It’s Always Something

Somedays things just seem to be going great until they’re not.

Take my shoe shopping trip this week for example.

I have EEEE feet. It’s a source of life-long hassle. Back in the day, you could go to a shoe store and a old salesman would measure your feet then fetch some shoeboxes from the back room which was lined from floor to ceiling with shoes of every size and width. Then along came the internet and killed all the shoe stores. (Don’t even get me started about book stores, music stores, telephones that you could communicate clearly with.)

I don’t use clipless pedals so I am always on the lookout for bike shoes with a flat bottom and a wide toe box. Twenty years ago a company called Lake made such a thing. Of course, once I realized how much I like their shoe, they stopped making it. I should have learned from my running buddy Tom. When he found a running shoe he liked, he’d buy ten pairs. (Tom ran 70 to 90 mile per week in support of a bodacious ice cream habit.)

My Lake shoes fell apart but just in the nick of time Shimano started making shoes to my liking. Over the course of a few years, I bought three pairs. They are all a bit different because Shimano can’t leave good enough alone. My orange pair died a hero on my 2019 tour. My black pair, the oldest, is on its last legs. My green pair, which I wear most often because they are only five years old, is starting to die.

I googled touring bike shoes and found a bike shop in Bethesda, Maryland that has a Shimano mountain bike shoe in my size. A day later, I hopped on Bike Nellie bound for Terrapin Cycles, some 23 miles from home.

It was a beautiful day, the day after a nasty storm, when the humidity broke and temperatures moderated. Ahhh. I reached the bike shop and tried on the shoes. They were pretty good. A bit tight. Stiff. The soles had a cut out for clipless pedals. My three Shimano shoes all have a rubber patch that covers this cut out. Not this pair. I was about to settle for second best when the sales person told me that his boss had a different model that I might like.

Boss was wearing them. They had flat bottoms and a wide forefoot. He got online and found that Shimano was selling them at half price to make way for next year’s model. He ordered me a pair. I’ll be riding back up next week to try them on. Toes crossed.

A few minutes later I was waiting for my food order at a local eatery when I noticed that I had an email response from the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA). I had tried to sign up for the 50 States Ride in September but WABA had failed to send me the code for a $10 discount for members. The email contained the code.

Good weather. The prospect of new shoes. A $10 discount. Life is good.

I took off on Big Nellie going downhill with a tailwind. Seriously. Life is good.

There I am having a splendid day when I feel a hot sensation on the back of my right hand. There was yellow-ish spot on the back of my black glove.. Apparently a bird had decided to shit on me. I pulled over to clean off my glove when I realized the bird had conducted a left-to-right strafing run. I had yellow-ish bird shit on my shorts and t-shirt.

Roseanne Rosannadanna was right. It’s always something.

And another thing…

A couple of days later I was doing some basic maintenance on my bikes. I had bought some cheap plastic fenders for Little Nellie and put them aside after I had difficulty mounting the rear one. Today I managed to put it on with very little difficulty.

Since I was doing maintenance anyway, I fixed a problem with the front brake. It was making a strange noise when I applied the brake. It turns out I have cartridge brakes on this bike. The pads slide into a metal holder and are secured in place by a metal pin. The pins on both brake pads had slipped out, causing one of them to contact the sidewall of the tire whenever I braked. A push from the flat side of a screwdriver fixed the problem.

Next up was chain cleaning and lubing. I did this to three bikes, the last one being my CrossCheck. I noticed the front tire was low on air. I had filled it only a few days ago. I refilled it and noticed that the pin inside the tube valve was bent causing a leak. I took the tire off and pulled a new tube out of the bag on the rear rack. The tube had a puncture. I pulled the patch kit out of the bag. The glue in the patch kit had dried.

I have a bag full of old tubes that I had patched. Every one of the tubes had a Schrader valve which is too wide for the hole in the rim of the CrossCheck.

So I found a tube with a presta valve in The Mule’s saddle bag and used that. Of course, I put the tire on backwards and had to re-mount the tire. After losing skin from both thumbs, I finally got the tire back on.

It’s time to go shopping for tubes and patch kits.

Anybody need a 700×35 Schrader valve tube? I have a few.

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