Michael P. O'Connor

I just finishing up watching the Tour of France. It is nice to see that Lance has won the 7th one in a row. It was a good race. While watching I recognized the street at the end of the race. I was there once with my family. We went to Paris on year for a summer vacation. I really did not like Paris, but it probably Frances equivalent of New York.
Watching the race makes me want to try a century some time. Not in a race type ride, but I would love to do a century just to see if I can do it in one day. I think if it was a level route I could do it, but if it is more like going around Pittsburgh, I don’t know if I could do it in a day, maybe 2 days.

Today was a good bike ride. I started out heading down to downtown, then I went up Liberty Av. then I caught up to Penn Av. I kept on Penn till it ended. I found myself up at Forest Hills, at that point I was lost. It was a great bike ride. I turned on my GPS, and told it that I wanted to go home, so it would point me to the right direction to head home. I biked for about 3 hours, and was out for 4 and a half hours. I got a nasty sun burn on my arms though. It was one of my best bike rides.

Today I had my back bike tire go flat 2 times. It happened 2 separate times. I think the first one is what the main problem was, on my way out of work and home, my bike tired just went flat. When I got home I patched the tire and then headed out to a rally (see next post). When I got home from the rally the tired went flat a second time. this time when I re-patched the tube I examined the tire I found that imbedded into the outer covering of the tire there was a sharp sliver of aluminum or the like. I think that is what caused both flats.

I finally got out to free ride to install the new gear cassette for my bike today. It was suppressing easy to change the cassette. The chain I got was a bit more difficult, it turns out the chain was a “master link” chain. It is nice to have the full range of gears back on my bike, for a while I had to avoiding the gears of 4 and 6. Free ride is a nice place so far I have learned how to fix/replace 3 things on a bike now. I can now straiten a wheel replace a rear wheel gear cassette, and replace a chain. Those are the 3 things I learned at free ride.

I went on for a long bike ride today. I did about 6 hours on the bike. I got some pictures from the fireworks at the North shore. I had a better place to site this year. On the ride back home after the fireworks I hooked up with a group that was going my way. We went over Polish hill. Tomorrow my legs will get the day off, since I will be heading back to work.
I biked up from CMU to Squirrel hill on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Today I did Polish hill, I hope that by the end of the summer that I can do the clime from CMU (Oakland) to Squirrel hill with out having to drop down to the first gear on the bike.