Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Local tri and basement bike

I just found out about a new triathlon happening here this summer for the first time called the Happy Valley Sprint Tri. I don't know if anyone would be interested, but you can always come and stay here if you want to do this one. For me, this bike would start great, then get progressively worse as I went, ending with a long, though gradual, uphill. But as you know, uphills of any sort are not so good for me. The run also has a pretty big hill in it right about the halfway point. It might be a good challenge, and I should support it, since I was previously complaining that there weren't many good local events. I have to figure out whether I'm even going to be in town that weekend.

On to the basement bike. Greg came up for the weekend, and we decided to go on a bike ride. Well, all my bikes are too big for him, so big that he can't even stand over the top tube. So I started trying to put together something else he could ride. As it turned out, I was able to build two bikes from stuff I had lying around, and I discovered that one of them had tubular tires (the kind you glue on), so that got me wondering what kind of bike I had down there in the basement. The rims are Mavic (sponsor of the Mooseman bike course) and the hubs are Campangnolo, making me think I might have something interesting. These are Mavic Montlery tubular rims, made in france. In my basement.

I went looking, and here is the exact bike I have: Gitane Tour de France. Seems some people liked that bike. Well, it was too big for Greg anyway, so I moved on to another, which turned out to be a Vita Sprint 10 Speed (circa '76, couldn't find much about this one online), also made in France. Those crazy French and their bikes. Both of these bikes are now in good working order, though I would benefit from a few new tubular tires. I have one more bike with tubular rims that looks to be the best of the bunch, but it's rear tire was toast, so I couldn't get it going. I've never used glue-on tires before, so I don't have the stuff to make that happen in my house.

3 comments:

CSquared said...

J'aimerais venir au Collège d'État mais c'est un week-end résistant. La Réunion de Classe tant pour Mat que je. Je serai dans Warren ce week-end, mais il serait résistant d'arriver dans le Triathlon. Aussi la semaine après l'Olympique Morgantown.

Le Français est idiot de leurs bicyclettes.

CSquared said...

You know I thought it would be funny to do this in the French language. What is funnier is re translating this into English and trying to figure out what I was really trying to say.

Link to translator: http://translation2.paralink.com/

catmarlson said...

When I first saw the post, I thought some French person was offended by Shawn's post and was responding.

Yeah, those translation programs are keeping translators in business. They can really make a mess of things. Kind of like TV overdubs of movies like the Big Lebowski.