A new bike, a new home, and the 4th of July celebration!
The last month has been a really busy one. If not from classes, traveling/moving, kayaking, I’ve been tied up trying to get my bike repaired by Specialized in California. That’s right — a couple of days after owning the bike, I looked over at the seat tube as it sat next to me and noticed a small crack in the carbon frame.
With another type of bike (steel or aluminum), this would be much easier to fix (with a secure weld), however carbon fiber is another beast in itself. As the name implies, it is made from layers of carbon, all organized in directions calculated to engineer specifications particular to the type of riding one does. First, carbon bikes are really light; mine weighs about 16 pounds. Second, engineers organize the direction and thickness of the fibers on a “carbon” bike to make it more stiff in general, and others are stiff in specific locations. Stiffness is nice when going up a hill, or speeding off a starting line. You want to fill confident that every bit of force you are putting on the peddles is being transferred down the chain to rotate the wheels. On the other hand, too much stiffness can be harsh on your backside. My bike has a good amount of stiffness, but most importantly, it is forgiving on my backside…And that’s where the frustration comes in. This crack in the seat tub is ever so subtle (I even considered not sending it back for the month-long repair ordeal). But having a crack in the seat tube could result in a catastrophic malfunction in which the seat-tube cracks and the seat post falls while I’m riding, leaving the remaining shard in place to ram up my backside! Ouch! So I sent it in, and found out 2 days ago (a nice 4th of July present) that I will have a new bike at my door this week. It looks a little different, but personally, I like the change:
Before
After
On another subject, we moved down to Tampa this last weekend, and slowly moved in to our new home.
Best of all (for me, not necessarily for Cait) we got Verizon FiOS. It’s extremely fast. Fast enough, that I’m thinking about potentially moving this site from a dedicated online host, to a server that is in the closet next to me:
We went down to Citywalk for the 4th of July. It was not necessarily our first choice of locations, but at the last minute, we thought that fireworks and piña coladas sounded great together. Unfortunately, lines prohibited us from getting the drinks, but we did get some decent pictures:
