Going into the holiday weekend

First off, hope everyone has a fun-filled and safe Labor Day Weekend. Unfortunately this does mark the end of Summer for anyone who is actually counting. Not much to show for it myself, but I am appreciating the cooler (yet still warm) Fall breezes.

Check this out:

What will the guys at Freeride Ent. come up with next???

In the mailbox:
Well technically neither item actually was delivered to my door...

1)Dell Vostro Laptop showed yesterday, but since nobody was around to sign for it I ended up having to go out to the terminal in Madison to pick it up. Darn sharp looking computer. Erin was a bit disappointed that it wasn't lightening fast. I have her somewhat spoiled with the home computers which are both running dual core Intel chipsets that are faster. It is fast enough, but is still restricted to the wireless internet connection which does get dodgy from time to time. I will follow up with more thoughts on the computer once we use it a bit more.

2) My wheelset finally made it back from the builder. I sent off the hubs about 6 weeks ago and said "No rush". Guess he took me literally. Well, not only did it take that long to get the wheels back but he ignored my build spec. Guess he decided to "upgrade" the spokes to butted and used 12mm nipples instead of 16mm. Jeese, doesn't anybody read the directions any more??? I wrote him a pretty lengthy email and spoke to him today to give him a verbal slap upside the head. He was willing to rebuild to the original spec, but I am not into him losing money and time so I will ride them as they are. To top it off they were sent to the old apartments! Fortunately all it took was a bit of time and 2 trips to the apartment office to get them into my possesion.
So now I have heavy and light wheelsets for the Heckler, built around identical hubs so changing back and forth is super quick and easy. The only thing I have to do is dial in the shift cable tension. Rear brake rotors lined right up. I had to shim one of the front rotors, but fortunately my box'O parts has a handfull of .6mm rotor shims so that was easy to fix.
Heavy: WTB Speeddisc XL rims, converted tubless, Maxxis Ardent 2.4 tires
Light: Mavic XM819 UST rims, Maxxis High Roller UST front, Nevegal tubeless rear
Difference in weight?? About 1.25-1.5lb. Not a huge difference, but since it is located at the outside of the wheels it does have quite an effect on pedaling and acceleration.

On the family front things are rolling along. Everyone is settling into the school year schedules. Faith really does like getting up and going to preschool. Not sure that Austin is too stoked on going to church and working on independent studies, but he gets up and goes just the same.

Rides this week? You can always check the ride log (over on the left sidebar). Unfortunately this week has been a bit scrambled. I did do the SORBA Wednesday night ride. Actually had a great ride in terms of climbing. While not actually cleaning the climbs I did manage to make it farther up them than ever before. Guess those big knobby tires are good for climbing traction even if they do take more work. By the end of the ride my calfs were cramped up pretty good. I thought it was a bit odd considering it wasn't an overly long ride. Later I discovered the culprit. My saddle had slipped about an inch back on the post. So I had essentially been riding on tip toes since it had happened due to the increased distance to the pedals. 2 days later and my calfs are still quite sore. Note to self, "Maverick seatpost is a turd".

That's all I got heading into the weekend. Hopefully I will have some excitement to recap on Tuesday. Take care.