Retirement ride

No, not me, silly.  I am already retired.

No, today was a ride to mark the retirement from primary equipment of NewLOOK.

It rained this morning and I was pretty sure there wouldn't be a ride.  As I was having lunch I noticed that the sun was out and by golly the street looked dry, there just wasn't any reason at all NOT to ride.

By about 4pm it was starting to cloud up again, the forecast says 60 percent chance of thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow (and tomorrow night).  So today's ride was a bonus and also a thing of beauty during a small window of the day when it was really quite nice out there.  I rode north out to the many lakes, mostly the traditional Vadnais ride (I had'nt been there for a while) although I did hybridize the thing by trying to ride on the way back the reverse of the new route which we have been riding this summer.  I wanted to ride that bit to see if it was flatter.  It wasn't.

A person who rides with me frequently might well recognize this location, this is where I was when the mandatory retirement mileage was reached.

I had reached mandatory retirement mileage but I was quite a ways from home.  I had to ride a few more miles (sort of like working a couple of months beyond retirement age, something I also did).  That's Snail  Lake Road approaching the intersection with Rice Street.  That business straight ahead is the Sucker Lake portion of the Vadnais/Sucker Lake park complex.  You know, the frequent destination for the northern many lakes ride.

It was very, very pretty there for a while.  This was taken while I was riding the entry road into Sucker Lake.

We are still very early in the process but the trees are starting to show some yellow.  This is a look at the north end of Lake Vadnais.

So here you go, a look at my bicycle odometer taken after I arrived back at my garage.

Note that I have gone with the double 14s meaning that that least favored number has been jumped past in two separate ways.  A twofer.

Also note that that really unsightly bar tape problem has now been reduced to an off-season (aka winter) project.

I really like that bike and I am going to miss it.  But I have a bicycle in the basement that I personally assembled.  I have reached a point where that now seems to me to be the most appropriate bicycle for me to be riding.  I am going to have to pump some tires as a minimum but that (and carrying it out of the basement) is all that is required before I can put FirstLOOK back on the road.

If you check that info area over on the left you can reaffirm that on FirstLOOK I palp tires in an orange colorway.  Unfortunately, the orange tires currently on the bicycle are beyond mandatory retirement mileage so at the first opportunity I will be changing them.  At that time I will also be changing the blog description to indicate that on FirstLOOK I will be palping tires in a really shocking chartreuse green colorway.

Stay tuned.