Inside

So I went up to LincolnWoods for a little while a couple weeks back, the day before the snow. I am completely out of shape for mountain biking! I wrecked twice on easy stuff, and once on a hard section. I sort of forgot that newly fallen dry leaves are a zero traction surface. Sure, that's my excuse... My skills atrophied in the months I was away from actual challenging riding. Short of some stuff in Arcadia, there just isn't anything like Lincoln in the southern part of the state.

I think I only rode for 45 minutes or so, but I was shot... my lungs were burning. It was fun, though. I had a grin on my face the whole time, until the check engine light came on in my car on the way home... Gonna need to do something about that. That'll teach me to drive my car to go bicycling...

I set myself up with an indoor trainer yesterday, so hopefully I'll have better fitness by the time the ice goes away from the woods. I took my first indoor "ride" today, and it's definitely a workout. More sustained effort than outside, where you can coast. It's pretty boring though, so good tunes or a DVD or something are definitely in order.

Project SST is underway

The project to turn my old mountain bike into a singlespeed has officially begun. I spent my spare time during the last week stripping off the old shifters, grips, brakes (that didn't work anyway) and levers, deraileurs, cogset, and cables. That was the easy part. Disassembly is free. While I was at it I cleaned and regreased the hubs. I'll also need to replace the crankset and BB, but I haven't been able to bring myself to actually do that part yet. It seems the idea of keeping the bike rideable during this process has been abandoned, but I don't feel so bad. I've got a couple other rigs to ride, and the parts I took off were either shot or sucked to begin with.

Now that the bike is broken down, it has been put back in the corner of my "shop" for a little while. No further progress can be made without parts, but that'll have to wait for some money. I'm excited, though, to see an old bike on its way to new life...

And now for something totally different...

Check out some cool, wooden surfboards, made here in the Northeast.

http://www.grainsurfboards.com