Find my inner Van Petegem

Date: Nov 10 Mon
Weather: 35F/45 windy
Mileage: 17
November mileage: 209
Year to date: 2682

Date: Nov 11 Tues
Weather: 35F/43F, rainy
Mileage: 21
November mileage: 230
Year to date: 2703


I rode home from work today with the weather at 43F with wet roads and and heavy air. It had rained during work, but I missed true Belgium weather when it stopped around 1.00. Tomorrow's forecast is for a stronger chance of real rain, so we'll see. As an aside, I had a prob with the Keen Targhees slipping off the MKSs. That was annoying. I can't deny my trepidation at riding in 43F/rain conditions. It's not an easy situation to dress for, although the many chaps in the Pacific NW make it their own conditions. I, OTOH, don't own quite enough wool and real rain jackets.

I'm also still pouting that I've had no input on my attempt at "writing" instead of typing. If anyone would still like to pine in, be my guest. Otherwise it'll be more banal, uninteresting entries from here on out.

As for today, and yesterday too, I commuted on the realigned Trek400ElanceSS. It's my longest titled bike. This is my original road bike from 1986 (Have I already told this story?). It was sold to my uncle back in the early 90s and purchased back in the early "Aughts", at a very fair price for him, FWIW. I've used it for some mucky weather, but it has mostly been hanging in the garage. In it's present incarnation, I've made it into a SS machine. Unlike almost everyone else in the blogosphere, I did very little of the work. I either can't or don't want to. My cash outlay wasn't a little steep, but affordable enough and I can afford my house payment, so it's all good. Following are a few pics of my first "real" bike. I'm beginning to like it more and more:

Trek 401Elance, circa 1986, lugged steel made in USA from Reynolds 501
Shimano brakes and levers
Sakae bars, crankset
MKS touring pedals
Sun assault SS wheels ( recent purchase)
old ass saddle
Performance Trans-it rack and old ass C'dale pannier
cheap ass Serfas? front LED
Serfas rear LED, very bright but shit switch
planet bike fenders

The change of late to the Trek400ElanceSS is that I purchased and mounted the new Sun SS wheels and SS. I took the Trek in to Clarksville for the purposes of doing a ghetto SS conversion. This bike holds/held no allure as a geared bike. It's old(er) and I have other more graceful geared machines, so it needed a new personality. The frame is a bit big for me and as it is/was, well hell, I just decided to SS it. Once at Clarksville, the evil Chris swindled me into a super sweet deal on the wheels. I have an idea what wheels cost, even SS version, and the price he gave me was just ridiculous. It so happens that he had them recently arrived in a box in back; it was all so painless. I gave in to his evil selling techniques and before long I had a SS with fresh new all-black wheels. It's a flip-flop hub, but right now I'm only running a freewheel. For some reason I have an extra fixed gear in the truck pocket, so the plan is to mount that on the flop. The advantage of those old frames- hell, I know all the "real" bike geeks know this- is that the old-school verticle dropouts will allow me to play around with chain tension and with different gear sizes.

Drivetrain, with permanent 40 and present 16 freeswheel. The front mech is on there as a chain guide. It looks like I might need to tighten up that chain tension. When do you do that?

Further study reveals that the dropouts aren't that long and vertical. The RB-1 has longer ones than this. 'Course, Lithodale has borrowed the RB-1 and I'm not SSing it.

I really like the present incarnation of this set of wheels. It's doing to rain the rest of the week and it seems a perfect time to give it a full workout, saving the beeootifull Bleriot for sunny days. 'Course, I might get tired of grinding hills and return to the LHT.

Peace. And Be Mindful. Time is fleeting and the days are short. Live it all to the fullest.