Taper

It's official. As of today, no riding until the Ironman. I drove to the LRT today and will do the same tomorrow. The weatherfolk are saying there's a 40% chance of rain on Sunday, so I'm all up in the air about what to do for the ride, bikewise. There's a whole list of reasons why I shouldn't ride the Jamis:

New Brooks.
Ride's not completely dialed in.
Rain. (see New Brooks, above)
No rack to carry rain jacket/everything else on.

But, unless it's really looking like rain on Sunday I might ride it anyway. Now that I got the awkward shifting sorted out it's a whole lotta fun to ride.

Because I'm not riding I thought tonight would be a good time to tear down the Schwinn and see if I can figure out where this weird grinding was coming from. So first I took the rear wheel off. And after a lot of grunting and groaning and getting out my big orange pipe wrench, I got the freewheel off the hub. My intention was to repack the bearings. But, when I took the QR skewer out, whoops! My axle! It was broken. I guess I need a new one of those. That might explain that grinding noise.

I took it as a sign and threaded the freewheel onto the Campy rims and Panaracer tires that I picked up at the bike swap in February. The Campy rims are black and the Panaracers are blackwalls. It's a nicer look than the silver Weinmann rims and the brownwalled Continentals I had been running. I also pulled apart the bottom bracket and relubed and repacked everything down there as well. My ultra-cheap moustache bars ($20 including shipping!) showed up from Nashbar today too. I'm still debating on whether I should swap those out before the ride Sunday or after. Either way, I'm going to have to stop and get some bar tape from Jim this weekend.