20 km around Repentigny
Despite the fact we stayed in Repentigny today, we probably got as wet or wetter than we would have riding.
We went out shortly before noon to check out the bike shops and get some more groceries, and ended up riding through some of the heaviest rainfall all day. According to the radar, both of the big nasty cloud formations missed us, one to the north and one to the south, but we definitely got hit with a small one!
The bike shop trip was necessary because we’ve changed our 44-tooth front chain rings for 36-tooth chain rings to allow us to spin faster when climbing hills. (And hopefully not get off and walk as often on the really steep ones). This takes our granny gear down to 17.2 gear-inches from 21.3, which is nice. If you don’t know what gear-inches are, you probably don’t care, but if you’re curious there’s a good explanation by the late Sheldon Brown, as well as a calculator for both Rohloff hubs and normal gearing.
Unfortunately, changing the it required some additional spacers between the chain-ring and the pant-protector rings. This meant at least one of the bolts holding the rings to the crank was marginal (only two or three threads of contact between the bolt and the nut), and I stripped it yesterday while tightening things. I don’t have a spare, and neither of the bike shops had a replacement, so my fallback will be to remove one of the pant-protector rings.
(This would be much clearer with pictures, but it’s time for bed).
Otherwise it has been a day of cooking good meals, relaxing, bike maintenance and geotagging of photos. Now it’s just a matter of organizing and uploading the photos. (We do have a few more than just the ones posted so far).