Yup, another semester down. Yee-haw! And although there are 2 more to go which continue to give the feeling of looking down a long tunnel, I can happily say that when I look at the folks who are a semester ahead of me I see hope and happiness. This is in comparison to the poor folks I met my very first week of school who were in their by-week between finishing clinical and graduation, and who looked like death slightly warmed over, we all still have a little pep to our step.
Rumor has it that this coming semester is the “easiest” because we still only have one test to study for each month and our paperwork load is lightest. I’m going to try and take a chunk out of that work load today. Fingers crossed I don’t let myself get distracted.
Speaking of being distracted, a little flash back to 2006 is in order. Posts are more fun with photos, right? Here is where we were in October so many years ago:
Indian Creek, UT. Heading on up to climbing.
And in other unrelated news, Ryan we all know is a research machine. His bike has been just a little “off” of late with a rhythmic thumping sound and a hitch feeling. He worked it over the best he could and could not find the source. So after putting in 80 miles yesterday he dropped it by the shop where we bought it and gave it to their mechanic to give it his work over. The gentleman who has been a bike mechanic for over 15 years was able to fix it. (I know some of us cannot handle suspense, so I’ll give that ending up-front.)
We did have our concerns though when at one point he told us he had changed out the ball bearings, the chain, realigned the derailer and still the issue was present. We continued to have concerns when we saw a little mechanic pow-wow going on around the bike with a lot of brow furrowing. And our concerns we made a little giddy when we chatted with the other shop employees and they all commented about how Oscar was getting a little frustrated and they had never seen him like that before. None of these are good signs. It is not normal for a bike mechanic to need 3+ hours to fix a simple bike problem. (Or so I’m told.) But as has already been revealed, the hitch was corrected. Turns out that inside the crank (for non-bike folks, this is the long part that connects the petals to the bike) it was either manufactured just a little too big or a bolt got a little loose and over time the wiggling created a gap, so that with every pedal the gap got a little bigger until there was wiggle room which created the rhythmic thump and hitch. None of the bike people had seen that problem before…so, new knowledge! Woop.
And the bike is in tip-top shape for his race.
Happy October y’all! Hope you get to enjoy Fall!
If Taco Could Talk 