New relationship

I’ve had the excite­ment of my first bouts of explo­ration, lat­er brought to new heights as I learned to do things I’d nev­er done before. Still lat­er I fell in mad­ly in love with lean, beau­ti­ful, fast, and expen­sive. Today my needs are for more prac­ti­cal­i­ty, I don’t need a tro­phy; I just need reli­able and maybe a lit­tle fun along the way.

I went out this morn­ing and rode for a cou­ple hours. End­ed up doing only about 14 miles; enough to get a feel for the bike cer­tain­ly, but no dis­tance records were set.

My con­clu­sions? The bike is OK. I wish I could fall in love with a bike like I did the 1992 Marin Lim­it­ed Edi­tion. I still love that bike and it’s hel­la fun to ride, but it just isn’t prac­ti­cal for going back and forth to work. It’s a rac­ing bike through and through. Too bad I don’t do any rac­ing. Of course, maybe I should start.

Any­way, the jury is still out on the STI shifters. I don’t like how the brake levers have side-to-side play. It makes me ner­vous when I have to stop fast. part of that may be the adjust­ment of the brakes, too. I’m used to well-tuned feath­er-trig­ger brakes. On the Lim­it­ed Edi­tion I could throw myself over the han­dle­bars with the brakes if I want­ed to. Well, maybe. Maybe only on a hill. the point is, the Lim­it­ed has brakes that will lock my wheels. The Verona does not. I had to real­ly grab hard in order to stop at some of the stop­lights I hit today. I think if I buy it I’ll insist on a new set of brake pads and a read­just­ment of the brakes.

The Verona is two pounds heav­ier, but it does have the head­light, tail­light, and pump on it. And as I men­tioned, it’s a big­ger frame. Once I put racks on it’ll get heav­ier still, of course.

Back to the STI, I guess it was nice to be able to down­shift as I braked, approach­ing a light or what­ev­er. I found myself shift­ing a lot more and think­ing about antic­i­pat­ing when to shift a lot less. I also found myself shift­ing the wrong way a lot more that usu­al, and I was nev­er sure where I was going to end up, gear-wise. That’s prob­a­bly got a lot more to do with being unfa­mil­iar with the 27-speed gear­ing than any­thing else.

I did make it to the top of that hill in Daly City where and I turned around because I was too beat to go on (after hav­ing rest­ed twice in the mid­dle of the hill). Maybe I’m get­ting stronger again, and I’m sure that my heart and lungs are a lit­tle bet­ter used to mov­ing around than they were this Spring, but I bet that the gear­ing has some­thing to do with it. Slat­ed for 2004: climb Mt. Tamal­pais? Mt. Dia­blo? We’ll see. =^)

So the Stin­son gets retired to desert-bike sta­tus and I might dec­o­rate it with lights or el-wire or what­ev­er. I went to the top of Mount Mitchell on that bike, so I hate to let it go to the trash­heap. I can ride the Lim­it­ed Edi­tion on week­ends or races, and maybe even spend some mon­ey get­ting it tricked out with some weight-sav­ing appa­rati like a car­bon fork or whatever.

The new bike isn’t a love affair, but I want it for its prac­ti­cal val­ues. Hope­ful­ly my appre­ci­a­tion for it will grow if I take it in to work reg­u­lar­ly. It could drop a bunch of time off of my dai­ly com­mute too.

One thing for cer­tain: I have got to get rid of the straps and toe­clips. I roll cli­p­less. These toe­clips are annoy­ances. Of course, that means either car­ry­ing shoes to work or get­ting cleat­ed shoes that are work-appro­pri­ate. I had total­ly for­got­ten how much bet­ter cli­p­less ped­als are. Just spoiled, I guess.