ONE - DONE!

I had been putting my riding time in with the Mercier of late, but that was primarily because I had already selected the Diamond Back Venture as my mount for Beach Week 2017 at lovely Edisto Beach, SC. I did a last minute ride in town on a Saturday morning, accompanying my son and his teammates as they ran laps around the Connie Maxwell home, and I was glad I did - the left crank began creaking and flopping. When I got home I pulled it and found it thoroughly rounded out and utterly useless. Fortunately, I had a bin that included a couple of orphan 170 mm left cranks, and there was an old silver-finished SR with a similar enough contour to work, so I fitted it, smacked it on further with a rubber mallet and cranked it on down until it was solidly in place. I decided the mismatched black and silver cranks only added to the bike's charm, and remembering that these were from a pile of stuff I got for free when the LBS was cleaning out junk bins a dozen years ago, I awarded it a value of $0.

The DB and my son's Trek MT 400 made the trip easily enough on a rack on the back of the family car, and for the next three days Eli and I fell into a pattern of him running 2 or 3 miles per day with me pacing and using the cycle computer to measure distance, followed by his mounting up on the Trek and our riding a leisurely-paced partial loop of the island. A few days of that took me up to 91 km or so, near the minimum for the challenge. Along the way we surprised a doe and her fawn in a wooded lot on Myrtle Street near White Cap

[IMG]The deer near downtown Edisto Beach by Russ Fitzgerald, on Flickr[/IMG]

and caught a particularly good rainbow with a nice horizontal section clearly visible against the clouds.

[IMG]Rainbow in the clouds by Russ Fitzgerald, on Flickr[/IMG]

The arrival Thursday of my main riding buddy and his family Thursday afternoon ramped things up dramatically. Friday morning I took Eli out for a two-mile run, brought him back, and then I got to sit on the wheel of Ainsley's fixed-gear as we burned around the Island a few times. It had been a while since I sat on a wheel, and since we have a long-standing understanding - I'm the older guy, he's the younger and fitter and faster one better suited to take long pulls - we rode together as well as always. Initially I considered blaming the 35 mm cyclocross tires for my difficulty staying with him - but no, I'm just old and slow and out of shape. Still, at 24.4 miles, it was my longest single ride in a couple of years, and I was most grateful for it. Saturday we reversed our direction when the winds were just right, getting in 21.9 miles with a perfect tailwind down the length of the main drag. I was handed the perfect place - being paced and having the wind push me along - and when Ainsley started hearing Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" in his head and locked into a pedaling rhythm, I geared up and hung on. We stopped for a breather at one point and watched the Breakfast Club tucking into their blue plate special -

[IMG]The Breakfast Club by Russ Fitzgerald, on Flickr[/IMG]

because nothing encourages a cyclist to move along faster more than buzzards, circling or otherwise. Though, in this case, we realized we were also the object of scrutiny by vultures -

Cyclists with buzzards by Russ Fitzgerald, on Flickr

so with a quick look at the sun rising over Edisto Beach State Park -

[IMG]Dawn over Edisto State Park by Russ Fitzgerald, on Flickr[/IMG]

- we headed out. Finally, the morning we left we got out early enough to grab another 16 miles before packing up. As of Sunday I have 191 km on the DBV, which should satisfy the mileage requirement nicely. This bike is a definite keeper, having been cheap to acquire, cheap to recondition, having surprisingly good handling, decent parts, and a reasonably good fit. It rides much, much better than its place in the Diamond Back lineup would suggest, and structurally and functionally it is most definitely NOT a clunker.

Then there's -

THREE

My son decided he preferred running on the asphalt around our neighborhood to the lovely track at Grace Street Park, which I took as an opportunity to put some mileage on Straightened Raymond. We developed a routine where I would ride his first lap at his running pace, then see how many times I could lap him while his did his second or third mile. It worked reasonably well, and over the course of a week I got used to the bike and became comfortable enough with the ancient Mercier that it started disappearing under me in proper bike-like fashion. I straightened the rear derailleur claw and the dropout and dialed in the angle of the mech. All of my miles on this one have been on the neighborhood loop, partially because I don't have a frame pump that fits Schrader valves, and partly because I am not entirely comfortable in trusting this bike too much. That may change with time.

[IMG]Original and real chrome at the rear by Russ Fitzgerald, on Flickr[/IMG]

I rode Straightened Raymond today after more than a week off, and immediately was struck by how narrow the bars are, how pronounced the bend in the left pedal spindle, how finicky the front derailleur setting must be to avoid rubbing and grating ... but I figure by the week's end, I'll have re-learned how to compensate for all of that again, and with 71 km done I'll have crossed that line as well.