Month: May 2021
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Three Rivers, Three Prefectures
This is a ride I’ve been meaning to do for a while: up the Tamagawa, across the top of Tokyo (which actually puts me in Saitama), and then back down the Arakawa. As I learned when I set out to map it, this course runs along another river in Saitama, the Irumagawa. When I told…
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Long-awaited wheel swap
Tubeless faff I recently saw a video in which a cycling blogger (with far more viewers than I have) described tubeless tires as “a bit of a faff,” and then went on to say how many thorns he’d had in his tires over the past year, and how it wasn’t an issue because he was…
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Minato no Mieru Oka Koen Get!!
The weather was iffy on Saturday — cloudy with a chance of rain. But Nana and I had plans for Sunday, so I could risk it or just stay home all weekend. I decided to risk it. I took my time getting ready for the ride, and hadn’t really chosen a destination until Nana had…
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Long time no Kawasaki Daishi
Maintenance before the start Before I could ride today, I had to take care of a couple of small mechanical issues that arose during last week’s ride to Takaosan: some adjustment of the rear derailleur, and a strange noise that cropped up late in the ride. So my first step was to bring Kuroko up…
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Fucking good luck
Guy tries to assemble world tour bike without proper tools.
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Refused at the gate
Optimistic start I finally got on the bike on Day 3 of a three-day weekend. On Saturday I was suffering from a tummy ailment, and yesterday we had lots of “guerilla weather,” including a number of tornadoes. This morning the skies were blue, with fluffy white clouds. While Nana whipped up a batch of her…
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Mitigated success
Stormy weather We had strong winds, lighting and even tornadoes last night. (None of the latter right around here, but what seemed like continual alerts on the television starting about dinnertime and continuing into the evening.) This morning dawned calmer, but with some freaky weather still in the forecast. With questionable weather in the offing…
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Not what I was expecting
During my last ride on Kuroko, I experienced a sudden grinding noise from the drivetrain, perhaps the crankset. I brought Kuroko to the Workshop in the Sky on my return home, planning on a complete drivetrain cleaning and inspection. I expected to find perhaps a worn chain or failing bottom bracket bearings — something Kuroko…
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New bike stand
I can’t really claim there was any pressing need to replace my bicycle stand, which I’ve been using for a couple of years now in the Workshop in the Sky. Its shortcomings are more annoyances than fatal flaws. For starters, the folding action is very stiff and requires a couple of minutes of wrestling each…