To Replace or Not to Replace...

I made it up to Left Coast Cyclery "on the way" home yesterday. It was about a mile and half to two miles longer, and some of it noticably hillier than the normal ride home. They were somewhat helpful, though they do seem a little bit snooty. I had hoped they might be more gracious; they weren't rude or anything, so it might have been my own expectations or something. I think I'm going to go by Missing Link and maybe Mike's Bikes this afternoon and look at new bikes and maybe talk to them about what to do with the old one. The thing is that putting a new handlebar and brake levers on it will help and with a tune up come to somewhere between 200 and 300, depending on whether I wind up having to put a new stem in, but if I can buy a new bike for only double that or so, that might be better. In particular, because I have realized that I really would rather not have the shifters on the drop tube and I basically can't do that to the old bike because the rear fork isn't wide enough to accommodate a larger cassette. Hmmm...

Found out that my friend Jill's husband has started a new business. It sounds great so far; they're working on a nicer web site. Jill and I talked about how they ought to be getting a couple more domain names related to the business name... I hope they do it before someone else jumps on them.

I rode in with Rachel again today. We stopped for muffins at "the muffin store", as she calls it. Actually a bakery near her school. There was a woman there who cracked up when Rachel just started chomping away at the muffin. It was almost as big as her face, so I'm sure it did look pretty amusing. When we left the bakery, I couldn't get my left cleat into the pedal. I've been having trouble with one of the screws, so I actually went ahead and took it out and left it at home, in hopes of not losing it. Of course, that meant when I pulled my foot out the torque twisted the cleat out of alignment. After dropping Rachel off at school I managed to get it back in for the ride to work, which was good. I definitely made use of it. Dawn is going to bring the screw and driver down here for me so I can put it back together for later. Another thing I guess I have to buy that I wasn't planning on... new bike shoes. Looks as if they'll probably be about $50... Amazon wants 80 for the ones I have, so I certainly won't be buying them there! I should probably try some on when I'm at those two bike stores to see if I can get a better fit or want to get some that are less meant for walking in.

I've been hovering at 235 give or take 2 pounds for over a month now with no special effort to lose any more weight. I know I'm getting in better shape, because my riding is improving and I have lost a little more size since July 1. The only thing I've really done is to continue to make sure I don't overdo carbs, which principally means not having cookies or ice cream anywhere near as often, not having a sandwich for lunch everyday, and not having pasta for dinner very often. I think Dawn and I are going to make a new plan for both of us to do a few weeks of an extreme diet to try to drop some more weight for each of us. I'm starting to be pretty convinced that I can keep the weight off now, so I think another quick kick to drop some more exta weight will be good.

Time to work. Can't figure out why the change I made yesterday isn't getting picked up. Oh, and let the ripping continue.