Oh, and PIAA (I see you lurking, mister), I got my spring replaced, Mikes Bikes just gave it to me, which was more than nice of them, and I put the small end facing the wheel. THings are running much better now :O

 

Today's ride was sweet! REAL muddy though and that climb back up to Auburn was a *****, but worth it in the strength department. PICS

Low clouds and a fair bit of rain. It didn't really start raining on us until the climb back up, but it did rain throughout most of the ride:





Stagecoach wasn't too muddy yet, just mostly soggy. I bombed the last descent and topped 30mph

















My legs got it worse than my bike.

 

Mike - I checked my brakes. I've got decent pad left on the fronts, but my cables are way loose. I've got the barrels out pretty far now :\. Probably need new cables soon but I did adjust the pads in a bit to compensate for the wear and it's feeling much better.

 

Are we riding next week? Weather shows a little rain on Saturday but I'm not worried about that. FHDL might be fun, but that steep climb might be rough, and the section with the exposed erosion stuff might be a bit hairy. You know, Olmstead is always a poopy mud filled ride of fun, maybe we could do that, or even Hidden Falls? Lemme know

 

Great, free fix FTW!

 

I've got my company's Christmas party in SF Saturday night (12/16). If I ride on Saturday, it would have to be very early (~7AM) and even that might be pushing it.

 

doh! Ok, I understand. Well, if you have any time off on maybe Wednesday, Thursday or Friday afternoon the following week, let me know. I'm also down to ride on the 23rd if you guys are

 

23rd for sure

 

I went down to the free maintenance clinic and Mikes Bikes tonight. Was pretty sweet, they showed me how to adjust my derailleurs (it's not as hard as it looks), we replaced the cable and one of the housings for my rear derailleur, etc. I'm SOOO dangerous now

In other news, my bottom bracket appears to be dead . Last night I was riding the bike around in front of the house and this horrible clicking sound started happening. Tonight when I had it at Mikes the guys there pulled it apart and tried to do a quick regrease and check but there's a lot of friction on the non-drive side bearing and the clicking, though better, is still there. Luckily, I've had problems with my BB before and the bike is still < 1 year old so I'm gonna call up REI tomorrow about some warranty action. Suppose I'll be riding my roadie this weekend though

 

Just replace it with a sealed BB. I can't believe they even still make BB's that need to be greased.

 

Yeah, I'll have to see what they say. Something wasn't right - when we removed the BB a bunch of water came pouring out of the BB shell :rotfl:. My BB is an external type so I'm not sure what that changes as far as the available bearing types. We'll see what they say - I was thinking this might be a good time to upgrade the BB with something a little lighter and better :\

 

Have you been riding through creeks again?

 

:rotfl: who me?

 

I replaced the BB and both hubs on my Bridgestone for that exact reason.

But it was fun.

 

Heh, glad I took my bike to REI. Last night my BB was silent. It started popping a little more today. Took it in, mech. tried to remove the crank/bb to look at what could be the issue and couldn't get the crank out. He dug around and found out that part of the BB has this protective shell around one of the bearings and it's got a huge crack and the spindle has bent in to it, which is why he can't remove the crank . He said it would take him and at least one other person an hour or so tomorrow to bang the part out of the bike. He said he had his doubts about the reliability of this BB/crank combo (they're designed to be a one piece setup, meaning that crank and BB work only together) so he's going to try and get me a Shimano crank and BB on REIs dime :wiggle:. We'll see what comes of it. If they want to charge me I might try to swing the FSA CF crank at Mikes on sale right now