Archive for Cycling
Juli’s Knee Surgery
Posted by: | CommentsMy pal Juli just completed the RAGBRAI Iowa bicycle ride in great style. This week long ride across Iowa was in preparation for her knee surgery or was it her last chance to stretch her legs before this planned operation. It runs in the family.
Juli had knee replacement surgery a few days after coming home from our trip to Iowa and is now recovering at home. The weeks since the operation have been spent in therapy and on a torcher chamber device that constantly flexes and straightens the knee keeping the range of motion in the joint. This sounds like real fun. This goes on even when trying to sleep.
Here she is working out on a stationary bicycle. Juli, be well and recover as quickly as your body allows and we will see you on the bike trail.
Its Getting Close To RAGBRAI Time
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Its that time again for the Cycling Pigs to ride again. For those not in the know the Cycling Pigs is a riding group, a bicycle riding group started a little over a year ago by a few brave souls for the purpose of organizing a bicycle trip through Iowa. The Registers Annual Great Ride Across Iowa or RAGBRAI is set to start in another month. This is its thirty sixth running of the ride across Iowa with numbers over ten thousand rides most days. You can read more about the ride at the RAGBRAI web site.
Its only 4 weeks until the planes leave for Iowa or rather Omaha Nebraska where we fly in. Omaha is the staging area for another great Ride Across Iowa. This year as we did last, we will be hosted by the Pork Belly Venture group. This is a large sag wagon support group that includes tents and fun stuff for the entire week. Real fun stuff like the Shower Thingy. Check it out.
As many of you know the recent rains have flooded out central sections of Iowa and part of the intended ride route. I do not think that any of these terrible floods will effect the ride even though it has effected thousands of residents of Iowa. The damaged homes will not have had time to receive full repair when the ride begins and many Iowans will be still struggling with the aftermath of the heavy rains and flooding that these 500 years water levels have brought. We will spend a much money as we can when going through these areas so maybe that could help cheer up some spirits. We are looking into some possible donation sites right now so that more help could be channeled into the right direction.
This year the Cycling Pigs group has grown. Last year there were four, this year we total eight. The Cycling Pigs has doubled in one year. Thats a pretty good average. So we will see how things go. More to follow soon.
Did you check out the Shower Thingy?
Honey I’m Home
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Honey I’m Home used to be the household saying in the “Leave It To Beaver” days. Many of you will not even know or remember hearing of the TV show “Father Knows Best“. Back in the 1950′s women were stay at home moms and the men worked. Today things have changed. To get an update follow the link on the cartoon to the full story.
Oh for the good old days when men were men and women were just women and not the CEO’s climbing the cooperate ladder. Of course I jest. Today is a different day.
On a more personal note. Today was the fourth day in a row that I was able to go out in the sun and ride my bicycle. In the past four days I have put in about 150 miles or so and started work on a nice summer tan. The weather here in Arcadia and the San Gabriel Valley has been gorgeous this past week with Spring galloping in bringing sunny days and really warm weather. Gone are the days of wearing arm warmers and leggings. This morning I rode out the drive way with a sleeveless jersey and no undergarments. By the time we got back to Monrovia after our tour down through the Rose Bowl the temps were 77 degrees (25 degree Centigrade) and sunny. These past few days have been really gorgeous out after our relatively wet and cool winter season.
The new bike coming from Dean Cycles should be ready this month. I ordered the El Diente titanium frame about five months ago. This custom frame has the S&S couplers and will break down to fit into a suit case. This will be the bike that I take with me to the Iowa RAGBRAI ride across Iowa and again in the fall when we travel to China. That will be another story.
Andy’s New Corsa Extra
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Andy my riding buddy just picked up a used Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra frame this past week. After fine tuning at Temple City Bike shop the bike looks awesome. Actually its exactly like mine except for the paint. Both frames are the Corsa Extra in 56 cm. His is the Blue and Red while mine is the Team colors of the 7-11 fame circa mid 1980′s. Bob Roll who is now announcing on Versus Direct TV was a member of the 7-11 “Team Slurpy”.
Today we took off from Stan’s Monrovia Bike shop for the usual ride down to South Pasadena and the Heirloom Bakery shop. Yummmmy those Heirloom cakes are really something special. We had to ride extra just to work off the calories from the cakes we ate this morning but that is our usual routine anyway.
I picked up the Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra last year when the frame came out as a reissue of the team frame. In the bottom of the cellar at the Eddy Merckx shop in Brussels there were a few stacks of old tubes left from the days of the Corsa Extra. These frames were origanalluy made from Columbus Tubing and this tube set is no longer being manufactured by Columbus. Some one had the great idea of using up the remained of the tube sets and to put out a limited edition of the Team Frame that sported this tube set – Team 7-11. There were only one hundred of these frames made last year and I picked one up as soon as they became available. The only difference between the reissued frame sets and the ones made in the 80′s is the threadless folk. The reissue still sports the all steel fork but mine is a threadless variety that was not thought of in the mid 1980′s.
Andy will be one of the riders in this years annual Cycling Pigs great Iowa adventure at RAGBRAI. I am looking forward to this ride in July very much. I don’t think
Andy will be taking his Corsa Extra to Iowa but its an idea anyway. I will be getting a new travel bike to take made by Dean Cycles in Boulder Colorado. I just talked to John there at the shop and he told me the frame is brazed up and is just going through quality assurance now. Maybe in a couple of weeks I will put up some pictures of the new titanium travel bike with S&S couplers. More on this later for sure but for now it back into the woodwork. This March starts a training cycle that will take me through the summer. My plans for Iowa is to kick some major butt!
Kimball’s Last Ride
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You have all heard the stories of the Texas Rangers and their demise during the outlaw days of the Wild West. The Hole in The Wall gang supposedly killed them all including Dan Reid the brother of the leader of the Texas Rangers. “Who Was That Masked Man“. The Lone Ranger of course, thought to be dead and nursed back to health by Tonto his future side kick, to ride and fight injustice where ever it may be found. Charming story. Todays Lone Ranger is riding off to Greece to spend some time with his “side Kick” Diva! Now that is much better than any old Indian I’m sure. So Kimball is leaving us for several months, leaving for Greece to play in the Parthenon and ride the hillsides of the Greek Isle.
His last day here was spent riding along the Rio Hondo bicycle trail to the constant crooning from Stan, “I Love Riding My Bike” to the tune ‘Oh Give Me A Home……Buffalo’s Roam’ or something like that. The weather was fabulous starting out a little cool and ending up in the mid 70′s. You can still see the snow on the San Gabriel Mountains and the run-off from the hills is still brisk. The water ways are full giving the water foul plenty of room to play among the reeds.
I used this as a little warm up ride after a hard Sunday jaunt to South Pasadena and back through Sierra Madre. I did check out the Chantry Flats road and its open now all the way to the top. Cool, that means I can beat myself up on this hill any time I want.
The Dean custom El Diente titanium frame I ordered a couple of months ago with S&S couplers should be done by the end of the month. This will be my travel bike which I will take to RAGBRAI this year. The cool thing about the travel bike is that it fits into checkable luggage. No added expenses for shipping the bike. How SWEET is that. The cost of the frame will be covered after several trips just in the recovery of shipping costs. Well maybe more than a couple trips but thats OK. Its the prinicple of the thing. Last year I spent almost $300 dollars in shipping costs for bikes traveling around. Now I will have a bike to take to China the next time we go. Now that is something I am really looking forward to.
BTW, I have a new camera. Maybe this is the inspiration to get me to start posting more often. Its the Nikon CoolPiX P5100, a 12 mega pixel wonder. All of the new photos from this little baby can be seen at flickr.
Patric O'Brian
Radical Brewing
