The Snakey Samba

#181 / #13

15.5 miles on the lovely American River Trail

And we averaged 12.6 mph! Both my Strava app and Himself's Garmin app agree.
I set some "personal bests" on some segments of our ride. Not that I care. Well, really I care a little bitty bit. Like, enough to post about it. But, you know. Not really. Sure. Yeah. Totally believable. May I borrow your backhoe? My shovel is not doing a fast enough job.

Enough of that!

Plenty of critters out tonight. Suicidal bunny-rabbits, a Very Large flock of geese (we crossed the crossing geese during a gap in their line), turkeys, and a Very Long snake. I believe it was a rattler. The oncoming bike traffic yelled some incomprehensible thing, the next oncoming traffic was clearer "Snake on the trail." I decided that 'snake' is not very intelligible at evening ARBT speeds, and think 'reptile' would be better. Of course, by the time you get to '-tile' the oncoming traffic would be 50 yards to your rear, so maybe not. I did try waving my hand and arm in a snake-like movement, which did no good at all. Well, I did get a weird look. So maybe it was worth it.

Anyway, we successfully avoided the snake and I hope he had a nice dinner of vole or something.

Once again, Himself got his boom to rotate. He tentatively identified it as happening when "powering" (I call it mashing) up a hill. His left cleat was also quite out of place by the time the boom shifted.
My theory is that some motion he makes while powering/mashing is causing his foot to wiggle on the pedal, which is moving his cleat, and when the cleat can't move anymore, the boom twists.
My torque wrench has taken up permanent residence in Himself's trunk bag.

It is time to lube my chain again, and I think it is also time to break down and get a Terracycle idler for my ride.

Admire the new picture for the blog: most of my riding is with Himself, so I figured it was time for a picture-change.