A Few Millimeters

So I arrived at the levee this morning and was immediately assaulted with accusations of blatant "surging" during yesterday's ride. That was a surprise, because from my perspective I thought I was taking rather short and shoddy pulls into the crosswind. OTOH, you can't surge if you're not on the front, right? Well, anyway, this morning was a nice easy recovery day, and pretty much everybody seemed to be in agreement on that fine point. Rob, who has been AOL for the last week or so due to a little IT Band problem, was there with his Powercranks. He hadn't seen me on the Orbea yet, and once we got started he took one look and said "your saddle's too low." Ordinarily I might not have paid much attention to that, but as it happens I had been fooling with the seatpost clamp late last night, so I put that one on my to-do list. The sky was still grey and depressing today, and the mood kind of spilled over to the ride. We spent a lot of time just riding silently in an easy paceline. Well, except for me, that is. You see, I was behind Rob most of the way back, and if you've ever been behind someone riding PowerCranks, you know what I mean! I still can't get used to it when they put *both* feet straight down to coast. That's just wrong!

Actually I've been developing a long to-do list for this bike, or to be more specific, for the two bikes. Although I'll probably keep the Cervelo as a 9-speed simply for financial reasons, I am planning on switching to the newer Look Keo pedals on both, and I want to make some changes to things like front derailleur, bottle cages, headset spacers, seatpost clamp, chain, brakes, handlebars, etc., etc., because I'd like to be able to switch from one to the other rather seamlessly. Hopefully by the middle of next week I'll be able to move my ErgoBrain computer head back and forth from one bike to the other, which will be good because I've been riding without a functional speedo for the last week or so waiting for a new speed sensor to arrive. Of course it won't know what gear it's in when it's on the Orbea, but that's OK for now. Eventually I'll spring for a new 10-speed one, but right now I'm reluctant to end its ongoing longevity experiment. I doubt it will survive all the way to 100,000 miles, but 80k is probably reachable. I must say I'm not looking forward to changing cleats and pedals, especially since it will probably require a little saddle height adjustment, but my old Looks are quite worn down at this point so it's clearly time leave the past behind.

So after this morning's ride I got out the tape measure and plumb bob (in this case a string with an old spark plug socket hanging from the end) again to double-check the saddle position on the Orbea. It was definitely more than a few millimeters too low and just a tad too far back, so thanks to Rob for having such a keen eye. Although I'd marked the position when I removed the seatpost last night, something obviously changed. One should probably not work on one's bike at 11 p.m. immediately after drinking beer. Anyway, hopefully it's all better now.