…sold bike… January 16, 2008

Well, I sold the 04 Giant OCR 3…

It was just a bit too small for me. I tried riding it, but could not get comfortable on it. With the seat up high enough to allow for efficient pedaling, I was bent so far over I was almost looking behind me. Ok, it wasn’t quite that bad… but I do need a longer top tube, and a taller head tube.

Cranks… I’m thinking that when I do get a road bike or touring bike that fits me, I’ll put 180’s on it. Most XL bikes come with 175’s or 177.5’s. I feel like my legs would do better with 180’s. I know, it doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but try two exact bikes – one with 175’s and one with 177.5’s. You’d be amazed that you notice the difference of 2.5mm’s.

Other things I learned from rebuilding the OCR 3… I learned that I love my Brooks. I have over 800 miles on the Brooks, and I absolutely love it. To realize how much I love it, I just needed to ride a few miles on another seat. The seat I put on the OCR wasn’t uncomfortable or bad, but it was the “old” feeling of riding on a bike seat. The normal feeling. The way I thought all bike seats felt. The way you get used to a bike seat because that’s just how they feel.

Not anymore. The Brooks rides differently. It feels better. It is more comfortable. You can do hours and hours on a Brooks without noticing it. If someone ever asks me what bike seat is worth $100 or more, I’ll answer “Brooks”.

Let’s see… other news or thoughts on random subjects…

Entertainment: Tom Cruise is a nutjob. Apparently, so is Scott Baio. Brittney? Pretty obvious.

Politics: I was a McCain supporter, but have been more interested in Huckabee lately. Two guys that work for me are from Arkansas and have nothing but great things to say about what he has done there. Sounds promising. But, it always does, doesn’t it…

News: Too many tragedy’s to comment on. Too many families killed for no reason other than lunatic ideas. Too many kids hurt or killed. Too many people doing too many horrible things. Too much tragedy.

What else…?

Getting my pilot license. All done with my training. Got a 90 on my FAA written exam. All I have left is my oral interview, and checkride. Both scheduled for tomorrow (weather supporting).

For my recent projects since finishing the bike rebuild, check out my other blog:

http://wh7da.wordpress.com

Oh, and if you want an easy way to monitor several blogs, use www.bloglines.com. It is an easy one-stop site for updates to many different “rss feeds”. And no, you don’t need to know what an rss feed is to use it. You just click “ADD” and type or copy the URL of the website you want to monitor, and it finds the rss feed. Then, you just go to bloglines, and it will show you any updates on any of the sites you watch.

I use it to watch CraigsList (you can enter Craigslist searches as URL’s), comics (there are lots of comic feeds out there – hundreds), favorite threads in favorite forums like bikeforums, feeds from hobby related stuff like planetham, and (of course) any other blogs I follow like ClydesdaleFitness.

In fact, here are some feeds I use, just to get you started:

https://back2dabike.wordpress.com/feed/
http://wh7da.wordpress.com/feed/
http://www.bikeforums.net/external.php?type=rss2&forumids=20
http://www.sneakeasysjoint.com/thecyclingdude/index.rdf
http://life-cycle.blogspot.com/atom.xml
http://honolulu.craigslist.org/oah/bik/index.rss
http://persistent.info/scraped/frazz.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/PlanetHam
http://naturesgym.wordpress.com/feed/
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/index_fullfeed.rdf

There’s more possibilities out there, but listed are a few of mine to give you some ideas.