Couch surfers showed up promptly in the morning, four of them. Â A bit surprised, I had confidence they’d turn out to be good ones. Â So far, they are. Â After getting them all settled Dan and I dawned our outfits and loaded our bags. Â Today we’d make another test run, this time not for time or distance but for strength. Â We loaded our bags to the brim and added a little for good measure and headed north, up the hills. Â One and a half hours later (including a long break to take a photo) we were at the top comfortable and ready for more riding. Â What a pleasant surprise. Â 25 minutes later we were back at the bottom with a top speed from John at 56.0 kph and a top speed from dan of 57.8 kph.
There is a reason we bought bikes early. Â Primarily we wanted to train, but truthfully we’d be stronger if we trained on our mountain bikes. Â The important part of having bikes a month early was to test the components, break the bikes in, and make changes to the set up. Â Today, we were happy to have failures. Â Once back in the city, Dan hit a small cut in the road from construction and his bike came to a dead stop. Â The deralur (sp) hinge had snapped and threw the mechanism into his rear spokes stopping the bike. Â The impact of another cyclist into the side of Dan didn’t help the situation either. Â Confused with what had happened we pulled aside and righted the chain and deralur and limped back to the Giant store. Â A bit of negotiating convinced them that less than 300 km shouldn’t have component failures and they agreed and replaced it. Â We hope to not run into that issue again.
We also accomplished getting a good photograph for our friends here to keep and to pass out to friends along the route.
2 responses to “Cycling on Monday”
derailleur
Thanks. Spelling is all fixed.