Spontaneous Cargo

Arriving home with the free shelf unit found alongside the road.

File this under "What a Bike can Do": Today I was at the grocery store getting some things for the next few days, and on my way home I saw this cool shelf unit sitting by the side of the road.  It was a freebie, and it just so happened we were looking for something to put in the garden for the squash to climb on.  Perfect!  Had I not been on the Mundo I would have had to come back for it, but with the amazing capacity of the longtail design and some of the cargo straps that I always have with me, I was able to strap the shelf unit to the bike and bring it on home.

My quick release cargo straps from Home Depot

I always carry 3 or 4 cargo straps that I got from Home Depot.  They are about 1" wide and 8' long, and have a very easy to use, secure, spring-loaded buckle.  Very useful!

Here is the shelf unit put back together, ready for the garden:

A perfect find for our rapidly growing squash plants.

Bike Lust and the Black Forest Classic 100K

On the Tommasini X-Fire demo bike with Pike's Peak in the background

June 23, 2013 will go down in infamy as the day I started lusting after a new bike.  I rode the Black Forest Classic 100K out of Elizabeth, Colorado to support the Children's Advocacy Center of Denver.  I was able to ride a demo bike from Creekside Bicycles in Parker, and now I know why all those guys are faster than me on the group rides!  It is the bike, dammit!  I have done plenty of 100K rides before on my classic 1967 Raleigh Pro, the Cosmos Mariner, but this is the first time I've ridden one in Colorado where the elevation added to the challenge.  (I think the max elevation on the ride was 7300 ft).

The venerable Cosmos Mariner at Arches National Park in March 2013

Despite the elevation and the hills, I found myself flying like the wind on the Tommasini X-Fire (Columbus XCR stainless steel frame), cranking in the big ring like it was nothing.  I kept on looking down at the gears to see if I was dreaming, but no, it was true, I had become a beast!  Well, at least it felt like that, and I finished the ride in the amazing (for me) time of 4 hours and 15 minutes, including stops.  Much faster than my previous best time by far.  Wow.  Now I know why some bikes really are worth the big bucks, so I'll be saving my pennies and dimes and lottery tickets in hopes of being able to get my very own super-bike ASAP.