10/21/97
I have not written in a while, but that's because the racing season is over for this year. I have been commuting fairly frequently to school on my 1 dollar beater bike, so I am in decent shape, but because I have not ridden any long rides recently, I am gaining weight...
Me and Lan are thinking of getting a tandem bike, so we looked around some bike stores, and test rode a bike at Aurora Cycles. We rode a Cannondale MT900. It was mountain-bike style, in that the handlebar is straight, and the wheels were on the wide side. It was pretty stiff, but that's probably because we've only been on cheap, flexible rental tandems at a few parks and beaches. Earlier in the week, we almost bought a really cheap tandem, but we decided that we should save the money and get something reasonably good.
Yesterday, Lan and I rode our bikes to get to school in the morning. I switched to my mountain bike, since it has a rack that can accomodate my panniers. I needed the panniers to hold our clothes. My clothes fit in my messenger bag, but I couldn't fit Lan's. On the way back, we took the bus home. It was fairly convenient, because the buses in Seattle have bike racks in the front. The bad thing is that it can hold only two bikes. So after we got our two bikes on, no one else could bring their bikes with them. Somebody was in that predicament, but I noticed that he rode his bike pretty fast, and he probably wasn't much later to his destination than he would have been on the bus.
Today, I rode my beater bike to school. At the end of the ride, I noticed that the front wheel was kind of 'flexy' in the left-to-right direction, as if the hub was loose. Since I cleaned and relubed the wheel a few weeks back when I bought it (It was on sale for 25 cents at a rummage sale). I forgot about it until about 6pm when I went for a short ride while waiting for Lan. I was thinking that I'll stop for a minute at Gasworks Park, since I had my wrench with me. But when I looked down, I noticed that the quick-release skewer that normally holds the wheel on the bike was missing!!! I took the skewer off to put my other wheel on the Bianchi the day before. I had been using the skewer from my other bike because my 25 cent wheel didn't have a skewer. I was amazed that I wasn't killed in a crash or something, especially because I go pretty fast down hill and fast in a twisty section on the way to school. I very carefully rode the bike to Recycled Cycles, near school, and picked out a nice $3 used Shimano skewer. Now I'm safe, and have enough skewers for my wheels.