A warmer day.

Today was in fact a little warmer, about 50 degrees in the afternoon. Therefore, it was time to go for a ride. Kathleen and I rode down through the Inner Harbor, then out past the stadiums to catch the Gwynns Falls Trail going towards BWI, with the original thought being that we would ride around the airport and back. However, the promised partly cloudy weather never really materialized, instead it was cloudy and blustery, and we both are pretty sure we saw a few wayward snowflakes. It was still good to get out though. After passing through the Inner Harbor, we got stopped by an epic freight train passing through.
It was going fairly slowly, giving us a chance to admire the graffiti on some of the cars.
Once it had passed it was off towards Brooklyn. We rode out to the end of the trail in Brooklyn, where there was somebody feeding the seagulls in the parking lot at the hospital there.
At this point, I wasn't comfortable continuing on our current path towards BWI, mostly because it meant having to ride on Richie Highway, and there are a lot of douchebags in that neck of the woods, I am going to have to figure out another route out there, but I have some ideas for next time. So instead we opted to head back around towards the city again. We ended up looping back around and eventually rejoining the other part of the Gwynns Falls Trail at Washington Boulevard. We rode around Carroll Park, checking out the Mount Clare house, then meandered our way through the West Side a little. Coming back towards downtown we spotted this at the University of Maryland complex.
A little further on we found ourselves at the foot of the Bromo-Seltzer Tower, it realy is quite skinny.
After that it was back to the homestead to clean up and contemplate dinner.

Continued Cold

It has been a while since my last post/ride, and the weather has been brutal. More cold, a couple of snow/sleet/freezing rain storms, and a trip to Miami have kept me off the bike. But all is not lost, I have spent the downtime combing through all of my old hobbies in the basement, and selling off the remains of them (RC Car racing, slot cars) on Ebay. I then turned that money around into my current hobby in the form of converting my bike to Campagnolo from the Shimano drivetrain it came with. I had been accumulating parts for about 2 weeks, and finally got them all in a couple of weeks ago, so the conversion was on.

Here is the bike up on the stand to start the stripping down process.
I ended up getting new wheels, as Campy doesn't use the same cassette (rear gears) pattern as Shimano does. As a bonus, these wheels are about a pound lighter than the stock ones they replaced.
At this point in the evening I was rolling right along, all the while it was snowing outside, but then I got to this point.
This is the bottom bracket, and like everything else, Campagnolo and Shimano don't use the same mounting so it had to come out. I spent a pretty goodly amount of time trying to remove it, but had no luck. The last attempt was to put the tool in the vice, set the bike on top of the tool, and use the frame as the lever to turn it out. I started to turn and all of a sudden this huge bang, I was sure I had just broken the frame, but in fact this is what broke.
This brought my project to and end for the evening, it was time to take it to a pro to have it removed. Here is the scene on my bench, that flat metal thing is Kathleen's kitchen scale, as a total geek, I weighed all of the old and new parts to see how much weight I was saving. Also there is my copy of Zinn and the art of road bike maintenance, very handy for this job.
The next morning I put the bike up on the car, and drove through the snow to work, figuring I would run out on my lunch hour and get that done. Well the snowstorm from the night before had caused quite a mess on the roads, there were cars like this all over the place.
The storm had hit the afternoon before at rush hour, and there were hundreds of cars abandoned on the roads and freeways, several of my co-workers had commutes home that lasted 4-8 hours. Luckily, the guys at 20 Twenty Cycling had made it in to their shop, and with one guy holding the bike and the other one standing on the wrench handle (their wrench was more sophisticated than mine, but since I saw theirs, I know how to modify mine for the future), they got the old bottom bracket out.
So it was back to work that evening installing new parts, here is the Token carbon fiber crankset installed, pretty sexy don't you think.
Here is the rest of the drivetrain installed, including the Campy Veloce front derailleur, and the Carbon Fiber Centaur rear derailleur.
At this point it is starting to look like a whole bike again, but in reality there was still quite a bit more to do, as those are the Shimano shift/brake levers still on the handlebars. But since it was getting late, I stopped here for the night.
Continuing on on Saturday, I stripped down the handlebars and removed the old shifters, this necessitated a trip to the bike shop for new bar tape, the old tape ripped while I was trying to (carefully) remove it. But I did get them stripped down.
Then the new Veloce shifters went on.
Once I was happy with their placement, I stared the cable routing, the Campy shifters route the cables under the bar tape.
Once I had gotten the cable routing right, and the shifters/brakes adjusted, it was time for new bar tape.
At this point the bike was ready to ride again, so I wheeled it out of the garage for the official bikeforums.net picture (drive side out, chain on the big ring in the front, small ring in the back, in front of a white garage door).
Unfortunately there was no hope of going for a test ride with it, when I took that picture I was standing in 8" of snow and slush in the alley. So back into the garage it went, and off to Miami for work I went. While I was in Miami my last ebay purchase arrived (from Taiwan no less), a set of Mr Control Brakes. Kathleen sent me a picture as a tease.
Unfortunately, I was still facing a week of 18 hour days in Miami before I was going to be able to do anything with them. Here I am at work, learning a new skill, I am operating the video switcher here for an evening breakout session, 25 years in the production biz, and I have never touched any of this kind of stuff.
I survived my week of work, and spent part of a day in South Beach with Kathleen (she came down mid-week and enjoyed some sunshine and my hotel room while I was working) before we flew back up on Superbowl Sunday evening. While Kathleen soaked in the tub that evening, I went back to work in the garage getting the new brakes installed.
Then this morning I got up early and finally went out for a ride. I went down to the Inner Harbor, and saw the evidence of the continued cold, I have never seen this area iced over before.
It was still farking cold out, the phone said 34 degrees when I got up, and as a result my hands were a little cold, so I made it a fairly short ride and headed for home to get ready for work. The good news is that all of my work actually worked, no problems shifting or stopping on the shakedown ride, and I ended up shaving shaving a little more than 2 pounds off the bike weight by changing all of the components, plus I went from 18 speeds to 20 speeds. The Campy stuff shifts like butter, very smooth gear changes, and the Mr Control brakes did in fact stop the bike. Hopefully the weather will warm up a little soon so I can get out again.

Enough Already

It has been a cold winter here this year. It hasn't been above freezing since my last ride on 1/2/11. But today it was (about 4o degrees), and we didn't have anything going on, so Kathleen and I went out for a ride to Essex. Earlier in the day it had been sunny, but of course 20 minutes before we got our act together to go, it got cloudy. We headed out Lombard Street, and took the back way over to Eastern Avenue out by Eastpoint Mall. Here is Kathleen leading the way you can see the remnants of our last snow to her right.
We continued on out to the Cox's Point Park at the end of the spit of land there, and the Back River was pretty frozen on the main part of the river.
But on the other side of the point it was completely frozen.
We enjoyed the park for about 5 minutes (it's still pretty darn cold), then realized that it was getting late and so we headed back towards home. On our way out of the neighborhood to Easter Avenue, I spotted this groovy sign.
Then it was off to the homestead, and get some errands done before going to see Lafayette Gilchrist tonight at the Creative Alliance.

Dreary

I went out today to get another ride in to start 2011. Kathleen was going to go with me, but this morning she started coming down with a cold. So off I went into the gray day. My legs felt like noodles for most of the ride, probably a result of yesterdays sprint around the park workout. I rode out to Fort McHenry, and since it was open, I got my first look at the new visitors center.
Right across from it and next to the remains of the old visitors center is this statue of General Armistead who was the commander of the fort during the 1814 bombardment.
Also on the grounds is this statue of Orpheus, the greek mythological hero of music and poetry. It is there to honor Francis Scott Key (The Star Spangled Banner was written in Baltimore during the bombardment) and the soldiers and sailors who defended the fort during the War of 1812.
After my little impromptu tour of the fort, I headed back towards Federal Hill. On my way back I spotted the Princess Cruise Ship at the dock.
Possibly still here due to this. I continued on towards the stadium and, of course being the huge Ravens fan I am, I didn't know that it was game day. Part of the Gwynns Falls Trail snakes around the parking lots for the stadiums, and this was the scene.
The trash pile intrigued me enough to take a spin through one the parking lot right next to the stadium, so here is a brief look at the stuff people buy and bring to the game.


That is the tailgater grill made by Margaritaville, it attaches to your hitch (I only know this because there was another one with it's cover on three cars over).
Then I got on my way out to Washington Boulevard where in my continuing series of churches here is a storefront one, but I thought done very nicely.
A little further up the way I spotted this mural, I hadn't noticed it on previous trips up and down this road.
After that I noodled around Camden Yards a little bit, and then cranked down Pratt Street towards home, the garmin says my top speed for that mile (and the ride) was 27.1 and I was going 20+ the whole mile, using the cars to pace makes going faster easier than without, also I think that it is slightly downhill there, which helps the cause.

New Year's Day

Today, in addition to being New Year's Day, is also the day of the Resolution Run in Patterson Park. Kathleen did the run this year, so I went out to shoot some pictures. I rode around the neighborhood a little to warm up and see the sights. It was a cloudy day, but a nice 50 degrees out, so a pleasant day for a ride. I got to the park in plenty of time to see the start, and say hello before the race. I rode up to the top of the park to kill some time, then down to the lower loop to wait. Eventually the horn sounded and they were off. Here she is (Blue top, black tights) just after the start climbing the small hill on the lower loop (this is the same loop that I sometimes ride).
And then back around by the Pulaski Monument at the bottom side of the loop, so about 3/4 of a mile into the run.
I scooted back across the middle of the park and caught her making the turn at the top of the lower loop again to climb misery hill (as I have dubbed it) on the Baltimore Street side of the park.
I took off again on the overland route and caught her after cresting misery hill and coming back down past the Pagoda.
Then another sprint back down the brick paths to the duck pond.
Then I took the overland route again to get down to the Pulaski Monument and startled her when she came by, I was riding right next to her :)
Then back across the middle of the lower loop to get her at the finish, not my finest work, she's the disembodied head on the finish line.
Then back home to clean up and off to a late lunch/early dinner at the Red Star.