Second ride

I took Circe out for a second spin after getting home from work last night. I eschewed the W&OD, which was chock full of other cyclists and strolling families, for neighborhood streets and gunned it to the top end of my comfort level. It's going to take a while before shifting becomes natural; since there are no dials at the shifters, I tend to look down at the chain to figure out an approximation of what gear I'm in. Yeah, that's about as safe as it sounds.

I put my hands in a slightly looser position on the horns and saved the thumb/index webbing from further abuse, so that's good. I've wound up with chain grease on the side of my right calf during the past two rides and that's weird. It may be how I'm standing at stops; more research indicated.

Oh, and toe overlap: I have it. In perusing the internet -- because it knows all -- this seems to be a fairly common occurrence with compact frame cycles. It's annoying at very low speeds when I'm steering a fairly sharp turn, but I'm pretty sure I can work around that.

First ride on the Dolce

Tonight was my first actual ride on the Dolce and I learned many things during the short, six mile jaunt:

• She wants to go fast. I barely had to pedal and she was off and running. I even raced up that blasted hill to the 28 bridge at 12mph. WHAT?? And, when I got home I wasn't a sweaty mess despite riding faster and farther than I do during a commute. Instead, I was merely glistening and my hair was almost completely dry.
• My posture needs a lot of work. That's hardly surprising since, aside from the test rides, my road bike experience was a couple of short rides on my cousin's bike in my early teens. Riding on the horns and in the drop bars put pressure on the webbing between my thumbs and index fingers. Also, I don't need bike shorts for anything less than thirty miles on the Ariel, but I could've used them tonight. The saddle isn't that different from the hybrid's, but my posture put uncomfortable pressure on new and interesting places. Ouch.
• She is light! I already knew this because I've goofed around using the bike for bicep curls. :) There was a bit of a cross wind during my ride and I felt like I might have been blown off the trail if I weren't so heavy.
• She's also kind of squirrelly. Riding one handed was... frightening. I'll get there, and I might even get to hands-free someday, but it's going to take some practice.
• Her name is Circe and we're going to be fast friends. See what I did there?

New bike!

Back in January, I test rode a Specialized Dolce Comp Compact and fell in love. I had decided that my next bike would be of the road variety so I could increase my mileage and participate in metric and actual centuries. When my bonus hit the bank account on Friday, I knew this was the weekend that I would make that bike mine.

Since I was already at the bike shop and learned from the manager that all branches of Spokes give club discounts on bikes and accessories -- Bike Me DC counts as a club, whoo hoo! -- I had Max pull the 54cm Dolce down and prep it for a test ride. Despite the gorgeous weather, the test was a short ride because 1) I'd already ridden the same style of bike and I wanted to make sure this one felt the same and 2) I needed to save my legs for the (uphill) ride back home. I carried the bike back into the store and declared, "SOLD!" I then phoned Scott and asked him to drive over and carry the new bike home. I think everyone was shocked that I wasn't going to ride it home, but I want to get used to the new bike in my own neighborhood rather than the open road and trail. After all, I'm used to a flat handlebar and a fairly upright position. The horns, drop bars, and brake/shifter combo levers are going to take some time to learn.

I still haven't ridden her, mostly due to lack of time. It's looking like the weather will be fairly mild, for February, on Sunday and I will be able to make friends with my new ride and figure out a proper name for her. "Nancy" is still stuck in my head despite not sounding "fast". Mom suggested that spelling the name as "Nanci" sounds racier. I think she's right.

Empowerment

My friend Charlene, who bought a bike at the swap meet last weekend, left her bike at my house because she couldn't fit it in her car. We made arrangements to get together this weekend and go for a ride and find her a suitable rack so the bike could live at her house. In preparation for our ride, and because I had no other plans on Friday night, I turned the kitchen into a makeshift garage and set to work sprucing up her bike.

After wiping off the dust and cleaning gunk off the rims, whitewalls, and spokes, I lubed the chain. No problems there. I flipped the bike right side up and gave the back tire some air. All cool, there. I gave the front tire some air. All good... no, wait. What's that hissing? Oh no, I killed her tire!

Actually, the stem had nearly ripped off the tube. There's no telling how old the tube was, but given the amount of cracks in the tires, I wouldn't call them new. Happily, my favorite bike shop had tubes to fit her tires and I rode over Saturday morning to retrieve those as well as buy the Dolce (more on that later).

I've decided that if you have to fix a flat, the absolute best scenario is to do it in your own home with all your tools available and to work on a fairly inexpensive bike which belongs to someone else. The front tube was an absolute cinch to replace and I felt pretty proud of myself for managing on my own. The back tire seemed much more complicated because, unlike Scott's and my bikes, there's no cassette or derailleur: there's just a hub and a coaster brake and some other contraption. Scott didn't feel comfortable monkeying around back there. I, on the other hand, didn't know any better and forged ahead because, gosh darn it, my friend was going to have a safe-ish bike! And the contraption had only one little screw which, alarmingly, caused the contraption to fall off when the screw was loosened.

I'd post pictures except 1) I didn't think to take any since everybody but me has changed a flat tire and 2) I'm too embarrassed that the Gentle Readers would identify the contraption as something perfectly benign and simple to manage, which it was...

Anyway, long story longer: I removed the back tire, much to Scott's amazement, and changed out that tube after realizing that I couldn't loosen the tire and old tube until I'd deflated that tube a bit. They don't cover that bit in maintenance classes. Well, I suppose they do as the instructor deflates the example bike's tire to demonstrate how to fix the flat, but the instructor never calls attention to the deflation part. I got the back tire on the bike as well as all of its associated bits and bobs.

So, with new tubes on slightly rotting tires, I then installed front and back fenders, a front basket, bell, and mirror on Charlene's bike. She was delighted. I also installed the rack on the back of her Scion. And before handing over the bike for good, I took a quick test ride to make sure that she wouldn't be the one to pay the price if my mechanical "know-how" caused pieces to fall off while in motion. (They didn't.)

Now all she needs are new tires -- an actual bike mechanic said she could go a little longer on the current ones -- and new grips and she'll be ready to ride for miles and miles and miles. As it is, we got in a five mile ride on Saturday and she can't wait to go for another spin.

Rawr

Every now and then I talk the hubster into meeting me along the trail as I ride home from work. On Wednesday he decided he didn't want to deal with the gym and said he'd meet me for the ride home. I warned him that I needed to do a little shopping as well, but those stops would be mostly surgical strikes.

I wound up leaving the office later than planned thanks to a last minute IM from the bossman and met Scott just before the blind curve on Smiths Switch. He turned around and fell in line behind me before a FedEx truck rumbled up behind us and then passed us with a WIDE berth. Heh heh heh.

Shopping and banking happened. The test run of my Avenir Softside shopping pannier happened (successfully). Not running down pedestrians happened. Seeing another cyclist in the shopping center happened ("He just left Eastern Mountain Sports so that doesn't count," said Scott). We headed for home and something new and exciting-to-me happened.

We rode up the blasted incline to the Route 28 overpass and I stayed in front of Scott the entire freaking time. I not only stayed ahead of him, I pulled away from him. Dude! Plus, I was loaded down with shopping bags, a tote, and my purse. I didn't need to gear down: I was in my middle gears the whole way up. I was breathing heavily when we got to the bridge, but I wasn't wheezing nor jelly-legged.

This morning's commute was pretty amazing. As rough as I felt on Wednesday morning, it was a complete 180 to this morning. I flew along the trail and street in my upper gears (even on the uphills) and beat my average speed of 12mph by almost 2mph. It. Was. Amazing.