Annie's Back!

It was really nice to get out on the trail this morning with Annie. Here she is (and below) decked out in our Lancaster Covered Bridges Jersey. Despite having had x-rays only yesterday and not knowing the results yet, there seemed to be no reason to stay off the bike. The pain she has is only when the area on the side of the ankle is touched; neither walking nor riding seems to impact it (we hope!) Since she's already been spinning in the house all week and we are still psyched for our big Labor Day ride, getting back on the road today seemed important. We had a good ride, good pace until a train blocked our return. We lost some time going up the Chestnut Street ramp and home on the streets, but it gave us a few extra miles and some good work on the hill. No incidents, thankfully. In fact, the spinning workouts are clearly more strenuous than our usual ride and Annie's general fitness and leg strength seemed better today than if she had been biking all this week.

On another front: we decided to sell the Treks! They just don't seem nearly comfortable enough for where we are now. If we need fatter tires for trail riding next summer we can either buy something with less of a "comfort" set-up since that set-up no longer feels comfortable, or try to get fatter tires that we can change-out on the Fuji's. So, the first Trek, mine, was sold in an hour. The other one, Annie's step-through frame may take longer or may not sell at all. We'll see. Next to go will be the Citizen folders.

Last night we took our second of the four class series on Bicycle maintenance. We learned how to take apart, clean and re-assemble a bottom bracket. Great fun!

I've got the bike with me for some errands, so the mileage chart will be updated later.



Finally, just a quick report on a new book. I read Tour de Life, by Saul Raisin and Dave Shield. It's an unbelievable story. Raisin suffered a catastrophic fall that resulted in a coma and necessitated brain surgery just to keep him alive. His prognosis to live was not good; his prognosis to walk was not good; his prognosis to ride a bike was impossible and his prognosis to race at the professional level was beyond impossible. Never the less he will be racing in the U.S Championships coming up this weekend! The story is moving. The funny thing is that while he emerges as an inspirational figure, the recovery proceeds through personality changes that do not really allow him to emerge as a very likable character. One assumes that as time passes this will change. The writing is not as good as the writing in Dave Shield's novels. He obviously needed to create lot's of dialog where the actual conversations could not be recorded or remembered or were conducted in French and broken French. This accounts for a lot of stilted dialog that one has to just read with a grain of salt. In addition to the link above, I've added the link to the side bar book&movie section for your later consideration.