It’s been an eventful week, so much so that I can’t even remember what happened on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (my favourite) were all about Ben and helping him get better from afar. For those of you keeping track, his leptospirosis test came back negative, so we still don’t know what is wrong. He was discharged from the hospital yesterday but is still experiencing headaches and fever. It’s very frustrating, but he’s got a great attitude in the face of the unknown.
As if that weren’t dramatic enough, I had some adventures of my own 
. At noon on Thursday, Loren and I solved the world’s/Kelly’s problems over soup, salad, and a shared pizza appetizer at a fancy restaurant in Bellevue. The waiter really wanted us to shut up and leave already so he could seat some higher-spending folks! Then I swung by Microsoft Building 113 in Redmond to say hi to Chris, let him know he still isn’t forgiven for last week’s “Thai”, discuss Ben’s illness, verify that his hair is still wild and spiky (it is, ladies, it is, and it actually looks good!), oh and pick up a copy of Office for Mac.
Thursday night, I had dinner with my cousin and his family, which consists of his awesome wife Erica (a fellow U.Va. grad. Go Hoos!), their 2.5 year old son Wyatt, and 7 month old Calvin. I see them about once every 3 months, which is basically enough time for both kids to always think of me as a complete stranger, which doesn’t help my ability to deal with kids. “Does it sleep all night?” “Does it have teeth yet?” “How does daycare affect its demeanor at home?” I do have fun watching the boys though. Especially when one of their parents starts laughing, so one of the boys starts laughing, which makes the other boy laugh, and pretty soon the main reason why everyone is laughing so hard is, well, everyone is laughing. It’s pretty cute.
Then, Friday, at swimming, I dove off the blocks! Six times! Speaking of excitement! And I never lost my goggles! It was awesome! The coach said I did great! Especially since beforehand, she asked if I’d ever dove off the blocks, and I said once last year with disastrous results!
Final excitement of this week to report: arrival of new stuff! I got a big box from Lazer Helmets with my Tardiz and Helium helmets for this year. I’d gotten a tide-me-over shipment of two road helmets in Hawaii, which I reviewed here, and it looks like I’ll have to make a few updates – my new Helium helmets have a couple of sweet upgrades over the one I received a few months ago . I can’t wait to ride outside and test out the helmets! Soon enough… only 36 hours before I start driving to California!
And, this morning, I picked up my new LOOK 576! I love it! I spent several hours looking at it all googly-eyed, and also riding it. I wasn’t really able to test its handling and responsiveness because I rode the trainer. I am a weather-wimp here in Seattle and today’s mostly cloudy, 30% chance of rain, windy, mid-40′s weather was good enough for lots of cyclists to hit the pavement but NOT ME. My blood is still tropical, thank you. I hope to report more thoroughly on the bike’s rideability in the coming weeks but for now, my first impressions are good. Aesthetically, I love it – the colors and graphics are sharp, and the cables are routed more tidily than any bike I’ve had previously. I also like the matching blue cable housing, it’s a nice touch. Also, a BIG BONUS for me is that for the first time EVER, I have two bottle cages on my time trial bike! My three previous TT bikes all had only one bottle cage. I typically race with one bottle on the frame and an aero bottle mounted on the bars, but two frame-mounted cages will be awesome for long training rides. No more stowing extra bottles in my precious jersey pockets!
As for fit, so far so good. My bike is a size Small, the smallest they make, and before I pursued the sponsorship I spent what felt like hours with a calculator and a measuring tape, making sure it would actually fit. I am 5’4″, which is above average height for women in this country, but below average height for triathletes, so TT fit is always a challenge for me. Anyhow, the top tube length is just fine, but we did have a small scare with the seat tube. LOOK uses an integrated seat tube, which must be cut to rider specifications upon assembly, and there is a “maximum allowance” of 150mm to cut (an essentially meaningless figure when you are looking at geometry specs, but not when you are looking at the seat mechanism freaking out that your new bike won’t fit!). We needed to cut 165mm. I called the customer service desk at LOOK and received excellent customer service! On a Friday afternoon, no less! The person I talked to found a frame that was damaged in shipping but was intact in the seat tube area, cut the seat tube 165mm and assembled the seat mechanism to “see what would happen”, then reported back to me that it would be fine to cut it that much. Phew! So, no issues with the fit on the back end. Although I do need to swap out my saddle, it came with a fi’zi:k Arione, which I have used previously as a road saddle, but after 2.5 hours in the aero position today, I am on a mission to find a new saddle. Pronto. As for the front end, the bike came with Profile Design aero bars that are mounted on top of the base bar, which are a little too high up, despite a negative-rise stem mounted with no spacers. I think part of the issue is that the head tube on this bike is a little taller than on my Blue, but that style of aero bar adds about a centimeter and a half of height to the front-end setup. So, sometime this week I* will need to swap out the aero bars to my Ritchey Hammerheads that are currently on my Blue (* i.e. a nice mechanic who won’t charge me $251), and then I should be golden!
