Linked Up Again!

Twenty bucks later and I and my bike are ready to ride again with a new SRAM chain and master link. Pretty darned easy, but unfortunately I missed out on a ride today. Got back from our errand running and finished the chain install by 6.30... too late for a ride, but also picked up a cheap light set today! Took a nighttime run in the driveway and its pretty darned bright! Thanks again, Allspeed Cyclery & Snow!

The Weakest Link

Was having a pretty good ride that I had been looking forward to after three days on non-stop monsoon-like rain. Did the usual errand running after work, mail and banking for the union and then hit the trails. Started out conservatively like I usually do and then decided to have more fun on the way back in. I decided to say the hell with picking a cautious line around some huge little ponds on the trail and just tore through them. The deepest one I had been a bit worried about. No way of telling how deep it was. Well it was deep enough that I was peddling through water with my foot underwater at the bottom of the stroke. No problem! I was laughing all the way through. Then was the steep descent. It goes down steeply and then goes right back up in a V. Halfway up it I heard a pop and felt the sinking feeling that I had just broken the chain. Yep, there it was lying in the mud. I have a chain tool, just not with me, of course! So, I had to walk the last mile and a half out, down the street, caught the bus most of the way back and then more walking. Walking a bike sucks!

Kicked!

Ass is officially kicked today. Best guesstimate to my ride after work today that took me from roads to a really wonderful, but completely technical trail ride in Portland that I never knew existed. Its a hard section of singletrack through pine forest and tidal flats with pedestrian bridges, slippery pine needle floors, unmarked dead ends, pine root steps, all out climbs that you have to be careful not to do a wheelie onto your back and suicidal descents down tree root steps. Beautiful, but Map My Ride doesn't correctly map it and my cyclometer doesn't work, so I can only guesstimate that it added all up to ten miles or so. I'm so sore now (but I feel great overall...) after two slow speed falls into a ditch and onto a root. I have a bruise on my elbow, shoulder, hip, cuts on my knee and a large welt, bruise and goose egg on my shin... all on my right hand side, courtesy of the clipless pedal that I cannot easily twist out of. Wonderful afternoon though!
http://trails.org/our-trails/fore-river-sanctuary/