My last post mentioned that there were some problems with the components on the roadsteed, and I was actually quite down about it all. Couple that with some uncertainty about work (an early-a.m. email from my boss on Saturday asking for a 1:1 call on Tuesday…. along with the juggernaut which is Oracle’s takeover of Sun, and you can understand why I was actually unkeen to get on a bike at all for the last 5 days.

But this morning I’d arranged to ride around the local area with Tim, so I hopped on the dirtsteed – still with knobblies and a seat-post adjusted properly for off-road riding – and went for a spin. Wasn’t too impressed, really – 16km at an average of about 19.5km/h. I certainly noticed the difference in gearing – spinning along in 2f/6r, still with plenty of get up and go left in me.

By the time we got to the end of Westlake Drive, however, my knees were really letting me know that there’d be no Arrabri Ave this morning – and we headed back.

And so this afternoon I popped over to Chapel Hill to visit Scott’s mate Rohan – keen cyclist (road and mountain), and very good with maintenance.

I wasn’t holding out much hope that he could fix the shifters for me, but amazingly enough, after he and Scott had taken the cover off and given them a drenching of WD40 (with the appropriate amount of wiggling) the darned things worked again! Not just the right (cassette) shifter, but also the left (chainring)! Amazing! Joy! D0000000000D!

Rohan also adjusted the rear derailleur a lot better than I had, and the cables. End result is that there’s no rear wheel knocking, I can shift easily (and into the top chain ring), and the brakes are easier to apply as well. I still need to replace the cables (and probably the brake pads too), but that’s something I can do myself over the next few days. I also need to get the wheels trued, but Rohan and Scott have a mate who can help me with that

Net result, so far – no need to go and spend $lots on a new pair of shifters. And Happy.

I’m going to have to do a few rides with Rohan and Scott in the mornings, too – they do a regular 35km river loop around from The Regatta at Toowong to St Lucia, Highgate Hill, West End (quick stop for coffee) and back along the Coro Drive bike path. I like the sound of that, and when I’m a bit fitter+faster I’ll try to ride to The Regatta rather than wimping out and driving.

For most of Saturday’s ride I kept hearing a rather annoying clunk, and couldn’t quite figure out where it was coming from. Eventually I realised it was probably within or closely associated with the rear hub, and was sad — servicing would be Required, and sooner rather than later.

Took the roadsteed off to Chain Gang for a service. Fortunately or unfortunately they are all backed up until Thursday, so I just asked LBSG what he could think of as possible causes for the clunking. He spun the wheel a few times, noticed that some of the spokes were loose (that’ll have been killing the wheel true), saw that there was more play in the freehub than he would have expected, that the smallest cog on the cassette was badly worn, and then another LBSG came over and looked at the shifters.

“Oh, those are the 8speed RSXs [wiggle wiggle, with force]…. they’re buggered, you’ll need new ones. Cost you about $400.”

[insert sadface here]

As it happens, I had noticed that it took more and more wiggling to get them to shift for the cassette, and they just weren’t moving enough for the chainrings either. A bit of googling later and it seems pretty obvious that these have a design lifespan, and 11 years post-installation is pretty much past it.

I’m hoping Scott’s buddy Rohan can give me a second opinion, but I’m now starting to look into whether I can move to a 9 or even 10 speed cassette and shifter set. All that will just have to remain on hold, though, until I move past ENOCASH (for bike bits at least). Just when I was starting to get things going! Guess I’ll have to put the slicks back on the mtbsteed and keep trundling.

I did a 57km ride today, with Chip, Tim, Ingrid and Elspeth. Took a bit longer than I wanted – made some wrong turns trying to remember the route we took on Australia Day, but we got there in the end.

Managed to sustain a decent pace (about 35km/h by the handlebar computer) along Brisbane Corso, and really enjoyed the espresso (Guatamalan single orchard) from Cup on Russell St in West End. Really enjoyed it.

The new year goal was to be riding at least 70km every week, and this week (Sunday to Saturday) I’ve actually managed it. Tuesday was the day my tyre blew out, so that was a bare 6.5km (half was walking home), then Wednesday 20.24, Thursday 23.55, Friday 17.03 and today 57.17. Total: 124.49km.

I’m expecting that to radically improve starting in about a week, because Elissa got a job based in West End and is planning to ride to and from several days every week, and asked whether I’d like to join her. Of course I would! Every day I do one of those will be at least 36km, possibly even 40. Should be able to get my stamina up very quickly as a result.

Then there’s the small matter of the Coottha Challenge, but now Tim has his bike back from the fixitman, that shouldn’t be such of a problem to get out and train for. I hope!

#FF0000. So I’m wearing my “I’m the evil twin” tshirt.

Today marked the end of an era: this filing is the official notification that The Merger (it’s really a takeover) has officially completed, at least in the USA.I wanted to work for Sun since I was 14 – I read an article in Byte about the Sun 3/80 (reviewed with the i386 coprocessor card) and knew at that moment that Sun was the company I wanted to work for.It wasn’t until 1999 that I got the opportunity to start living my dream, and now I have a bunch of fantastic friends all over the world, have worked and continue to work with some of the smartest minds on the planet.I hope that the shakeout happens very quickly, and that I’m still around in the new world to keep doing what I love with people who I respect, admire and have learnt a heckuvalot from. Articles like this one give me cause for optimism, as do the full page ads that ORCL placed in the WSJ last year saying that they intend to spend more money on SPARC, on Solaris than Sun ever did.Guess we’ll just have to wait and see what The Webcast later today brings.

Well, it’s certainly been a while since my last post. In that time I’ve moved from SXCE to OSOL, had a trip to the SFBay area and Beijing, had an actual holiday (first one in 3 years), had 2 MTB off-road coaching sessions with Spoonboy, been loaned a road bike (thankyou Chipdancer) and experienced the joys of C turning 1 and having her very first birthday party.Quite an eventful few months all told.To start this new year I’ve got some goals which I hope to be able to keep to:

• Ride at least 70km every week, over 3 days

• Ride in the Bicycle Queensland Coottha Challenge (and not suck going up the hill!)

• Ride in the Bicycle Queensland Brisbane to Gold Coast 100km mass ride (and do so faster than last year’s 4h49m riding time)

• Get off-road more, on the MTB

Should be easy enough, don’t you think?

I’m also trying to get out of the headspace which made me think I was always at work — there are a bunch of novels I’ve got stacked up waiting to read. There’s always stuff to do around the house, and this “dad” caper is pretty absorbing too.We’ll see how I go.

After the rather large effort which was the Bicycle Queensland Wilson HTM Brisbane to the Gold Coast Cycle Challenge (seen here via Nokia SportsTracker), I took a bit of time off to be less cycle-y. Also wanted to get a chunk of time together to give my steed a service, especially the brakes. So it was only today that I got back on the bike.

Yes, rather slack, and rather lazy of me.

I’ll live.

I’d put the knobblies back on because I planned to ride up to the top of Bowman Place (higher than the top of Mt Ommaney Drive) and then ride down the southern side, which is all bush. Sadly, not to be. The southern side is massively overgrown with some really thick vine-like stuff with thorns. I’d have had to crawl underneath if I’d been walking – riding was out of the question. Got back to Bowman Place, kicked up a gear or two going down towards the boat ramp, then kept up a decent pace going all the way up to Sumners Rd and home just before the rain started.

So, 16.7km in 56 minutes at an average of 17.9km/h. Not too bad really since that includes the scrabbling around in undergrowth as well as the actual ascent of Mt Ommaney itself. Since that was one of my goals from before the B/GC100, I was delighted at just how easy it was to get up there.

Yes, I was panting and pretty stuffed at the top, but I recovered very quickly.

Also, what used to be a real killer of an end – the last climb up to Sumners Road – just wasn’t. So, I still need to get my brakes fixed up properly, they’re just not quite right yet, still not one-finger control. I also need to adjust my rear derailleur – sometimes it just doesn’t shift from 4-5 or 6-7, very annoying.

I also need to spend more time off the roads, and boy oh boy, the difference in cornering with the knobblies (cf the slicks) was quite strange. Sigh. Want Road Bike. Sigh. Just going to have to keep on riding, no matter what I’ve got.

Soooo... last week was horrendous – absolutely no riding done, and I only managed a shade under 70km for the week before that (week 2). Work really kept me busy, with several 6am concalls and a bunch of concalls at other times too.

So I took last Thursday and Friday off and hoped to get off my backside and ride both days. That didn’t happen – had to do a build respin on the Thursday (lost half the day so only got the back yard tidied up), and on the Friday I cleaned up my disc brake pads (wet-n-dry sandpaper, rinse with metho) and discovered that the problem is actually my rotors.

One’s got a large wobble in it, the other is totally dishlike.

’ll have to replace them, but they’ll keep going for a while yet. I did manage to order some Supersonics from Ground Effect and picked up some spare skinny tubes for next Sunday’s ride, but that was it until today because yesterday’s 35C temp got in the way of doing pretty much everything except having a dip in the pool.

So I rode off to Cafe Sul Ponto – the coffee cart on the Goodwill Bridge.

Had to stop for a few minutes and adjust my brake calipers (too loose!), but still managed to get there by 09:02. Good coffee, excellent conversation with the bloke who runs it, then I thought I’d wander back via the Kurilpa Bridge which opened today.

Sadly, I got there too early to ride over, so I had to dismount and walk through the launch party site instead. Kinda disappointing, really.

Anyway, 42.1km today at average of 20.6km/h, which I’m pleased with. Still not quite sure how Sportstracker reckons I hit 74.1km/h coming home (that’s the drop from Fig Tree Pocket to the bridge over the Centenary Highway, btw).

I have three goals for this week: (1) ride up Arrabri Ave from the southern end – it’s always beaten me up until now, that’s going to stop! (2) ride up Mt Ommaney Drive from the southern end – only climbed it from the south once, it’s time to do it again, and (3) ride at least 15km every day with a 50k effort on Saturday. Should be doable. We’ll see!

This afternoon I heard, for the first time “CZM, NO!” from J. (It can only be a matter of time before I pull out the full name “NO” usage). C’s been crawling around the dining room table where J’s got her laptop setup, and she’s been trying to play with the power pack and cables. Now we’re well and truly into the realm of ‘no’ being our most used word. I guess our little bundle is growing up!

Progress towards my 100km/week goal is good so far. Last week’s efforts included two spins around the Centenary Suburbs (14.0 and 18.8km), a long hard slog up the back road of Mt Coottha with Tim (39.5km) and a 47.2km trip to Kangaroo Point – all for a total of 119.5km. Score!

Took me most of 40 minutes to climb up Mt Coottha, unfortunately, so I think next time Tim and I ride it (we’re hoping to do that every Friday) we might just go up the front way. Apparently it’s a tad easier. We’ll just have to see.

The Kangaroo Point jaunt was quite nice. We caught up with several bunches of roadies along the way, tagged along with them for a while and then split off. It was quite interesting – different dynamics entirely.

On a “oh my ego is bruised” note, I’m starting to think that while my Double Happys are excellent for off-road, they seem to want to ride up the thigh when I’m doing a long road stretch. I might have to get some lycra roadie nicks.

<sob!>