Paul and I took off for a good 25 miles or so. Busted out the camera for it. The shutter speed on this thing was nice, I got my shots then got the gloves back on:) I kept my shoes as loose as possible, and only wore a thing coolmax sock and medium weight wool fox river sock. I could really move my toes more, so I think the enhanced circulation to my toes helped. They were still cold, but when I got back, they warmed up within a few minutes, before I even got to the shower the numbness was gone. Good tip from Matt. And washing and fully drying my lobster claws kept my fingers warm too. I also found that I could shift over the finger separator in each claw to keep each finger together. That helped a lot too. Here's some pics:
We started at Ada Hayden lake (can you find it?):
No matter where I go next, I will always remember how flat Iowa is:
Paul climbing one of today's biggest hills:
Tree farms don't do so well when the weather's like it's been:
Paul starting to take the dry line after a couple nasty ice falls early in the ride:
7 comments:
Ahhh. No wonder I hate the wind! You see that sail behind me!??!
%^)
Thanks for riding today Alex!
Hah, yeah that's true. Finding a good fitting jacket is a good idea. Hopefully it'll start warming up a bit here to do more riding. I'll be trying to push through my work to have some more riding time available this spring.
Well, I just throw on 36 X 16 and going out for an hour. I guess we will see how it feels!
Thanks for riding yesterday!
Thanks for the "riding's more important" reminder:) I need to do it more often.
Heading back into the "wind" on the way back felt a little slow, so a 44 not a 46x18 would be good for me. Let me know what you end up doing with your 1x9 setup. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that I have an opinion on how to do that up right.
Alex, I hope you see this! What would you do for a 1X9? I really want to know!
Alex,
You left me a message on my blog about your opinion on a 1 X 9 set up. What is your opinion?!!? I would love to know!
Ahh, sorry, I'm inconsistent on when I check up on the blog, only when I get some free time which is very random:)
What I did is buy a Mountain cassette. Standard is 11 or 12 up to 32 or 34. I have a 12-34. This gives me an awesome range, and have never been in need of another gear. I picked a front ring so that my middle cog on the cassette would be about 2:1. This has worked great with all round conditions, with a cross bike.
However, if I were to do a 1x9 gravel grinder and/or 29er (due to the fatter tires) I would bump the front ring down at least 2 teeth, if not 4. So instead of running 46 up front, I'd run 42.
Also, for the 1x9, I bought the right BB length so that my front chainring lines directly up to my middle rear cog. This is a must! It really makes setting your high and low, and indexing on your der easier.
I would run a Ngear jump stop.
http://www.gvtc.com/~ngear/
Don't waste your time with any other device!!!
Then I would put an chain ring guard on the outside. With my 130BCD I can't find a bigger guard than a 44t. But I don't know how that changes for a mountain chainring/crankset setup.
This further complicates things, but road cassettes have really fine step sizes. So it's nice to make small adjustments. But the biggest range I've seen is 11-27. So it'd be nice for small adjustments with all the flat gravel out there, to tune your cadence, but it makes the front chainring choice a bit harder.
I could go on forever, so let me know if you have some choices/restrictions and I can chime in some more.
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