General Update

To celebrate my first full month of blogging my biking, I decided to show you my Cyclistats calendar for November.  There it is folks - 12 rides for 176.2 miles during November.  Not exactly staggeringly impressive, but it's roughly 176.2 more miles than I rode last November so cut me some slack.

As you can see, I only rode to the bus once this week.  That's all I could manage this week, what with meetings & other functions all over the valley (2 days), minor bicycle issues (1 day), and laziness (1 day) and all.  But I got out for a ride today, as you can also see.  Last night was my office Christmas party at my boss's place in Eagle.  Kate & I had to drive there separately, so I got a bit liquored up so I had an excuse to leave my truck there, ride home with Kate, and ride my bike back today to get the truck.  So I did that.  Near the end of the ride I got egoslammed by some chooch that wouldn't let me catch him.

And!  Harry will be pleased to know that I changed my truck's oil again today (after less than two weeks and ~250 miles) - I checked the dipstick just one or two days after the last change and the oil was already filthy so I thought I'd give my truck a bit of a treat.  Plus I haven't ridden enough to merit a chain cleaning and I wanted to get my hands dirty and do something manly . . .

In bike maintenance news, I think it's time for a new headset on the Raleigh.  With Tyler's help, I've been nursing the old one for a couple years now - dealing with a wobbly fork and re-tightening it on a regular basis.  On Wednesday night, Tyler stopped by my place to give me a hand in tightening it again.  I rode it sixteen miles the next day, and already it's loose again.  Drat.  This may be a product of the bus though too - that bike rack isn't the easiest on equipment.  Perhaps some experimentation is in order . . .

Something slightly more peripheral but still bike-related is that I've made more progress on my massive garage project - building storage and organizing.  Recent progress involves moving bike hooks to more efficiently use space, building shelves to hold bike paraphernalia, and reorganizing some peg board to house bike tools.  Of course it's slow-going both because I'm anal-retentive and I take weeks to consider things before committing to a single hole in a wall and because every square inch of floor space I manage to clear is taken up again by other junk.

I need a shower.