Last Week by Bike--Weekend Disaster

By the end of the week, an erie storm came in from the West, riding the headwind--then blocking out the late afternoon sun as I rode home.


Normally these storms come out of the Southeast, from down Old Mexico Way.


This is a sign of Fall and the end of the Monsoons--however, late that night (I think this was Thursday's ride home I've photographed) there was a fierce storm with thunder and lightning.


Saturday's disaster, mes amis. I went a bit beyond my skill level, as you can see above, and installed a front rack on the back of my Raleigh Super Grand Prix commuter bike. Phil at Pima bikes gave the rack for free (he said he kept tripping over it in the shop) and to make Little Egypt happy, I put the trunk she bought me on the rack, so see above. After I really struggled to get everthing off--then all back on, it was clear that the rack with trunk were quite useless. The trunk wont' hold very much, and the rack is too short. So I wasted all afternoon getting it together 0nly to realize it wasn't going to hold what I needed.


As you would expect, Callie was all over me every minute--insisting that I throw the ball or her favorite squeak-ee toy, over and over agian--for hours! Okay that was fun, but just imagine trying to wrestle off a stubborn bolt or nut--and then tossing a tennis ball out in the street for Callie to leap in the air for a catch!

Finally I had to tell Little Egypt that the bag she bought me wasn't going to work (she had bought that and a pair of bib shorts for me as a surprise) and I think we needed to take it back.

She said for me to just put it on her bike--so she'll use the stuff and I'll get my bike fitted out proper with a rack and then a set of panniers.

Why some company would produce such a bag that would carry so little, I'm not sure. I wanted it to carry at least a pair of tennis shoes and clothes for the Y. It couldn't even do that.

The good thing is that I got some sweet new tires for the Raleigh. They're 27 inch but not as big as the ones before (1x1/8 instead of 1x1/4) so the tires won't be rubbing on the fenders. They're Continentals, not made in Germany like my good road tires, but in Taiwan--probably by the same standards as the German made tires.

The weekend was restful and I needed that time off the bike. It is weird how the price of gas has gone down--it seems that I've biked all through the high-prices when gas was pushing $4.10 a gallon. We rarely drove out car and saved probably a few hundred dollars.

Cheers!