Yak's Muddy Fox Courier, Trek Multitrack and other bikes

Lovely bank holiday weekend with the multitrack. Had a family gathering at my parents house, so on saturday me, my partner, brother and sister-in-law had an early morning ride down the towpath to broxbourne, train to cambridge, then ride from cambridge to my parents' village. Them on their brand new matchy-matchy shiny CdA's, my partner on her trusty raleigh mixte and me on the multitrack. The towpath bit was fun although I missed the muddy fox's bouncy tyres on some bits. The route to my parents place goes down the bike path next to the guided busway, essentially a 10 mile stretch of smooth, flat, straight, uninterrupted car free bike path. Normally I find this bit boring on the muddy fox as it gets quite monotonous just slogging it out and getting overtaken by land-skiers and mamils... loads more fun on the trek, felt like a proper roadie though, my MBUK-reading childhood self would've been ashamed

Had some nice fenland pootles on sunday, saw some baby cows, found out the pizza rack is perfect for transporting flowers bought from people's driveways:

After trying out my brother's CdA I realised my levers were too far forward so I moved them back and tidied up the bar tape, much more comfortable now.

On bank holiday monday me and my partner did the full 70 miles back home. The 20 miles was almost entirely on car-free lanes thanks to cambridgeshire's pretty comprehensive cycling infra

The middle bit through hertfordshire and essex was lovely, found a new-to-me route which I think is mostly on sustrans route 11? very quiet singletrack roads and windows XP-default-desktop-background-esque landscape. It was super hot and my partner wasn't enjoying the hills so much - her trek wasn't quite ready for a long ride so she took the mixte which doesn't have v wide gearing. We had the whole day to do it though so just took it easy with plenty of stops. (I didn't take any pics of this bit without my partner in them so had to use all my photoshop skills before posting here)

We got to stansted abbots to join the lea towpath at about 4, had a late pub lunch and a shandy before wobbling back to london. Saw some proper towpath characters including a triple tandem and a guy on an electric handcycle blasting eye of the tiger doing about 20mph

Really pleased with the trek now, think it's pretty much 'dialled' as they say. Despite my earlier reservations I love the woodchippers, they're so comfy in every position, and I can live with the stretch to get to the bar end shifters. I think the spacers have tidied up the headset adapter a bit, although they're too big e.g. the diameter is larger than the 1" part of the quill stem adapter. Certain I ordered 1"spacers so not sure if they're meant to be like that or they sent me the wrong size?

Doing the caledonian way next week with my dad which will be about 4 days of 60-70 mile rides, I'm no expert but probably not quite as flat as the fens, so hoping I'm up to it...

In other news, I rode the muddy fox a bit this week for work and have decided it's due a bit of an overhaul, bottom bracket is knocking/clicking a bit and the headset creaks, and I have a suspicion that the forks are bent as no matter what I try I can't get the brakes or mudguard lined up despite a perfectly trued wheel. If my suspicions are correct, I'm going to strip all the parts and take the f&f to a shop for straightening up and cold setting the rear dropout to 135mm, then treat the spots of surface rust etc before rebuilding with new bb & headset.