Grab Bag

• Experienced a strange juxtaposition this morning in bike culture world. I headed on the Ute to Breadworks for coffee and breakfast . After my Euro experience, I'm feeling cavalier about helmet and bike clothes usage, so I was sans lid and sporting the flip-flops. As I was reading the paper with my a nice coffee, I saw a big group of club types clumping for the Sunday morning ride. After finishing my coffee, I waded through the lycra crowd- prolly 30 strong- to get my Ute from the bike rack. It was just a strange juxtaposition, me in regular clothes, no lid and flip-flops surrounded on all sides by lycra-clad warriors. One chap talked me up a bit about the Ute, but otherwise it was strange looks all round. Wonder how many of them do any real-world biking? I'm a bit close-minded about it all. If they really want people to see them as more than toy users, then they should use the bike for more than fitness equipment. But who am I to judge? Shut up and ride.
• Gotta get out for more mileage but these damn World Cup games are crimping my style.
• Taking 'Z' to Sunday school today, I ran across an interesting trio, two on interesting bikes.

Nicely chromed early-80's Schwinn Traveler, according to Justin (?). Added details include Brooks, front generator hub (I think newer 20"SON, front and rear dynolights), and nice metal fenders. It was an impressive package.

Vic's Heron in all its pimped-out Rivvy glory

• There were 3 riders in this little grupetto, which I found to be the inaugural Sunday morning 9.00 ride of Vic's Classic Bikes. The story on Vic is that he has a personal collection of more than 1,000 bikes- or is it 100?- and he opened his first official shop just last year in a part of town near my school and Sunergos, God's answer to coffee. (in more ways than one). He didn't last too long there, so he's moved into the B'town corridor. The problem is that now the B'town corridor is more than replete with bike shops- Drew and Derek at OnYourLeftCycles, BardstownBike, Vic's, and Parkside, which is the fixie shop. I feel sorta bad for Drew and Derek because they run a solid little shop, but how do you keep economies of scale going to 4 shops in 2 miles? Instead of 1 or 2 shops keeping busy with maintenance, that business is spread among 4. Tough biz. More problematic, will each of the 4 have to "niche-i-fy" themselves even more, i.e. OYLC the bmx/'cross shop, Vic's the classic steel, Bardstown the mainstream and Parkside the fixie shop. What fun is that? Good for Vic, though, for sponsoring a slow-n-steady Sunday morning ride. And he's got LOTS of nice, classic steel.

New signs posted indicating that the coolest part of the Riverwalk, which happens to be the oft sunken part, is officially closed. They built a trail on a flood plain; it didn't work out.

• Did a quickish 1.5hr yesterday afternoon post-soccer, pre-supper. Ughh! My wife told me she saw a registered 95F in the middle of the afternoon, and it certainly felt like it! With a finite amount of time, I decided to ride a little harder, and for some strange reason I took the Bleriot. I can't remember a "fast" ride on the Bleriot. I also decided to ride some hills in the Parks at a harder tempo than normal. I acquitted myself pretty well, at least for a little while. Going up hill#5 toward the top I thought my head had caught on fire. I slowed down a bit. #6 was sorta fun b/c I was in an easier gear. I fella passed me with some panache, but I drop down a gear and fought my way back up close to his wheel. 'course, I was wasted after that for a bit. After that, I still did 3 more hills, giving me 9 for the day. My avg speed ended up coming down about 1mph towards the end, but it felt good to ride some tempo for a change. This week needs a long ride if I'm to do the 85m to Lexington in a few weeks.
• Isn't Blogger getting crafty with their design features? Makes me think they're going to start charging soon.