SEATTLE — After helping Brian put his bike together on Wednesday, we noticed a strange, dry-bearing sound coming from his rear hub, as we spun the wheel. We threw the bike into the back of the car and took it to Gregg’s Greenlake Cycles for a quick check by their service guys.
Turns out his freewheel is old and a bit worn. This isn’t a part that, A) is repairable (too many small difficult to deal with parts) and, B) isn’t typically carried in stock (at least for Brian’s wheel set). Because the freewheel is only used when coasting — the wheel itself is spinning, but the gears aren’t — the wrench’s advice was to “live with it” for the STP and to “keep pedaling”.
So after watching 5 hours of Tour coverage on Thursday OLN go Floyd!), we headed out for an easy training ride to keep the blood flowing. After hearing about how crazy the parking situation is with 9000 riders trying to find a spot, we wanted to scope out other options.
We rode down through Golden Garden’s park, and past Shilshole Marina, before hitting the Burke-Gilman trail. We looked at parking in Fremont and at Gasworks park. But the best option seems to be parking in the U-District and riding the Burke-Gilman for about a half mile and taking one of the bridges to Husky Stadium and the start line.
Today we’re going to run some cycling-related chores, do a final clean/check of the bikes, pack our bags, have some pasta and get ready for our 4:00 AM wake-up call tomorrow.
You can bet we’re getting pretty darn excited….
Ride Statistics
Time: 1:58:44
Max. Speed: 33.0
Avg. Speed: 12.2
Distance: 24.18