May rides, may they all be wonderful

[north woods gal]

Hope everyone had a chance to ride over the long weekend. If not, still hope you had a nice holiday.

Crankin, I've had the same problem, too, with shifting up to the higher chainring (left side) on road bikes. I get a little arthritis, too, now and then. Some days, it seems like it takes way too much effort. Down is not bad, but on a compact double, that's a lot of teeth to cover when you shift to the big ring. My usual 105, though, was at least better than the SRAM Apex is used for a while. That one was really hard to shift.

We broke records with our weekend heat wave and, believe me, heat waves are a rare thing in these parts. Spooky strange. Still, I managed to do my usual daily 15-20 miles by riding early and/or late. My morning rides army favorite because I get to ride laps around the neighborhood with my husband. (A lap around our neighborhood is 2.2 miles, by the way and all hills.) This time of year, we often get to stop and visit our neighbors, which we all know. Mostly, though, it's just special being able to ride with my guy.

He's good for a few laps, but because of his long history of back issues, longer rides are out of the question. I then continue on my own to finish my road workout farther from home. Ever since I got that darn single speed, it's been what I've been riding for my road work. It's a "skinny" tire bike as far as MTBs go, so it's does fine on good gravel roads or hard pack dirt roads, but a 29x2.2" bike wheel is no match for the worst of our gravel and sand roads. Time to grab the ECR and do some exploring on those roads.

Late afternoon is when I finish up my daily riding with trail work on my own MTB trails. Our trails are so dry, right now, that I rarely grab a fat bike. Besides, I get plenty of fat bike riding all winter long. Even the skinny tire MTBs do fine, right now, but my favorite to ride on my trails is still my Krampus with its 29x3 wheels. What can I say? I love riding steel bikes, either on the road or the trail. I may just sell off a couple of aluminum bikes, in fact, and stay with almost all steel bikes to ride.

One note to add: my Gunnar SS was built with a carbon flat bar. It's my first ever carbon handlebar. I love it! Has just enough flex to absorb a lot of buzz that gets to my hand with metal handle bars. Very nice feel. Feather light, too. May get one for the Log Lady when it arrives.