one more hill

Sachez pics

2007-05-03T22:30:58Z

sanchez_badge
Originally uploaded by leetchang.

I finally got my photo problems straightened out and have added more pics to Flickr. I going to go to Counter Balance to get front brakes tonight.

Swobo in the house

2007-05-03T05:27:44Z

Swobo is here
Originally uploaded by leetchang.

It finally arrived. The Swobo Sanchez that I ordered was delivered by UPS today. YEAH! I have more pictures but for some reason they turned out a little strange. There's a blue tinge throughout the pictures. I'm going to have to retake the pictures or figure some way to fix them in Photoshop. Anyways, assembly was pretty easy. I had it together in about thirty minutes. I tooled around my neighborhood after the rain went away. It was a blast to ride but I do need a front brake especially since I'm going to be commuting to work on it once or twice a week. Well, more pictures will be posted once I get my photos fixed.

2006 Tour de Blast

2007-05-02T04:41:41Z

IMG_0577.JPG
Originally uploaded by leetchang.

My wife and I did the 2006 Mt Saint Helens Tour de Blast ride. It was a blast. We're thinking about doing this ride again this year. It was a perfectly clear day with great views of Mt Saint Helens. It was a little warm for my tastes, upper 90's if I remember correctly. The climbing was more then I bargained for. The website said that there was only 6200 feet of total climbing but it turned out to be closer to 8600 feet of climbing based on my GPS. It was fun though and we'd like to do it again this year. Here's hoping we get they same clear weather like we did last year. Click on the photo if you'd like to see more pictures from our ride.

flat repair fails

2006-03-28T05:37:22Z

Well my repair attempt didn't hold up. I've had to replace my repaired Tufo tires with a new spare because the repair failed. The hole in the tire kept on leaking air. From the looks of it, the super glue doesn't doesn't bond well to the rubber. I might try a different glue like Gorilla glue or the new Elmers Ultimate glue.

flat

2006-03-23T20:42:24Z

My rear tire flatted on the way to work yesterday. This was the first time I’ve had to change a tubular tire on the side of the road. I didn’t have much problems getting the tire off and putting the spare on but removing the valve extender from the flatted tire to the spare was a pain.

]]> Buying extra valve extenders and pre-installing them on my spare tires would of saved me about 10 minutes. The whole process of changing the tires, adding Tufo tire sealant and inflating them would have taken less then 5 minutes if I already had the valve extenders installed.
Once I got to my office, I inspected the flatted tire and found a 5 millimeter cut in the middle of the tread. I once read somewhere on a forum that you could repair Tufo tubular tires with some superglue and Tufo tire sealant. Since the tire was relatively new, I decided to give it a try. I glued up the cut on the tire with superglue, put in some sealant and pump it up to about 120 psi and felt and listened for any leaks. A couple of hours later I checked the tire and found that it was still holding strong so I mounted the tire back onto the wheel and crossed my fingers while I rode home in the rain.
Well, I made it home without any problems and the tire was still roughly the same hardness as when I first inflated it so I left the tire on and rode in this morning with it. The cut on the tire is still sealed and the tire is still at the right pressure after 40 miles of riding so it looks like the repair with the superglue worked.

ouch

2006-03-21T18:58:17Z

I wiped-out on the way home from work yesterday. I was at the intersection of 6th and Stewart in downtown Seattle trying to beat a light when my chain broke. I was peddling hard out of the saddle at the time so I came crashing down onto the pavement when the chain snapped.

]]> The PowerCranks aren't very forgiving when you loose tension in the drive train. Luckily I was able to walk away with just a bruised tush and a few scratches. Bike came through unscathed except for a scratch on my saddle and rear scewer. I thought there would be more damage with the force that I hit the pavement with but even my bike shorts came through without a scratch even though i landed squarely on my behind. I put a spare link onto the chain and now i'm riding with my butt firmly planted on the saddle until I get a new chain. I've got to do a better job of regularly cleaning all the grit and grease off of my chain cause this is the third chain I've broken in the last six months.

e-motion rollers arrive

2006-03-17T05:10:39Z

When I got home tonight I found a big box from Inside Ride on my front porch courtesy of FexEx Ground. My E-Motion rollers had arrived. After getting my bike into the garage I brought the box inside and rushed upstairs to take a quick shower.

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Nice big E-Motion box

I saw these rollers at the 2006 Seattle Bike Expo last month and was impressed with how easy they were to ride on considering they were "rollers". Being the crazy bike gadget guy that I am, I placed my order at Inside Ride for my own set of E-Motion rollers and now I've got a nice big brown box in my great room.
I've been riding inside on my CycleOps Fluid2 trainer on the weekends because of the cold and rainy Northwest winters. The Fluid2 trainer has served me well but I've always wanted to ride on rollers because of all the benefits I've read about but I've been reluctant to get one because of the steep learning curve. Rollers like the Kreitler and CycleOps are also not meant for hard sprints and out of saddle cycling because of the difficulting in on the rollers.
The rollers came packaged very well. Everything was in it's proper place and it came mostly assembled. The only thing that needed to be attached was the fly wheel. My initial impressions were that this was a very well constructed piece of equipment. All the joints were very solid and clean.

Riding with PowerCranks

2006-03-14T22:15:22Z

I've been riding with the PowerCranks for almost 5 months now and I've seen big gains in both power and 'fluidness' in my peddling. I'm not too entirely sure if my power gains can be attributed to the PowerCranks since I just started cycling a few months before I got the PowerCranks and I had very little power to begin with.

]]> My power gains could of been gained just from riding on regular cranks since I had very little power to begin with.

Powercranks Installed

2005-10-28T19:40:49Z

August 11th, 2005 was the day I recieved my Litespeed Tuscany from PreownedBikes.com. This is the first road bike I've had in over 15 years.
I recieved my Powercrank xLite yesterday and installed them on my road bike. The installation process wasn't too hard as long as you follow the instructions.

]]> It took about 20 minutes to get the old cranks off and the Powercranks on. I took the old chain rings off the old cranks and installed them on the Powercranks. I did the same thing with the old Crank Brothers Eggbeater pedals. That's going to make switching between the 'normal' cranks and Powercranks harder but I didn't want to spend the extra money on another set of chain rings and pedals and besides, I don't plan on going back to the old cranks for quite some time.

Tour de Whidbey

2005-09-27T20:29:49Z

My wife and I rode the 2005 Tour de Whidbey on Saturday, September 24. This ride was held on Whidbey Island which is an island locaed in the Puget Sound just northwest of Seattle. There were three different routes to choose from, a century, a half century and a 25 mile ride. My wife rode the 25 mile ride while I chose the to ride the full century.

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Profile map

The century route was in a figure eight which was good for me because I wasn't sure if I was up to riding a full 100 miles especially since the organizers had touted that this was "one of the most challenging century rides in Western Washington". I'm not sure how this ride stacks up to the other centuries but this century had over 7400 feet of climbing was pretty had for me..

The route map

the climb begins

2005-08-13T21:46:41Z

I was gaining weight every year and feeling pretty crapy health wise so I started thinking about starting an excersise program in order to loose weight and get fit. The hard part was trying to figure out a way to fit excersise time into my busy schedule. It so happened that a few of my workmates cycled to work daily which got me thinking - why don't I ride to work?

]]> I live right on a paved bike trail, the Burke-Gilman, which dumps right into downtown Seattle where I work. So I decide that instead of spending the 45 minutes to an hour that is takes me to commute to work by bus, I would ride.
The commute is roughly 20 mile each way depending on the path I take making it forty miles round trip. For motivation, I made a bet with a co-worker that I would ride to work everyday for two weeks straight.