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Ride report:(warning: Long) predawn darkness, the vagaries of Divine Providence, and remounts
Have been off the bike for too long.
I call my buddy Peter up last night. "You and your brother-in-law still do your morning rides?" "Yeah, thirty miles." "Where do you start?" He tells me the start point, about fifteen miles away from my house. "I'll meet you there at seven thirty tomorrow. I'll be riding in." My alarm goes off today at four o'clock. Wake up, wash my face, eat a bowl of cereal. It's still dark outside. Get my stuff ready. Catch flak from mom & dad--they dont' like the idea of my riding off before dawn. Not safe. It's five o'clock when I set out. Still dark. My lights are on. I move slowly--around nine miles an hour, on average, in the dark. Safety first: even with lights, it's hard to see road hazards in the dark. I make good time. Dawn breaks. The sun is now up, and I'm cranking a steady fifteen miles an hour on a striaght stretch. Out of nowhere, I say the antiphon for matins under my breath: "O Lord, open my lips/ And let my mouth proclaim Thy praise". I pray the rosary as I go, tapping decades out on my fingers. God in Heaven is a good friend, and like many good friends, He is not beyond a joke. I finish a decade on a doxology: "Glory...." and just as I finish, I roll to a stop sign. My toe catches on my front fender, folds it under the wheel, and I go down. I start laughing. I pull the offending fender off and go the remaining distance to the meeting point--Peter's brother-in-law's house. Just as I'm around the corner from the house, POW. A spoke breaks. Now I know I'm a fat *******, but this is ridiculous. These are thirty-six spoke wheels, recently trued. I examine the hub flange, and see that the spoke hole has keyholed somewhat--I suspect this deformation of the spoke hole has been sawing spokes off right at the spokehead, causing the breakages. Time to haul that back to the shop...I'm going to want a new wheel on warrantee (even though the bike is now 2 years old), because the hub seems to have been defective from the word go, and I've broken more than a few spokes at that same place. Peter's brother-in-law, luckily, had a Cannondale R500 which he doesn't ride much, which fits me just fine, so he lends that to me. It fits well enough that I don't have to adjust a thing. We mount up and go. There were a few adjustments that I had to make, mentally. First was the brakes: My Jamis Aurora's cantilevers are very very powerful. The Cannondale's brakes are dual-pivots sidepulls; strong enough, but they felt different. I had to make a panic stop (misjudge a left turn and nearly become a Ford Explorer hood ornament) and lock up the rear wheel--it fishtails. Let me never ever do that again. This was my first time on a modern, close-clearance road bike. I have to say it was a blast--for twenty-five miles of their thirty-mile loop, I was constantly itching to go out in front. Peter would attack me, just as a joke, and I'd counterattack with surprising (to me) combativeness. On one stretch, I cranked it and opened up two minutes' gap on my companions. The bicycle demanded to be ridden hard and fast--not like my Jamis, which reassures me and calms me to ride at a steady pace. Maybe someday I'll have a real modern road-racer. I'll have to think about it. My absence from the bike really showed up in the last five miles home--towards the end I was barely hanging on to Peter's wheel. The legs that I had earlier that morning were gone. It was frustrating, because I remember when i used to be able to ride faster, harder, farther. I was consoled, somewhat by the fact that I had tacked on sixteen extra miles (riding to the meeting point, instead of driving), and was riding a borrowed bike. So overall, I was pleased that I could still ride reasonably fast (for a man of my weight & fitness). But annoyed at the broken spoke on my own bike. |
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"Luigi de Guzman" wrote in message ... I say the antiphon for matins under my breath: "O Lord, open my lips/ And let my mouth proclaim Thy praise". Adonai s'fatai tiftach ufi yagid t'hilatecha -- it's also the opening to the Amida. There's kind of a traveling song, "The River", by David Paskin, that uses Adonai s'fatai tiftach as a part of the words -- I think it goes something like: And the words they are my vessel And the thoughts they are the waves And I journey along the river with my heart leading the way And there are times the waves are angry There are times they're calm and slow And all along the river there is one thing that I know That I have miles and miles to go. Adonai s'fatai tiftach u'fi yagid t'hilatecha Eternal God, open up my lips that my mouth may declare your glory This would make a nice meditative bicycling song. -- Warm Regards, Claire Petersky please substitute yahoo for mousepotato to reply Home of the meditative cyclist: http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/ See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky |
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"Luigi de Guzman" wrote in message ... I say the antiphon for matins under my breath: "O Lord, open my lips/ And let my mouth proclaim Thy praise". Adonai s'fatai tiftach ufi yagid t'hilatecha -- it's also the opening to the Amida. There's kind of a traveling song, "The River", by David Paskin, that uses Adonai s'fatai tiftach as a part of the words -- I think it goes something like: And the words they are my vessel And the thoughts they are the waves And I journey along the river with my heart leading the way And there are times the waves are angry There are times they're calm and slow And all along the river there is one thing that I know That I have miles and miles to go. Adonai s'fatai tiftach u'fi yagid t'hilatecha Eternal God, open up my lips that my mouth may declare your glory This would make a nice meditative bicycling song. -- Warm Regards, Claire Petersky please substitute yahoo for mousepotato to reply Home of the meditative cyclist: http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/ See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky |
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S o r n i wrote:
wrote: So where's the ride report? You snipped it. ...and why isn't this in rec.bicycles.rides? Is there a rule in here? pot, kettle, black mr. quote cop. -- david reuteler |
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S o r n i wrote:
wrote: So where's the ride report? You snipped it. ...and why isn't this in rec.bicycles.rides? Is there a rule in here? pot, kettle, black mr. quote cop. -- david reuteler |
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David Reuteler wrote:
S o r n i wrote: wrote: So where's the ride report? You snipped it. ...and why isn't this in rec.bicycles.rides? Is there a rule in here? pot, kettle, black mr. quote cop. What the hell are you talking about? Bill "truly baffled" S. |
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