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5: Brifters! My first ever brake lever shifting bike. Maybe my second ever even riding one. I thought they were genius when they came out, I was just too poor and riding fixed all the time.

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Sayonara 2025.

Fun couple hours riding up out of Fairfax and down into Sleepy Hollow. Gorgeous day, and I didn’t injure myself!

I always love the Gestalt Haus jackalope sausage, but the M&G burger was really calling me. Next time.

Nicassshhio Reservoir was beautiful, and The Mighty Kia is always fun over D Street into Petaluma.

Oh yeah, I started my day taking a cat to the vet. Here he is interested in the toy, but not fooled by the toy.

Update! Both eyes now have trifocal lenses installed!

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Getting my anemia fixed.

I broke my wrist right before New Year and spent some time in the hospital for surgery intake, and they did a bunch of blood tests. The results show up in your phone app in about 20 minutes!

Turns out my iron levels and hematocrit were abysmal. Like “no wonder I suck at bicycles” bad.

Kaiser had said, “oh your iron is a little low we might look at that in a year or two” United said, “dood you’re anemic here’s what we will do.” And then they did it.

1. Check me for internal bleeding. “Bloods gotta be going somewhere.” Ick. This is an involved, unpleasant process. Double ick. Turns out I have Barrett’s Syndrome.
2. Take a pill every morning, and come back in three years to get scoped again.
3. Take iron, but not too much, since it can “irritate the stomach.” I’m pretty sure this means “make you bleed internally which defeats the whole point.” I won’t go into why I think this is the case.

So if you feel weak and asthmatic riding bikes and your poops are often almost black… talk to a doctor about anemia!

Quad Lock phone mounts for bike and car.

I have a terrible sense of direction and it takes me repeated visits to understand the spatial relations of a place. So I tend to go places I already know. Having a phone/map mount where I can see it and follow the map is a huge help for me to get around and try new routes.

I use it more in the car than on the bike, but I hope to change that in 2026.

Overall, Quad Lock is good, it needs a dedicated case, and I like the ring back thing because it aids in holding the phone easily and securely.

The only downside is that it smooths out the movement of the phone on the bike so I don’t get “steps” in my activity app.

Paying retail money for new and stylish clothes

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Upright bars. I’ve been riding flared dirt drops for decades, but swapped in Velo Orange Tourist bars to recover from my broken wrist.

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I got this pretty SimWorks rack from Analog Cycles, but the TravelAgent conflicts with the mounting rod.

I’d need to switch to a cantilever brake in the back to make this work. Or… just move a pad washer to get the brake off the rack strut… hm.

Cleaning the rim seemed to help the crazy squeal, so I put the shiny brake and new pads (sanded of course) on the Fitz for tomorrow’s road run out to Forestville.

UPDATE: better braking and no shrieking!

UPDATE (full story below): this is a Gripshift Bassworm invented to add more “spring” to Gripshift shifters to work with updated Shimano derailleurs.

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