Conspiracy theory

I think the world is conspiring against me to keep me off my bike. From my crash last week, to cold temps, to busy schedules, and mechanical failures, they all came together in a perfect storm to keep me to a scant 2 mile journey in the last week.

I did purposely stay off the bike to give my shoulder a chance to heal up a bit. I think my chiropractor was able to afford moving to his new office in part due to my crash habits. My shoulder is starting to feel better as I apparently pulled about every major muscle in my left shoulder/neck area when I landed on the pavement. I still can't sleep on that side which sucks slightly and bearing weight where it pulls on the bone/joint itself is pretty sketchy as I still have some shooting pains. While the weather was nice several nights, I stayed away from the bike in hopes of saving it up for this weekend. I even had a group lined up to ride on Sunday morning.

Of course, the weather would stick it right up the arse on Sunday with cold temps, wind, and some snow the night before. Normally I wouldn't let this stop me considering I soldiered through most of the winter in far worse conditions. However, with it being a road ride and most everyone else bailing on the ride, I put together a strategic decision to call it early Sunday morning. Unfortunately, Steve didn't get my messages as his phone was dead. He still toughed out a good 20 miles while I wussed out in a nice warm bed.

Finally, my bikes were being temper mental over the weekend. On Saturday I was planning a nice ride to run some errands, check out my new knock-off camelback, and swing by the bike kollective. I dressed up to the nines in all my bike gear and headed out to the garage to grab my road bike. Both tires were pretty low on air due to being filled with CO2 from double flatting on my last ride. I pumped some air into them and fished around for a couple things in the back of my truck. A loud pop sounded through the air and my rear tube let go. Hmm, that was odd. I pulled the tube out to find the hole and see if there was something sticking in the tire. A small rock had worked it's way through the tire and rubbed a small hole in the tube. So, fast forward to me replacing the tube only to find a tear in the sidewall of the tire. Shit, time to scrap the plans of riding the road bike. I change out shoes quickly and wheel the mountain bike out. As I take off for the post office I glance at the rear wheel. It's wobbling like no other! Damn, I must have tweaked it when I crashed last week. I would have figured the front tire would have been the one to get trashed, but apparently when the bike landed sideways it nailed the back wheel. I made a strategic decision to ride only to the post office and back getting in my whopping 2 miles.

Figuring it was a lost cause to ride, I headed over to the shop to pick up a new rear tire and true the rear wheel from the mountain bike. Sweet, the place was pretty empty when I pulled in. Lou was in there putting his new ride together as well as Pete tweaking his ride. Even the sickly Squirrel stopped by with his wife and little one. Pretty soon the shop was filled to the brim with people. I stood around for a bit before figuring I was more in the way the anything else so I headed back home. I picked up a pair of the new Michelin Pro Race 3 tires after contemplating going to something a bit more hardy for a brief moment. We trued the wheel as best possible which still has some wobble to it. Luckily I'm running disc brakes so it doesn't matter a lot.

I did take some time to do a little maintenance once I got home. I put the new rear tire on the road bike and inspected the front to see if it needed changed as well. All looked good on that front so I kept it on and gave the chain a little lube. As soon as we get some of this damn grit off the road, I'll be treating it to a nice new SRAM 9 speed chain considering this one is closing in on 4000 miles all ready. The mountain bike got some much needed TLC as well. I put the new wheel on and then commenced to figuring out why my disc brakes were rubbing. The setup was definitely off. I'd never really checked them after buying the bike. I did notice on my last hundy that the front wheel had some definite drag on it though. It took a good 15 minutes, but now they're running drag free and rolling much more nicely.

Damn, what a weekend.