Another mediocre week

Despite glorious weather, its been another mediocre week.  I rode in on Monday but had to go to Bristol Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday.  I did get out briefly on Wednesday.  I rode out through the docks and down the Avon gorge, then very foolishly for a man on a fixie, decided to ride up and over the suspension bridge.  Not only that, but after riding up, missed the turn and rode down into Clifton Village and had to ride up to the bridge again!  It was a very nice evening though.

Nobody was out Thursday, so Jayne and I rode out to the Plough on the tandem.  It was a beautiful evening.  I rode in on Friday, but my mileage was poor.  I had hoped to top 2500 mile last week and was struggling to achieve it this week as well.  Jayne and I went for a short spin yesterday but I was still a couple of miles short of the required total.

Today we planned to go out to the Weird Fish, and if I was back in time, to also meet up with Simon for a spin.  In the end, we didn’t get away on time, the service at the Weird Fish was worse than its usual appallingly slow, so I texted Simon to say we’d maybe see him on the road.  We met up with him near Myerscough and decided that the two of us would head up round Inglewhite for a bit of a climb and try to catch up with Jayne on the way back.  Well we never caught up with Jayne.  It was Simon’s first long ride in quite a while and he was paying the price for his fast start.  But I did get the necessary miles in.

The rest of the weekend has been spent on a special project.  I used to have an Orange P7.  When I got my Marin full suss in 1999, I sold it to Joe, who was just getting into mountain biking.  Joe subsequently also bought a Marin full suss and consigned the P7 to being a baby seat bike at his place in France. Karl and Simon and a couple of guys at work have all recently bought new P7’s and I was getting a bit nostalgic.  I asked Joe if there was any chance of getting it back and last week he brought it back from France for me!

The agreement is that I build up another frame as a replacement.  I will swap most of the parts over, but some won’t go, like the Suntour XC top swing front mech.

I spent most of Saturday stripping it down.  It is a disgrace!  I am not very fussy about maintenance, but his goes way beyond anything I would suffer.  There was about a centimetre of play in the bottom bracket, same again for both wheels, play in the headset.  It took me 15 minutes to wrestle the seat post out.  The bottom bracket was a nightmare.  I bought a new bottom bracket tool and even with it bolted in place and Jayne steadying the frame, I had to stand on the wrench to get it to undo.  It was a mess of rust.

Eventually I got it stripped down.  Today I started swapping the bits on to an old Claud Butler frame I had (remember the most expensive free bike ever?).  It is going well.  I’ve got cranks, mechs and bars fitted.  I’ve overhauled the front hub and need to do the back.  Should be good in a couple of weeks.

I’m off to Switzerland tomorrow, working unfortunately.  So it won’t get any attention til Friday.  Nor will my miles be very good next week either.  I need to plan to take my bike with me in future.

Anyway, it turned out to be an OK week and I did top 2500 miles well ahead of schedule.

For the week – 101 miles

For the year to date – 2534

Cheers

Tim