This was the end

Of a pretty damn good streak. Today marks the first day of 2011 when I've driven to work and have to play 10am parking roulette.

Not so bad.

I had hopes and designs on pushing a bit longer but the weather conspired against me in that getting the girls on bikes in the rain today to get to school would have been kind of tough. Maybe this summer it is something we can work on getting ready (aka all weather commuters for them too, fenders and the works). Just one more thing to spend time and money on. Put it on the list.

There are only a few days when it works though with all the activity schedules. But one day is better than no days. Any day out of the car is a good one. That said, getting in a bit earlier than normally when I have to drive and with one of the big prep schools near the image factory here on spring break, the traffic is pretty mellow.

The time change hit me pretty hard, I'd repeat the back and forth between Chandler and myself about it from yesterday but somethings are best left in the past.

I did get out for a big ride on Saturday. Big as in 4hr and 50min. Used the Blue and tried out the Zipp 101s. And honestly? I'm impressed but very skeptical. The hub is not stiff enough, in my opinion, to deal with the stresses of a radial laced drive side. Now, if any of you who might read this know anyone at Zipp who can explain to me why radial drive side lacing is a good thing and is not going to result in an exploded wheel, please lemme know. They are fast, they are stable and they were pretty cool. BUT. They are wicked stiff (compared to the 3x wheels i took off, even the tied and soldered one), how ever it is sort of the antithesis of desired stiffness. Vertically stiff but they feel spongy when accelerating. Now some people can counter that the twisting is just storing energy, but that's energy i'd rather store in the tire casing or transmit directly when I apply it.

The extra width is nice. I put the durano plus tires on there and they seemed pretty decent, air volume was okay, but 40mm valve stems won't cut it. Need 60mm. And 60mm valves won't cut it on the Reynolds (need 80mm).

Now I've built plenty of wheels (back to spoke lacing), and I know a few of my friends that might be reading this have as well, and radial drive side is essentially absolutely verboden (yes that's dutch, germans spell it verboten). The only exception I've ever run across is when you have an extremely stiff hub (generally requires a large diameter hub body, not flange - the part between the flanges). And the logic is usually to allow for more deraileur clearance or to move the flange out a mm or two to help balance the wheel dish.

The Zipp doesn't have a terribly wide hub body, nor can I see how it would really benefit (with current drop out spacing) with the dish difference.

The Reynolds does a cross pattern on the drive side and radial on the non-drive fwiw. My old favorite wheel build using the Sun rims Eric gave me when he worked there for a while, that's held up great and sprints beautifully (2.0 pulling spokes in 3 cross on the drive side, ritchey 1.8/1.5 static spokes and wheelsmith oval laced radially on the non-drive).

The rims are awesome and honestly it has me thinking that maybe buying a nice 24h DA hub and rebuilding it is in order. That said, I'm more curious to see if I can break them with normal riding. Although i'd rather not find out they are at the limit in a race (like I did at the one race I had a chance to win before I broke a rear spoke).

Not glowing review of them. But I've never really been one to blow smoke up people's ass about something. Hell I'm wicked stoked to have them, and they are fast. I was rolling right past not-skinny on the downhills without any extra effort and we're pretty close to the same weight (he might be heavier). The 46x12 gearing was enough to keep up with the non-compact gearing crowd in that loop but, it was close and a couple times coming in at 30-32 mph tagged on to the back of the group when I found myself trying to shift to a smaller cog. Max speed was only 40 on the ride but that's mostly because for all but one exception i was not attacking or setting pace or doing anything other than riding defensively. I did get dropped on the hill after the damn but managed to bridge up to Brent and Dean and we brought the fit fast climbers back in sight before the stop and left turn. legs were actually not terrible. esp considering I brought one bottle (in the jersey - still can't bear to put a cage on the blue) full of water and a couple gels. I only drank about 3/4 of the bottle in the 70 miles before getting back to the city and two gels (spaced out perfectly). The two bars in the pockets stayed as unused reserves. I did pound the fluids before leaving and it was cool enough that we weren't sweating too much. And we didn't pussy foot around. avg hr for the first 70 miles was 142 (max is 180).

I wound up with 79.28 miles and 4hrs 50 min on the bike. And felt pretty good. Two sandwiches and a shower later and I was fine. No DOMS either. Maybe I didn't push hard enough (college hill was really painful at the end of the ride - so i don't think that was it), or maybe the 9.28 mile ride from the coffee shop home riding into the wind at a mellow pace was enough to flush the crap out and the food I popped in fueled the recovery. I dunno, but man.

It was AWESOME.

So fun. Having Murat pull the surprise of showing up and the group of 15 or so at the start was very cool.

Not sure when I'll get to repeat that but I'm really looking forward to the Ronde.

Today's car adventures were a result of my wife heading to KY on an visit to her dying grandmother. She was released from the hospital and is pretty close to the end and she wanted to head out there and see her before she moves on. So I get a few days with my girls, just me and them. And can I just say this: as they get older, it gets more fun. They can help and do stuff and we function pretty damn well as a unit. We will get a whole week together soon (wife's headed to a conference), and while it means more days of hoppin' in the car and playing the shuffle and then ballet taxi service, maybe we can find a break in the weather and ride in together.

But anyway - enough rambling about me. Go watch some people way cooler than the camera man and laugh at his awesome planning.

Oh and I really hope I remember to get the car to inspection before the end of the month and really hope it passes. Gotta get the L and R high beam fuses to stay in place for the inspection (they don't work so good right now - kind of wiggly).

SHIT has GOT to get DONE today.

Coffee recharge time and then gonna f'n get some awesome stuff done. Or the not awesome stuff to be honest. All the stuff that's been building up for 6 weeks.

heddwch
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