Bike Month Days 18-20: *741% Less Cursing*, PromBomb, & Disco Racing!

Friday 5/20: While our first attempt to bicycle Lisa's son to Green Valley Elementary School was a disaster (see Misery. Pure unadulterated uncut misery.), Lisa did create a tiny thread of hope when she said "if I'm going to ride routes like that I need a bike with more gears, that's lighter, and has skinnier & faster rolling tires".

I knew I could create just such a bike with a little help from my long time cronies over at EastCoasters.

EastCoasters had everything we needed in stock
so Mark & I rode over and Dave Tompkins hooked
us up! 

Later that evening, I modified Lisa's trusty old GT mountainbike, replacing the saddle with a Terry Cite-X Gel, replacing the knobby tires with Bontrager SR1s, adding ultra-high visibility lights to both ends (front: Planet Bike Blaze, rear: Blackburn Mars 4.0) and the cherry on top - new Pearl Izumi Select Cycling Gloves. 

Compared to her Trek Belleville, Lisa's modified GT is lighter, has many more gears, and should also be more comfortable and faster.

The result? On Friday we did try bicycling Mark to school again and ...

741% less cursing! There was still some, but so much less that this bicycling Mark to school craziness just might become a regular part of our mornings :)

The lovely Green Valley Greeter Ladies are helping
us dial-in our drop off positioning.

After another breakfast date at Star City Coffee, unbelievably, Lisa agreed to ride back to Mark's school! I wanted to check out another route option and Lisa was game :)

Our original route was very direct, but it included a steep climb on Overdale Rd and a short, but treacherous section along a particularly busy and narrow part of Colonial Ave:

The route we discovered after breakfast is slightly longer than our original route (1.74 miles vs 1.31) but it eliminates both riding on Colonial (we just cross Colonial) and the Overdale climb:

The average grade is also less on the new route, but it contains a life threatening hazard - loose dogs! Lisa was relentlessly chased by this man eater!

Later that same day, we biked to the post office with Mark to put our first round of wedding invitations in the mail!

To be sure I didn't try anything funny, Mark kept me at
gunpoint during our post office errand.

Thursday 5/19: STARBOMB! On the Thursday closest to the full moon each month an antique bus takes anyone willing and their kids bicycles from downtown to the Mill Mt. Star.

Starbombers & our faithful driver Cedric in front of an antique bus whose 

use is donated each month by the Commonwealth Coach & Trolley Museum 

From here we downhill "race" on these mini (kids) bicycles, through the darkness, all the way back to downtown where we have a mini critical mass ride and ... afterparty at Flannery's! 

to my immense delight, the signature drink of STARBOMB has become Irish Car Bombs!

Wednesday 5/18: Tennis practice was cancelled Wednesday evening due to rain in Salem, which opened the window for me to race in the Singlespeed class in the Wednesday Night Disco Race Series. As soon as I realized tennis was a no-go, I scrambled to get to the race start as fast as I could but was I still was late so I started 8.5 minutes behind the field. I didn't care though, I was so excited to be able to participate, to try to ride fast, and to see and hang with my racing cronies a bit.

There were only three singlespeed racers, and one was racing

 in his first ever race,  so I managed to get one of these awesome awards!