Fortieth Birthday Bike Trip Part #1

So I turned 40 in January, the big Four-Oh. I don’t know why, but forty looms like some big scary milestone. I’ve tried to put it out of my mind. Look, it’s just arbitrary; 40 doesn’t mean the same thing it used to. We are younger, fitter, and more vigorous, so Laura and I have decided that forty is fuerte.  I like that and to celebrate I didn’t really want a big bash; I just wanted to ride my bike around Puerto Rico.

So off I went in an attempt to do 320 miles in four days.

Here I am departing from our little house in Guaynabo on my 20 year old Casati Bicycle. It’s old, yes, vintage perhaps, but it’s only been ridden once or twice a year for the past ten years.  Remember, it’s not the years, it’s the miles.  My everyday ride is the mountain bike.

With Laura and the kids in tow, we headed north through the city, and with the awful traffic only averaged around 4 miles an hour for the first hour. Once we got the coast it opened up a bit and I had more fun. You see, here’s my butt. That’s pretty much the view my lovely family enjoyed for four days.

Now, some of my cycling compatriots might chastise me for not shaving my legs, having a spiffy carbon fiber frame, fancy clothes, and an uber-light wheelset. In my defense, I present the following:

1. Shaving is a lot of pain for no gain.
2. What father of four has 3 grand to drop on a bike?  I like the old bike.  I can fix whatever I need to.
3. Fancy clothes?  I just wanted to be seen by cars and not die.  Functional clothes are more to my liking.
4. Well, yeah, I have wheelset envy.  *Chuckle*  Some of the new wheelsets are awesome.  I’m saving my money.

Let me digress for a moment here.  Before the trip, I knew I was going to have to get a new rear cassette.  The existing cassette was a hold-over from my racing days, mostly flat riding and the largest sprocket only had 21 teeth, way too few if I should ever encounter any hills.   I went on Ebay and found a nice old 7-speed Shimano Hyperglide cassette and called it a day.  Once the thing came in the mail, I went to take the wheel off and realized my old one was a Uniglide cassette.  D’oh.  That’s bike talk for incompatible.   I hadn’t taken my rear cassette off in a couple of years, and I had forgotten it wasn’t Hyperglide.  Sigh, senior moment?   Now, granted, I should I have worked all this out well before the trip, but I put it off, and now I was leaving the next day, and all I had was this leg breaking gearing that was just not going to do.  My solution:  Grab an 8-speed Hyperglide cassette off an old mountain bike wheelset, and shim it with a loose cog.  Nice.  It worked, and my legs were saved if not shaved.

Day one took me along the north coast heading west.  I had a gorgeous view of crashing waves and beautiful beaches for much of the trip from San Juan to Barceloneta.  I made it 43 miles that first day, before I kind of ran out of gas and sunlight far short of my original goal of 75 miles.  Seeing as how I had not ridden farther than 30 miles in a day for over 10 years, I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.

That night, we found a little pizza joint called “Jimmy’s Pizza.”  How fortuitous.  Pizza wasn’t all that special, but we had fun and Jaimito and I told the uninterested staff we were Jimmys.

Here we are pictured in “I roll with the O’Malley crew” shirts graciously provided by my cousin Genevieve DeBose.  It’s like I had my very own team.

Stay tuned for part two.  Hopefully it won’t take as long as this one.