Today’s bike ride initiated my new bike, the Blue Norcross AL, that I mentioned yesterday. I chose the “Oakhurst – Valley Ranch” route to ride 29.1 miles. The cool front that blew through yesterday hung around overnight. while I drove home from church before noon I kept checking the temperature reading in the Jeep to see if it would get to 70 but it didn’t by the time I got home. The NW wind had a chill to it so I wore a thermal long sleeve jersey under a short sleeve jersey and bike shorts. This would keep me comfortable once I warmed up. After I was ready to ride my wife took a picture.

I rolled out the driveway at 1:01. The bike rode crisply and the gears shifted smoothly. Though the tire pressure was only 70 psi the ride was firm. It has been a number of years since I rode a metal frame road bike. My measurements for the saddle position from my Stradalli transferred correctly to the Blue Norcross AL and I felt comfortable riding. I learned the distance from the seat to the ground was different from the Stradalli though. The first stop where I need to put my foot down was longer than I expected so I had to move forward from the saddle and straddle the top tube to put my foot down. After that I leaned the bike slightly to the right to reduce the distance.

The wider tires moved over road bumps and debris easily but I could hear the small knobs on the tire whirring as I rode. I think this bike will be a good replacement for my Motobecane 700HT MTB. No PowerPod readings on this ride. I purposely left the power meter off this bike.

Below are some picture of the Blue as I took it out of the box and began to assemble it.

Links to Strava.com and RideWithGPS.com.

Strava Extended Statistics

Assembling the Blue Norcross AL (click on the image to enlarge it)

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