4 Spokes and You're Out

Somehow he got it stopped before is self-destructed

It's truly summer now. Every ride starts with a hopeful look at weather radar and ends with sweat-soaked jersey and gloves clinging to dehydrated skin. I love it. Well, maybe love isn't quite the word, but I definitely like it a lot better than frozen toes and fingers. Last week was kind of an exercise in slipping rides in-between raindrops, sometimes unsuccessfully. Even so, there were lots of riders out and about, so the group rides were fun and challenging. Back at the office full-time now, I think I got rained on twice coming home from work, but neither time was much more than a light rain and insufficient to get my feet too wet. 

The weekday morning rides were mostly pretty well-attended last week, so that was nice. A few people have been meeting up with the 6 am group along the levee, which has been kind of making up for Charles and Rich who have been AWOL. With things to do at home on the weekend, like fixing that big hole in the bathroom wall, and thinking about trimming hedges and cutting grass (never happened) I never even considered anything other than two Giro Rides, both of which were fine, at least until the incident on Sunday. 

We were maybe 300 meters from the Goodyear Sign Sprint on Sunday when I heard a very strange sound somewhere in the middle of the group. It turned out to be Jeff neatly severing four spokes out of his formerly nice Enve carbon front wheel when Steve's rear derailleur attempted to occupy the same space at the same time. Fortunately nobody crashed, which is notable since losing four adjacent spokes out of maybe 20 could have easily resulted in catastrophic rim failure leading to a big crash. Of course, once he stopped it was clear he wouldn't be riding home on that wheel. A few of us waited to make sure everything was OK while he called for extraction. As the rest of us started back I found myself behind Steve. Looking down at his rear derailleur I could see that the cage was bent dangerously inward, so he stopped for a second and straightened it out by hand. After that it looked fine to me, although he said it wasn't shifting quite right.

Sticker Shock

I headed over to Lowe's to pick up a piece of plywood so I could fix the hole in the bathroom wall. It wasn't really a simple task since I'd be working with the tiles I'd earlier pried off of the now-removed sheetrock. They still had a fair amount of mastic on them. I wanted to replace two rows of tiles and the same thickness sheetrock that had been removed, the tiles with the old mastic would be sitting higher than the surrounding tiles. Also, I wanted to use plywood since we'd had to cut into a cross-piece in order to get to the shower pipe, and I wanted to strengthen that area. So a decent half-sheet of plywood was basically fifty dollars, which was considerably more shocking than what the plumber had charged, but I really wasn't willing to go with something cheaper. So the two rows of tile went in just fine, but then of course making the removable panel was complicated by the usual old-house complications, which is to say that nothing is quite square, or level, or flat. I eventually got it all sorted out thanks to sandpaper and a little planer and a lot of patience, but it took an extra hour or so. I moved the little antique oak washstand back in front of it all and you'd never know there had been a problem there. Still need to get the drain line replaced, of course. Meanwhile, the road work crew moved our water meter over about three feet to presumably free it from the tree roots, and the plumber had already removed the flow restrictor from our hand-held shower head, so if you turn the shower full-on the water pressure is probably now sufficient to take the skin off your back. Incremental progress.

Jered Gruber's photo of Sepp

Last week was an interesting one for the Tour de France. As happy as I have been to see Mark Cavendish again winning sprints behind an awesome leadout train, I was even happier to see Coloradoan Sepp Kuss finally get the opportunity to do what I've known he could do since last year's Tour, which was to win a stage. Although I can personally relate a lot more with Cavendish and sprinting, albeit at much, much slower speeds, it was great to see a U.S. rider win a stage after such a long drought. It'll be interesting to see how this last week plays out. Sepp doesn't have much left in the way of domestique duties, and Mark doesn't have many surviving sprinters left to deal with.