Apparently a couple of people got married this Friday, and because of that, a lot of people got the day off work. I have no comment on this, beyond that I enjoy days off. Well, actually, I do have one comment, which is that they might not have chosen the best year to chuck a bank holiday straight after Easter for students, with the school year already being thoroughly messed-up by the late falling of the holiday - but, weather wise, it turned out well. No complaints. Just exam worries.I didn't actually catch any of the ceremony, since I was cycling at the time - as any self-proclaimed cyclist should have been, really. It's not like they didn't have highlights. The ride in question was between Manchester and Whitchurch to meet up with friends, and didn't get off to a particularly auspicious start when before I even got on the train to Manchester two rivets popped off my pannier. Regardless of how I loaded it, I really don't think it was a brilliant design decision of the people of Carradice to hold their panniers together with soft aluminium pop-rivets. Braced by a belt, it made it to Whitchurch, but is badly in need of some M4 machine screws to hold it more permanently.
The ride wasn't atrocious, with a rolling speed above 26 kph carrying weight, but this was with a following wind. I got marginally lost a couple of times, and some of the roads out of Manchester were ruinously dull and traffic-exposed, but really there was just a certain dullness to the ride. I suppose I'll just keep on blaming it on the seriously industrial front wheel on my tourer, until I replace it.
With this relaxed leg-loosening exercise waking me up from a fairly sedentary week, on Saturday we climbed Snowdon. I have never seen a mountain quite that busy - there was barely ten paces on average between groups, and in the unusually warm weather, I wasn't too surprised to see the mountain rescue helicopter out. I didn't see much point in rushing to the summit with this much human traffic, and with people to walk with, so I can't really class this as a training session, but it was at least a good excuse to get up Wales' tallest mountain again, and topping 3000 feet twice in a week felt like a good way to start the "summer".
On Sunday, I rode with a friend about 40km to Delamere Forest Park, where, unfortunately (in part due to spending an unexpected amount on bicycle maintenance this month) I was too skint to do the "Go Ape" ropes course, so contented myself with riding around looking for geocaches with my girlfriend on the back of the bike, which counts for something I reckon. It was also the first time I noticed how really twitchy the bike gets with weight that far back - I hope getting some lowriders will help stabilise things for long journeys, because it really does need you to stay on your toes. The combination of narrow bars, steep headtube and short trail are at odds with everything one would consider normal in a modern mountainbike, and I suppose just shows how much of a throwback the geometry on my tourer really is. I'm not prepared to change it, though - replacing threaded steerer forks would be a hassle, I like the internal brake cable routing through the stem (which is also high-lift, very necessary on an otherwise very low-fronted bike), and the narrow bars make me comfortable riding with bar ends in a city. Besides, it's comfortable enough unloaded, so I'm sure a more even weight distribution will sort things out.
Good trails!
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8
No comments:
Post a Comment