Giro³

Friday coffee ride on Lakeshore Drive

Just back from the third Giro Ride this Labor Day weekend. Not exactly exciting stuff, but at least they were both fast and convenient. This morning, Monday, we had a surprisingly big group that showed up for the lagniappe Giro, but even so, I was expecting a nice moderate pace since so many of them, like me, had also done pretty fast rides the two days prior. As it turned out, the ride got quite fast here and there, which I guess was good because I wasn't feeling too drained from the Saturday and Sunday rides. On the way back when we were halfway between Chef Highway and Lake Forest, riding along the merge lane of I-510 as we've been doing ever since the city inexplicable shut down the service roads, a Levee District police officer decided to stop the whole ride and lecture us about how we shouldn't be riding on an Interstate highway. I doubt it will have much effect on the ride, given the lack of viable alternatives. If the road surface on Bullard wasn't outright dangerous, and if there weren't a number of traffic lights there, it might be OK, but we'd lose some of the best long stretches of fast riding. I used the new carbon Mercury wheels this weekend. Figured I should give them a good workout since I'm considering using them for Six Gap at the end of the month. If it looks like significant rain, though, I'll probably stick with my old aluminum wheels since I'd rather not learn about braking with wet carbon rims while plummeting downhill at 45 mph on unfamiliar roads.

Friday was the first Tulane Coffee Ride of the semester. There was a nice turnout, and the ride was pretty easy as planned. Looks like we'll be going to Six Gap again this year.

The Org Expo table with swag from USAC

Yesterday was the Tulane Organizations Expo over at the Reily Center. It was probably the nicest venue for that they've ever had. We've already had a few new riders come along on the club rides. I think we collected about 60 email IDs for students who were interested. Based on prior experience, that probably means three or four will still be involved by the end of the semester. Most of last year's riders are still at Tulane, so it should be a pretty good year. As usual, we haven't heard a peep out of the SCCCC. They pretty much seem to ignore us for mountain bike season. I see on the website that they have an Oct. 4 deadline for 2020 road race "bids" (as if...) but I don't know if they have bothered to contact the club directly.

Pulled the rear carb to start the rebuild. It was in surprisingly good condition, despite the frozen bolts.

Meanwhile back at home I finally got around to pulling one of the carbs off of the GT-6. It was surprisingly clean inside, other than the brown powder left from evaporated gasoline. I have the rebuild kits and will probably do them one at a time, just replacing the essentials to avoid changing any of the existing settings. Unfortunately, one of the Phillips-head bolts holding the dashpot cover on, and which I needed to remove in order to change the torn diaphragm, was seized so badly that it broke. I'm going to keep spraying it with penetrating lubricant for a day or two before trying to remove the rest of the bolt with some vice-grips. Wish me luck.