Sunday, April 30, 3017
After getting back from the duathlon this morning, I did a bit of work on the "unpaved" wheels for my road bike. I swapped my megarange freewheel (which works great but has a large jump between the two lowest gears) for an 8-speed freewheel with an extra cog in between those two gears - I had done the same with my fat bike this winter. While I was doing that it became very clear that I also need to lube the wheel bearings, so I did that as well, and installed the wheels on the bike.
Given the weather the easiest place to test the work was on the rail trail. I decided to ride some pavement first, so I headed east toward Delmar. Smooth going all around... there was very little clearance between the smallest cog on the new freewheel and the rear fork (8 cogs needs take up more room than 7) but I didn't detect any problems - we'll see what it looks like when I remove the wheel later this week. Back at the parking lot in Slingerlands I headed west on the unpaved trail - that's when the fun started.
Work crews have been prepping the trail for eventual paving later this summer, which has left the trail surface pretty chewed up. I made it about a mile and a half before the combination of the uphill grade, the lousy surface, and my legs being tired from this morning convinced me to throw in the towel and head back. I even left the trail for a bit and rode along Font Grove to give myself a bit of a break. Looks like the unpaved trail is only going to be rideable using a mountain bike until they get it paved.
JMH
