training

I just got Camille back from the shop on Tuesday and love the improved shifting. Today was a fun day, but long and very wet! It seems to rain every Thursday for some reason... Anyway, biked up to Redmond for Aikido in the morning as usual and then stopped at QFC to pick up some picnic food. Fresh hot chicken tenders and a cranberry, walnut, pineapple salad. Yum! Then we headed back to the Sammamish River Trail and followed it north to Woodinville, where we stopped for lunch and watched folks playing catch with their dogs. The wind started picking up and it was getting chilly, so we rode on to Bothell and connected up with the Burke-Gilman Trail. There was the most gorgeous scenery as we biked the trail along the river, by the sea-plane airport in Kenmore right on Lake Washington and then into Lake Forest. It's such a pretty trail! Chatty squirrels darted across the path in front of us, about a hundred black birds sat in a couple trees and cawed up a storm of insults overhead as we passed and on the way home we met three roosters who seemed to think they owned the trail. Why did the chicken cross the road? To see if the bike would swerve first...

There were a number of chocolate refreshment stops made along the way. I found an extra-dark Hershey bar with blueberries, almonds and cranberries to be just the ticket. Highly recommended! :) We fought the wind the entire way back to Redmond and just as we arrived, it started to rain again. My feet were almost completely numb with cold, so I spent a couple of hours at Starbucks nursing a venti chai with whipped cream and thawing out. Then we braved the wind and the rain back to Aikido and after class again fought the wind home. 9am to 9pm. 50 miles. And I have now completed my white belt tests to go on to yellow belt. Lots of great things today, so I'll end it by spending my first night in my new sleeping bag and tent. Lots of love, LaichandCamille! <3

tires and brakes

Due to the rather excessive number of flats that I've recently encountered, when my front tire went flat at midnight halfway home from work last Saturday, I decided enough was enough. When I got home and took a closer look at the tire, I found several pieces of glass and rock embedded in the tire as well as a rather large gash to the side. I had replaced the back tire the week before, but obviously the sides of the roads here are brimming with opportunities to puncture. So I took Camille to the bike shop yesterday and she got Armadillo tires which according to Mike are tested through fields of glass. Good stuff. Sounds just a bit like my daily commute! While changing out the tires, notice was made of poor Camille's brake pads...or lack thereof. In a mere two months the back brakes were completely worn out and wafer thin while the front brakes were about halfway worn through. With new brake pads, Camille can now stop on a dime. :) I've put almost 500 miles on her in two months. Not too bad, but not as much as I was hoping for. She's going in to the shop this weekend for a tune-up. Overdue, I think. She'll enjoy the TLC, though.