Two Wheel Blogs

What is better than visiting with good friends? Today some old friends of ours came to visit and celebrate my son's Birthday. We all had a great time.

Peat and his family arrived around 11:00 A.M. and the fun started. We played a lot and got out the water fun park. It was nice to dodge the rain storms that were predicted (only a 40% chance).

Looks like he is happy to be a year older.

So a bit later after the kids started to wear out, Peat suggested a little ride out at some of his (and my) favorite trails. I am lucky to live about 5 minutes (by bike) from some really great trails.

When we arrived, I recalled that the renaissance festival was taking place in the same park, so we started from a different trial head to avoid the hassle of festival goers. Pete on his Carl Strong (custom built) and I on my repaired KM, headed down the trail.

We had a pretty good time. We were supposed to hook up with a few other people, but for whatever reasons, they could not attend. Ho-hum, it was a great ride anyway.

I expected to catch a view of the festival at some point, and perhaps see some of the jousting that was supposed to be taking place. We never saw any signs of the festival except the steady flow of traffic past the trail head. We did find a condom at the trail head...apparently some jousting of another sort had taken place...

Our bikes performed admirably, but my front wheel was making even more noise during this ride. I stopped at one point and noticed that a few spokes were lacking tension. In fact, one was so loose that I could turn the nipple by hand. After tightening it with my multi tool (just enough to pull up the slack without affecting trueness of the wheel) the wheel became silent. That settles it, these wheels must be re-tensioned. I have to set up a plan to take them back to their builder for touch up....(I have read that Stan's rims typically require re-tensioning after a few hours of break-in.

The amazing thing I learned here was that even with one spoke doing next to nothing in terms of structural support for the wheel, the wheel was still solid feeling and true. I really would have expected that the wheel would wobble and feel mushy with a loose spoke to two...live and learn I guess.

Once we got back to the house, we cleaned up and got ready for dinner. Headed out for a feast. It really was a great time. I was able to do it all today...a great time with family, friends, and bikes....almost felt like it was MY birthday!