Ye Olde Trek Rides Again, with a Sella AnAntomica even

I spent some time in the garage last week changing my old Trek 620 from a fixed gear back to its stock configuration. My intention was to get it ready to sell, on my path to just three (or maybe four) bikes. But, and there's always a but, partway through the build I got the idea to put my Soma Oxford bar on there in place of the laughably narrow stock drop bars, as a sort of trial moustache bar.

My first try was a complete failure:

It's easy to see the reason why:

S26O to Columbus

The kids had Friday off for some teacher service day, so I took the day off from work and we headed out for a quick family overnighter... via Honda Pilot, not bike. Our destination was Columbus... Indiana. I stopped here in the summer with my brother, and saw a few things there that I thought the kids would enjoy. Of course, the kids were mostly looking forward to the hotel, because it had a pool:

Actually, this wasn't our intended hotel... their pool was closed due to maintenance, so we went across the street. That worked out well in the end, as Jodi somehow sweet talked them into a lower rate, and this hotel also had a mini golf course:

Practice putting gets a lot more exciting when you judge it by time, not strokes. I think professional golf could learn something here.

Working on the Six Pack

I felt bad after writing in my previous post that I haven't taken the kids to enough playgrounds this season. I decided to rectify that situation today. After a couple of morning laps at P2 on my Sette, then a trip to the library on ye Olde Trek, I dragged the kids outside to go to a playground this afternoon.

Much whining ensued: "I want to stay home!" "Why can't we just go to Westbury Park?" But I promised them a new park feature, and some bamboo, and that got them out the door.

The new feature was the outdoor workout machines at Coffman Park. Henry tells me he can work on his "six pack" this way, and he's pretty serious about it:

Where Have All the Playgrounds Gone? and Fleet News

These days, it seems I can't take a simple ride down the street without someone flagging me down to ask, "hey, what happened to all the playground ride reports lately?'

All right, this has never actually happened, though with my ever increasing blogging fame, it's not as unlikely as, say, Fox news actually reporting with a balanced viewpoint.

There's a couple of factors that have really reduced our playground travels this season: