New Year, New Plans!


New Years Teardown

Took the time today to tear down the whole bike. Some things need to be replaced or changed. This bike did a good job in 2016, and I'll be pushing it again this year in Japan, and possibly South Korea.

Things to fix:
- New hoods for shift levers
              - MicroShift offers replacement hoods on their website for only $9. You get 2 pairs with that!

- New Bottom bracket
              - I made a mistake of buying an FSA Crank. The crank itself is great. But the bottom bracket has caused me loads of trouble. I've spent 2 hours before in front of home hardware store in AizuWakamatsu stripping down the bottom bracket and reassembling it. Not fun in hot weather!

-New Crank (maybe)
              - Instead of buying a new MegoEXO BB I've though of just replacing my whole crankset with Shimano or Sram. The cranksets compatible with the MegaEXO BB are not very compatible with a Shimano BB, without using some force or alteration.





This Years Plans

First up....Peru!

I won't be going to bicycle, but I am interested to see what possible riding conditions would be like. I have an idea in the back of my head of riding a section of the PanAmerican Highway from Lima to Valparaiso in Chile.

March 15th to April 20th I'll be back in Japan!

Will have to miss the Sado Longride this year, but my plan so far is to head to Fukushima again and ride down the West coast of Japan towards Hiroshima, passing through Toyama and Kanazawa. Once in Hiroshima, cross over to the other side on the Shimanami Kaido, a bike path rated as "heaven" by Giant's founder, Liu King.

April 21st

120 mile ride down the coast from LAX to San Diego. It will be my second time doing this ride. 

Later 2017

I've looked at flights to South Korea and Beijing....things look promising.


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