Now, Surgery on the Bike

We decided to get outa Dodge for a few days and headed up to Boulder, CO for a mental health break. I brought the CAAD-5 as I worry less about tossing the aluminum bike around on the car than I do with the carbon-aluminum Six-Thirteen.

On Monday I went for a short 20 mile ride and noted that the rear wheel had gone out of true so on returning home, touched it up a little bit. Tuesday morning had me kitted up for what would hopefully be a longer ride but on getting a few miles down the road, the bike seemed to go slower and slower and on inspection, the back wheel was seriously outa round and rubbing on the brake. I stopped to adjust the spoke tension again and one spoke was really loose. On closer inspection, I observed that the hub had cracked at one of the spoke holes and the spoke had pulled through. Oops. So much for putting the lightweight wheels on the bike for a road trip.

Front hub intact.

Limping back to our host's house in Lafayette with the quick release fully open, I checked  online and found an endless supply of bike shops in the Boulder area. Boulder Bicycle Works had high web ratings and they told me that they had a used rear wheel in excellent shape.  I headed over there to look at it. Sure enough, when I arrived, the wheel was in the wheel truing stand ready to be checked and tuned up if I wanted it, which I did. I decided while I was there to also get the matching front wheel and the attached cassette for what amounted to a very economical parting with currency. I think they are ShimanoWH-R540's.
Whew...my vacation was saved. The only complication was I had to run back out to a nearby shop and get new brake pads because the paired spoke Shimano wheels have the spokes attaching to the rims on the sides of the rims and my brake pads were worn down so much that the brake shoe guides were tapping the spoke holes.

Hub flange fractured on non-drive side as shown 
by the arrow.  Stock picture from web. 
I forgot to photograph the original part.

So today found me on a longer ride on the Cannonball sporting shiny newish Shimano wheels that ran fast and true.  Many thanks and a tip of my brain bucket goes to the great folks at Boulder Bicycle Works. They definitely get the Los Alamos Bikes "save the vacation" award.

Cannondale sporting replacement wheels

Eldorado Springs in the background.
 I sallied on to Rocky Flats to search for glowing animals.
No luck.

Surgical recovery program at 10,300 feet

As a sixtysomething, recovering from two surgeries and a broken foot last year sometimes left me wondering if I should trade in all the bikes for a newer motorcycle and a barca lounger. Psychologically, getting back into Serious Cycling© was difficult. For a while, just riding to work took mental, if not physical effort. That mental hocus-pocus is what really surprised me, since I've been riding since, well...since I can remember.  Meanwhile, the blood pressure and numbers on the bathroom scale were inching up. Time to get seriously off my ass.

So there was this bucket list item....done yesterday. The Ski Hill road in Santa Fe, aka NM475, aka Hyde Park Road. Last time I broke 10k altitude via human two-wheeled power was around 2007 during the Red River Century. (That pic on the masthead was taken on the Red River circuit, with me on the Six-Thirteen and long dormant co-blogger Scott following closely on the Litespeed).

The Santa Fe Ski Basin route goes sinuously up into first the Sangre de Cristo foothills and then into the high peaks. From the home base in Casa Solana its about 1.5 miles of flat warmup to Artist Road, followed by about 16 miles of relentless climbing. Suitable for a TdF stage, I suppose. Probably not Hors Categorie (the average grade is about 4%; the 4 mile NM-4 climb into the Jemez is about 7%), but perhaps Hors Old Fat Guy. The Strava page here shows the gritty details better than the NM Touring Society illustration below. As far as my time compared to folks like Ferrara Fortunato, don't even ask.

Santa Fe Ski Basin profile, courtesy of the New Mexico Touring Society

Aside from getting enough oxygen to these old legs as I pushed towards 10,000 feet, the only other problem on the uphill was that my recently rebuilt right shoulder still fatigues before my left when pulling on the bars in hard climbs. But the psychological lift on hitting the imaginary red kite near the top (see Patrick Brady's beautiful description of the power of the red kite here), and then my personal finish line was enough to convince me to do the happy dance out of the saddle and then my usual Fates to the Damn Wind Screaming Descent™. Fortunately, there is not another Fabio Casartelli style memorial on the road resulting from my ride back down the hill yesterday.

Ok, bring it on...whatever "it" is. I feel whole again, albeit still a little overweight.

If the city limit doesn't end, does the city go on forever? Another rider, in picture, tackling what Patrick O'Grady calls The Big Hill

Around 8500-9000 ft you go through Hyde Park

End of the road, circa 10,250

Road actually tops out at about 10,300 ft a little before the ski basin at Vista Grande Overlook

I'm not dead yet...

Sturdy and efficient Cannondale CAAD 5 back at normal, 7000 foot altitude.
Yep, that is a compact (50-34) and an Old Guys Special 13-30 on the back. 

I'm still using this bike rather than the Six-Thirteen because I could put a steerer tube extender on this bike's aluminum steerer tube and that extension was a must during post-PT recovery. 

Unintentional self-portrait...