ornoth_cycling | Rememborial Day

Rented a car and drove up to Maine for Memorial Day, and brought the Bike Friday with me, as a way to get training miles in while testing out the new ride and a semi-real test of the travel capability.

Travel went well, mostly. After setting it up, the Bike Friday still needed a lot of adjustments: handlebars, gears, and brakes. I got the bars right—much better than my first test ride—but I didn’t bother adjusting the chattery gearing, and the front brake… well, it was so tight that I had to ride the whole weekend with the brake release most of the way open. Still, the bike shipped well, and I even had room to spare in the case, since I didn’t bring the bulky trailer wheels.

On the road, the bike worked well enough that I was mostly able to forget that I was on a crazy travel bike, which is quite a testament. I still had a couple more lessons learned, tho.

First, gotta pre-plan tire pressure. Either pre-fill the tires for short trips, or bring the floor pump or something for longer trips. Need to figure out a solution to that, because the floor pump is a bulky annoyance. Also, gotta get another saddle bag; it’s a pain to have to fill my jersey pockets with spare tubes and air pump and multitool and cell phone and wallet and GPS and food and cue sheet and keys and patch kit and tire levers and first aid kit.

As for training, I’m not sure whether I did the right thing or not. It being only my second weekend of riding this year, I probably didn’t take it easy enough. Sunday I did a 35-mile ride from Augusta to Manchester, then south on 135 past the state Y camp and around Lake Cobbosseecontee down to Monmouth, back to Haiioweii (sic) via the Litchfield Road, then the Kennebec River Rail Trail back to Augusta.

A wise person wouldn’t have pushed it more than that, but I decided to ride up the longest, steepest hill in Augusta: Winthrop Hill, which climbs in grades up to 15 percent, rising 340 feet in less than a mile from the Kennebec River to the airport. Owie!

Then Monday I rode another 37 miles from Augusta to Manchester, then north on 135 and 27 to scenic Belgrade Lakes and back past the old family farm via 27 and the Leighton Road, which has another short but nasty spiker coming up from Bond Brook.

Both rides were very up and down, as is typical of Central Maine, and thus were pretty respectable challenges, despite their fairly mundane length. So it wasn’t really a surprise that on Tuesday my knees were complaining pretty vocally. Unfortunately, this early in the season, I can’t really tell if that’s from the strain of all that hill-climbing or whether I had the saddle on the new Friday too high or too low. I guess that’s another thing I’ll have to pay more careful attention to when setting up the Friday.

But training has begun. Now to put some time and effort into the fundraising…