Preperation Updates

This is likely to be a brief post - just wanted to throw a quick update out there before heading out to another of the long string of graduation/nice weather/pre-moving sort of cookouts and parties that started a few days ago. Have most everything together, or at least figured out, for the big ride that'll be starting in about 2 1/2 weeks now!

Went out for a fun training ride/visit with Matt and Tina, a couple good friends from Boulder who are also into the triathlon scene. We met up Saturday morning with a decent size group of tri-team people and went for a 30-40 mile ride out north of town and up to Jefferson. Beautiful weather, traffic wasn't too bad, and the downhill on the way home was a blast! Picked up some good bits of info on touring too!

Unfortunately, I managed to loose my brand new speedometer thingy on the way to the rendezvous point. Apparently, I hadn't clipped it all the way into the mount Friday evening when I was trying to figure out some functions on it. Tried re-riding the route before and after the longer part of the ride, but couldn't find it. Bummer.

Spent some of Sunday evening installing the new headset - wasn't too bad to just improvise the specialty tools that are recommended for the job. Did have a little issue with the bit that's supposed to press onto the fork - for some reason my fork has a slightly larger steertube than any other bike on the planet, so one part didn't fit. Turns out it's not really necessary, so I managed to get everything put together and working Monday afternoon after taking the fork and extra part over to a bike shop to see if they could get them to go together - the mechanic had never seen that situation before...

Received what will hopefully be my last package of bike stuff this evening - got a jersey, some bottle cages, and a few spare tubes from nashbar. Mounted the bottle cages, and packed up the bike with all the gear I'm planning on taking. According to our funky bathroom scale, the entire setup (bike, gear, bags, water, etc) is a little bit over 50 pounds - not bad! I roll home from the grocery store with more stuff than that sometimes, my bike handles the load nicely.

Talked a bit with my housemate Steve about shipping stuff the other day - he works for a retail shipping place - and figured out what the most economical way to ship the bike is. Might actually box it myself, which I know I've sworn I'd never do again.

The rest of this week is going to involve a lot of packing, I'm essentially moving everything I own (minus bike touring stuff!) into my uncle's basement before leaving. Also have finals for 4 classes coming up, but I'm not too worried about them really. Yay for indifference!