San Jose Fire Stations

This evening I started an on-going quest to visit all 34 of the San Jose Fire Stations (map here). Figured it would be a good way to get some miles on the bike and also learn about my new home town.

Pictures to be posted here.

I visited the first three on a short ride this evening (map here). I'd visited part of the route before, but never the section past 17th street. San Jose is a *big* city. Lots of areas that are completely off the map for most of us Silicon Valley types. The highlight of the ride today was seeing an old Vietnamese lady walking back from the store with her walker/cart full of produce and wearing one of those stereotypical cone hats. It seemed weird to see the hat worn in a non-ironic way, though these days its hard to know. Even if she's 80 years old, she's probably aware of the symbolism and just likes to wear it anyway. :-)

Problems Solved

I found the cause of the noise in the rear hub. Turned out that the "pie plate" had worked its way loose. Once I got all 3 plastic hooks reconnected to the hub, the noise was gone.

In the mean time, I fixed the rear flat. Looks like a small hole in the tube that would be easily patchable, though I just replaced it anyway. No idea on the cause, which leaves me a bit concerned for the future...

Bike Care

I'm starting to get to know my bike and learn the various sounds and vibrations that are expected. And, the ones that are unexpected. Right now, it seems like something on the rear hub is rubbing and needs to get fixed. I'm actually looking forward to playing with it this weekend and seeing if I can diagnose and fix it myself. Might even be a good excuse to buy a bike stand. :-)

Yesterday, the rear tire sprung a slow leak. I got to play with my small hand pump as I was leaving the office, which worked great. I was able to get it up to around 60psi and get it home without any trouble. Of course, it was completely flat this morning, so I'll likely drive in to the office today and work on it tonight/tomorrow.

Since most of my commute is on gravel, the bike gets really dirty. I'm starting to research how much I need to clean it in order to keep things running smoothly.

Learning a bit each day...

Week 1 - 139 miles

I didn't really have a target this week, but I'm pretty happy with 139 miles. The commute is about 22 miles round-trip and I did that for 3 days. In addition, I rode about 30 miles on Saturday and close to 40 miles today, in both cases around the urban South Bay (San Jose <-> Mt. View/Los Altos). I'll be away for Memorial Day next weekend, so I'm guessing this coming week will be around 90 miles or so.

Cycle Computer

I got a cheap Planet Bike Protege bike computer last week and put it on the bike last night. It works good and definitely pushed me a bit harder today on the ride into work.

My dream setup for Germany, though, is the following from Garmin:



Garmin Edge 705

Drool. Of course, I'd also need to get the Germany-Switzerland and the France-Netherlands SD Cards.

- Dave

Bike to Work Day

Fixed the flat without much trouble and biked into the office (map below).

Bike Rack

Shoving the bike into the back of my car on the way back from the bike shop was one time too many.  :-)   

First Ride with New Bike!

I picked up a new Trek 520 at Bicycle Outfitters this morning. The 520 was basically my dream bike for the Germany trip, but I was a bit concerned about it as a commute/road bike. I hadn't even left the parking lot on the test ride, though, before I was hooked. I guess I learned cycling on touring bikes and it just feels natural. Much lighter than I expected as well.

Took it on a quick local spin (map included below) and it worked great! That is until I tried crossing 101 on Tully and found the entire shoulder/bike path covered in glass. Sigh. Rear tire immediately blew. No spare. No patch kit. Walked part of the way back and then took bus/light rail home. Guess I better be a bit more prepared next time, even for a quick spin.