Last night I had to get a quick ride in. 22 minutes. Stayed on the flats through the neighborhood and kept it at a good pace. I’m around a 16 mph average. I’d like to get up to 18.It was my first ride in about five days due to bad weather and stuff to do around the house. The weather looks lousy right now so I think I’ll just practice my horn tonight.
I am just getting around to making progress on the Jazz Book again.I have an interview scheduled for the end of the month with a great Baritone sax player.
I’ve given up the Gillette Fusion and the Mach 3.For quite a while I have used a shaving brush to apply shaving soap. First I bought a brush and somewhere along the line I stopped using shaving gel and started using shaving soap. The Mach 3 was the first razor I ever used that didn’t cut me to pieces with every shave. The only pain involved with buying cartridges since they were so expensive.Recently I made the move to a Double Edge razor. The kind your father or grandfather used. I’ve got a couple of Gillette Adjustables from 1960 and 1963 as well as a couple of Gillette Techs from the 1930’s. A 10 pack of Double Edge blades from Wal-Mart is $1.96. I picked up some shaving oil to try and add that to my shaving soap. Even with this added cost I’m far ahead of the Mach 3 or Fusion days.The important part is that after about a week I was getting better results than I was with the latest offerings from Gillette. The key was figuring out that I had to use no pressure and let the weight of the razor do the work. The other important thing it to use about a 30 degree angle for the blade. Finally, I found that it’s a little slower to get a shave but I enjoy the process more.I use two or three passes on my face with the Double Edge razor which is about the same process that I used with the Mach 3 or Fusion.If you don’t want to go vintage with a 1960’s Gillette Adjustable then you can buy a new Merkur from classicshaving.com.
9.3 miles tonight on the bike. I must be getting into better shape as I was near a 16 mph average.On Sunday I did 16 miles in an hour and ten minutes. It was a nice ride through a couple of different towns.If I could keep it on the flats more of the time I could easily hit an 18 or 19 mph average.
Road 35 miles today on the bike. Went through two bottles of my homemade sport drink and one bottle of gatoraide when I had to refill the bottles after 20 miles. I basically rode through the western suburbs on various chipped gravel trailes. At mile twenty I ended up a Blackwell Forest Preserve (somewhat by design as I knew they had two things I needed – a porta-potty and gatoraide in a vending machine).I am amazed at how many drivers fail to accept that people on bikes have just as much right to be on the road as them. I managed to get a couple of dirty looks for riding on the roads near Danada. For some reason people drive like idiots in that area.I’m getting close to needing a new rear tire. I think I can get another 200 miles or more out of it. I’ll probably order one this week just to be safe.Back when I was 22 I started to do some real mileage on the bike and it took me four to six weeks to get up to the 30 mile range. At 37 it took me six to eight weeks. Of course I weighed less back then and maybe took a single water bottle with me. These days I take two bottles of sport drink and know where to find more.I was a couple of miles slower on my average speed but it’s hard to build up a consistent speed on chipped gravel with all of the people and you can’t really get a decent speed going on the various local roads that I took today as I really didn’t always know where I was going (basically trying to avoid major roads for safety).
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