A losing weekend

No, I didn't race (though that'd likely be the title if I had as well); but everything else at least felt like a loss aside from my one major victory of a mechanical variety. Not only did the Ravens lose badly yesterday, the Orioles lost the final game of the season in a trouncing by the Yankees; a game I sat through with a bit of dismay despite the beautiful weather. It really looked like the players just wanted to be finished from the start of the game; even though the normal started weren’t playing nobody looked like they cared. Innings lasted forever, runs were walked in, pop flies were dropped and O’s managed to go out with not even a slightest hint of a fizzle; more like the final bit of air squeezed out from a slow leak.

The night before SC barely eked out their 3 point win over Washington; a team that when they played their best the offense could pick apart as shown towards the end of the 1^st half, though too many dropped ball, bad passes and mental mistakes led to a game that was much closer then it should have been. In reality I should be glad they won, though they apparently showed enough people their weaknesses to drop to 2^nd in the coaches poll to LSU despite the win.

Enough of the loser talk now though, on to the best news from the weekend; I finished building up my cross bike! Everything came together well and I commuted in on it this morning and even felt relatively safe riding it! Aside from the headset and the wheels I built the entire thing from the ground up which I’ve got to say is a pretty good feeling. The only real work I’ve even done has been on the fixed gear which seemed like nothing compared to everything that’s involved in building a full geared bike. Amazingly the bike shifts perfectly and feels solid; though I need to do some more adjusting to the saddle before I get much further with anything. It's probably a tiny bit big at 57cm for me for cross racing, but it doesn't feel awkward or anything I feel like I've got adequate control for cross riding. Hopefully the larger size doesn't mean more ball busting though.

In the end I ran the cables, installed and adjusted the derailleurs (ok, so the front was already clamped on the frame as well), ran and adjusted the brake lines and brakes and finished it all off with some slick looking grey and black cammo bar tape. It looks pretty slick actually; not at all like the thrown together franken bike I expected. I even love the way the red and black saddle (that came with my fuji track bike) looks on the bike; the bit of red really makes it look pretty sharp.

Unfortunately the flash drive solution I came up with for transferring pictures to post online didn’t work out when this morning my computer won’t recognize the memory stick. Hopefully I’ll figure something else out soon and get some shots of the bike up along with everything else I want to get up there.