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Fortunately last weekends spill didn’t really affect my ability to ride, so I haven’t really missed a beat. Other than my 2x day bandage maintenance, life has been pretty normal. I still have a bit of a shiner that has migrated from the right eye down to my cheek at this point. So, onward with the plan. Andrea and I will be heading back down to St. Francisville for the West Feliciana Classic S.R.

This is a first year race, but the payout for the 1/2/3 is pretty good and I like the area after seeing for the first time at Rouge Roubaix back in March. The weekend promises no gravel roads, but the high chance of T-storms might make the conditions epic anyway. The original plan for the race was a 5-mile TT, a 60 minute crit, and a 80 mile RR. The crit course is flooded out, so they modified the plan to do a similar RR on Saturday afternoon (reverse of Sunday). Same course, but 1 lap less (56 miles).

This week has been a pretty busy week, but I managed to get a bunch of bike related things done. First of all, my front tubular wheel. Looking at it, I clearly didn’t use enough glue in putting it on. Since the tire was in perfect condition, I put it back on the wheel with a glue job that I could rely on. I also deflated and checked my work, all looks good.

On my TT bike, the seatpost fail that occured the week before last, messed up my position. I was mostly focused on getting back together on the side of the road and didn’t really followup in adjusting the position. I didn’t notice, but my saddle was about 1 – 1.5″ back too far on the rails. Can’t quantify the effect, but I am sure it didn’t help last weekend. Whilst packing up for last weekend, one of the screws that hold the rear derailleur hanger in pace came out. The last thread on the hanger itself stripped out. Solution, take the bolt to Lowe’s and see if was a standard screw. Thankfully, it was a M4-0.7 and they had some short ones (8mm) so I could get it reattached (albeit a phillips head instead of 2mm allen).

Last night, finally got around to tearing down my FSA SRM crank to try to figure out why my crank creaks when in the small ring. It was a known issue last weekend, but I knew that I would stay in the 53 all weekend. The design of the SRM-FSA crank is strange that both chain rings are bolted in from the inside with five T-30 Torx bolts. I took it all apart and cleaned all the parts, and put it all back together to a torque spec of 100 in-lbs. The 53 chainring is 130 BCD and the 39 chainring is 110 BCD, so there was a total of 10 bolts to install. I didn’t see anything obviousely wrong on the crank or the rings, but one of the bolts sheared off when torqueing it down. That was probably the problem. I robbed a bolt from my other FSA crank K-Force light that uses standard bolting. I then put it all together using the following (which has worked)

• Clean all parts with a rag… including inside the BB bearings, etc
• Clean the splines and the spline insert with IPA (70%), let dry.
• Apply a light coating of grease (Phil Wood waterproof) to the inside of the outboard bearings
• Insert drive side crank – spindle (one piece)
• Wipe off the splines to make sure that no grease is on the splines
• Liberally apply (fill) the channels with Loctite 641 on both the splines and the spline insert on the non-drive crank arm
• Put it together making sure to have the crankarms at 180 degrees.
• Lightly grease the fixing bolt and the dust cap (extractor).
• TIghten the fixing bolt to a moderate torque.
• Reinstall the dust cap using needle nose pliers to hold it while you spin the cranks.
• Wait 24 hours to ride.

Unfortunately, I finished this procedure this morning, so I won’t want to test it out until tonight or tomorrow at the race. I hope the chainring bolt that was apparently cracked was the source of the creaking. I ran out of the Loctite 641 fixing compound, but expect to get my order in next week (ordered two bottles).

Now my only concern is my seasonal allegeries. I hope the fact we are going 350 miles south will help get me into a different allergen situation. I don’t have headaches, but only some congestion that clears when I ride.

The weekend, I will concluded my four weekend run of Friday vacation days and long weekend with Tulsa (before that Fayetteville, TN – Shreveport, LA – St. Francisville, LA). After that I am home a weekend then back to down to Convington / New Orleans, Lousiana for Tour de Louisiane. The end of June is our hometown race (Smith & Nephew / Marx & Bensdorf Gran Prix) and then a 4th of July weekend race in nearby Oxford, Miss. After all of that, it will be more than time for a mid-season break. Andrea and I once again plan to head up north to Michigan and Wisconsin to see my parents and my brother.