Patagonia Pete

I think Oregon in the summer must be one of the best places to ride. I’ve had sunshine and a fair wind behind me since I got here. The north wind is cooling so you don’t overheat and the people are friendly and helpful.

I stopped at Newport to have the guys at Bike Newport look at the Rohloff hub and check the bike geometry to see if we could sort out my knee problem. Darren and Elliot were great. Darren changed the oil and suddenly the slight grinding disappeared and I ‘found’ the lost gear! Looks like I lost quite a bit of oil on the flight to Anchorage and I’d been riding with a fraction of the oil it should have had. It says something about the quality of the hub that it survived about two thousand miles with hardly any oil in it. It’s all working smoothly now and I have a full set of gears to play with.

Then Elliot got work on me and the bike and after a bit of finagling I’m now set up with the correct geometry. The saddle had to go back and up by about 6mm in each direction, which is quite a bit. My left leg is slightly longer than my right, so the seat position has to be a slight compromise. I may fit a shim under my cleats to correct my leg length issue. (Is this getting technical enough for you, Sam?!)

And the other thing I did was have a flight in a 1939 bi-plane!!! Oh, yes! I couldn’t pass up the sign by side of the road offering that. In the true spirit of 1930’s barnstorming, the guy had his plane out on the slightly underused airfield. Just him; no crew or in fact anyone else, unless you count his small dog. So after putting on the cloth flying helmet, goggles and headset we were up, up and away! And here’s the proof…

Brilliant! Now I just need a pipe and some outrageous flying jodhpurs and I’m set.

Pip pip

Love
Pete