Fixing My Sagging Sack

I took off Friday from work and decided to do a ride since the weather was good. I decided to do something hilly out of Yardley so I used my Synapse for the ride. Whenever I take my Synapse out I notice how much different my sack looks. The one on the Synapse is much straighter and firmer.

Yes I know the bike is 11 years younger than my Feather but as far as I know age should not make things sag. At least not on a bike. 

Just because my Feather is old doesn't mean it can't perform or look as good as a newer bike. And for the most part my Feather is a fast good looking bike except for its sagging sack which get ridiculed. People tell, me all the time, that my sack is sagging and might fall off. The bag is secure and hasn't fallen off in 5 years when it almost took out Dave. Still it is a source of some embarrassment so I decided to take closer look at it after my Yardley ride.

I checked out the bracket that holds the sack on to my seat. I use the Jandd Klickfix system that has a bracket on the seat that allows you to easily clip your bag on and off the bike. This makes it easy to switch the sack between bikes so that I don't have to have a separate sack of gear for each bike. The Feather has a carbon fiber seat with the rails built into the seat so the bracket is a little harder to mount and makes it hard to get in on at the right angle. 

However after taking a look at the bracket which is probably at least 10 years old I noticed that the end of the clip was thin and broken. This was definitely causing some of the sagging.

I did have a spare bracket in stock so I replaced it and tried to position it better to keep the sack a little straighter.

It looks much better now its still not as straight as when this sack it mounted on my Synapse but that has more to do with the angle of the seat and rails than anything else. This just goes to show that with a little maintenance something old and sagging can be made to look and function almost like new. 

Lucky Happenstance

Today was one of those days with very unpredictable weather that made it hard to plan a ride. The forecast said rain by noon. I got up a little after 6am and the sun was out. There was nothing on the radar and the hourly forecast said there wasn't a significant chance of rain before noon. I decided that I would head to Cranbury and then do a ride to Englishtown. I sent out an email letting the posse know what I was doing in case anybody wanted to join me.

By the time I left my house I didn't have any takers so no posse no problem I'll just do a solo ride.

I got to Cranbury about 20 after 8 and found Herb sitting there. He was waiting for Bruce. I hadn't see Herb in quite a while so it was good to see him and catch up. Then somebody else walked over to talk to us and it was Ron who was going on Dave's ride at 9am. Bruce rolled in soon after with a new bike. It was one of the new Cannondale Ebikes. I think it was the one of the Synapse Neo models. So now Bruce is now stronger, faster, better (i.e. Bionic Bruce). These bikes are getting more efficient and more practical so I can see these becoming more popular especially for older riders.

Right after Bruce showed up Jack came by. He was planning on going on Prem's ride but apparently he didn't realize Prem's ride was at 8 am not 8:30am. (Not sure how Jack missed it since it was clearly stated in the ride title and ride details) In any case it worked out for everybody as Jack ended up going with me on my loop to Englishtown. It was suppose to be a 40 mile loop but when it didn't look like it would rain as early as expected I added a few more miles and visited the lake in the Assumpink. As you can see from the picture above there were no rain clouds in site when we got there around 11:30am.

On our way back as we crossed 130 on Windsor Rd we ran into Herb and Bruce again as they were heading home. We road with them along Windsor.Then Jack took off for home as we headed up South Lane,  We ended up having to turn around. Some car had hit a telephone pole and there were live wires across the road. I ended up going back to Windsor and up Old Trenton to get home. I ended up with just over 50 miles.

So though some lucky happenstance my solo ride ended up not being solo and I got to catch up with a few people I haven't seen in a while so sometimes unplanned circumstance make for a good day.

Vacation Days

I don't think I will be going on any real vacations this year. I definitely don't want to get on a plane anytime soon. I could drive some where for a vacations but a lot of the surrounding states have travel restrictions that would require us to quarantine for 14 days before doing anything so I really don't see the point. If the restrictions get lifted in the fall we may consider going to Cape Cod or maybe down to the outer banks. But for now I'm using my vacation days to take a days off from work to do some riding.

This past Tuesday I headed towards Princeton. My main goal was to try out the new Alexander road bridges that had recently been completed. I had tried to get across a month or so ago but was stopped because the construction wasn't yet completed and a crew was still working on the bridge. Tuesday I flew right over the new bridges. These are definitely an improvement as they are a lot wider and have a large shoulder. I don't normally ride on Alexander road on any of my normal rides but this may be an option at times if the traffic stays low.

After Alexander road I headed along Carnegie lake towards Kingston sticking to residential streets. One of my other goals of this ride was to check out a path through the Herrontown Arboretum. I was inspired by Jim who was trying to map out some of the interesting paths in this area. The path was paved and not too bumpy. The Arboretum wasn't much to look at except for an nice pond.

However it was a good short cut to get to Kingston and back towards home. It ended up being a good 30 mile ride even though I got rained on a little.

This past Saturday I led the posse to Round Valley. Because of the hot and humid weather I went for a shorter route than usual from Hillsborough. It ended being a good choice. I did a lot of sweating during the ride so would have probably cramped if I did my usual 58 mile route. It also helped that there was a little less climbing.

Our rest stop was the boat launch at the reservoir.

Even with all the rain we had the reservoir is still low. I didn't understand why they would keep it so low until we tried to ride the rest of the way around the reservoir. As the picture at the top of the post shows there was a gate across the road. Since the gate was open we were going to ride through but there was a guard there telling us to go around so we did. It looks like they are working on one of the dikes on that side of the reservoir which might be why they are keeping the water low.

We had to briefly ride on 22 and then through Lebanon before getting back on course but the detour only ended up added about a mile and a half. We cruised back quickly to Hillsborough and were back close to noon.

I may not be able to travel away from NJ to do any riding trips this year but there is plenty of good riding here so its not a bad place to be stuck.