Group Fun

Last night I was able to show up for the Speedway group ride. We usually only have a few road rides in the spring, before the trails dry out and my mostly-MTB team heads for the single track. I'd missed the first couple rides for illness and daddy duty, but I was very happy to be able to make this one.
 
I managed to get in a ride after work to ensure I was going to be suitably fatigued for the group ride later that night. I did a set of VO2max intervals to give myself a handy excuse in case I got dropped. I was primed.
 
The group was fairly large by our standards, and we kept the pace conversational as we wound our way through miles of bike trails. Once we got to a place where we had a little room to open it up a little, my front tire slipped on some gravel and into a grate. That resulted in a slow leak that shortly thereafter made my tire a little too soft, so I gave everyone a nice break while I gave a master class in slow flat fixing. The new tube was eventually installed, and we continued on our way.
 
Immediately after we started, I started noticing a rhythmic ticking coming from my front pseudo-carbon wheel. Afraid it was going to explode at the worst possible time (like on a fast descent), I began a series of futile investigations to find the source of the noise. After a while, I just tried to ignore it and hoped it would hold until the ride was over. Just get me to the keg.
 
Here and there we would take digs on random hills or stretches of road, but sheltered in the draft of my more fit teammates, I was cruising along and enjoying myself. The few times I tried to get froggy resulted in my head filling up with snot, so I was generally content to sit in with my time-bomb wheel and enjoy the ride. We shed the majority of the pack as they peeled off for home, but a few of us hardier souls rode it to the end towards the promise of beer. The Speedway team is sponsored by two of the craft breweries in town, which means we are blessed with proper recovery drinks. You can't reach peak performance without them.
 
I still haven't figured out what was causing the ticking sound, and will investigate further today. My best guess is the long tube stem is clicking against the carbon fairing, but with a suspect quality, low dollar, open mold Chinese carbon wheel set like this you can't eliminate the possibility of a Taliban IED.
 
Oh the chances I will take with my health for the sake of saving a few bucks...

Comments

  1. Tim Joe ComstockMay 3, 2015 at 6:16 AM

    Mike, is it? Correct me if I am wrong here, but am I correct in that you have been posting for lo these many years and have yet to receive a comment? Gad, sir, I would have folded my tents quite awhile back. I am a comment junkie and just love being the center of attention. I applaud your stoicism.

    I found my way here by way of the Wankmeister. You'll be seeing a bump in readership now, for sure.

    I guest posted twice over at Fat Cyclist and after each one my audience almost doubled. Then, out of the blue, a guy named Lloyd Khan picked up on a little piece of fiction I wrote and put it up on his site, Lloyd's Blog. That brought me a nice (albeit small) contingent of non-cycling readers. (At least I guess they were non-cyclists. It never occurred to me to ask.)

    I don't know what your goals are with Alaska Pack Fodder, but let me wish you luck in your endeavor. I just this weekend formally shut down my Blog, The Trailer Park Cyclist, after a very enjoyable four years. Drop by for a look, if you are so inclined.

    tj

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alaska Fat CyclistMay 3, 2015 at 7:29 PM

    Since I'm a giant ego-centric bastard, I usually couldn't care less about other people's opinions. Comments tend to distract from the purity of my genius. Plus, unless you create sock puppets, you need actual readers to post comments. That's a bit of a sticking point, especially for a blog about a sport nobody cares about in a state that's viewed by the rest of the country as merely a location for poorly-produced reality series.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMay 4, 2015 at 5:36 AM

    Northern Exposure wasn't too bad. I thought it was entertaining. My wife might be the show's biggest fan, so I really wasn't in a position to not like it though.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alaska Fat CyclistMay 7, 2015 at 7:18 AM

    When it was in its heyday, I didn't live in Alaska and didn't have any first-hand knowledge of how the state was. Now that I do, I pretty much view it for what it was- entertainment with only a casual association with reality. Day to day life is too mundane to keep people entertained, so you usually have to amp up aspects. It's always been this way, and reality television just is the current evolution of that. It's when people confuse actual reality with reality television that the problems occur.

    ReplyDelete

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