Rides near the street where you live / attraction of single speeds / Monocog's continuing apotheosis.

[Patrick Moore]

Phone calls starting 7:30 this AM and continued for almost 5 hours, so I played hooky from resumes and took an afternoon ride on the newly upgraded Monocog. In fact, my ride was not mere crass pleasure, it had a serious, earnest purpose -- I had to find a way to get to Hertz without driving or using a car service -- must pick up rental van on Mon.

I found a way to get to the shopping center, one of those horrible sprawls 1 mile N-S and 1/2 mile E-W, with hectares of parking off of a very heavily traveled 6 lane adjacent to another very heavily traveled 6 lane and to other semi-urban/sub-urban multi-lane traffic feeders. This involved back ways along acequia ditches and under said arterials, onto nice neighborhood tucked away against said 6-lane intersection, to strategic traffic light that lets me cross street on bike and jump to safety on sidewalk.

No matter. I turned the excursion into a meandering detour on this early spring day, rain threatening, drought established, winds blowing. I took the photos in that part of the Rio Grande Valley State Park adjacent to my house, within 3 mile radius (park is perhaps 1/4 mile from my door). 

Again, early spring, clouds, rain falsely threatening, blustery, mid 70s; bosque just starting to turn green. River surprisingly full after months of 2' depths and sandbars; "they" apparently released a great deal of water upstream.

Monocog continues to delight. 65" gear is just right for this riding: low enough that with 175 mm cranks and 70 mm tires I can stand and torque thru all but the deepest sand; high enough that with tailwind, as outbound today, or on pavement I'm not flailing despairingly to maintain a decent speed. 

Road BB7s replaced the very cheap indeed OEM Tektro disc calipers, and with the AX levers I get decent braking with careful adjustment of pads. And pads aren't even bedded in, and I forgot to use compressionless housing. Are BB7s excellent? No. What are they, then? They are perfectly adequate. Adequately easy to install and adjust, adequately strong with modest hand pressure; adequately easy to keep from rubbing; certainly better than any centerpull I've used, and I've used many (tho all bolt on). 

I really should have used non-aero levers, but the only n-a's I have have clamps that don't let you tightend down much beyond 23.8mm. You can torque down the Shimano 600 AX levers for a tight grip on 22.2 bars.

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Patrick Moore

Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum

[RichS]

Patrick,

Some nice dirt trails you have in your neighborhood. Thanks for the pictures. I would agree on rewarding rides one can come up with close to home. I'm seven miles from downtown Atlanta but there is a plethora of wide neighborhood streets that offer rides that can combine paths and light traffic. Example: one is a 21 mile loop with 1500 ft. of climbing. More distance and elevation is always possible!

Best,

Rich in ATL

[Patrick Moore]

Things will look much prettier in a few weeks, that is if we ever get a bit of rain. Green, such as even we get, is a bit late this year because of cold and drought. 

Yes, I'm lucky -- we don't even have many mosquitos or flies or ticks, tho' mosquitos do come from near river at full summer twilight.

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