Rest stop at Goose Bay
Leader: Steve Palincsar
Members: Sarah Clement, Janell Saunders, Donaro Gardner, Ken Meredith, Sabine Hentrich, Ron Altemus, Harry Kidd, Patricia Sanders, Tom Short, Linda Bankerd
Guests: One registered for the ride but didn't show up
Route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/44986801 37 miles, 1327' elevation gain
Weather: A cool, sunny and windy day. Temperatures ranged from 49-50 at the start (and much colder feeling in the shade at Livingston Rd) to 59-60 by early afternoon. As nice as the sun and the temperature were, it was the wind that really caught your attention. The National Weather Service forecast called for 7-8 mph winds, but Weather Underground actually recorded 12-15 mph winds with gusts up to 22, and that's what it felt like: very much like yesterday but a little cooler and not quite as windy. Still, it was a very pleasant day for a ride.
AMS: 12.8
Mechanicals/Mishaps: Today we had two.
Arriving at the Goose Bay rest stop, Linda Bankerd had a rear shift cable failure. It's bee several years since we've seen these, and I'd grown complacement and thought perhaps Shimano had solved this problem. Alas, no -- and today's frame design with internal cables has made things worse than they used to be: the expedient repair of using the broken shift cable to hold the rear derailleur on a middle sprocket is no longer possible, since you no longer have access to the broken cable.
So Linda had to struggle on, stuck in a high gear and having to walk all the hills. Tom Short stayed with her and sent the rest of the group on, planning to revise the route to return on Bicknell as the flattest of all the possible ways to return.
On Poorhouse just before we reached the Pisgah Store, Sabine
Fixing a Flat at Pisgah Park
mentioned she heard a strange ticking sound coming from my tires. We were less than a mile from the rest stop at Pisgah Park, so rather than stop by the side of the road trying to see if anything looked odd, I elected to keep on riding.
I checked my tires as soon as we arrived at Pisgh Park, and found a chunk of glass sticking out of my front tire. As flat fixes go, this was a relatively easy one: remove the wheel, remove the tube, replace the tube,pump up the tire, replace the wheel and you're good to go. And I had company, too: although most of the group chose to stop at the Pisgah Store rather than at Pisgah Park, Sabine and Ron were with me.
In practice it's seldom as simple as it sounds. My tires on my rims make for a fiendishly difficult remove and reinstall, and Ron and Sabine got to see the fight for the final foot of bead and the deployment of the Ultimate Weapon, the Kool Stop Bead Jack.
Actually, this time it went rather well. It was a lot worse before I learned to use a Schwalbe tire lever and an old leather toe strap to anchor one side of the bead. Although my pump wasn't playing nicely with my replacement tube, Ron had his pump and it worked very nicely. I was glad for the help and the company.
Report: It's always fun riding to Goose Bay. The terrain is great no matter which way you go, the folks at the store are always welcoming,
Sabine's photos of the Goose Bay Marina
and it's a nice place to gather and socialize. It was a lot of fun to have so many folks turn out for a Sunday ride, and I think everyone had a good time, once you make allowances for the broken shift cable and the flat tire.
