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I’m all packed. Got my food, drinks, batteries, spare clothes, duffel bag with change of clothes for the rest stop in Wilmington.

The bike is ready. Um, yeah, about the bike. My trusty carbon Trek is out of commission. Done. Kaput. Fini. A scant day before the event and it was struck down in its prime. (Literally.) As well as my spare bike. Yup, the blue Cannondale, too. What are the odds? Without going into the gory details (there may have been an overpass involved) let’s just say that a well intended favor by a friend went horribly awry. It’s in the hands of insurance adjusters now. Say a prayer to the insurance gods for me.

So where does that leave me? Using a spare bike from said friend who is absolutely beside himself with guilt. It was an accident. I’m not upset (well, maybe a little, but I hide it well). I’m just disappointed I have to tackle the biggest cycling event of my life with a strange bike. Not that the bike is strange–it’s a very high quality Italian bike–it’s just strange to me. I’ve put maybe, MAYBE, two miles on it testing the fit and seat position. Couldn’t really dial it in at his house, but when I took it home, I think I figured out where it needed to be for me to feel a little more ‘at home’ on this new bike. The gearing is different on this bike from mine. I’m not sure by how much. Hopefully my hill-climbing mojo is strong enough to carry me over the coming 10,000′+ of climbing.

We moved the aero bars over to his bike and I discovered that one of the pads (an integral part) was also broken in the accident and hanging on by a thread (note to self: electrical tape that sucker down before the start tomorrow to avoid losing it somewhere).

The last night ride, the 400km, showed me how substandard my lighting really was. So, still not ready to commit to a multi-hundred dollar pro light, I picked up a helmet-mount LED light at EMS. It was the highest wattage (3 watts) with an extremely long run-time (to the tune of 70 hours. One high! I only need about 9 hours!). A quick test at sundown and it seemed promising. Having a light on the helmet will be good in that I can direct the light where I need it and not rely on the handlebar mounted LED as much. I don’t think we’ll have rain at night which will also help with visibility.

I may try blogging from the road (via my BlackBerry… if I have reception), so if you see a short post, with typos, and maybe incoherent thoughts, that would be why. I’ll probably assemble them into one single post once all is said and done.

Start: 4am, Saturday morning.
Finish: 3pm, Sunday afternoon. (hopefully)

The route: This is a rough approximation of the route. There are some turns that don’t look right, but the overall gist is there.

This entry was posted Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Amusing, Cycling, Dumb. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.