First Ride Completed

This past Saturday I finally logged my first bike ride of the year. Originally the plan was for this first ride to happen a week ago, but the weekend prior to this last one saw a late season snowstorm pass through my part of Colorado. This weekend, however, the skies were clear, heat was on, and my legs were in good working order, so there were no excuses for not getting out there. For my first ride of the year I didn’t ride quite as far along my old cycling route, but I still got out for a solid half hour. The roads were good and my bike performed well, except for two issues. At first my bike was having trouble catching some of the gear changes, but that problem seemed to fix itself after a few minutes. The bigger problem, though, was that I noticed my bike’s front wheel was not properly aligned, such that the brake pad on one side of the wheel was much closer to the wheel than the pad on the other side, to the point that the closer pad was practically touching the wheel. By slightly loosening the brakes I solved this problem, but I really need to look into this and try to figure out why the wheel alignment is off. My rear wheel has a similar problem that was the result of an incident several years ago when a careless driver narrowly clipped my rear wheel and threw off its alignment. That’s not to say that the bike is any way inoperable—far from it—but I’m guessing it’s not optimal. Next weekend I’ll take a stab at fixing the front wheel and hopefully I’ll get it back into its proper place.