Strength went down, Stress up

It was freezing cold this morning.  The temperature didn't go up so much even in the day time.

Even though we did some exercise to warm up before riding, our energy diminished so soon because of the cold temperature.

My diet kept failing, because of stress?  Anyway the fact made more stress.  I'm in a bad circle.

I have to think about a new strategy.....

Comfy ride

Luckily his new cassette was delivered earlier than we expected, so we had a comfortable ride together today.  The weather was still nice and warm in the afternoon.

When he was riding the Schwinn Folder, I couldn't pedal full speed freely.  Because I know very well that feeling on 20'' tires compared to 26'' and limited gears. 
But yesterday he found it much easier riding on the Folder.  And he seemed not to mind riding it.

After he installed the new cassette and rode his Portal, he was amazed by the easy pedaling.  Yes, we older people need an easy riding bike.

When a car passed by, I chased as fast as I could.  Of course I couldn't catch, but it was still fun to ride fast on the flat road.

Since earth worms incident..

That desiccated earth worm incident warned my bicycle technician.  Mr. WhP started to check the chains on our two bicycles and he thought we needed to replace them.

He replaced the chain on my bicycle with a new one.  That work went well.  But when he changed his chain, the new one ran and shifted very smoothly, but when he pedaled a little hard, sometimes the chain slipped over the sprocket teeth.  He concluded that the sprockets were worn out and needed to be replaced.  It will take a week to receive the new sprocket cassette.

So he rode our Schwinn folder today instead of his Novara  Portal, and he got small back ache afterwards.  But he could ride, that was better than no ride.  In addition as he rode he got to feeling better than at the beginning.  So he will be OK with the Schwinn for a while, I hope so.

So far I'm very lucky with my Novara Jaunt.  The ride with new chain was pretty nice today, it seemed like.

Bicycling on Sonoma Valley R. Park

Just gave up on 2 hours driving to wherever we wanted to ride, because it's always hard to find where to park, especially in unfamiliar places, and it was already noon!  So we decided to go to this well-known park.  This is the 3rd time to bicycle on the paved trail.

Because the trail is surrounded by many trees, the trail has cracks and several shaped bumps besides the up and down slopes, I felt as if I were riding a new trail.

We did the round trip twice and biked to the entrance of the park and back to the parking lot which is an interesting slope.

We saw many happy dog owners walking together.  I've never seen so many dogs and so few kids before.

After quite a bit of rain lately, the park was more light green colored, so beautiful, it was a pretty nice comfortable atmosphere.

Want to record another E.worm discovery

The next day after the last earthworm-caused chain fall-off incident, he found another desiccated E.worm on my bicycle brake!

On my bicycle too?!!  ....  We need to watch out about earthworms for after rain bicycling, I thought.  But it's so hard to see them on the ground soon enough.  And I wonder is it better to take them off as soon as possible or to let them dry first, then take them off.

We had a nice and lazy day off yesterday for resting.
Now it's a sunny weekend morning, we'd better hit the road soon.  But where we should go for a ride with warmer weather to avoid old knee injury pain.

Well, definitely we'd like to go when it's warmer in the afternoon, but the population on the trail might be crowded in the afternoon, if we go to any popular place.
So better to leave soon! 

Unbelievable incident?!

When we were bicycling together, suddenly Mr. WhP said, "Oh!?".  I heard his bicycle was making noise.  He was wondering what made his chain fall off.  After he fixed it we finished one hour ride and came back home.

I should call him to describe what he found:  After first trying to adjust the rear derailleur, and failing, I saw some kind of funny hard brown stuff stuck in a place that interfered with the derailleur!  On closer examination, I found it was a desiccated earth worm!  The thing was wound around and dried hard as a piece of plastic!  After chipping it off, I had to readjust the derailleur once more to get it working  correctly.  It's the first time I've ever seen such a thing!

Has anybody had such an experience?