Icemanbb's Weblog

Great Allegheny Passage

icemanbb — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:12:59 +0000

I got out with a buddy and rode (out-and-back) the section between Connellsville and Confluence. Great weather. It’s the first time I’ve had a chance to get out and do a longish ride (~60 miles round trip) in quite a while. The trail is in good shape through this section, a bit narrow in a few sections but still navigable for two way traffic, if people stay to the right and ride single file where needed. I felt really good and not really that tired at the end. I did add a few extra miles because I missed the turn off to the car at the shopping center in Connellsville (the rail car is somewhat hidden by brush. I got about four additional miles up the road and when my buddy hadn’t caught up to me I thought he might have had a problem so I retraced back to where he was the last time I saw him. – It should be noted that I managed to miss the turn again. I didn’t see him so I turned back around and – yes you got it – missed the turn for a third time. A few miles up the path my cell phone rings so I stopped and answered it. I was met with “Dude, where are you. I’m at the truck, got my bike on the rack…” So I turned around yet again. This time he was waiting at the turn, but of course now I could see the rail car. At least my error was not as painful as him forgetting to unclip before stopping (in Ohiopyle, before a crowd naturally). Reminded me of the guy on Laugh-In on the tricycle.

The lesson I learned from this was that the GPS works better if you have the map page displayed as opposed to compass page with speed data displayed.

Broken Chain

icemanbb — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:43:47 +0000

My bike commute to work is generally a pretty innocuous 9.5 mile round trip. An occasional kamikaze groundhog or deer lurking, in their usual spots near the road. In the two plus years of commuting by bike I’ve only been yelled at (only counting angry yelling) twice. Friday morning though the chain on my Novara Safari broke about halfway up the last hill to work. I walked (obviously) the remainder of the hill and then managed to coast nearly all the way to the building. At lunch a coworker took me to the LBS where I picked up a SRAM PC-951 chain (origonal was a SHIMANO GC-73). I managed to get the chain installed pretty easily (this should have been an omen). I didn’t leave work till late Friday night (7PM) and discovered rather quickly that the chain would slip on a lot of the gears. I managed to get home without much if any extra effort (20-25 min about the same time as normal). I decided not to fool with it tht night. Got up the next morning and went back to work. At work I managed to take a link out and reconnect the chain although it took a lot longer then the initial installation. The ride home Saturday afternoon was better, not as much slippage, but the chain is still too long. I had a “spare” SHIMANO chain at home and so looked at it. It has a 119 links. The SRAM chain has 114 links. I was confused by this since the new chain was shorter by 5 links, before I took an additional link out. It took a few minnutes but then it dawned on me that with all the different makes of bikes and the resultant variation in wheelbases that selling chains with the “exact” number of links for each bike is not practical. I will have to go dig the old chain out of the garbage so I can count the number of links in it for future reference. Ahhhh isn’t experience a great teacher.

Hello World

icemanbb — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:35:52 +0000

I’m just getting started. Not exactly sure of where this is headed yet.