Ride or Pie?!: Taughannock

Showing posts with label Taughannock. Show all posts

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Back on the bike

Okay, my wrist is no longer fractured, the cast came off 3.5 weeks ago, and thus I'm finally back on the bike. Of course, being in a cast and off the bike for over 2 months took its toll, and the wrist isn't fully healed yet. So I started slowly, with a 38 km ride into familiar territory: to Taughannock State Park and back. Spring hasn't arrived in Ithaca yet, and so I had to deal with temperatures of -5°C, cold winds, and at the end of the ride some snow. It felt very good to be back riding, even though my wrist hurt quite a bit when riding in the hoods -- riding on the tops seems to work better. I hope this is going to get better soon, as I need to do some serious riding to get back into shape for the season.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Gunnar

Finally the weather has been nice enough for me to take out Gunnar for a couple of rides. After a short loop through the city and a ride to the FLCC spring seminar two Sundays ago, yesterday I took Gunnar on a real test ride, out to Taughannock and back on Route 89. And Gunnar rides like a charm. I pushed it pretty hard and averaged at 30.7 km/h for the out-of-town portion of the ride. I think the geometry works pretty well for me, but I will keep tinkering with it: saddle height is maybe still a bit too low, but the current seat post is already at its max. And if I have to get a new seat post anyway, I might get one with a different set-back. Currently my KOPS (knee over pedal spindle) position is about 6 cm behind the spindle and my saddle is as far forward as possible. I'm well aware that several cycling gurus are rather skeptical of the KOPS method and their arguments are making a lot of sense to me. But given that my saddle is at the margin of adjustability, a zero-setback post would give me more options to tinker with my position. Probably I should just ask Glenn for advice. Handlebar height might get readjusted downwards, too. At the moment my posture is fairly aggressive, but I think I could drop a spacer or two and still be comfortable.

I'll go for another ride with another German guy today and we'll see how Gunnar feels after 2 or 2.5 hours. I definitely expect my behind to hurt, as the Selle Italia Flite Gel Flow (I have the one without titanium rails) saddle is just too tiny. My knees might also be a trouble spot, as I messed them up a bit yesterday, courtesy of a downward sliding seat post...

I also shot some outside pictures of Gunnar. I hope you'll enjoy:

Odo Wolfgang: 3924 km
Odo Gunnar: 991 km (point zero is at 954 km)

Sunday, March 14, 2010

More ride, less blog

What's a good indicator of the coming spring? That my kilometrage is up and my blog-postage is down.

Just a quick maps-con-pics from last week's lovely ride to Taughannock Falls. If you want more details: I think the accomplice might blog about the ride soon.

Oh, and I've done the first couple short rides on Gunnar. Verdict: nice ride, but still needs some adjustments. More detailed account to follow sometime.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Ride report: Trumansburg

Quick ride report: Temperature only slightly below 0° C made me jump on Wolfgang and do my standard round to Trumansburg and back. When I started it was very grey and snowing, making the ride to Trumansburg not terribly pretty;.

I love those quiet country roads...

I was, however, rewarded with a nice view of the icy falls in Taughannock State Park.

From Trumansburg ride

The reason for riding to Trumansburg (aside from it being a nice ride) is that it allows me to work for a couple of hours at the Gimme!Coffee there.

Wolfgang parked in downtonw T-Burg

On the way back, I made a quick stop at the lower Taughannock Park (the Gorge trail is open, btw) and at Allen Treman Park in Ithaca to shoot some pictures of the lake.