Sometimes Things Break

 

I try to keep my bike in good shape so that I don't run in to any mechanical problems while on the road. I usual have only 1 or 2 flats a year and have only once in 30 years not been able to get the bike back to the starting point. But every once in a while things are going to break. 

Today I did Laura's ride out of Pennington. When I pumped up my front tire before the ride the pin inside the value shot out when I took the pump off. I threw some tubes in the car and change the tube before the ride.

 Laura planned a 50 mile 2600ft ride. I felt pretty good as we were doing some climbing. There were 10 of us on the ride including most of the regulars. I was looking forward to a good social ride and catching up with everybody. 

At the top of Mt Airy Rd something didn't feel right with the back wheel and it was rubbing the brakes. I thought the wheel fell out of the drops but a quick looks showed that I broke a spoke. In fact the spoke was not even attached to the wheel and some where on the road. 

The wheel was not only rubbing the brakes but also the frame. As Bob will tell you a wheel rubbing a frame can do some real damage to a carbon bike. Jim was able to true the wheel up enough to keep the wheel from rubbing the frame and so with the brake open at back I decided to head toward Wheelfine to try and get it fixed. The rest of the group continued with the ride. 

It was about 4 miles to Wheelfine and although I felt the back wheel wobbling under me I made it without a problem. Michael was there and there is no body better to fix a broken wheel. He is also an interesting person to hang out with and so we had a good conversation as he fixed the wheel. He ended up putting in a new silver spoke which contracts with the other black spokes but I don't care how it looks. The wheel is probably better now than before and I had no problem making my way back to Pennington. 

It wasn't the ride I was expecting to do and I ended up doing half of it on my own but some times now matter how well you keep up your bike stuff is going to break so you just have to find a way to fix it and make your way home.

The wheels on my Synapse were not the best wheels to begin with so I will probably be looking for new set of wheels as when one spoke break other could follow soon after.

Exploring Some New Roads

 

After 30 years of riding I have ridden almost every rideable roads in New Jersey (and quite a few that were unrideable). However New Jersey has a lot of nooks and crannies so its always possible to find a few roads that I haven't ridden yet. 

The area where I moved to is close to a lot of roads I use on my Rova Farms Ride so I am familiar with most of the roads by my new house. Since I try to ride once or twice a week after work I will be doing more short rides in this area. To make sure I can have some variety on my nightly rides I decided to try all the roads in the area so that I can always quickly put together a ride of any length and difficulty. I try and use my after work rides for training to keep or get in shape for my weekend rides. I usually do between 15-25 miles and try to find some small hills to get my heart rate up. 

From my old house I had a really good variety of roads and could do anything from quick flat ride to a hill ride with almost 1000 ft of climbing in 25 miles. There are less hills where I live now so it will be a challenge to find more than 500 ft of climbing. 

From the new house it takes almost 2 miles to get out of my community and I have only a couple of ways out so the first and last couple of miles are going to be mostly the same for any ride from my house. However once I'm out I don't have to cross any main roads like route 130 as I had to do from the old place. There are a good number of quiet flat roads around the new place and I'm enjoying exploring some new back roads and finding my way around the local neighborhoods. Most of the back roads are low traffic and the busier roads usually have a wide shoulder. I just need to do some more exploring to find some hills to climb.

Now that it has been a few weeks since we moved in we are now more settled. We still have a lot of unpacking and organizing to do but the office, living room, bedroom and kitchen are set up so enough to live comfortably so we can now unpack the rest at our leisure.

Now that I'm past the hectic part of moving I can get back to my normal weekend rides. A couple of weeks ago I did a ride out of Yardley so I could get back to doing some hills. We did this route which was close to 3000' of climbing. I also tried a new way up the hill from Yardley to Tyler State park where we climbed the toughest hill in the park which felt just as hard on a road bike as it was in the winter in with my heavier mountain bike. 

It was good to get back into the hills but this past week I kept it flat as it was a hotter weekend.  After a few weeks of no dirt roads or bridge outs we actually had two on the ride in the Pinelands but both were easy to get through. 

It felt good to get back to some regular rides and get some routine back in my life after the move. The new house doesn't feel like home yet but some of us are getting use to the new digs.