TandemHearts

King’s Ridge has been on my list of rides to do for awhile. It’s about a two hour drive north of us and there are no stores for about 40 miles of the route. Those two things made it logistically a little difficult. But everything I had read about the route made it sound wonderful: some tough climbing, some white knuckle descents and gorgeous scenery. When my friend Sarah e-mailed me that her Team in Training group was doing an informal ride up there and a friend would be providing SAG, I knew it was time to tackle King’s Ridge. This would also be my first long ride after having my bike fit done. Because I could not shake my nagging knee problems, I went to professional to see if my bike setup was part of the problem. It was. With some adjustments of less than an inch in various directions, my bike felt great and my knee was happier on the test ride. I knew King’s Ridge Road would be a great test ride with lots of climbing to test the knee and descending to test my nerves. Thumbs up to both.

I like to listen to music. Since I think riding a bicycle with ear plugs in is a sure sign of poor judgement, we have a set of small speakers that we can use with our MP3 player. Unfortunately, the speakers go through batteries pretty quickly. Somebody on the Tandem@hobbes mailing list mentioned that it was possible to build a converter that can power a portable GPS receiver from a dynamo hub. Dynamo hubs are small AC generators built into the front wheel of the bicycle, usually used to power a headlight. We had just added dynamo hubs to our bikes, so I figured we could adapt the idea to power the speakers.

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