on twitter. I probably could have ridden my other bike but instead I just complained loudly about the tires I have because they’re so hard to change. I blamed the tires, but really the rim tape had shifted and the flat came from a spoke hole.

Apologies to Bontrager Lite Hardcase but you still are a nightmare to change. I need fingers with some kind of super strength to get them off the wheels and at least 5 zip ties to get them back on. I wasn’t smart enough to keep things like rim tape around so today I’m hoping to make a trek to a bike shop I’ve been meaning to check out for ages.

My cousin was having a bridal shower on Saturday. I had been planning to ride around Keuka Lake that day as the finale for 30 Days of Biking but I didn’t really feel like trying to do both so I just rode to the shower instead. It was 30 miles with the wind at my back and the first real sunshine we’ve had in weeks so it couldn’t have been a bad ride. Unless I crashed and broke my bike or something awful.

I saw this sign along the way.

I didn’t see any dead frog though.

At the very end there is a crevasse. I believe mytracks is lying when it says it’s only a 10% grade. There’s a sign on the way down that suggests cars should keep it under 15mph and I was trying to do less than that on the bike. I’m a chicken. I had to stop in the middle because my arms were getting tired from holding the brakes. As soon as you get to the bottom of this fine hill you have to climb an almost equally brutal hill to get out of the crevasse. I didn’t stop at all on the way up. I did beg the lactic acid in my legs for mercy though.

I caught a ride home from the shower with my mom so it was a nice one way trip and I didn’t have to face the crevasse again.

Hardcase tires give you the convenience of being nearly impervious to flats, but only nearly impervious. Once you do get a flat though, the difficulty level of changing the tube out is like fighting the boss on the hardest stage of the hardest video game. You need persistence, more persistence, and eventually, you need cyclist friends on the internet who know what they’re doing.

I went for a long ride last Saturday (ok, not that long, just 21 miles) and it went really well. On Sunday morning I went out to take another ride and found the tire flat. Rather than wrestle with the tire, which I knew would be a nightmare I just took the hybrid. It served me well for a long time but it’s just not the same as the ninja bike.

It took all my finger strength to pry the tire off the wheel. I really didn’t think I was going to get it off for a while. It might have taken me 20 or 30 minutes to get it off. I was even using tire levers. I’m sure there’s a trick but I don’t know it yet. I yelled and swore a lot. I complained on twitter and received some encouragement.

Once it was off I realized I was going to have to get it back on somehow. I followed all the usual tire changing practices. I checked the inside of the tire for sharp things even though I had already pulled out the offending extremely tiny extremely sharp piece of quartz. It was a good thing because I found an even tinier piece of quartz still sticking in through the inside of the tire.

I tried to get the tire on without any tools because bicycle tutor said don’t use any tools except a bead jack which I didn’t have. I failed.

I complained on facebook and got lots of suggestions including, use the tire levers to get it back on. So I tried to used the tire levers to get it back on. I failed. I tried again and again, more and more violently. I was pretty sure I probably damaged the tube in the process.

I decided to order a bead jack online. It arrived three days later. This was the answer. I would be back on ninja bike in no time. The bead jack was made of plastic and snapped on the third try. Perhaps I was using it wrong. I was just imitating something I’d seen on youtube after all. It did not come with instructions. I was really really mad. I might have cried a little. I was resigned to taking the stupid wheel and tire to the bike shop and admitting defeat.  I complained online again and a friend sent me a link that showed me the way. I had the tire back on in about 15 minutes. I had looked online but I must have been using the wrong key words.

Zip ties are the answer.

Installing Hard to Fit Tires

I was so excited to have gotten it on that I forgot to take the zip ties off before I inflated the tires. This seems to have resulted in the tire getting seated wrong. I’ve deflated it and wrestled with it and re inflated it a bunch of times. I’m still working on this one. It’s in a rideable state now anyway. I also forgot to hook the rear brakes back up before I took it out for a ride. Of course I realized it the first time I tried to stop. Aaaargh.

…and now I don’t know how I feel about my tires. The flat resistance is nice but this leaves me with less of a sense of self reliance. I now know that if I do get a flat while I’m out on a ride, the chances of me fixing it and going on my way without assistance is much lower than with a standard tire. I can change a regular tire pretty quick and easy now.