(Non) Post

Well. Wasn't that a silly thing to do.

Apparently, I never posted the blog entry I wrote last Friday on my way home from work. Now, I'm not going to post it because a: the info is pretty out of date and b: it was poorly written. Basically it explained how fat and tired I was after my trip and how that was making it hard to ride everyday.

Now I have a much better story about the ride that took place right after I wrote (but did not post) that embarrassment of a blog (non)posting.

I got off the train a stop early at Sorrento Valley Station. From there I got on the I-5 South onramp to take the freeway one exit (Genessee). This is one of the 5-6 places in the county where bicycling on the freeway is legal.

Not that I'm going to go ride all of them. Riding on the freeway is significantly less exciting that you might expect. Basically is it similar to riding on any of the major boulevards in a city (roads with 3-4 lanes in each direction and a speed limit at or above 45 mph). The main difference is that the shoulder is not as well maintained and just littered with debris. I found this out the hard way.

Right as I got up the hill to the freeway (the onramp starts about 250 feet of elevation below the freeway) I popped my rear tire. This meant changing my rear tube on the side of the road. Really not too much fun.

To top that off once I exited the freeway I learned that they were doing median construction and that they had removed the bike lane from that segment of road. Super. Anyway the point of this trip was to drop my bike off at the shop because it was making a squeaking noise I couldn't identify and I was concerned it might have something to do with my crankset (I knew it was related to the act of pedaling.)

Long story short, I looked like a fool because my chain had dried out (I didn't clean it before I left so it had been over 4 weeks since it had been oiled) and that was the only problem with my bike. I, of course, was expecting to have to leave my bike and had arranged a ride home from REI (and had therefore made it a point to use all of my energy getting to the shop) which I now had to pass on (can't transport my bike on the wife's car).

I ended up riding a full 30 miles that day (far more than I expected I was capable of, taking into the account the post that I failed to upload. The upshot of this was that I rediscovered my love of cycling and have spent most of this week riding almost as much as I can in my commute (skipping the trolley and bus on the way home and just riding the additional 6-8 miles).

This has meant less posts to the blog (which is why I'm only now realizing that I never posted last Friday), but has given me more ideas for things to post about. So look forward to that.

-Matt the Weatherman

(P.S. I wrote this post Thursday afternoon and didn't get around to posting it until now. I guess I still haven't learned my lesson.)




Direct link to REI Cycling store