Incremental progress on the Moto_GT and Ride me out to the Ballgame Year 2

I was hoping to complete the Moto_GT rebuild in June, that did not happen but I did make some progress.  It was shifter day recently, I carefully took apart the Suntour power ratchet shifters, one side at a time documenting how all the parts went together. I am pretty sure I got them all back in the right order, we'll find out when I run the cables.

When going through the shifters piece by piece I came to realize something my readers have long suspected, I had a screw loose!  The smaller screw, near the rubber cover was present only on one side of the shifters, so I need to get to the hardware store and see if I can find one that matches.   Won't be the end of the world  if I don't, but I would like them to match.

Back on the bike and ready for cables.  I had cleaned up the cable guide earlier so...

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.it is also back on the bike and ready for the cables to come too.

I also wanted to get the Pedals cleaned up to complete the cranks.  RJ the bike Guy has a nice Youtube video for cleaning up Atom 440 pedals, however that all starts with removing the dust caps and the ones on my pedals were on tight!  I tried a big screw driver, a small screw driver, a dental pick and a knife blade and all I got for my trouble was a nick on my finger from the knife.  So I contented myself with a sonic bath and some brass wool clean up (finished pedal on the right above).

The pedals actually spin nicely as is and if I ride this bike allot I would probably put MKS Sneakers on it anyway but a simple screw driver slot on the end cap would have made this much easier.

With the pedals back on the crank-set is complete.

And here we sit, I need to service the hubs, clean the freewheel and the rims and then we will be ready for new cables and chain.

Ride me out to the Ballgame 2018.

Last year, inspired by the A few spokes shy of a wheel blog  I decided to ride to a Seattle Mariners game which I wrote about here.  I have been doing alot of short 20 and 30 minute rides lately for exercise and one of things I wanted to do for a big boy ride was go to the ballpark again.

On a good day you can see Mount Rainier from the summit of the bridge, but today was overcast and in the low 60s, nice for the ride but no mountain.

The ride to the Safeco Field takes me through the industrial part of the city and the shot above is downtown through the lens of the port.

I like this shot because you can see Smith Tower, the white building with the pyramid top, once the tallest building west of the Mississippi, against the more modern Columbia tower - the really tall black glass spire looming behind it.

And now in the home stretch I can see the Safe, which turned 20 this year.

A respectable number bikes in the bike locker for today's game.

Including this vintage Motobecane, a Grand Record, two up in the line from my Grand Touring and the first time I have actually seen one in person.

I was literally in the cheap seats, straight away center field but I had no complaints, except that I had purchased the ticket in the hopes of getting a unique bobble head to commemorate this story about starting pitcher James Paxton.  I got to the ballpark an hour early only to find out that people had started lining up at 9 am for the 1 pm game to get the prized bobble head,  I was out of luck (Sad Trombone).

I was joking with my seat mates about getting there early only to come up empty handed when the nice folks in front me said they had gotten a few extra and handed me one.  Wow, never underestimate the kindness of strangers!  A great day at the park, the Mariners won their 7th in a row and are in a good position to end the longest current post season drought in Professional sports, 17 years and counting.

My steed awaits

The real beauty of riding to the game comes afterward as thousands of fans sit in traffic trying to get out of the parking garage and then home, I just pedaled by in the bike lane.  I was a bit concerned about the climb back to West Seattle, the  6%, mile long, grade was steeper  and longer than what I had been doing to that point.  If I am honest I will say I was prepared to stop about a 1/3rd of the way up the  hill to go multi modal....and then my bus passed me just before I could get to the stop... so I figured what the heck and put my head down and kept on grinding up the hill.  When I got to the top I looked down while stopped for a light and was surprised to find I hadn't been in my easiest gear, or even my second easiest, I was in the 3rd easiest gear!!  That means I could ride any of my bikes up the hill, not just the triples with the granny gear.  That put a smile on my face but I may have some sore legs tomorrow.  I did notice that my saddle was getting kind of personal near the end of the ride so I need to do some more dialing on the Allez fit before I can really say if its a keeper or not.

Ride to a ballgame. Smile. Repeat.