Thursday, September 3, 2009

Singlespeeder with a Mechanical

Before I headed out to Dupont yesterday I thought I would be smart and install a new bottom bracket as my old one was very worn out. I switched from an isis to a square taper so I had to swap out my crank set, chain ring and pedals. When I was putting the chain ring on my square drive crank set it didn't seem like it was going on quite right but it was on so I figured it was good enough. Shortly after we started riding my chain dropped and then dropped again and again. After a brief consultation with the Wednesday Night Drinking Club's chief mechanic it was clear that the chain ring was not installed good enough after all so I told the rest of the club to go on while I headed back to my truck to try and fix the bike.

I got back to my truck and after 15 minutes or so of fumbling with the bike I had it good enough to try and ride and headed out on the gravel to try and meet everyone on Sheep Mtn. They were headed the 'wrong way' up Sheep so I figured I would go the other way and meet them in the middle. As I started climbing I realized I didn't know which way was the wrong way and figured they were probably doing it the same direction as me. When I got back to the road I turned around and did it again. By this time it had been well over an hour since we had parted and after some additional calculations I realized that my math was wrong and they had most likely already done Sheep and were long gone. No big deal. So I took off up Pine Tree.

Instead of bitching about a trail that I didn't work on I'll just say that I made as fast of work of Pine Tree as I could and by the time I hit Longside I was moving along pretty good. Longside is a fun trail that rides really well in both directions and I was having a great time riding it on a cool September night.

By the time I got to Corn Mill it was getting dark but I was still having fun riding so I decided to hit Burnt Mtn. real fast. I went up the steep side which is my preferred direction and only had to get off to push twice. The downhill that direction is a lot of fun and the bike was feeling really good underneath me.

I went straight across Little River without a problem and when I got back in the woods again it was getting hard to see but I wasn't done riding yet so I hit Laurel and Mine Mtn. Mine was getting a little sketchy in the dark but the moon decided to peak out so I hit Scarlet Oak for one last trail. It was very dark in the woods and I was basically creeping down the trail.The moon was pretty so I decided to go all the way down to Reasonver Rd. so I could look at it a little more. When I got back to parking lot Jonathon said that my ride couldn't have been bad because I had a huge shit eating grin on. He was right!

1 comment:

  1. Good to here you had such a good ride after that bad start.

    I updated my link

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