Yesterday (Tuesday) I went to Bike Werks in Kingwood to pickup my assembled Stradalli RP-14 Carbon bike. I started to assemble it myself but when I got to the bottom bracket I did not have the tools to insert the bearings so I went to Bike Werks. They did an excellent job assembling the bike paying close attention to details I probably would have missed. Jeremy routed the cables away from the head tube so they would not rub, he wrapped the handle bar tape tight and lined up the overlaps just right. When I spun the rear wheel the rear hub sung. The brake levers were flat with the handle bar to make riding on the “hoods” easy.

The only work left for me was to install the Stradalli water bottle cages, move the Lezyne pump, seat bag, Garmin mount and sensors from my Motobecane Le Champion CF bike. I had to make a run to the hardware store for cable ties. I lowered the seat about an inch to match the measurement on the Motobecane. All of this did not take too long and I was ready to ride around 1:00.

I noticed the clouds getting heavier and the temperature dropped from 71 to 67 and then up to 68. Up to this time I had not noticed the flat rear tire. Here is a tire that has zero miles on it and already a flat. I pumped it up thinking maybe I bumped the valve or something but about 10 to 15 minutes later the tire was soft again. I pulled the tube out of the tire and did a water test to find the leak. This did take long when I found the hole about 8″ from the valve stem. I went out to the garage to get some patches and patched the tube, one time, two times and finally a third time. apparently patches can dry out just like rubber cement. The old patches would not stick. Putting the patched tube back in the tire and onto the rim I was ready to ride.

This is a picture my wife took as I was getting ready to leave on my new bike.

In the driveway with my new Stradalli RP-14 Carbon bike

The plan was to ride to the south in case I needed to go by Bike Werks if there was a problem. I headed to Huffman via Atascocita and Walden. As I left home at 2:02 the temperature was 68 and the wind was 14 mph from the NNW under a cloudy sky. I started off on the streets of Kingwood differently than usual because I wanted to avoid the Kingwood High School traffic. As I rode I noticed the saddle nose was tilted down enough to let me slide forward and put more pressure on my hands. At the Hunters Ridge Village Park I stopped and adjusted the saddle nose up 1 click and continued the ride. The adjustment was good and I no longer felt the hand pressure. There will probably be some fine tuning on this and the saddle height.

At first I thought I would ride about 25 miles but as the ride progressed the bike was riding great so I went the usual route to Huffman and back. I biked 32.09 miles averaging 15.4 mph. This brought the week’s mileage to 67.95, March mileage to 331.71 ( leaving 173.29 miles to reach the 505 mile goal), and year to date miles to 1036.

While I was stopped at the Huffman Chevron a biker (I think his name is Nick) I had met a few months ago arrived along with his friend. He noticed my new bike and we talked about it and lots of other bike stuff. He told me about the Vredestein Volante TriComp Road tire he had on his Litespeed bike and how they stood up to the debris with no flats. By now the clouds had thinned out and the temperature was 75 so I removed my leg warmers for the ride back home. I was overdressed now with a short and long sleeve jersey under a wind breaker jacket. The bikers left before me heading west on FM1960. I thought I wouldn’t see them again but I passed the friend in the middle of the causeway and caught up to “Nick” at the west end of the causeway where he was waiting for his friend to catchup. I stopped to check and he said they were supposed to sprint to this point and he wasn’t sure why his friend had stopped. When I rode by him he was talking on his phone so I didn’t stop to see if there was a problem.

When I got back in Kingwood I rode by Bike Werks to let them know how the bike rode.

I got home at 5:15 with a partly cloudy sky and 76 degrees, a lot warmer than what I thought it would be when I started.

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