School was out so after a 3 to 1 vote and some bribery involving sweets we headed for the beach. (Superman was on the TV and he is much in favour with my 9 year old at the moment.) The objective was to see if the sea was warm enough to swim. The sun has been back with vengence this week so the odds were looking good from our front garden viewpoint. Chains were lubed, paniers stuffed with swiming gear, including 2 inflatable sharks, beach blanket, spades, buckets picnic etc... Tires were pumped up and we wheeled out into the sunshine.
A nice cooling breeze picked up.
We managed a long picnic break in a park. A coffee & loo break in a village café. The closer we got to the coast however the stronger the headwind got.
When we finally mounted the dune at the end of the cycle path and hit the sand the kids hid behind the bikes or lay flat to avoid being sand blasted to the bone by the lashing wind. I made the executive decision to head back inland towards the windfree park straight away and the inflatable sharks never even made it to the water. Oh well you can't win every time.
What was good was that someone has been busy building links on the cyclepath system so we had chanced a new left turn at one point and hooked up to a new car free path to this new beach a few miles up from where we normally go. There is now the possiblity of cycling to the beach 99% car free which is pretty fantastic. After doing 40 km, half of which was against a headwind in the sun with a fully loaded Yuba Mundo I am frazzled but feeling good. I was surprised by the drop in noise and better gear shifting I noticed after oiling my chain before this ride. Oops must do that more often, but the Yuba Mundo, although being the bike I use the most is also the bike I touch the less mechanically. Almost never infact, apart from pumping up the tires once a week. The moving parts although simple and not particularly lust-worthy are proving to be pretty tough.
I was quite sceptical of some of the Yuba stock parts at first. Ultegra they ain't but I have had few problems with anything (although I did replace the whole front end for discs). Just goes to show how easy it is to become obsessed with performance and upgrades in cycling; when you come to ride something with what you thought were very basic components it surprises you how little difference all those upgrades can make to a well maintained bike.
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