The first two rides of July were with the club and the south county folks. My first ride was on Friday from a park in Irvine down around Newport Back Bay up to where they usually have a huge flag display, but didn’t this year. I made some PR’s riding hard after the time off. And with a little pushing from others. The focus of the ride was to stop at Sidecar Donuts in Costa Mesa. Good donuts, but crazy busy. The second was to finish the week on Sunday with the usual south county Scenic ride. Again more people to prod me into riding harder.
I managed 183km for the week. Not tremendous, but just two days riding and harder riding at that. On Sunday I’d chased Paul nearly the entire day. I am not going to catch him without help from traffic lights. Fun though to try.
This next week, I’ve got more family stuff going on, making for another short week.
I did have one failure. My Kask helmet ratchet knob came apart.
One of my tasks this week is to take this back to Velo Pasadena for them to assess the problem and document it to the distributor for warranty.
Finally got going on the month pretty well, beginning Thursday with a group ride with the fast crowd from the park in Irvine. That was some work.
Friday I did a short ride after some maintenance. I straightened out the Frames and Gear hanger, adjusted the alignment and changed the OEM 160mm Ultegra rear rotor for a 140mm Dura Ace. Aligned the brake caliper and 20 miles to check everything works.
Saturday was the club poker ride, and I lead the medium no drop. We had a crowd. It was a little bit of a workout. Then Sunday to round out the week the breakfast ride to Las Pulgas and back. I left the house early and rode up to the natural trail above the overlook and took a photo with the baby elephant. I was two seconds slower on my climb up there than my PR. On the ride itself, I hit the sharp little hill up from North Beach on our way south and nailed my only PR for the day.
We, like the rest of the world are experiencing a heat wave. Unlike most, our heat isn’t too bad as long as there is a breeze off the ocean. And there is. We had tailwind southbound and slight headwind northbound.
Total for the week is 246km. I’ll start off the next week with a metric century.
The metric we rode from Oceanside to Coronado was fun, but we did have some tire/tube fun. Type II, type fun. We began the day with Barry unloading his bike from the back of his car to find the rear tire flat. It was a little painful for me to watch the process and I eventually began helping. Which leads to this next short paragraph on tube changing.
First, deflate the tube completely. Then unseat the beads at both sides of the tire. Press the stem into the tire so the bead can slide from the rim hook into the rim depression. Next grip the tire in a pinch, thumb and fingers across from the stem, (180° from the stem), pull the tire over the rim edge. Tubeless tires will be tougher, but the sealant acts as a fine lubricant. Tube type tires are easy to do this. Once you have one bead off the rim, continuing pulling around. Only needs about a quarter of the way to be able to pull both tire and tube off.
Now, check the rim tape carefully all around for sharps. Then the tire, at the tread and sidewalls. I do two laps of rim and tire in opposite directions to either find what caused the puncture and make sure nothing is amiss. Now, the fresh tube should be inflated to the point when held by one hand there is one crease at the bottom. Orient the stem to the tire trademark for proper points, make sure of rotation marks and mount both beads at the stem into the rim first, and continue around the wheel equally so you end up at 180° from the stem with the last bit. Usually the far bead from the side facing up of the wheel will go on more easily, then using the heels of your hands while holding the stem between belly and lap, legs supporting the rim, not the spokes, push, peel the nearside tire bead onto the rim. Next, very important. run thumb and fingers around both beads along the entire rim pushing the tire bead into the middle of the rim so the tube is not pinched. Pull the stem into the rim away from the tire and inflate to seat the beads. At home in the shop, I deflate at this point then re-inflate to riding pressure. Note, no tools were employed. I did exactly this with the brand new tire I just installed to replace the nearly new tire that got a pice of glass cutting the tread on Monday’s metric from Oceanside to Coronado.
Above my puncture repair after sealant failed to seal the hole, a chunk of glass having made that not possible, even though I reamed the puncture. Barry holding my bike. Peter, behind me had the third electric pump that finished up the repairs.
For now, I’m running a latex tube in the rear because that sealant was a mess and took far too long to repair, overheating and running my Silca inflator down to nothing in no time. A second and second inflator also failed. Went with the Lezyne hand pump then a third inflator. Back at home on Tuesday, I cleaned up the mess and changed tires.
the mess on the frame from sprayed sealant and all the grit picked up on the remaining half of the ride.
The puncture from the outside, 599km on this tire.
Inside the puncture looks even smaller.
I will put a patch on the tire and keep it as a spare in the car for those ride morning problem solvers. Our ride continued.
It was a good ride with lots of fun, laughs, food and friends.
The Thursday morning OCW ride was fast as usual. We had wind and heat and humidity. I managed to hang on in zone 3 for about 40 minutes, then I was chasing, catching on, dropping off. Repeat. It was a workout. I managed to pull off a new PR in the Back Bay section, from gate to gate. The onshore wind was a help. I was faster while my power output was lower than four of the previous five attempts.
I finished off the week with the Sunday La Pata climb ride where we don’t climb La Pata, and didn’t climb to Oso either. Cut half the harbor loop and turned at Poche beach instead of riding south to North Beach and back. Richard and I did a loop on the San Juan Creek road new pavement, missing the turn out toward the beach the rest made while we were stuck at a light.
The month finished with a little bit of a flourish. A quick ride to the bike shop for new side load bottle cages to work better with the Revelate frame bag I plan to use for longer rides. I initially mounted the cages as left side out, but after one ride swapped them to right side out. My left shoulder and arm doesn’t do well with these, though only one shortish ride isn’t a full test, the right side load without the bag for another short ride was fine.
The King Cage holders are great, but with this XS sized Revelate Tangle frame bag is very tight.
For a short ride with the group on Friday, I removed the bag and swapped the cages to right side load, then used my bottle cage tool holder. It is quite a bit smaller than the seat bag and I’ve since gone back to that.
Also can be seen, I swapped back to tubeless after a rash of punctures with tubes. I figured out I’d not shaken the sealant well enough and had at the initial setup, injected the sealant after going off in search of stuff for too long so it all settled again in the bottle. I corrected that mistake. Quite easy to deal with and only a few drips here and there from the job.
A three hour train ride to Oxnard then about a three hour bicycle ride with a five hour train ride home. A very long day that began with my waking at 3:30am and finally getting home at 8:30pm. Fun riding though.
We got lunch then ice cream.
I got my helmet back from Velo Pasadena along with a pair of repair kits for the retention system on my Kask helmet. An easy enough repair.
All set for he first ride of August. We are and have been experiencing quite a heat wave with humidity thanks to an Eastern Pacific hurricane which has also made from some very dangerous and huge surf and swells, dumping sand over and over the coast trail between me and Dana Point. I’d heard our local beach life guards have effect more than 500 rescues in the last week alone. That is huge and frightening.
Totals for the month:
Distance: 1,274.1km
Climbing: 6,381m
Time: 50 hours, 29 minutes
Along The Way 