Arrival Of My Bike
Well I finally took the plunge this year, I shipped one of my bicycles to Italy. It almost found its way here faster than ourselves, thank you Send My Bags! A quick and fairly economical way to transfer your belongings across the ocean, if you are so inclined.
Of course there were some things to buy, I just could not take along everything I needed because of the weight and limited space in my luggage. This included a new pair of shoes and helmet (doesn’t really pay to risk that in the knock-around world of baggage handling).
My First Couple Of Rides In Turin
I didn’t actually ride inside the city, it is not worth the hassle and interruptions given by the classic grid of roads, with all of their signal lights. Instead, due to our proximity to the eastern hills of Turin, my thoughts immediately turned to the quiet roads above. I quickly learned that having a 28-11, 10-speed cassette on my wheel is not entirely suited for the climbs around this area.
My first ascent was up Borgo Po took longer than I was expecting. It actually took a day to recover and I quickly learned just how flat Wake and Chatham counties are back in North Carolina. But good training nonetheless and something different for a change.
My next ascent took me up Cavoretto Hill and the hopes of a nice one hour ride up and then down using a small one lane road that winds its way passed a park. I cannot say enough about how much construction is being done to the roads in and around Turin, they clearly have gotten their Covid monies from the EU parliament. Almost every road or street here has a hole in it with men frantically digging and replacing something.
Construction forced me to change my plans and turn around at the top of the hill and descend to whence I came. Though I wasn’t entirely unhappy about the choice (having reached my maximum heart rate) I felt a bit tired and annoyed. I took another photograph, since it was such a salubrious (oder bekömmlich) day, I had to just take advantage of supreme clarity of the air.
Of course not wanting to go down the hill the same way I came, I tried a few other alternative routes, which of course almost made me almost contribute one of my lungs to the hill before leaving it.
I finally relented and viewed the way down with some misgivings and thoughts of failure. But, after discovering that my Garmin had wigged out on me again and did not track all of my heart rate information coming up the hill (most likely due to the terrible conditions in which I had to mount the damn thing on my bike, more on this soon), I was finally okay with just going back down the hill for a rest and returning to my apartment.
Back To The Subject Of This Post
Well, as I had alluded to in the subject of this post, necessity is the mother of invention. After my bike arrived, I quickly re-assembled it and discovered, much to my chagrin, that I had forgotten an essential piece to my smooth operation. The bike was fine, I could get flats, fix them and pump them up and ride on my way. What I couldn’t do is see my Garmin, which would normally be mounted on my handlebar stem. In my confusion before we left, I had forgotten to throw this essential piece in the box…!
Being an avid problem-solver, I remained undaunted. The problem was just one of securing the device to the handle bar stem. Since I already knew how Garmin solved this issue, coming up with something similar didn’t seem too far out of the realm of possibility.
Therefore, after installing three (3) rubber bands, a piece of double-sided tape (made by folding tape back onto itself) and an artfully carved wine cork, I had something temporary I thought. It looked like hell, but after more than a dozen rides, seems to function fine for the most part.
As you can see in the above photograph, the solution looks ridiculous. Though I must say the cobbled streets here tend to drive it to its engineered extremes, one should definitely use the device’s strap in a loop around the stem to secure it. For in the event that it get’s jarred loose (though I admit the photograph above does not show this), and it will, its fall onto the road would more or less destroy it.
For those interested in a similar solution the components are listed above.
Finally the envelop holding my Garmin Attachment plastic showed up in the mail and I am now happily riding the cobbled streets of Turin and its surrounding environs without a care in my bumpy world!