…is Fri­day, May 15th. Donna and I won’t be rid­ing to work that day, I have a doctor’s appoint­ment across town, so we are rid­ing tomor­row. Which is OK because it will be smack in the mid­dle of Bike to Work Week and it is pretty near the mid­dle of National Bike Month.

I just hope the roads aren’t crowded tomorrow.

I thought I was through with my Christ­mas gifts, but after yes­ter­day morn­ing, turns out I needed 2 more.

The Cat­eye LED head­light we bought a cou­ple months ago does a decent job of light­ing the road in a 4 foot diam­e­ter cir­cle about 20 yards ahead of the bicy­cle. That, along with the ail­ing Nite Hawk incan­des­cent head­light fill­ing in the gap between the front tire and the LED spot, for­ward travel is pretty well illu­mi­nated. But turn­ing cor­ners is tricky because the lights are on the han­dle­bars, they only see what’s around the cor­ner once the bike is actu­ally turned.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing about two miles into our 6–1/4 trip to work I turned onto a street that turned out to to be cov­ered with leaves. Because of the light­ing setup I didn’t know there were leaves there until we were cross­ing over them. Coast­ing at about 10–12 miles an hour the front tire slipped out from under me. Before I could even get out the O in OH SHIT, we were down and skid­ding to a stop on the ground. What took the brunt of the impact was the right front pan­nier that was loaded with my clothes and I think that saved both of us from a rougher land­ing. We got up, checked for any seri­ous dam­age to us or the bike, I reat­tached the pan­nier and we ped­aled slowly up the street. Because we less than half way to work we opted to turn around, pedal home and then drive the car in.

The bike appears fine except for scrapes on the right ped­als and the tape on the right side of the han­dle­bars where they skid­ded on the pave­ment. The attach­ment hook on that right front pan­nier needed to be rebent back into its nat­ural shape. The cap­tain has some road rash on the right knee that makes wear­ing pants uncom­fort­able, a sore left thigh that prob­a­bly got poked with the han­dle­bar and a ten­der right wrist from hit­ting who knows what. The stoker got a small cut on her right leg and a fairly sore shoul­der. Both prob­a­bly have bruises that will mate­ri­al­ize in a cou­ple days.

The right knee of my tights was shred­ded in the fall so I had to order a set online today. I also ordered another LED head­light, but this one has a hel­met light so that I can aim it around cor­ners by look­ing that way so as to avoid nasty sur­prises like yesterday.

We rode the tan­dem to work today and the Emperor spent the day in the air con­di­tioned lux­ury of the garage at home. The ride in was great, because it is our early week we started rid­ing at a few min­utes before 5:30 AM, there was zero traf­fic and the tem­per­a­ture was 70° with a lit­tle bit of fog. The ride home wasn’t too bad, even though it was sunny and 90°.

Donna and I took our usual walks around the perime­ter of the park­ing lot all three times today and each and every time we came to the far cor­ner I would see that empty park­ing spot and for an instant won­der what hap­pened to the car.

Tried out Ver­sion 1.1 my Pho­to­jojo Bike­Cam tonight. The lock washer helped because the clamp around the han­dle­bar didn’t come loose at all dur­ing our nearly 12 mile neigh­bor­hood jaunt. But, you just knew a but was com­ing didn’t ya, the cam­era still had a ten­dency to rotate from fac­ing straight for­ward. My guess is because this doesn’t work like a real tri­pod, i.e. the screw doesn’t bot­tom out in the camera’s tri­pod socket, no mat­ter how much you tighten it, it is still going to rotate.

Because the cam­era is off cen­ter on the han­dle­bars, the tri­pod mount is off cen­ter, the cam­era is stick­ing up at the end of a 2″ long screw, the tires have 90p.s.i. in them and the roads are not real smooth, 90% of the images I’ve taken so far have been blurry. Even the un-blurry ones aren’t what you’d call pho­tographs (snap­shots maybe), so what is going to let the world know you are tak­ing these pic­tures on a mov­ing bicy­cle and are not just snapped by some­one from another planet who has never even heard of photography?

You include the bicy­cle. If you look at the very bot­tom of the first pic­ture you can see a shadow of my hel­meted head. Not real obvi­ous. When life hands you lemons, you should make some Mike’s Hard Lemon­ade. When the cam­era kept rotat­ing bit by bit, an idea popped into my head, why not rotate it nearly 90° and include some of my hand/arm. I think ide­ally I should fig­ure out how mount the cam­era in a ver­ti­cal man­ner and using the widest angle avail­able include just a bit of the front tire. Maybe I can work that out with my Gorilla Pod.

G.A.B.B. 7 in 1998 was the last time we did it. What started as a fun thing to do for a few fel­low co-workers had turned into a chore. What was one day a year turned into 4 dif­fer­ent days for the four dif­fer­ent start times. There was all the arrang­ing for t-shirts and break­fast, find­ing some­one to ferry in the good­ies and other people’s cloth­ing, arrang­ing to bor­row bikes for peo­ple who didn’t have one of their own, etc. so I was look­ing for an excuse to stop doing it when the per­fect one dropped in my lap.

Willie worked in the back of the plant and on a slightly ear­lier start and end time because of his job, so at quit­ting time for him, the rest of the plant was still hard at work. Maybe some­one took excep­tion to Willie rolling his bicy­cle through the plant on his way home and com­plained to HR. Or maybe it was an office per­son from up front com­plained about Donna and my bicy­cles parked in our respec­tive cubi­cles, we never got the full story, but in the fall of 1998 a bike rack was placed out­side near the entrance and bicy­cles were no longer allowed in the build­ing. Hav­ing had my fair share of bicy­cles stolen from racks in my life­time I refused to ride to work and take a chance on it hap­pen­ing again.

When I informed HR in the spring of 1999 that I wouldn’t be doing the ride that year because their rack wasn’t big enough to hold the 12–15 bicy­cles of the rid­ers and I didn’t want to have to round up that many bicy­cle locks, they offered an excep­tion for the event. I declined the offer.

Rode the “Bus” into work today. Not mass tran­sit, but our own alter­na­tive fuel vehi­cle, the tan­dem. I call it the Bus because com­pared to a sin­gle bike the tan­dem rides and dri­ves like one com­pared to a sin­gle bike. We didn’t really do it to save the gas money, but because we have been threat­en­ing to get back to bik­ing to work for the longest time and today was the day. We have vowed to ride to work every other Fri­day, you know, the one we actu­ally work. We are also going to try and take a ride on the Fri­day we are off work, weather permitting.

Speak­ing of weather per­mit­ting, we don’t let any­thing below a 50% chance frighten us off, so today’s weather call­ing for a 20% chance of after­noon thun­der show­ers was a non-issue. Until about an hour before quit­ting time. The skies out­side dark­ened and fear­ing a repeat of Tuesday’s hail I checked the weather radar. At first glance it looked like we were in trou­ble as there was a long line of orange and red south of Aiken and Augusta, but when put in motion that line wasn’t really mov­ing north. Still, the plain green was spread­ing our way, so it looked like it would be a wet ride home.

We had a cou­ple of offers from co-workers with pick ups for a lift home, but declined them because if it was rain­ing, we and the bike would prob­a­bly get just as wet load­ing the bike up and on the drive. By the time we left it had been rain­ing for a while and had slowed to a sprin­kle, so the roads were wet. Turns out that is where most of our wet­ness came from because as we got closer to home the rain stopped and the roads had dried. Just as we made it home it did start to rain again, but too late to soak us.

The Emperor didn’t go to work, but it did get out this evening. We went out to eat with friends and then did a lit­tle more shop­ping for the final acces­sories for the green bath­room, a set of tow­els, a tooth­brush holder and a shower cur­tain, leav­ing just need­ing one more thing, a liq­uid soap dispenser.

We didn’t have any bills to pay today, so instead we went shop­ping by bike. You know we planned this because Donna put a back­pack on instead just rely­ing on stuff­ing things in my jer­sey pockets.

After a few miles of mean­der­ing around our first stop was the New Moon Cafe for a cou­ple of bagels for Sunday’s break­fast. From there we headed over to the Aiken County Farmer’s Mar­ket. Corn, squash, toma­toes, cucum­bers and some local cheese went into the back­pack with the bagels. Oh yeah, four home­made peanut but­ter cook­ies came home with us too.

Another lit­tle 10 mile tan­dem trip, we did the monthly pay some bills thing. Because the power com­pany and the water works are down­town we decided to eat some break­fast there too. Lucky for us our favorite break­fast place is down­town too. Mmmmm, Rasp­berry Sour Cream Muf­fin. Donna snagged a bagel for today and we picked up an extra pair of Yan­kee Dough­nuts for Sunday’s breakfast.

We didn’t even get 8 miles in tonight.

I charged up the big bat­tery for the bicy­cle lights this after­noon, took the lights off of my com­mut­ing bike and mounted them on the tan­dem. The bat­tery charger said the bat­tery was fully charged when we left the house and 8:30PM in the fast fad­ing twi­light. After about 5 miles the head­light was look­ing a lit­tle dim, so we turned around and headed home the most direct way pos­si­ble. We just barely made it back with the head­light still burning.

We haven’t used those lights in about 5 years, so the bat­tery was really dead. I won­der if after a sec­ond full charge it will last a lit­tle longer?

Spring­like day here in Aiken. There was a big chance of rain all day, but it only came down for a short while this morn­ing and quit. About 9 o’clock we wanted to go for a bike ride, but wet streets and lin­ger­ing green splotches on the local radar made us think twice.

By 10:00 AM the green was gone and the streets were mostly dry and after a cou­ple of cloth­ing changes to be dresses right for the warmth, we pulled the tan­dem out of the garage and headed off.

This was to be a test of the new seat which has been sit­ting obe­di­ently on the bike since before Thanks­giv­ing. After 8 miles it felt pretty good. When we got to the 8 mile point at a tee in the road Donna sug­gested just turn­ing around and going back the same way we came. The nor­mal right hand turn to com­plete the 15 mile loop passed right by a church and it seemed like a lot of traf­fic head­ing that way. I pro­posed alter­nate 3, turn left. It meant a 20 mile ride, but it was a nice day and we were feel­ing good.

The last cou­ple of miles were a lit­tle painful, but not because of the seats, it was our back­sides. We have only been rid­ing 12–15 miles and the extra 30 min­utes in the sad­dle were more than we were used to.

I have to admit that I’m enjoy­ing the tandem­ing much more than I did when we first had one 10 years ago. I’m not sure what the rea­son is, and I’m not going to lose sleep try­ing to fig­ure it out, but I look for­ward to rid­ing the tan­dem more so than rid­ing the half bikes.

Spent a few hours yes­ter­day set­ting up the tandem.

I installed new tires and tubes to replace the 10 year old ones that came on the bike. They were in sur­pris­ingly good shape, but why take chances on the pos­si­bil­ity of fail­ure due to dry rot when bar­rel­ing down a hill at 50MPH!

Wrapped the stoker’s han­dle bars with some new tape. The old stuff was dried out and not very com­fort­able. I bought enough to do the cap­tains bars too, but didn’t use the sec­ond roll. The captain’s han­dle bar tape was in bet­ter shape, just a lit­tle faded and it was the same kind as the new stuff I bought, so the setup matched already. Now we have a spare set of tape for any future needs.

Next I installed the cycle com­puter for the stoker. There was an old Vetta already mounted on the captain’s bars, but my stoker likes to have her own, so she can see how far, fast and long we are rid­ing. One of the joys of tandem­ing is ped­al­ing like mad down a hill and reach­ing crazy fast speeds. The stoker cycle com­puter keeps the cap­tain from hav­ing to answer, “How fast we going now?” ques­tions every 15 sec­onds dur­ing descents…

Next I changed out the captain’s sad­dle from an older Vetta that was there with a newer fan­gled Flite Tita­nium with the cutout in the mid­dle for the com­fort of your pri­vate bits. I then took some mea­sure­ments off the road bike and dupli­cated them on the tan­dem for the captain.

For the stoker on this bike you really can’t do that for han­dle­bar reach, oth­er­wise the han­dle bars would be in the mid­dle of the captain’s thighs. But sit­ting a lit­tle more upright is not a prob­lem on the back of a tan­dem, in fact Donna said she even enjoys it more there. Set­ting up the seat to pedal dis­tance is still impor­tant. After our short ride of a cou­ple a weeks ago Donna men­tioned that she felt too low, like the seat needed to be higher. When I mea­sured Donna’s road bike and com­pared it to the tan­dem they were already really close, hmmm, con­fus­ing. Until I real­ized that the soft­ride beam gives when you sit on it to pre­load it. Loos­ened the pivot bolt and pulled up the beam a cou­ple of inches. Not sci­en­tific, but a start. On the next ride we see how it feels. It is a one allen bolt adjust­ment, so I’ll pack the appro­pri­ate wrench and we can adjust mid ride if necessary.

This morn­ing we headed out for ride to check and see how well I got it set up. Things went great for the first mile. Then a loud pop came from the back of the bike. I thought her foot had popped out of the pedal, but Donna said no, it felt like under seat. We stopped and dis­mounted. The seat felt secure but seemed to be lean­ing a lit­tle. When I looked under neath I could see why. One side of the seat clamp was bro­ken. Oh well. We rode care­fully back the mile in which we came and parked the tan­dem. All dressed for a ride we pulled down the sin­gle bikes and went for a short 12 mile ride north east of town.

Got noth­ing much to say tonight, but I do need to make up a ride report from this morning’s ride for the Aiken Bicy­cle Club’s web site. So in lieu of any bitch­ing and moan­ing tonight, I present, 20 Miles in the Morn­ing:

When Donna and I rolled to the end of our dri­ve­way we almost did a 180. The road looked like it had recently rained and the clouds seemed low enough graze our hel­mets. We knew that at least 2 of the usual group were not going to be there, so we reluc­tantly headed to the Odell Weeks cen­ter. Some­one from out of town had called me on Thurs­day and said she would be in town vis­it­ing and could she ride with us, so some­one had to show.

Not long after our arrival at Weeks, Jenny pulled in and started to unload her bike. By 8:30 no one else was there so the 3 of us started out. It was still threat­en­ing look­ing and the roads were damp, but off we went any­way. Glad we did, as each mile clicked off the weather got a lit­tle nicer. So much so that the sun actu­ally made an appear­ance 3/4 of the way through the ride. Right about that time Donna rolled through some glass and flat­ted. The next 5 min­utes were spent chat­ting while the two ladies watched Brian get his fin­gers greasy from the chain and knees dirty from the tire. We fin­ished with a nice tail­wind down Pine Log.

At the end Jenny thanked us for going for the ride, we thanked her for show­ing up because if she hadn’t, Donna and I might have just gone back home.

Went for a bike ride for the first time in about a month. Just 15 lit­tle miles around town and now my butt hurts. I’m not tired or any­thing, just my sit bones ain’t used to it no more. How the mighty have fallen, as lit­tle as 5 years ago a 60 mile day in the sad­dle would bring not a wim­per from any part of my body, as they say, “Use it or lose it.” I’ve lost it.

Bike ride in the morn­ing, gro­cery shop­ping and lunch out with Donna and her Mom, after­noon in front of the com­puter doing newslet­ters and the evening in front of the com­puter goof­ing off. The Miata sat all day.

Started up, still up.
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