I have two wheelsets for my cyclocross bike; one for road use with appropriately skinny tires and one for dirt use with appropriately non-skinny tires. The 'cross bike had the skinny tires on, since I have been riding some pavement (eek!) lately. I swapped the wheels over and headed out on my merry way.
A few hundred feet from my driveway is a nice little technical uphill singletrack into County Farm Park.
Anyway, I started putting a little power down, and...pop! pop! pop! The chain was skipping on the third cog. That was the only gear that skipped, but the top half of the cassette felt pretty gritty. I tried to stick it out for a while, telling myself maybe the shifting was off a little or there was some junk in the cassette, but to no avail. The cassette was buggered up and my ride was not going to be right with only half the gears working.
Oh, did I mention I recently put a new chain on? It was fine on the road wheels, but that cassette has far fewer miles. I finally gave in, went home, and swapped cassettes over. Life was good, and the drivetrain was again happy.
By then the sun was getting low and it was too late for a "real" ride at that point. I swung by the local auto repair shop to see what interesting was sitting in their lot. Hey... an early Volvo 240 wagon, and BMW 320i. That makes me smile a little bit.
From there I tried to get a look at the new shopping center being built on Washtenaw across from Whole Foods, but the construction area is pretty effectively fenced off and there was not much to see. Hopefully something other than chain restaurants will move in.
Not wanting to have a total loss of a good ride, I headed over to Sylvan Park, not far from home. Sylvan borders US-23 and has a few extra trails running through it that are not on the map. Mind you, this is not really a destination sort of place to bring your mountain bike, but it is some dirt that is close to home for me. I wound my way down to the little creek running through it and was nearly deafened by the frogs/crickets/locusts/critters. I'm not sure who was making all the noise, but they were really going for it. I stuck it out on the trails as long as I could, but daylight was failing quickly and my little commuter light is not very trail-worthy.
I had one last stop over to see the progress on the sidewalk being built on Washtenaw under US-23. It's about time! Ten to twelve years ago I did a group ride that involved riding though that section. Not fun. I have avoided it like the plague since then. So it makes me happy to see that area getting more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.
So not the most exciting ride of the year, but at least I didn't let a mechanical keep me home.
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