Bicycle Fixation Weblog
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03/01/2007: "Training Your Bike"
Sorry I haven't posted for so long, but I was busy shipping the many backorders of knickers and getting ready to go to the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in San Jose, Which we now have done, having arrived by Amtrak after a spectacular ride up the California coast. This particular route passes through a great deal of country that has been either ranchland or military reservation for hundreds of years, and so the rolling oak-dotted hills, populated by horses, cows, deer, and hawks, look much as the Spaniards left them long ago, and the hard blue sea that breaks in the sweeping coves, the bright immortal sea, gleams with a Homeric intensity in the roadless solitudes.
Our biggest apprehension was having to box & check the bicycles for the trip, but Amtrak provides custom bike boxes that require only that remove the pedals and loosen and turn the handlebars to fit them in. The baggage heandlers were gentle (they handle a lot of bikes), and, while I would have preferred a roll-on-roll-off protocol, as Amtrak has on its shorter-distance trains, the boxes appeared on cue at the San Jose station, and ten minutes later we were on the road.
And now we've had a night's sleep and hope to explore a local road or two before getting down to business and meeting friends whose hearts, but not whose faces, we have come to know over the years thanks to the internet.
More later!
