August begins with a small group ride from the Irvine transportation center to Oceanside for lunch. We take the metro to return to San Clemente, North Beach.
Didn’t quite get the first metric century in for the month. I could have ridden to San Juan Capistrano and ridden home from there for the extra mileage and complete that. My front brake was making more noise, now not a squeak, but a loud scraping. Loud enough to penetrate my poor hearing-impaired ears. I investigated to find metal on metal wear.
I should have caught the thinning pads, but didn’t. My first disc brake set on a bicycle. 4,762 miles on the bike. I’ll be ordering fresh rear pads and a spare set from both ends.
I found pads and a Dura-Ace rotor locally, so for around $150 I’m back in business. The new rotor came with a new lock ring of a new design that uses the bottom bracket tool in place of the rear cluster lock ring / freewheel tool. Good thing I have both.
The worn pads were very thin.
This looks particularly bad when compared to a new pad.
That got me into the middle of Saturday’s afternoon heat with little appetite for riding. I will make a point of checking the pads every week when I am cleaning up the bike.
The first week of the month will finish up with only two rides thanks to all the running around on Saturday, shortening my riding time.
Finished the week with a donut ride with the club, but no donut. I didn’t want to wait on the long line so headed home.
I took it easy and gentle for the most part. Then Monday got the first full week of the month with my usual short route with a little exploring. The new Japanese bakery looks to be maybe a month or so away from opening. Construction is complete by the looks of things they are advertising for employees. I’m looking forward to trying this out.
Tuesday was an impromptu metric century up around the back bay and home with a flat to top the day off.
I could just see this tiny shaving to photograph it with the phone. I couldn’t find the hole in the TPU tube and without bifocals I decided to just swap the tube to a spare and ride.
The above photo is of the tube and the area of the hole. The hole is far too small to get picked up by the camera. I could just see it with my eye when the tube had slightly more air. The hole was about the size of that period at the end of this sentence.
The small rib-looking features in the tube, the second from the left of the vertical black line is where that hole is. Easy enough to patch with the special TPU kit. A bit more fiddly than conventional tubes for field repairs, but do able, just not fast as there is a half hour wait between the one minute release pressure on the patch and adding air pressure.
Wednesday we had planned a ride to Oceanside from SJC with a train ride back, but AMTRAK emailed us early on Wednesday morning, while I was in route to SJC by bicycle of course, so my first notice was Dan’s message pinging notice in my earpiece. We cancelled our reservation after this notification of no bicycle car on the train. Instead we made a little loop out around Cow Camp then up to Oso and back, adding some of the scenic route in the loop to get Dan his 30 miles.
Donuts and coffees.
I finished the first week with another group ride with OCSR. This was the Dana Point to Las Pulgas ride.
I finished up the week with not quite 400km with 363km. Still felt OK. That last ride felt like a lot of hard work, but still almost half in zone 2.
Another metric century. This bike is so pretty. Even covered in sweat.
Another ride today after a rest day, it turned out I really needed. I felt really good once I got going on the bicycle today nd laid down some efforts. I rode my version of the clubs La Pata climb, with more climbing. Once home and coffee’d I set up the feedback stand and cleaned up the bicycle.
Riding where I ride makes keeping the bicycle clean a snap. It takes me almost longer to set-up and tear down and put away the stand and bicycle than I spend time cleaning and polishing. Today was a dry cleaning effort using Armor All. Spray stuff on the rag, wipe and clean, then buff with dry clean rag and done. I noted I have about another hundred kilometers before I swap the tires back and front to attempt to even out the wear.
Saturday rest day, so I swapped the tires back to front and found another tiny, nearly invisible hole in that rear tube. Patched that and good to go. Then decided I replace the cleats on the Lake shoes.
I thought I had spares, but didn’t or couldn’t find them. Called the bicycle shop that is a short walk away and they had one pair in stock.
This process is made very easy with a white, fine-tipped paint pen. Those cleats were new on 11/30 last year, so around 11,000 km of wear. I’m going to try and remember to alternate the foot I pull for stops in an attempt to even out the wear. The left cleat had become very hard to latch.
Sunday’s OCSR club ride rounded out my weekly goal of 400km with about 2km to spare. I am closing in on 11,000km for the year this month. The Sunday ride had some hard efforts on a couple of climbs. The La Pata climb in particular, netted me new PR’s while chasing Rob. He is fully back to strength, giving me a greater bar to clear to keep pace.
Took it easy on a ride down to Las Pulgas and back this morning. Quiet and easy spinning. Cool enough breeze off the water to keep it comfortable while rolling. Stopping for a natural break at the restrooms was quick, because it was very hot when stopped with no breeze. 1:38, 91% of the ride in zone 2. Mellow as it goes.
Finished up the third week of the month with a group ride with the club. We did the Aliso Creek loop. I’d intended to Stay in the back, riding sweep. It turned out we didn’t need that once we got to Margarite Parkway. So it became Rob, Paul and I hammering the hills. Paul on the gravel bike running a mullet didn’t have the big gears for the descents, but had the muscle and lungs for the hills, putting Rob and I to task. Paul and I were able to shake Rob off only because he took a very long pull to begin that section and dropping off on the last big, long climb. He caught back up on the descent past the mall and was recovered and back to the front. I was fine with not pushing too hard because I knew from a couple of tries I didn’t have it in me to stay with Paul on the climbs. Good time though.
A week of 345km, so not too bad. The last week is short riding with stuff happening, so it will be a low distance week. We are emerging from our heatwave as well.
My last full week of riding for the month was shortened thanks to a little project. I fixed up a thrift-store find tag-along for our grandson. Our oldest daughter found the contraption and figured dad could fix it up. And so I have.
I began by pulling the chain, it was dirty and rusty.
I wiped it with a goo removal shop towel thing, then into t he ultrasonic cleaner for a couple of hours, then hot water rinse and scrub. Then into a rust conversion bath overnight. Hot rinse that, then back to the ultrasonic cleaner for a couple more hours, followed by another hot rinse and blow dry. Then finally into the hot wax bath. Drip/wipe then install. While the chain was cleaning I disassembled the wheel and bottom bracket bearings, cleaned and greased them all, re-assembling and tightening properly. Last were the pedals which like the other bearings were under lubricated and over tightened. Cleaned, lubed and adjusted and all back ready to ride.
A short ride with the grandson followed on the afternoon of the second day. He liked it. He and his aunt dropped by the thrift store where he picked out the next project.
I want him to get comfortable with pedaling first before I go rebuild a whole bicycle. These tag-alongs are transitional tools. He likes it enough to not fuss about it and wants to ride more so, all good. I expect to be rebuilding a bicycle for him sometime next month.
The month finished a few days early with family commitments pushing any riding off the table. I made the last ice a short one down to Las Pulgas road and back. I made some efforts in the heat. The cooling breeze was very welcome, even when it was in my face, forcing me to work a bit harder.
As our weather has slid into these heatwaves, I’m thinking I need to do a couple of things to work around that. First is get out on the road earlier and second, shorter, harder rides. That will give September more of a power month feel than distance. We’ll see how that goes.
Totals for the month:
Distance: 1,365.8 kilometers
Climbing: 9,424 meters
Time: 54 hours, 20 minutes
Along The Way 