05 September 2006

Dear England

For Christsakes you won 5-0. We don't even have a coach and none of our players are good enough to play in your league. Well, very few of them, anyway. We'd be happy to naturalize Frank Lampard.

I shouldn't have written the words Salt Lake and Playoffs in the same sentence. Noted.

Another exciting weekend came and went. I made two recipes (well, not exactly, but close) from Indy Foodie on Labor Day, and then cleaned the kitchen. The grass remains uncut.

Sunday I bought a new kickball for LNOUJ 2006 or 2007, whenever that happens. It's a quality kickball that I'm saving as a surprise.

Saturday was a family reunion, a 30 mile (Trenton-New Baden-Germantown-Breese-Aviston-Outskirts O' Trenton) bike ride, a home tour (nice house, Mark), and a bit of drinking with the lads. Really sort of uneventful all around. I played kickball with some little kids and only made one cry. Not on purpose.

Oh boy.

This coming Sunday (also known as Grandparent's Day) I'll be participating in the Admiral Spruance Regatta, a canoe race in Indianapolis' very lovely downtown canal. I didn't front the money, work did. If my team was to win, we'd get tickets to Vegas. If we lose horribly (last place), we still get a free meal. Works for me. We haven't practiced, and I'm not even sure if we have the required equipment.

Anyway, someone across the hall is talking about Big Head Todd, and he just said "I swear this guy had the biggest head I've ever seen". And he works with me. And with that...

5 comments:

Mike said...

Dave,

A steady effort of 18 on a mountain bike is pretty fast. I'd say it'd be damn near impossible. Well, not impossible, just not plausable. You're fighting against wider tires there, and usually they've got tread on them, and all that works to slow you.

I've ridden the rocky backroads of clinton county... if you take the rocks out of the equation, and you're riding on smooth tires, highway and country road differences are maybe 2 mph. On a long ride on my road bike I find that if I'm on a new section of pavement I'm 2-4 mph faster, but usually that's just because it's a lot less effort. I feel like I'm rambling.

I'd guess a bike shop could put a different cassette (the rear gears) on your bike, but that's probably not a very good way to accomplish what you're after. And then there's also issues with the cassette actually working with the rear derailler and yeah it's not worth it.

If you've got the room to store it and you wanna go faster, buy a road bike. And when you need help with the choices there, I'm available to provide answers. I'd rather talk about bike than pretty much anything so no biggie.

Last but not least, if you haven't ridden a bike that's well put together and fits, you really don't know what you're missing. If you find that you enjoy riding the mountain bike, there's no reason to think you wouldn't enjoy the road bike. That's how I started, doing 7 or so miles on the mountain bike, but when I made the switch I never looked back.

Though mountain bikes are really fun on trails.

If you're wondering about dollars, the cheapest roadbike I'd recommend is probably right around $700.

Mike said...

Thanks for the website reply. I wrote back to the guy to ask him to be more specific, but as it turns out he never replied. Perhaps he was having a bad day.

I'd highly recommend a helmet.

J said...

mike,
yo.

My bike was recently thrashed by a car while parked... bummer... but I guessed thrahed is a bad word. Just the back tire was hit, so I gotta buy a new rim and whatnot. Its coming soon; its already ordered. I really want to brink my bike back to the States. Just cause nobody owns a Tokyo Bike in the USA.

When the USA is under my feet, lets do some bike rides.

LAter, jon PS no reason to write other than its late & I am delaying bedtime.

Mike said...

Jon,

Very few things would make me as happy as going on some random bike rides. I still want to ride across Vermont, should be a piece of cake.

Alright alright.

Anonymous said...

Dave if you just push mow your lawn, you'll get more excercise than you need. And if that's not enough, start mowing the corn field.