Oh how I love the hashtag.  Anyway…

That’s right, folks.  I was pretty sure I was going to be stuck indoors on the trainer for much of the rest of the season.  We’re supposed to get hammered with snow this year, it certainly started out that way… but we caught a break.  Better, we’re riding today and we’ll probably be able to ride again tomorrow too – and after two weeks stuck indoors on the trainer I needed some fresh air.

It almost didn’t happen, too.  Ten minutes before we were supposed to meet, it started snowing fairly hard.  The ground started to cover and I was almost certain we’d be doomed to riding the trainers after putting all of the cold weather crap on.  I was just about to push our bikes out the front door….

When Mike rolled up.  I pushed my bike out and Mrs. Bgddy followed a couple of minutes later… and we rode!  The roads were never that dicey and the pace was certainly easy, but my God was it nice.

Over the last couple of weeks it’s been hard to keep it honest with a mere 45 minutes a day on the trainer.  Yesterday’s ride approached an hour and a half and I was bummed when it was over.  Such is life on the trainer.

Still, it’s Christmas weekend – no work and it looks like we’ve got two more great riding days ahead of us.  Winter riding sucks, but when compared against the trainer, I’ll take it!

Funny story from yesterday…  My gravel bike’s got a Shimano Sora drivetrain on it and is a little finicky when it comes to shifting.  Any cable stretch in the rear derailleur cable and the chain will skip, so every once in a while I have to use the barrel adjuster to tighten the cable up…  Well, yesterday I decided I’d use the in-line cable adjuster to do the adjusting.  I couldn’t figure out why they’d put an in-line and a barrel adjuster on the shifting cable, that certainly doesn’t make sense, but whatever…

I crank down the adjuster but it doesn’t really fix the problem, so I go to the barrel adjuster, give it half a turn and no more skipping.  Fantastic.

Well, seven miles later and I’m thinking I need to work a little harder on the trainer.  I was struggling a bit, so I figured I was just out of shape from too much time on the trainer.  A minute later and I had to grab a handful of brake.  The lever depressed about a quarter of an inch…  The in-line adjuster was for the brake and I’d cranked it all the way down.

I loosened the in-line adjuster and rode the rest of the way home without the brakes engaged.  It was a lot easier pedaling those last nine or ten miles.  DOH!