Sometimes I ride 100+ miles in a day. Sometimes I do the Rocket Ride. Today I will combine these two endeavors.

That rarely ends well.

oh boy. i'm in trouble.

i planned on waking up at 6 to ride but i just woke up at 10. oh well. i'll still ride because that's what a hard nut i am.

the only problem is that the fred group rides meet up at about 11. if i'm seen on the road at about this time, people might call me fred.

That's a cool bike. The one on the first page. I have been away for a while. Nice to see nothing has changed.

keep reading. only 586 pages to go. tell us when you get here.

587. You're assuming he read the whole first page.

No one is brave enough to enter the Velo Vol July mileage challenge?

That's revealing.

We don't want to make you feel bad about yourself. Let it go.

i don't know for sure, that's why i can't enter. I can estimate it.

106 miles sportive, 130 miles night ride, another 3 weekends of 120 min. that makes it 596 miles so far. 5 ish 20 mile short weekday evening rides. 696 estimated.

what was the velo challenge mileage?

i just got in from my ride and i think something is wrong.

since last weekend's exertions, i think i have lost my mojo. i did a 20 mile ride on thursday evening and it exhausted me. Yesterday's 40 mile ride was painful and today i struggled to get to 40 miles and i am weak and feable afterwards.

give me back my mojo!

Estimates don't count.

pretty reliable estimate though.

And you want us to believe you rode 700 miles?

Is there a way to clean/maintain brake calipers?

Mine don't seem to be working so crisply these days.

Also, the rear dérailleur doesn't shift so well going up the gears.

it was an unusual month. maybe that's why i'm so tired.

+1

Brakes - Do they just not brake well or what's the problem? It could be old cables, worn pads, or anything in between....

RD - Barrel adjuster time.

cleaning the pads and wiping down the rim makes a big difference, but i take it you mean the squeezing smoothness of the calipers. after i wash my bike i put a cloth or paper around the brakes and spray wd40 into all the gaps and generally over the whole thing. then i wipe it off. it seems to keep things smoothly moving. i do this with gears too. basically moving parts get a nice oily layer in the contact places.

Last month I replaced the cables and housing. The calipers don't seem to want to open and close very freely. The front brake cable is getting "stuck" on something or other.

Used to happen to my fuji with POS tektro brakes. Putting lube on all the contact points helped. Make sure there are no tight turns in your cables.

Earlier someone made reference to a periodic "cleaning" of the rear dérailleur, which made me wonder what I'm missing out on.

spray it with wd40 til it drips. all the dirt comes off.

This.

Does this work? I just clean it by hand with a tiny scrubber.

until the next time you ride anywhere even remotely dusty and it sticks to all the wd40.

Tied 5-5 in the bottom of the 9th, some kid named Carlos Gonzalez hammers the first pitch of the inning into the right field bleachers. Hits for the cycle. Cubs lose 6-5.

Luckily, we were sitting near an exit. Unluckily, we stopped at the liquor store on the way home and purchased a bottle of Blanton's Bourbon.