Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Good things

Those sunglasses I got, the frameless Tufosi's - worked awesomely. Great optics, just enough shading, they look good, and the only piece of the glasses I can see is the nose piece. Thumbs up for sure from the.bigun.


The new aerobottle - great as well. no splashing with the new lid means that I can fill it up to the top now. It also means no face full's of Gatorade when I hit a bump! Refills easy with a standard waterbottle - really, no negatives and all positives.

I tried the new Roc Gu - contains extra amino acids and caffeine. Good stuff actually. Used 2 on my last 50m ride, on an empty stomach, and I really liked them. Maybe Gu will have some at CdA...

I also bought a pair of the cheepo booties that Spokane Al recommended on the CdA blogger site. $18 with shipping; it's hard to go wrong there.

My taper has been a bit less than textbook. I've been really, really taking it easy - aside from work, my workouts are lacking. Now that I'm shipping my bike out today, I'll be really avoiding any temptation (however slight) to get on the trail and ride. I have been getting in some heavy lifting - moving TrisherpaDi out of her studio, and then moving all the "stuff" into the house. Fun stuff.

I shipped my bike today to Spokane! $53 to ship it. For all you shippers out there....some tid bits:
  • If you can get the box under 7" wide, you can save around $10 on Fedex ground. My box was 8" - I may have been able to take an inch off - but with the crank on, it makes the bike a bit wide.
  • My box height was 28". I didn't change that dimension (or the width) - and with my seat removed, the top of my seat tube and the bottom of my crank took up the whole box. My bike is a 58 cm.
  • The box length was 43" - even if it was smaller, that would not have effected the price much. I believe that under 50" is where you want to be. I shortened the box to match my bike's length. The whole orig. box by itself would have been over $80 - so by shortening the length, I saved a bunch. I was able to do this by not shipping my wheels. I'm renting Zipp 808's, so I figured that sending the extra weight and lengths were not necessary. The whole thing, with the tools to put it together, weighed 28lbs.
  • I took off the rear derailleur and hanger - to protect it - and that helped the length . I had to loosen and bend in my aerobar grips, and take off the elbow pads, to make that whole contraption less than 8 inches wide...that was a pain in the neck. I just hope I used enough Styrofoam to pad it all. I guess we'll see in a week!

10 comments:

Jenny Davidson said...

No face full of Gatorade = definitely a plus...

Unknown said...

And we'll be looking forward to pictures of the Bigun lookin' hot in those sunnies!

greyhound said...

What are you now, Martha Stewart? "Good things" for the athletic and yet aesthetically sensitive guy.

Danielle in Iowa in Ireland said...

Shipping my bike would seem so petrifying! But I guess it ain't gonna get there on its own!

Fe-lady said...

I am all for shipping my bike to places instead of dealing with a bike case in a luggage line in the airport!
See you sometime next week! (wow)

IronTriTim said...

Saw the ROC GU must try it, been using Powerbar gels.
Also thanks for the tip on the bikes, will be shipping my bike to Florida.

momo said...

i just bought one of those new aerobottles, too! i'm going to try it out on friday. the old one is why i stopped putting carbo pro in there. i was always sticky!

Herself, the GeekGirl said...

Found me some shades at WALMART. They are way cool. And at $10, They're practically disposable.

The Stretch Doc said...

I was wondering how you shipped it so cheap.. good thing mine is going on the plane b/c the box i got is reg. card board bike box, no were near that size and its $50 on SW, each way!! wheewww..

rockon`

Oly said...

I personally like a smaller box. ;)

Thats just me though.