Bike Therapy

Ambre and I signed up to do the Fat Tire Non-Competitive division of the Fireweed 400 race. This afternoon Karen and I drove up to the look at the course. It starts at Sheep Mountain Lodge and goes gently up hill for about half a mile and then steeply up to the point that you have to brush the moon out of your hair. The Sheep Mountain Lodge is in an interesting area that reminded me of a part of Montana, Bozeman maybe? When Sarah and I were driving to Michigan ten years ago we came to a town that was the last one going east where you could find a Taco Time, and the first one where you could find a Hardees. As we drove towards Palmer and then Sheep Mountain there were plenty of "Moose Crossing" signs, but after Sheep Mountain they switched to "Caribou Crossing" signs. Oddly, no sheep crossing signs anywhere.

This morning I went to WeBike for a consult. "It's a poor workman that blames his tools," but I wanted to know that my bike was the reason that I was the slowest Hardly Davidson. According to webike's Wayne Lahti, yes it is. Apparently as I fixed my bike with the cheapest replacement parts available I created a slow heavy behemoth fit only to ride through the mountains and over tree roots. To actually ride on the roads, as I mostly do, would require a new bike from the ground up, and he had numbers (26, 29 and 52 for example) in both inches centimeters and dollars to prove it. I'd be skeptical except for this important point; if he's right, I can feel good about myself, well better anyway. I'd feel really good about myself if I was one of those people that had chosen a career and a savings plan that would let me feel good about buying a new bike.