Monthly Archives: April 2016

Yesterday was a beautiful day.  Warm with a very light wind.  I decided to ride west this time and head out to Wellington, Oh.  It’s only about six miles away so it would be an easy ride.  Just enough to start to get the legs in shape.

Got on the road and an annoying sound was coming from the bike.  Checked the front brake and it was fine.  Finally it became so annoying that I pulled over and found that the rear brake was rubbing.  Although I am a certified Fred I carry a tool kit and thanks to the bike maintenance class I took at the Swerve Bike Shop I was able to adjust my brakes and solve the problem.  I was very pleased with myself as I am not known as being a handy guy.

The ride took my past farms and woodland.  Wellington is an old town with big houses.  In the late 1800’s it was the cheese capital of the world.

I took a video, just to show what it is like to ride around where I live.  I screwed up and didn’t pause it so it shows my avg speed as being much slower.  No big deal.  Also, I’ve found that having the software overlay the GPS info onto the video is very time consuming.  It took four hours to do the overlay.  That is why I am posting this the next day.  Like I said, I am learning.

This is going to be a great season.  Everything is coming together.  Over the past year I’ve talked about my brother having cancer and all the time I’ve spent getting him treatment.  It paid off.  He had a PET scan last week and he is free of cancer.   He is once lucky guy.  When we started his cancer treatment he was given only a 20% chance of this.  Wow.

Weather is finally turning nice.  The plan was to get on the bike around one but after a bunch of phone calls it was closer to 2:30.  Got all ready and found the back tire flat.  Took the back wheel off and found a small hole in the tire.  Replaced the tube and realized that I hadn’t replaced a back wheel in years.  Within minutes my hands were covered in grease, my chain was in knots and my derailleur didn’t look right.  Scary.  I came in, washed my hands and looked at a couple YouTube videos to make sure I did it right.  I felt incredibly stupid but what can you do?  Here are the videos I used.

Once on the road it was cool and windy.  I just wanted an easy ride so I headed east.  The plan was to ride ten to fifteen miles.  It’s going to get nice from now on so just wanted to get some miles on. Rode through the country and ended up going through Penfield.

I saw a few hawk, large number of vultures and one fat groundhog.  Everywhere around me people were getting going, mowing lawns and outside work.  It felt like Spring. I took a video but nothing interesting.  I’ll post the good ones, I promise.

It will be sunshine and warmer temperatures for the next few days.  I’ll be on the bike.  It’s been far too long.

We had an incredibly mild winter and then Spring came and took a dump.  We had high winds, rain and then snow storms that were far worse than any during the Winter months.  Just a few days ago my backyard looked like this.

Temperatures were wildly erratic and low with high winds.  It looks like they are stabilizing now and I should be on the bike tomorrow and every day after that.  I need to get some serious miles in and melt some of this excess girth.