I did that thing a third time:
Ride for Black Lives Los Angeles 2020.09.26
1am bedtime + 6am alarm = coffee:
The pre-ride ride, from my place in Marina Del Rey to ride start in West Hollywood:
Threw out the gross main helmet and wore the commuter instead:
Ride start, still a bit cloudy around 8am:
Ride finish, quite sunny by then:
Ride summary (rode the "bottom" section thrice, as always):
Post-ride recovery:
Unrelatedly, after two months of living in this apartment, I finally stopped being lazy and mounted both bikes on the rack:
While it looks pretty good and even works OK, there are a few issues:
• Both bikes sometimes touch the wall, so it's gonna get destroyed over time;
• Taking them off and putting them back on is tedious as fuck;
• Can't wait for an earthquake.
That aside, I've been wondering if there's a point to holding onto the Fuji anyway. I kept it as a beater bike when I got the Cannondale, but have used it for that purpose only a few times at my old apartment and zero times here. I don't see that changing either, to be honest. I didn't want to risk theft of the nice bike by locking it up in front of the store or bar, but that's become a complete non-issue.
In fact, I've only ridden the beater on Ride for Black Lives rides in months now, and I was already thinking about taking the Cannondale next time, since the Fuji simply isn't as nice, and I seem to care at least a little by the time I need to head back. I chose the Fuji for these in case the police decided to crash the party, but I'm not worried about that any more. Besides, the Cannondale is actually insured.
The best argument in favor of keeping the Fuji now is having a backup bike. The US bike market is
fucked—courtesy of COVID-19-inspired resurgence of cycling interest—so getting a replacement for the Cannondale might not be trivial. But this feels like a real stretch of a reason, and not enough if it's the only one.
Anyway, enough rambling about that. In other news, I ordered a new helmet to replace the utterly disgusting Kali Loka I've had for two years, and I'm excited for my fancy new Giro Cinder to arrive tomorrow. I ordered some casquettes today to try and keep some of the sweat away from the padding, but that's probably for naught and a worse strategy than just buying cheaper helmets more often.
I'm also thinking about getting a seat-mounted dual bottle cage to up my max capacity to four bottles. Some of these longer rides can be a bit dehydrading in the sun, and refilling the frame-mounted bottles isn't as easy during the pandemic as it was before.