New Bike

On Sunday I bought a used mountain bike I found on craigslist. I'll skip on disclosing the price, but price was the main reason for going used: I didn't want to spend alot, but I didn't want a $300 mountain bike.

It's an '05 Giant Yukon Disc. Hardtail, disc brakes, trigger shifters, and some insanely odd 26x2" 80PSI tires.

So I rode it to work today. Since it was snowy out this morning I figured it was a good day to break her in. It does pretty well in this crap. Ice isn't so great, I really need studded tires for ice (I fell once on the ice). Snow though, for snow it does wonderfully!
On dry pavement it's not so nice. The road bike has spoiled me.

Anyway it looks like I'm gonna be about 11 for 20 for commuting this month. Pretty good given that I had only a road bike for the first 3 weeks.

Edit: A picture.

Saturday Ride

Distance: 25mi
Avg: 13.5mph
Route: Around the south side trails

Yesterday was a pretty nice ride. It was fairly windy, but the wind really only bothered me going straight south (almost directly into it) on parts of the trail with little coverage and some mild incline.
Still some slick spots. But not too bad.

Lots of irritating dog walkers and walkers. Special thanks to the older couple who thought the dividing line was a convenient his and hers trail setup.

MySpace

I don't have a MySpace account. I've always had sort of a moral issue with them: They allow users to modify the appearance of their pages; I firmly believe that's a crime against The Internet. You'd probably have to have seen opendiary to understand why I think this is a sin.

Anyway, other than that I don't care that MySpace exists. It never bugged me. But today I find a dozen e-mails from MySpace in my inbox, and some junkmail (I don't get junkmail, I've had this account since gmail went public and I don't get junkmail). Somone signed up for myspace with my e-mail address!
They then confirmed it. It wasn't horrible to clean up, I logged in using the password they set (asshole33 -- obviously this person doesn't like me or this spammer has an odd sense of humor).

They had created some friends. One was Mz. and my last name. So I'm a little lost.

Anyway, I'm mostly pissed that someone signed up for myspace with my e-mail address successfully. So I'm putting this here as, you know, evidence. When they decide to shut down MySpace I'll be all for it ;).

Fixing the Wife's Bike

My wife inherited her bike, it's about a 10 year old Schwinn hybrid. It's the old school WSD: Two down tubes, no top tube.

Other than the obvious structural and aesthetic deficiencies this design presents I've been noticing other things: The rear brake cable is a mess: It bends around corners cables shouldn't bend around, especially not on a bike where they're exposed to dirt, mud, water, snow, etc.

It also features cantilever brakes with plastic housings for the pullback springs. Of course, one was cracked. That's okay though, the springs are too weak anyway: I'm going to try to find decent brakes to put on this bike. The frame and forks have mounts for caliper brakes, but I'm not sure if I can use them with the wheel it has.

The tires are rotten. Oops, shouldn't have bought tubes for them before looking at the tires!

The derailleurs were still well aligned though! And the chain was good as new, with only minor damage to one sprocket.

Oh, and the rear wheel isn't true. I guess I get to learn how to true wheels now. I figure by the time this bike is in good working order we'll be out about $150, probably a third of its original price. A lot of that would disappear if the brakes weren't ... below my expectations.

Oh well, can't complain about free, right?

Flat Tire. Crap!

The odometer reads 804 (it's been a long winter), and poof. The tire begins deflating after a winter formed crack in the bike path.

So I bought a patch kit and bike mountable pump today; and a couple of spare tubes. The tube was patchable though, so I figured a $0.30 patch would be fine over a $6 tube.

Oh well, I was ready for the ride to be over anyway. It was cold today. The temperature was fine, but there was a lack of sun exposure and it was very windy.

I also saw warming patches at the shop. For $2 I'll skip them and buy shoe covers. But I'm wondering if I can order a box online for something more reasonable, like four times cheaper.

The Forecast

Well, the forecast looks pretty dismal. 3-6 inches tomorrow followed by weather that might melt snow by the weekend if there weren't more snow in the forecast later in the week.

I've gotta stop checking the weather, it's too depressing.