Further to yesterday’s post, some of you expressed concern over my funky-ass steerer:
I thought nothing of the rust myself, but you managed to give me second thoughts, so I dropped Drew Guldalian (he built the bike) a line to see what he thought. His advice was to sand it with 100 or 120 grit sandpaper, grease it, and repeat the process annually to keep it in check. So there you go.
I’d already greased it before putting it back together (you’ve got to keep it greasy, you know) but in the coming days I’ll pull the fork and do as he recommends. And in the meantime, this morning I headed up to the Trails Behind The Mall once again:
Unsurprisingly, the steerer maintained its integrity, but I did almost fall on numerous occasions because I kept patting myself on the back for owning such a fantastic bicycle.
Not only is this bicycle fantastic, but so is the weather. May is the perfect time of year for jorts riding, since it’s warm enough that you don’t need any layers, but cool enough that you don’t drench your jorts in sweat and look like you peed yourself. As you can tell from the state of my steerer, I’m a heavy sweatter, so this is a problem for me:
As I also mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve just received some rather fine vestments from Vulpine, and this morning I attired myself in their merino crew tee:
And their mid merino blend stripe socks:
I’m far too modest to say I looked good, but I’m totally secure in saying that I felt good.
Of course, you’re under no obligation to purchase an expensive t-shirt, just as you’re also free not to subscribe to Strava. But that’s not stopping people from complaining about the fact they’re cutting a bunch of features for their non-paying users:
Having to pay in order to access certain features on a fitness app you’re under no legal or moral obligation whatsoever to use strikes me as perfectly reasonable, but then again I have morphed into a filthy capitalist in my old age and suffer from the delusion that people need to make money. Anyway, there’s always a workaround:
Also, look at it this way, Freds and Fredericas: every goddamn group ride is cancelled, and you’re saving well over $200 just by not riding the Gran Fondo New York. That’s like four years of Strava right there. And if you really want to save money you can use aluminum wheels instead of carbo…oh, never mind.