Blog Archives

UBI pt. 2

7/21/2016

So far, bottom brackets, chains, and cassettes have been added to the week's instruction. There's been lots of hands on practice and this evening, actually took apart Oscar's hubs and cassette to overhaul. Surprisingly enough, it actually wasn't as bad as I had expected. There was some pitting in the front hub and it was all in desparate need of a good scrub and lube but everything was still usable. On my commute each morning, I had been having more and more trouble with the drivetrain skipping, leaving me unable to ride in 2/3 of my gears. Not fun in a town with real hills. Tonight's ride home was like flying! I couldn't believe how smoothly Oscar rode with just those simple maintanance skills (and lots of help from my awesome instructors). Still so much to learn and practice but I can tell that Oscar is going to be such a happy bike by the end of this class!

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United Bicycle Institute

7/19/2016

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After an incredibly frustrating 18 hour long train trip, I finally made it up to Portland to take UBI's mechanic course. I had applied numerous times through their women's scholarship but decided to go ahead at sign up. The mechanic portion of the bike world has always mystified me. Although I had gotten to a point that I could do basic repairs and change flats pretty comfortably, there was still so much I felt useless at fixing. I'm excited to get a chance to get more confidence in wrenching and also build in a new set of knowledge and self-sufficiency into my bike work.

Day one had us already overhauling hubs and I was grateful to have had Neil's help already with the Troll's hub. Today, we used our hubs to build a set of wheels! I can't believe how much I've learned already!

One day my garage will look like this, too.

Oh no! My hub broke!

The Great Spaghetti Monster.

Trued and tensioned!

This is probably the happiest moment of my life so far (you know, besides my kids...)

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Playing dirty

7/3/2016

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Summer is officially here with both kiddos out of school! We celebrated by taking both boys on our river trail ride. Big Brother was an old hat at it, already riding the route once before but this was Little Brother's first try. Although LB has been getting mch better at riding predictibly and cautiously while being a good listener, getting him in the gravel was difficult. After the first 5 miles or so, he started getting tired and frustrsted. There were some crashes and tears but mostly smiles. I have to remember to stay alert to their energy levels and patience so we can head off the major meltdowns. After all, the whole point of these adventures is to instill a lifelong love of cycling. For me, riding a bike is my stress relief so as soon as it stops being fun, it's time to reevaluate and pull out the emergency lollipops. Thankfully, by the time we were done, the boys were full of sticky smiles and happy memories (with some proud crashing stories).

This weekend was also my kid-free time and I got in some great rides with friends.