record OLN’s Tour de France streamed commentary.

If it works it will mean I don’t have to stay up until 2am to listen to the whole race. When you have to wake at 6am for work – this is a good thing!

Total Recorder is available from:

http://www.highcriteria.com/

I bought the super cheap Standard Edition for about $12USD (~$20AUD).

I tried to record Stage 5 but it appears to have dropped out (just after I went to bed of course). It’s not Total Recorders fault, rather, OLN’s stream was near death just before I ‘retired’ so it probably keeled over totally when I was in Nodsville. I’ll try it again tonight and relive stage 5 through Cyclingnews

Calling all Tour de Donut riders…

“Just wondering if there were any of you going to the Tour de Donut race this coming Saturday July 10th in Staunton Illinois. It will be my first time to ride it but believe it will be great fun. If they run the same 30 mile route as in the past years you ride about 13 miles then stop and eat as many glazed donuts as you can, then ride 9 miles and stop and chow down again then ride the final 8 miles back to town. For each donut eaten they deduct 5 minutes off your total time. They have mens and womens classes and a mens over 50 class and had about 525 riders last year I was told. Hope to see some of you there. I’ll be on the old orange & yellow Schwinn Continental, probably near the end of the pack (or along the side of the road getting sick!).”

– Mark Bentley

“Mmm donuts..”

– Homer Simpson

“Now we’ve got 4mins to air right?”

“So I can go to a quick loo loo?”

– during OLN’s internet radio coverage of the TdF2004 TTT (Stage 4)

Pulled some tricky moves tonight, squeezing through nice gaps in traffic, all the while laughing at silly cars..

One dopey idiot, driving with a mobile stuck to his ear, takes 5 minutes (actual time: 5 seconds) to make a right turn and then proceeds to drive 20kph below the speed limit. Slowing cars down is one thing but slowing bikes down! Screw this! I pass him (laughing) and then watch as another car passes me somehow catching some rubbish underneath their car which causes a shower of sparks over the tram tracks (and more laughing from me).

Raining now.. hard.. I’m soaked through again, my white t-shirt now transparent, my white body scarring drivers for life.

No brake pads left front or back – emergency stop not an option. Make it home soggy, safe and happy.

Time: 1:05 (pretty good!)

With some parts scored on the weekend, I managed to put together something rideable. Unsafe IMHO, but rideable…

Vegemite Street Fix

Bogans who smash empties on the road should be made to lick the streets clean…

6am – Wake (just) and decide getting the bike ready and riding to Doncaster in under an hour ain’t gonna happen, even with my Superman-like abilities .

9am – Wake (for real this time)

9.50am – Leave, after printing Dutchy’s directions.

10am – Return home, after forgetting Dutchy’s directions.

10.20am – Waved down by PYT (pretty young thing). Supply her with directions to Ringwood and continue on my merry way knowing my good deed for the day is done.

Turn onto Mitcham Rd, spotting Old Warrandyte Road (map reference and possible bunch meeting place?) on the way.

Ride along Doncaster Road reaching High St.. hmm.. where was Manningham Road?

Ride all the way back along Doncaster Rd. (with obligatory high speed ‘Bland Rover’ pass thrown in) and manage to miss Manningham Road again.. maybe I’m looking for the wrong street?

“Shortly after turn east into Tindals Road” didn’t quite work out for me. I’m sure this road isn’t signposted on Springvale Rd. so I went straight passed it. At the end of Springy Road,

after that evil short/sharp hill, I did a U-turn and turned left up the continuation of Old Warrandyte Road. “Tindals Road.” was on a letterbox up here so I guess I’m blind or the road is marked strangely?

The scenery was great out here even though I spent more time looking at the bitumen, gasping for air, than appreciating it!

The roads are nicer than up in the ‘nongs with lots of sealed shoulder to give ‘bail room’ when that P-Plater wants to ‘take you from behind’.

I got as far as “Take next major left which is STILL called Eltham-YarraGlen Road” when I lost the ride’s scent. I’d been huffing and puffing for 3hrs and was dreading the thought of the hilly return, so I decided to turn around and head back over the river before I ran out of juice. It turns out that the return was HEAPS faster than the climb out so I was on the

Ringwood-Warrandyte Road in no time – fun!

Dutch: Are you sure the road isn’t “Wattle Glen Road” rather than Eltham-YarraGlen Road? After the round-a-bout, there was a left turn to Hurstbridge but I’m sure it didn’t have the same name (Wattle Glen Road?).. I continued passed it for a while and gave up at the “Alma Road” bus stop before I saw anything that resembled a “major left”.

With the second sunny Sunday in a row – it was a really good ride – my winter tan is coming on nicely! The rolling hills here are much more fun than a pure climb like I’d do in the ‘nongs and challenging in a different way due to the power on/power off style riding.

I know it was still reasonably hard because I was out of the saddle a fair bit and for a heavy guy like me, that rarely happens! This could also be a lack of fitness or a singlespeed hangup?

I’ll have to try extra hard to make it to the next bunch ride so I can do the rest of it.

Ride Stats:

4hr 5min

No other stats due to *&%*&^ing Polar speed sensor not working

A sunny day in Melbourne is one thing. A sunny day in Melbourne, mid-winter AND on a Sunday is a riding oppurtunity not to be missed!

The Peugeot road bike had been dusted off and a mysterious puncture repaired. ‘Mysterious’ because the bike was fine and had been sitting on carpet for months. It wasn’t even due to heat expanding the air in the tube because I’d let most of the air out.. one of those little mysteries, I guess.

Since March, before visiting Europe, I’d not ridden anything except the singlespeed GT. Gears, skinny tyres and dropbars (bars not bears!) were about to become a novelty!

I originally wanted to do the 100k “Springvale Loop” (preparation for an as yet unplanned Melbourne to Mildura “tour”) but I had other stuff I needed to do and didn’t want to spend that much time on the bike. Solution? Climb a nearby hill – the “1 in 20” to be precise.

It was windy but the road bike was obviously a lot more aero than the GT and the gears were fun (yes, I DO remember how to use them!).

The 1:20’s 7k took a slow (not my slowest) 23:50. Numerous muscles, apparently unused on the SS, really let me know they were there – it was a painful return to the climb.

Quite a few other roadies were out and most of them were nodders. Bonus.

The descent was into a reasonable headwind so my max down the tourist road was only just over 60kph.

Sore triceps. Sore knees. Sore back. I think I’ll have to do some more of that – bring on the sun! 🙂

Ride Stats:

Distance: 38k

Total Time: 1hr 35min

“1 in 20”: 23min 50sec

Max Speed: ~61kph (into headwind)

I decided to take the wheels off my “NotAGibson” track bike and fit them to Vegemite, hoping to ride it today. Nuh uh!

The front wheel was too tight in the forks so I filed down the dropouts a little and in it slipped.

The back wheel was a little trickier, having never actually removed a track rear wheel before.

– Loosen wheel nuts to give some chain slack

– Drop chain off sprockets

– Remove wheel from bike

– Panic because I have no tool to fit the lockring groove

– Find the lockring is ‘actually’ finger tight and remove it by hand (reverse thread spins opposite to normal)

– Use chainwhip to remove cog

I thought the Miche groupset included a lockring. It turned out to be a splined mounting ring for easy cog removal.

Before realising this, I panic, looking at a cog with no thread that would surely not fit onto the threaded hub. Then I found this site: Jeff Noakes “Potentially Useful Cycling Information” which explained that, what I thought was a lockring, actually goes onto the hub first and the splined cog sits on top of that. It was lucky that this setup didn’t need a chain whip because it didn’t fit the fatter Miche teeth anyway!

The whole lot is then held on with the normal lockring (note: removing skin from fingers is not actually necessary at this stage).

Now the real problem becomes apparent:

Being a road frame, with longer chainstays, the track chain included isn’t long enough!

The chances of finding a suitable chain right now are slim, but I’ll head to the shop and see what happens..