21.8mi

This morning I was hoping for a nicer ride than Monday’s. I defintely got a nicer ride, and it was thrilling to feel the sense of success in the saddle again.

This morning was a little warm — about 75 to start, and 85 by the time I finished. It seems like I might ride a bit better when the temp is up just a bit. As I look back, the rides that I’ve enjoyed the most have had me sweating, huffing and puffing. And on those same rides, it seems like I have more range, and can ride farther. Hmmmm…..

Anyway, today’s ride was definitely nice, and I guess the Katy and I kissed and made up after our falling out on Monday. 😉

6.8mi

I figured I’d get a ride in this morning before Morgan and crew arrived. That’d put me on the right schedule for the week, and maybe I could even stretch the ride a bit. Well, that didn’t happen! 🙂

I got out on the trail early, way before the heat of the day, and no matter how hard I pedalled, I just couldn’t will myself to get into the ride. It was weird, and the first misfire I’ve had since I started cycling in May. I struggled to Defiance — just three miles down the trail — and limped back to Weldon.

I hope I never see that kind of ride again! I’m not disturbed by it though. I know every day can’t be a 20+mi day for me, and I am bound to have great days and not so good ones. That’s just human nature.

But watch out Katy Trail — I’ll be back! 😉

21.8mi

Finally today, I was able to return to the trail, tackling a more normal ride. Between my little fainting episode last Saturday night and the blown tire from Wednesday night, it’d been eight days since I’d had a good, long ride.

And, boy did I feel it! It was a hard slug through the first half of the ride — usually it’s just the first few miles that I have troubles with. My legs complained and complained. And surprisingly, there was no one on the trail on the way to Augusta from Weldon. It was 60 degrees, a little bit of fog, making for a crisp morning. After the horrible heat from last week, I figured the trail would be packed. Nope. Even on the way back, there were very few folks.

The trail was a mess too. There was tree shrapnel all over the trail, fallout from the big storms Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Big tree limbs draped low over the trail, and in places blocked it. Yes, the Katy was hit pretty hard from all the ruckus late in the week.

However, I made, after forcing myself to stick to my guns and get my usual ride in. I think I’ll probably get another ride in tomorrow morning. Morgan and crew are coming to town tomorrow night, and I doubt I’ll be able to get my Wednesday night ride in — although I may be able to get one in Wednesday morning, or Thursday afternoon.

I guess the good news is that I’m back on the trail, and burning up the miles. Today was another milestone — I crossed 500mi of riding since I started this crazy excursion in early May. I’m still eyeing 1000 miles as my target for the year. If the weather’s good, I think I have a good shot at it!

3.5mi

Last night, I changed my first blown tube — yay! It was a struggle, but I won. However, the down side was that noticed a tear in the sidewall of my tire. That’s probably either a contributing factor to my tube blowing, it was collateral damage. Either way, it was a successful operation…. until I noticed the tear. That meant a new tire.

So this morning, I was off to West County Cycles for a new tire. While I was there, I decided to get a floor pump — figured I’d need it for the next time I work on a tire here at the house. Those CO2 cartridges are great, but are a one-time-good-deal. I could certainly see where I’d wanna pump air through a tube I’d repaired, and the CO2 just doesn’t fit the bill.

West County had a bunch of pumps. I went for the one with the longest barrel — I figured that would deliver the most air with the fewest pumps. I also made sure that it had a tire pressure gauge built-in — wanna make sure my tires are the right pressure!

Once I got everything unloaded from the shop, I fitting Sio on my old Huffy Monaco, and hauled us both to Defiance to ride a bit. This was Sio’s first ride with me, and I was thrilled. She kept telling me that she thought she wouldn’t be able to ride even a mile. Well, a mile passed, and then two, and then three. In all, she rode 3.5mi, and probably coulda done more. I didn’t wanna push it though — it was her first excursion with me, after all!

The best thing about the whole ride was her telling me that wanted to ride more with me. That’s a cool thing! Of course the Ted Drewes from the Katy Bike Rental shop wasn’t a bad thing either!

It’s no leg-shaped, fishnet-hosed lamp, but my Katy Trail Challenge shirt arrived today!

click on the image to enlarge

It’s a nice enough t-shirt, with a map of the Katy Trail, and emblazened with the phrase “I conquered the Katy one mile at a time!” I did it in bigger chunks than a mile at a time, but still….! 🙂

3.0mi

7.0mi

Despite the heat (100 degrees), I planned to ride tonight. I looked at the National Weather Service maps for St. Louis, and saw some real ugly storms 100-150 miles north of town, but they were headed for central Illinois. There was another cluster sitting right on top of Rolla, growing in intensity, but I figured I probably had time to get my ride in.

When Mr. Slate pulled the birdie’s tail, I slid down the back of my brontosaurus and cruised toward the Weldon trailhead. I knew today was gonna be tough, but I figured I’d take it easy, maybe ride ten miles or so, and ride toward the I-64 bridge complex so I’d be in shade most of the way.

Typically, I hate the heat, but there’s something about riding through it that I really get into — especially when shielded from the sun by the canopy of trees. I rode slow at first, building to higher speed as I went along, trying not to push it too much.

While along the trail, I saw probably have a dozen deer, including some itty-bitty fawns. They were all headed toward the boggy water, I guess in need of some relief from the heat.

I hit the bridge complex, and felt great. I was really thinking about going on up to Pitman Hill — about three miles — but decided that if I wanted the extra miles, I could ride to Defiance from the Weldon trailhead. That’d put me not too far away from the truck in case I got exhausted quickly along the way. I turned back toward Weldon.

The ride back was going quick. For some reason, I was keeping a great speed, and felt like I wasn’t working hard at all. All of sudden I heard a sound — pfffffft! It sounded like startled cat hissing at me, and it totally freaked me out. I looked around, but didn’t see anything, although an upset feline could be hiding easily in the trees along the trail. I got a bad feeling about what had just happened, and looked at the front tire — no issues.

I looked at the back tire. Dead as a doornail. Ugh.

Now you’d expect that this would be a great opportunity for me to try out the new tire repair kit, or to replace the tube with the one I bought. Yeah, that’d be the right answer. Except that I had left that gear on my desk at home. Ugh again. I came to the swift realization that I bought a tire repair kit just in the nick of time for when I’d need it, only to not have it with me. D’oh!

At this point, I was three miles from the trailhead, and there was nothing to do but walk the bike back to the trailhead. Toward Weldon I plodded along, pushing Bandit at a measely 3.3mph as opposed to the 14.5mph I was enjoying prior to my tire expiring.

A fellow cyclist stopped to ask if I needed help — that was nice! I declined, as there wasn’t much he could do for me and I was in no distress. He rolled on and I continued down the trail. I passed a guy on one of the trailside benches who quipped, “Nice day to take your bike for a walk!” I got a chuckle out of that, and stopped to talk with him for a minute or two, and then continued on.

The good news was that my bike odometer was working, so I had a good idea how fast I was going, how far there was to go, and could make an educated guess as to when I’d get back to the trailhead, so I was in no hurry, and had no worries. With a mile or so to go, I noticed the sun was no longer beating through the trees, and I could just see that a big cloud had eclipsed it. The shade was glorious, and the air temperature felt like it dropped a little. I figured that this was that little storm I’d seen over Rolla, blowing off some clouds our direction. I had plenty of time to get back to the trailhead before anything would happen.

I walked my bike down the ramp at Weldon, loaded up, examined my tire (couldn’t find anything obvious), and about then the sun came out. Good timing.

Today’s excursion was certainly one of the more interesting ones for me, with just seven miles of riding and three miles of walking. I have a mammoth blister on the heel of my left foot — my riding sandals just weren’t built with hiking on gravel in mind. No biggie, and that won’t keep me from riding on Saturday.

Now I’ve just gotta figure out how to replace the tube in my rear tire…. 🙂

As you’ve probably noticed, the sidebar of the site has a new item. I’ve joined the MS 150 bike run in Columbia MO come September.

This is a sponsored ride, and if you feel so inclined, you can visit my MS 150 web page link in the sidebar, and donate to support this worthy cause.

This is a terrific thing for me. I’m thrilled that I can use my newly rediscovered legs for something useful, and it’ll give me the opportunity to try a long ride with appropriate support every ten miles or so. Right now, I’m thinking I’ll try the 75 mile ride on Saturday, and slim down to the 35 mile ride on Sunday…. unless Saturday goes extremely well, in which case I might try another 75 mile ride.

Of course, the real winner here is the MS Society, and I’m thrilled to be part of a labor of love as this is.

I’ve even ordered a team jersey to make it official! 🙂

So, what do you do if you bust a tire tube out on the road? Well, one answer would be to walk the bike back to the nearest trailhead, and hope for either a bike shop to be closeby, or hope the cellphone works there. That’s been my path until this weekend.

I’ve been thinking about this scenario, and finally decided to do something about it. I talked with Joe from West County Cycles — we were in there looking for a bike for Beck — about pumps, and kinda figured that’s where I’d head. After a few minutes discussion though, I realized that a CO2 cartridge inflation kit made more sense. They carry the Genuine Innovations line, so I picked up their Tire Repair & Inflation Wallet. This’ll fit nicely in my bike trunk, and I think, along with a replacement tire tube, it could save me a lot of grief on the road.

There’s enough air in two cartridges for a couple of inflations, a patch kit, some handles to help replace a tube and a nozzle device to get the air from the cartridges to the tube. These cartridges are about $3-$4 each, and I can’t imagine why you’d carry a pump instead of these easy-to-use cartridges. I’ll trade $3 for a lot of pumping any day of the week!

I’ve never changed the tube in a bike tire before, and I hope I never have to. At least I’m prepared now, just in case!

21.8mi

I set off this morning, in hunt of another good-sized ride, knowing that my bike was ready and tuned. It was a little warm this morning, already about 70 degrees, but I knew I had the coolest part of the day ahead of me. I should’ve realized things could be interesting when I crossed the river, and the bridge complex was so fogged in that I couldn’t hardly see the cars in front of me.

I got to the trailhead at Weldon, and get ready to ride, hitting the trail about 6.30am. I was no more than a mile down the trail before I was shrouded in fog. It was so bad that I was having to stop almost every mile, and wipe the dew from my glasses. By the time I got to Augusta, I was drenched.

I stopped there and talked to a couple of other riders who indicated this was some of the worst fog they’d seen on the trail. While I was talking with them, I could see the water droplets flitting about, driven by unknown forces in unpredictable directions. It reminded me of being on The Mountain, sitting in the clouds.

I headed back, and within two miles, the sun was out, and the fog was off the trail. That made for some beautiful spiderwebs on the trail though, with the sun backlighting their dew-ladened strands.

This was a cool ride, but was really weird. That much fog really made it tough. I guess I’ll need to see if there’s any hints out there about keeping the fog off the glasses, as that was the biggest hurdle for me. There were times that I had to ride without them, as I could see better with uncorrected eyes! Silly, silly…..

Anyway, a good ride behind, and the first step on my next 450 miles!

Tonight I got my bike back from West County Cycles. I dropped it off there on Wednesday after my ride for its 30-day checkup. They found nothing out of the ordinary, and talked to me about maintenance that will keep me busy after my rides. However, those things’ll keep my bike in good order for a long time, and that’s what’s important.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to ride with my cleaned and tuned bike, and I’m hoping to click off another 20-30 miles. Kinda depends on the weather. It’s supposed to be hot, hot, hot tomorrow — 98 for the high, with a heat index of 110 — but I’m hoping for a reasonably nice morning.

BTW, Beck has named my bike. Sio named the truck Smokey, so Beck has named my bike The Bandit. Yep. Smokey and The Bandit.

Wouldn’t expect anything different from me, would ya? 🙂