Hakuna 5mm Allen Key

I assembled my bike and went for a ride. Google Map. Look at how flat the terrain is. Yes, I brought my GPS with me. Speaking of which, does a halfway decent set of topo maps exist for handheld GPS units for anywhere outside the developed world, or Kenya specifically? I have a Magellan Explorist 500 that I got in 2007, and it came with topo for the US that I can put on an SD card. I've got most of the Western US loaded on there, but if you don't have that, the default background map is pretty crummy in the US, and in Kenya it's horrible--all it shows is dots for the 5 or 6 largest cities in Kenya and the border with Uganda (which is actually helpful since I'm so close to it). Other than that it's a blank slate--no roads, features, nothing. Not even an outline of Lake Victoria, which is a huge bummer, since I'm definitely within a day's ride of that.

Anyway, the bike got a little dinged up in transit; I should've added a lot more padding. The disc brake discs maybe got bent a tiny bit, maybe even the large front sprocket, and the rear derailleur is a little wonky. I'm pretty sure none of the bike fundis around here have ever seen a derailleur, so I'm on my own. None of these problems are really major, it's just not perfect. I still managed to go around 20 miles pretty easily today, and right from the get-go, I realized that biking around here is going to be awesome. The first little bit was on back roads/trails through the shamba, which was pretty rad, then I went a long ways on the road to Malaba. On the way back, an older guy in a linen suit on a single speed threw down the unspoken gauntlet and we raced at full tilt for about 5 miles. I beat him to the paved road through town and stopped there, but he was just behind me and kept going, so maybe he won. The traffic on the road is totally unsafe, so I'm fine with that.

Most things are closed on Sunday, so tomorrow when the hardware stores are open I have to try and find a 5mm allen wrench. I brought my bike multi-tool, but its wrench isn't long enough to reach inside a part of my rear rack and tighten the bolt all the way, so I lost one early on in my ride today, making it a pretty noisy ride as the rack kept slapping against the frame.

Comments

  1. Guillermo Noguera11:06 AM

    Are you using your touring bike? Any pictures yet? Enjoy the adventure!

    ReplyDelete
  2. April Lara11:11 AM

    An Allen key is very useful and this particular one that you used is satisfactory. If you wish to know more about Allen keys, you could visit this website: http://www.allenkey.org

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adze Picket Co. (I Love the PCT)

Image
Me at the Border I spent the weekend at the ADZPCTKO with Nitro , Tatu Joe, Ducky (the Wise) , Tomato, BearCan't , Mattress, Love Barge, Nano, Sly, Disco , WeatherCarrot, Too Obtuse, Nacho, Tall Paul, Mags , and Wildflower (AKA Icognito Cheeto Bandito). I got a ride down with Firefly. I'm tempted to just end my post there, as it would seem like complete gibberish to many of you. But I won't. The ADZPCTKO is the Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kickoff, held the last weekend in April (also known as NFL Draft weekend, where, miracle of miracles, the Redskins, despite Dan Snyder's best attempts to screw it up, actually managed to avoid throwing away multiple draft picks on Chad Johnson and instead traded for more picks. Hallelujah!) at Lake Morena campground, 20 miles north by trail from the Mexican border near Campo, CA. Conventional wisdom says that the weather window on the PCT is such that there's not much point to starting earlier thanks to snow in the S...
Read more

Hardrock 34:42

Image
It's Tuesday, I'm back in Berkeley, and I just ran my first Hardrock last Friday/Saturday in 34:42. I wanted to record thoughts immediately after the experience, because it was hard , and now that it's been a few days, I'm already forgetting the pain. [I don't want kids, so you'll have to insert your own reference to childbearing here if you so desire.] Start The race started at 6AM. I slept reasonably well the night before in my truck just behind the school gym where the race starts--Silverton is very low key, so it's easy to dirtbag inside the city limits. I did, however, have a bit of GI non-normality, but it didn't seem like a big deal. I started in shorts, T-shirt, and a windshirt. As expected, the windshirt soon became too warm, likely because of the clouds that were obviously going to bring rain sooner rather than later. First Climb I started maybe 30-40 deep in the field, going faster than I'd ever climbed in training, but not feel...
Read more

Should I run UTMB?

That's it, the title is the post. No, of course that's not the post, but I am wondering. My schedule has filled in a bit for the year. I'm now signed up for: Orcas 100 (Feb), Paiute Meadows 50K (May), Scout Mountain 100 (June), TRT 100 (July), and hope to run the fun runs Lupine Loopfest (Feb), Desolate Peaks (August), and Euchre Bar Massacre (October). But the big news is that I got selected in the UTMB lottery. I have until the 29th of January to confirm my registration. For the non-runners: UTMB is a 106-mile loop around Mont Blanc through France, Switzerland, and Italy, starting and ending in Chamonix. By all accounts it is spectacularly beautiful and very difficult, with about 33,000 feet of climbing. For most of my running life I haven't really cared about European races or followed European runners, but I got swept up in the spectacle of it last year. It was the race's 20th year, an American man finally won (Jim), and also finished second (Zack), and Courtney...
Read more