Seven

I've been taking David to school on the trail-a-bike this week (behind the fixed gear). He's getting more comfortable with the bike, but it's still a lot easier riding with Lara. Not sure if that's because David weighs more (70 lbs vs. ~50?) or if Lara just does a better job balancing. If it's the latter, that would be interesting, because Lara still uses training wheels whereas David's been riding a "two-wheeler" (David's terminology for a bike without training wheels) for a long time. Lara and I rode to David's school last evening. She played on the playground for a while. When we got home, David was jealous.

Last night I got new batteries for my front light after I picked up Xiang from school. On the front of the Van Dessel I've found room for a small light, a reflector, and an old Cannondale bag that I haven't used in years. In the back, I've now got my Profile water bottle cages, a reflector, the connector for the trail-a-bike, and on the seat stay I mounted a light using the little Profile knob that I had on the aero-bars on the Lemond for a computer.

Yesterday I spoke with Bob Beckman (http://www.coinet.com/~beckman) for nearly an hour on the phone. It was great. We talked about bikes, clothing, components, touring, racing, etc. He's got a couple of children about David and Lara's age I think - maybe a little older. I could hear them in the background. One of the new ideas Bob gave me was to design the Vanilla to accept a Rohloff internal geared hub in case I ever get tired of riding the fixed gear. I was just looking at the Rohloff website, and it looks like they make good chains too: http://www.rohloffusa.com/slt99.htm.