Clouds and Conspiracy

It was by all measures a difficult week out on the road. It seemed that each day served up its own unique gumbo of cold, wind, and/or rain.  One day during the week I forced myself out of bed on another dark and cloudy morning, got dressed to ride, hit the streets, rode four blocks and turned around to go home and make coffee.  That was one of the better days.  Finally it looked like Saturday would be better, even though it was cloudy, fairly windy, and there was a bit of rain in the area. There was a decent sized group at Starbucks for the Saturday Giro Ride that included Kenny whose bike was still decorated for Christmas. That day only a handful of Giro riders went long.  The rest of us turned around at the regular spot after a rather erratic stretch down Chef highway. As the pace gradually picked up I found myself near the front.  That was more or less according to plan, as I'd intended to wait until the return trip to put in some efforts.  So I'm sitting on Brett's wheel and he decides to close the little ten second gap up to the handful of riders who were up ahead. It was the same kind of acceleration you'd expect from a motorcycle - steady and relentless.  Suddenly I'm struggling and thinking, "Why is this hurting so much?"  At 30 mph I ride over a little crack in the road and feel my rim bottom out.  A flat.  I pull out of the paceline and coast to a stop along with eight of the group.  The rest continue on. After changing the flat our little group got a really nice smooth paceline going and I thought to myself how much better it was than it had been with the whole group.  I arrived back home dry, if not warm, with plans to do the northshore ride on Sunday.  The forecast was calling for a temperature of around 40F and a 10% chance of rain.

So Sunday morning I step outside in the dark to load up the car and feel a light drizzle falling.  WTF???  How could a 10% chance of rain turn into this? Ever the optimist, I drove out to Puccino's anyway where I found John and Chuck debating the wisdom of riding.  We decided to wait around an extra fifteen minutes and then head across the lake in hopes that the line of rain would pass by the time we were ready to ride.  Up on the causeway we drove through some heavy rain, and even waited in the car for a while once we'd arrived.  The rain slacked off to a light drizzle, I piled on practically every piece of clothing I'd brought and we headed north on wet roads in a light rain.  We were only five miles out when John sat up and said he was going to turn back and wait for us in the car.  John and I continued on to Enon, making a short loop of Dummyline, Choctaw, 60 and 16, by which time the rain had stopped. Of course, by then it didn't matter because my feet were already wet, along with all four layers of clothes I was wearing.  It wasn't really up to epic standards by any means, but at least we got in some 40-odd miles without undue misery, although I did stand in a hot shower for a good fifteen minutes until my feet thawed out.

I'd hoped to have the new bike built up by now, but I have apparently been the victim of a broad international conspiracy involving numerous parties in the shipping industry.  Way back around Thanksgiving, in a weak moment, I'd ordered some key parts from probikekit.com. That package took over 30 days to arrive.  In the meantime, about a week before Christmas, I ran across a Campi front derailleur clamp on eBay that I thought would look nice so I ordered it. That never arrived, and when I emailed the seller (planet bike, I think) they said that a number of items they'd shipped out that day had also disappeared and that they'd ship me out a new one right away.  Anyway, when the parts from Great Britian arrived I discovered they'd shipped the wrong stem.  So I sent that back and they shipped out another, but I went ahead and ordered another one to ship second day air in hopes I could get the bike on the road for the weekend.  I checked the UPS tracking and it arrived in New Orleans in the wee hours of Friday morning as expected, but then they indicated a "late trailer" exception.  No tracking updates since then and of course also no delivery either.  It'll probably show up on Monday.  At least I was able to stop by Bicycle Connection on Saturday and get a second pair of Look Keo pedals and an insanely expensive carbon water bottle cage.  So basically I have this growing collection of bicycle parts staring me in the face every day.  Unfortunately, it's rather pointless to start building a bike without the stem since the only tricky part is setting up the handlebars and shifters and cables and derailleurs, all of which require that the stem be installed.  Frustrating.