My friend Ed had been dealing with some serious health issues, including a bout of COVID, and admitted to not having put in a whole lot of miles on the bike this summer. The plan was to ride a very relaxed pace, so he would still have something left to tackle the hills near the end of our 48-mile route.
I was careful to dress warmly, as I didn’t anticipate really working up a sweat. Although this trail is very shaded by tree cover anyway, there was going to be a reduced amount of warmth hitting us because of the surrounding hills and lower sunlight angle at this time of year.
The lack of sun hitting the trail also meant that it hadn’t dried out completely from the heavy tropical storm rains that hit the region about a week ago. In some of the lower areas, we were weaving from side to side to avoid mushy spots of thick mud, and in some of the rock cuts, where water couldn’t drain laterally away from the trail, it was like riding through a very shallow creek.
It was incredible, in a matter of days, how much autumn color had popped in the trees, and an increased amount of fallen leaves and branches on the trail added to the adventure. Maybe about ten miles into the ride, I heard an awful metallic snagging sound and then a loud pop. Ed was right behind me when I asked, “What was that?”, and he immediately responded, “Your rear tire!”
A stick had gone through my wheel and sheared off the tube’s valve stem right at the little circular anchor nut. It took a bit of effort to twist the nut over the mangled end of broken metal, then it was otherwise a fairly simple tube replacement. I was sure to inflate the tire toward the maximum PSI, since I did not want to get a stupid pinch flat, now that I had used my spare tube so early in the ride!
Ed, who lucked out and didn’t seem to have any issues with debris during the ride, got a kick out of watching me stop a couple more times – once when a vine got tangled around my rear hub and another when a stick got stuck between my pedal and shoe.
It had been a few years since my last visit to the trail, and I suppose the surface has eroded a bit from use and weather, as there seemed to be more exposed rocks and tree roots than I remember. We did a good job of calling out obstacles when we saw them, helping to keep each other from taking many big wheel hits. I was glad not to be doing this a couple weeks later when the dropped leaves would really be thick, and spotting objects in the trail would be impossible. There were a couple equestrian farms along the trail east of Blairstown, so we were also being careful to avoid the “horse bombs” on the trail. Having that stuck in the knobs of your tires is not pleasant!
I don’t need to go into the route details too much, as it has been described in-depth in a previous blog entry, but Ed took a few photos that he encouraged me to share:
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| The New York, Susquehanna & Western RR marker shows it was 79 miles to Jersey City. |
Staying somewhat within the theme of the blog this week. I have always been annoyed by the way people change name pronunciation for no real reason other than laziness. I was watching a YouTube video from BikeIt UK, where the host Andy regularly does restorations of classic vintage racing bikes. He was interviewing Graham Weigh, who has been involved in cycling for forty years, building, collecting and supplying bicycles to the public, as well as pro cycling teams.
I was shocked to hear Graham, a guy you’d think really knows his stuff, mispronounce Vitus bicycles with a long “eye” sound, instead of the way the French would “vee-tus”. I was then irked by Graham’s explanation that “Pronunciation depends what country you are from.”
WHAT?!! That is just ridiculous - Vitus is a French name, so you should always be pronouncing it the way they do. I shouldn’t really be surprised, though, as it seems a common British attitude. Commentators on Eurosport stubbornly stick to mispronouncing names, even when colleagues are consistently saying the names correctly during the same broadcast.
Just think how you’d feel if someone kept butchering your last name over and over, despite being told how to say it. I’m reminded of people immigrating to the U.S. and having their names Anglicized, whether they liked it or not. I feel disappointed when I see what I think is going to be a wonderful sounding last name, only to find it has been mangled and sounds awful. For this reason, sometimes I feel like learning to speak/pronounce Italian is a curse.
One of the most stupid name pronunciation stories in sports I’ve ever heard comes from hockey. American forward Zach Parise started insisting his name be said as “pah-REE-zee”, despite the fact his father, J.P. Parisé, who starred in the NHL for sixteen years, correctly pronounced their surname “pah-REE-zay”. Zach not only dropped the accent mark but also part of his brain somewhere along the line!
Finally, I decided it was time for an alteration to my collection of bikes. Having been working consistently all summer on bicycles equipped with them, I’ve come to realize how much more responsive stopping power they supply. Not that the cantilever brakes on my Cross Concept are bad, it just with some of the more challenging terrain I ride, like that on the Tro-Bro Brandywine route, I feel that the disk brakes will provide an extra level of security.
Mind you, despite the fact I have tried them and appreciate how well they work, I’d prefer not having hydraulic disk brakes. I always say that I don’t want to be an auto mechanic, so dealing with the messy fluids is not my idea of a good time. Cable-actuated disk brakes are the way to go for me!
I took the plunge and bought a disk-braked Bianchi last week. I was having absolutely no luck finding either the Via Nirone 7 or Impulso "allroad" models, and considering the collection of bikes I already have, I really couldn't justify throwing $3000 at a Zolder Pro cyclocross bike, no matter how much I would have LOVED it!
I decided to go the route of the easier-on-the-wallet C-Sport - the C stood for camaleonte or "chameleon" in English, but they no longer use the name. It's a flat-bar gravel bike, but I'm going to set it up with drops. The bike comes in C-Sport 1 to 4 models, with the appropriate upgrades along the way as the numbers increase, but again, I was having trouble finding anything in my size – it figures! After a week of emails to anyone in the country who carries Bianchi bicycles, I finally found a 55cm C-Sport 3 in a West Chester, Ohio, shop.
It has pretty basic stuff, though it is equipped with hydraulic disk brakes, but as explained, I will swap in mechanical disk calipers. My friend Chad told me I was welcome to a set of 105 components he had lying about, so I’ll mix in what I can. Otherwise, I'll do a 1x drivetrain and install a carbon seat post and a nice Cinelli stem/bar set.
A couple of my riding buddies tease me about the relatively narrow 30mm tires I regularly ride on the trails, but hey, I’m a roadie at heart. They will really be amused to find out the C-Sport comes equipped with 38mm tires! We'll see how I like those or not. What the bike looks like currently:
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