Discharged, recharged

Work has been spilling over into my private life a bit too much lately, and I anticipate more of the same in the weeks to come. To keep myself relatively centered, I kicked out some space to take myself a four-day weekend. I had designs on going camping near some trout-filled lake or maybe just hanging back in the Old Pueblo and sleeping in. I did neither.

Instead, I woke up early, taking advantage of the cool mornings to get in the kind of weight lifting that long work days, high temperatures, and West Nile Virus-carrying mosquitos prevent me from accomplishing during the week. I also dusted off the Chameleon singlespeed and clicked off some sunrise laps around the local regional park. I rode pretty damned well considering it was my first venture off pavement since late February. Looks like my expanding bike commuting mileage base has saved me from oblivion yet again. How much faster will I get if gas goes to 4$ a gallon? Five? Ten? The dogs got two decent walks, and will get a third one tonight if the last of my weekend activities, the drinking of beer, doesn't get too out of hand.

And one last thing before I sign off - there are only two more shopping days until Summer Solstice.

Dopers suck, drinkers do not.

Have we all had a chance to read last Friday's anti-doping Foaming Rant from from Velo News editor-at-large and über-curmudgeon, Patrick O'Grady?

I have, and I fear it was rather unfortunately spot-on in most respects. I did, however, take great exception to the following statement regarding what Mr. O'Grady used to consider sport, as opposed to what might now be labeled entertainment:

"It demanded a high degree of skill and fitness. And it couldn't be something a fat bastard could do drunk while sitting down."

Mr. O'Grady has obviously never seen a singlespeed mountain bike race, much less yours truly in action on behalf of my team at the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo. I have no skills to speak of. I'm unfit and somewhat corpulent. I like a beer or six, and I do as much climbing in the saddle as out, but if that race wasn't sport, then I had better hit the competetive hot dog eating circuit.

In other goings-on, following my late-May misadventure, I installed my road bike's replacement 12-tooth ring and set the bike aside. While riding to work the next morning, I was disappointed to see that the new cog was already bent and, in fact, so were the 2nd through 5th gears. So much for having been a meticulous and thorough mechanic. Also, so much for being able to replace one cog instead of buying a whole new cassette and, of course, another chain.

It turned out that with half the cogs in the stack bent, the new 12-tooth was doomed to conform to the overall warp. In fact, and in retrospect, that likely accounted for the strange, oh-shit-I-just-stripped-the-freehub-body's-threads feeling I experienced when I torqued the cassette's lockring down. At one point, the tool spun freely for a turn or so. I backed everything out, saw that the body wasn't ruined, and put it all back together with no apparent issues. Or so I thought. At any rate, a shiny new cassette and chain are already here, waiting to be installed and at some point in the very distant future (I hope), bent.

To offset the financial setback of having to replace a great deal of my drivetrain and to keep a modicum of dirtbag cred, I would offer that my most-recent thrift score was a medium-sized Timbuk2 messenger bag for the sum of $1.49 at a certain charitable organization's retail outlet. The last messenger bag I found at a different secondhand shop, same brand but a smaller model with, inexplicably, 2003 County Music Awards embroidery, cost me a whopping $5.99. New drivetrain expensive, old bags cheap. Win some, lose some.