Out on the line
It was distressingly cloudy today, and the weather forecast was oscillating between “thunderstorm” and “showers”, so I didn’t want to ride very far away from home and risk getting soaked to the skin on a hour+ retreat to Sellwood. So I changed my travel plans into a 20-odd mile loop through East Portland (Springwater Trail to 82nd, then Luther, Clatsop, and Flavel back to 39th/41st, then north to Clinton, then back home on the Springwater Trail. This plan didn’t survive intact, because Portland is tiny, so I added a Hawthorne-Mount Tabor appendix to push my loop up to a not-totally-embarrassing 23 miles) and slowly rode around the city with my eyes peeled for rain.
I didn’t get rained on, but I had to chop off a second proposed addition when it started to rain in West Portland as I headed west on Clinton St. But I did manage to get up to the top of Mount Tabor (which, oddly, seems a lot steeper in a car than it does when I’m creeping up the hill in my 66" gear) and then back down via, in part, some gravel paths that went to 1 in 2 grades when I didn’t expect to see them. I am pleased to report that I can successfully steer the xtracycle when the rear wheel is skidding on loose gravel (I wasn’t using very much of the front brake because on those 1 in 2 grades it just made the front wheel skid, and I consider it a matter of pride to not dump the trek and roll down the hill like Jack and mecha-Jill) at 25mph.
I’d updated some of the bicycle on friday – I’d replaced the old dia-compe brake levers with a pair of riv-approved shimano levers – and it’s amazing how much better the bicycle tries to stop when it’s dealing with components that don’t have the wear that the poor old dia-compe levers had. The thing that provoked me to change out the levers is that I smashed my right thumb a couple of weeks ago (thanks to a speed bump which was steep enough to tear the handlebar out of my right hand on the up, then crunch it down on my thumb on the down) and the new “please don’t hurt me” position of my right hand was causing the hood to pull forward and wrap sideways around the lever, so it was a completely delightful surprise when I took the bike out for a test run and managed to lift the rear wheel when I did a quick stop at the end of a downgrade. Regrettably, and despite having the Park Tool page on “how to wrap your handlebar” up on the computer as well as having the back of the bar tape box sitting right there showing me which direction to wrap, I managed to wrap both bars counterclockwise. Again.