70 degrees in February

Do you know those weeks where it's nice all week and then rains on the weekend? We finally had the opposite experience here; nestled in between two cold weeks, it was nearly 70 on Saturday and low 60s today. With weather like that, I had to get out and ride, three rides on Saturday:

Ride one was a morning loop on my now 30 year old Raleigh Technium:

I think these old Techniums are underappreciated bikes. It rides quite nicely and has decent tire clearance. It feels heavy when I get it down from the ceiling, but moves along with vigor. It's the most comfortable drop bar bike I've ridden. Not bad for $25!

The kids spent the morning playing in the creek behind our house:

We've lived here about five years now, and the kids have played more in the creek in the last month than they have in that five years combined. Yes, even the parts of the month where it wasn't spring like weather. Henry and the neighbor boys would play, come inside to thaw out, and then head back out again. We're going to be doing a lot of laundry this spring.

Kate had a playdate, so after a morning of creeking, the boys and I mounted up and headed to Moe's for lunch. Henry stopped to look at the rusty old pump (?) near the bridge:

Sam had a little downhill wobble, and managed to hit his rear tire with his bottom, but he was feeling better by this point:

Though he still took the downhill on the way home very, very gingerly.

I was riding my New Albion Privateer on this ride, so we could pick up a few things from Kroger after lunch (Henry had written our grocery list: sardines and Ding Dongs). After riding the Jones bars on my Jones bikes, it's hard to get too affectionate about the Albastache bar on the NAP. They're nice for moving along, but too low for going slow, and there's no brake access at that point with your hands all the way on the back of the bar.

I was reminded how good the Jones feels when I took it on a library run that afternoon:

The trails around here are too soggy to ride, but even on paved multi use paths, the Jones feel great. A three inch knobby tired bike shouldn't roll along this well, but somehow it does. How would it feel with some big 29er slicks? Maybe later this year I'll find out.

You can't see it in this picture, but I also installed my new brake hose so I could add my hydraulic brakes to the rear. The bleeding went pretty smoothly, unlike my first time. I think I'm getting the hang of hydros. I can't see buying another set of mechanical discs.

I had to make Saturday a four-fer, one ride on each of my four bikes, so I rode my KM up and down the street as well. No changes to my simple single speed:

I'll probably keep the KM to mix it up with Jones for mountain biking duties, but I also have an idea that it would make a pretty nice fat tired, disc braked city bike. 

I had planned to ride more today (Sunday), but ended up spending most of the afternoon with the kids in the creek. They made big progress on their bridge:

Kate came out to join the boys and got photo bombed:

It looks to be at least 30 degrees colder next weekend. Weekends like this need to be spent outside, and we took advantage of it.