Midweek update 3-11-09

Hey everybody,

What and exciting time! It is only 59 days till the Trans-America. This week saw the return of good riding weather. I've been out there mixing it up. On a ride yesterday, I broke the cable stop on my ultra light road bike. For those of you who don't know, without cable stops, your shifting becomes in operable. You can still ride, but get stuck in one gear. So unless you are on flat ground or going down hill, forget it. I went down to "Take's" and bought the best epoxy glue they had and will test ride it tomorrow to see how it holds out.
In the mean time, I've been fooling around with my movie program, converting DVD footage into a more uploadable WMA file to be inserted on this blog. That way I can post short video clips along with pictures and my daily updates come May 8th.
This is a clip from a while back that I just finished converting. Put on your seat belts, and hold on.

Aloha, Ted.

Up date for week 2 of march.

Hello again and thanks for tuning in.

Ted doing the dreaded routine bike maintenance.

Well, things have slowed down a little. The weather makes it difficult to go with any predetermined plan. So for the most part outside of my usual daily commute, I've been concentrating mostly on logistics and equipment stuff. My front derailleur froze up on me from ridding in the wet weather. Not a big deal, I just needed to clean it and re-lube the pivots. Apparently moisture got into the bushings and caused the moving parts to stop moving. It's a good thing it happened now, cause at least I know that this may be a concern on the real trip. Another problem I've had this past week is both tires going flat after ridding in the rain. No apparent reason that I could see. There were no thorns or cuts visible, and when I pumped them both up, they seem to be okay. It's a strange one, but I've had that happen on a few occasions before.

On one of my rides when the weather was a lot better, I mounted the video camera on the back of the BOB trailer just to see what it looked like from back there. Here is a short video clip of that experiment:



I'm doing these test posts now so that I can share stuff with you guys later when it counts. So please tune in once a week for the updates. Usually by Sunday night for the coming week. Then as much as I can when internet access is available on the road.

See you guys next week. Alooooha, Ted.