Will I ever learn?

My guess is no.

Ok, I started to post today (see brown print below) but realized I was way off on a blabbering tangent. Verbal diarrhea if you will. I've left it if you want to read it but I would advise it. Here is the short version:

Yesterday morning's commute sucked donkey d* because of all sorts of bike issues, didn't freeze though so thats a plus.

Ride home started well but I falsely assumed (again) that the snomobiles would have been out to pack some of my trail commute home meaning I had to hoof it for a couple of miles. Good training for the Winter XC challenge I guess.

See how simple that was?



Marcy had the day off yesterday for MLK day so I seized the opportunity to commute to work. I had to really since it was going to be one of the coldest days of the week (how does this ALWAYS happen???). Things started off bad and just got worse as my morning prep got going. I had left some of my evening prep for the morning so I could spend some time with Marcy Sunday night which meant that I had to mount up wheel set number 3 (stans rims with panaracer rampages for extra float on the trails) on the El before riding. Seemed simple enough. I went out, pumped the front tire up a bit since it had leaked down somewhat, mounted both wheels and went back inside to finish getting ready. Come back out 15 minutes later to find that my front tire is now totally flat. F! It's a tubeless setup so I didn't want to pull it apart to put a tube in so I opted to just throw the wheel with the Nokian tire on the front. It's skinnier than the Rampage but at least it would get me rolling. Then it took me forever to get the brakes adjusted properly for the differently spaced discs between wheels. Cold hands and small knobs aren't a good combo! Finally, I was ready to roll so I put on my gloves (three layers: thin fleece, brown jersey gloves, large mittens with felt liners) which takes a minute or so because of the layers and mount the bike to ride out. Opps, not yet. Seems sometime during my fumbling around I had knocked my chain off so I had to strip my gloves again (can't get grease on the mitts!), fix the chain and finally mount up to ride out wondering if this was cycling gods way of getting me to stay home but I didn't listen. Couldn't listen really since I had so much time and mental energy already invested in the morning's ride.



Once on the road I felt a bit better. It was super cold but I felt like I was dressed pretty well. I knew everything would probably be good except my hands. I was right and all it took to keep the hands toasty was to do some windmills every 5-10 minutes to force blood back into the fingers. Unfortunately, I soon noticed that I also seemed to have a slow leak in the rear tire as well. Another Stan'd wheel. I just mounted these tires recently and haven't had a chance to test them out plus I almost out of sealant so each tire got a minimum amount of sealant so that is probably why they were leaking a bit. I just got a new bottle of sealant from Bikeman so I guess it's time to fill them up again! Anyway, thankfully the leak was slow enough that I was able to slog through to the office