Bicycling

Requiem For Bob

When Donna retired she said that the only thing she was going to miss was riding the bike to work on Friday. We decided that seeing as we couldn’t ride the tandem, I would ride a my single bike and she would ride her single bike with me half way and turn around. She would then come back in the afternoon and meet me near the Valve Store, that way she’d get in 1-1/2 bike trips to my one.

Trouble is my regular single bike is a lightweight club racer, not a commuter, so there is no way to mount any of the racks on it that would allow me to transport my clothes and lunch to work. One way to go about it would be to take all the stuff I need at work on Friday by car on Thursday night, then retrieve it by car later Friday evening or Saturday morning. But we used to be so proud about riding to work on Friday because often times we wouldn’t even use the car at all that day, now with this option we would be making two car trips to ASCO to support one bike trip there.

Several years ago when I got the Bianchi road bike we stripped a few of the parts off of the Bob Jackson framed touring bike to upgrade Donna’s touring bike and hung ol’ Bob upside down from hooks in the garage. My idea was to get my old touring bike down and take it and the various other parts, that may have come off it originally or may have come off Donna’s touring bike or may have came off some other random old bike, down to Cyclesport and let Shareen work her magic. If it needed something, and we figured it would, she could source it and fix up my old friend.

Turns out it needed new tires and tubes, a 42 tooth front chain ring, a set of brake calipers, new cables and some handlebar tape. We got it back a few weeks ago and I mounted the front and rear racks, strapped on the front panniers off the tandem and my new trunk bag for my lunch. I took it out for a shakedown cruise around the neighborhood it felt good. The weekend before the first planned ride to work, Donna and I went for a usual Sunday morning Ridgecrest breakfast ride. The clip-less pedals were tighter than on my club racer and there was a slight creaking coming from up front somewhere, but other than that the bike felt like a pair of sturdy well broken-in shoes – comfortable, familiar and ready to go anywhere. When we got home I loosened the screws on the pedals and tightened down one of the front racks mounting screws.

That Friday on the way to work the creaking was still there. On the way home it was little louder. The sound was most evident when standing on the pedals climbing one of the small hills on the route and seemed to coming from the handle bars. When I got home I loosened the stem and pulled it out of the frame, cleaned it off and coated with a little grease, because this could be the source of the sound. I then took the front rack off entirely and went for a ride around the block. The creak was still there when I rocked the bike by pressing down on the left side of the handlebar and lifting the right. So now I’m a little worried about the creaking because the handle bars are original to the bike (which was bought new in 1981!) and after 36 years of life/use they might be suffering from metal fatigue.

Figured I should take it to a professional for a second opinion, so back to Shareen at Cyclesport. Dropped it off late on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday when I called her after work, she said she pulled the handlebars out of the stem and lubed that too, another known creak creator, and neither part looked like there were cracks in them, but the sound was still there. I told her I’d be down to get the bike. When I got there she said, “I found where the noise is coming from.” I said, “Great.” She said, “Noooo, not really.” “See that scratch on the head tube?” “Yeah,” I say, “I noticed that, along with all the other paint imperfections on a 30+ year-old bike.” “Well, that’s no scratch,” she takes a box cutter blade, lines it up with the scratch and proceeds to push it in about a 1/16″ of an inch, “that’s a crack.” It starts at the front, angles up and follows the outline of the lug, ending about 2/3rds of the way around the head tube. Crap.

Oh That Worked Out Well…

On Thursday night we packed up in preparation for riding the tandem to work, but we knew, however, that it was an iffy proposition. The weather folks were predicting a decent chance of a couple of hours of rain in the morning. If it happened early enough, we might ride if the road wasn’t too wet. If it happened late enough, we would ride before the rain ride and everything would be dry by quitting time.

When the alarm went off at 5:00 AM I went and checked the radar on the computer. And while my calculations from watching the current loop and their future cast predicted that the narrow visible line of thunderstorm would arrive after we were inside at work, we both agreed it was too close to risk. The last thing we needed was to get soaked a mile from work and have not only our cycling clothes get wet, but the work clothes we were going to change into as well. We went back to bed.

When the alarm went off again at 5:30 we got up and unpacked everything, got dressed, made our hot beverages and headed into work where we had our pre-staged breakfast waiting for us. About a mile from work the first large raindrop hit the windshield. The amount of those big drops increased in reverse proportion exponentially as we got closer to work. By the time we pulled into the parking lot it was a full on deluge. It was coming down so heavy that we opted to forgo parking in our usual far left corner spot and get one a lot closer to the door. In spite of cutting our distance to walk in by two-thirds and having a large golf umbrella, we still got soaked from the knees down and merely damp below the waist.

Lets recap, we got up at 5:30 and left the house at 6:00 to arrive at work at 6:15 and get really wet. If we had bike ridden, the time line would have went like this, up at 5:00, out the door at 5:30 getting to work at around 6:00, or about 10 minutes ahead of the rain. So, to avoid getting wet, we adjusted our schedule just enough to cause us to get wet.

Awwww Mom!

Even though this morning’s temperature was borderline freezing, Donna and I still bike rode over to our usual Sunday breakfast spot, Ridgecrest Coffee Bar for a panini. We were the only folks in the place until we were just about finished and a family of five came through the front door.

It was a man and woman probably around 30-years old, two boy kids maybe 5 & 6 and a infant in one of those car seats with a basket handle. The parents had on puffy vests, car seat infant was under a blanket, but the kids were just in flannel shirts. As the group approached the counter, the younger of the two kids, noticing the sliding window behind it, said, with as much exasperation as a person that age can muster, “They have a drive-thru!”

I’m not sure whether his annoyance was because he had to get out of the car and walk 15 feet to the door (in the cold) or because this was the first time in his life he had ever been in a restaurant that had a drive-thru and and they hadn’t used it.

Living In Denial

They1 were calling for rain for Saturday and when we got up and checked the radar, it was, thirty miles north of us. We ran the futurecast and it looked like the rain would hold out until between 9 and 10 at the site of Cars & Coffee. All we needed was a few minutes to get the “Car Show Photo” for the Motoring Challenge and then, for all we cared, it could pour. We left home with the top down.

There was a very slight mist in the air. We sat by the window while we ate breakfast to keep an eye out. As we were ready to leave Hardee’s a car pulled in and it was quite wet. Donna asked the woman where she came from and where was it raining. Her reply both relieved us a little and scared us some too. We started for downtown and about halfway there it started to sprinkle a bit. I asked if we should put up the top before I got out of the car to take some cash out of the ATM. Donna said no, but hurry up.

Flush with twenties, we headed west towards Augusta. A couple blocks later larger drops started to fall. When those large drops started to come a little quicker, I asked again and this time Donna said yes. The rain wasn’t too bad so we continued on hoping that it might break and it would even be sprinkling when we got to Augusta. Ha. Less than a mile later it really started raining. The further we got out of downtown the harder it came down. When it got to the point that I could no longer drive the posted speed limit safely, I hung a left and drove back home.

They1 we calling for a cloudy morning today and when we got up it was, so we proceeded with our usual Sunday morning bike ride for breakfast. As we pedaled through the neighborhood we could feel some moisture in the air, but that was to be expected with yesterday’s rain and this morning’s lingering clouds. A few miles into the ride the mist thickened and with the cool northerly breeze it was not real pleasant. Donna offhandedly mentioned turning around, going home and getting in the car. I said, no, its not that much further.

Ha. Should have listened. The further we rode, the heavier the mist got and glasses were getting hard to see through. It was too late by this time to turn around, so we rode the last mile grumbling to ourselves getting very damp.

We enjoyed a nice leisurely meal inside of Ridgecrest sharing a Breakfast Panini and reading the local paper while sipping hot morning drinks. When we went back outside to get on our bikes for the ride home, the clouds were still low and thick, but the mist was completely gone. The ride home was a lot drier.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 96

1. When I say “They” in this case, I mean the finely trained expert meteorologists at the Weather Channel.

Danger Will Robinson

After a crappy start to the year on riding our bike to work, today marked the 4th Friday in a row we have accomplished it. Because of our timing and the route we take it is normally a placid and enjoyable trip, but today we encountered not one, not two, but three inconsiderate or inattentive drivers that had our hearts racing a bit.

1) Less than 10 minutes into the ride to work some guy in a Suburban was in such a hurry that he couldn’t wait behind us for the last 50 yards to a stop sign that he passed us, taking up the entire left lane on a slightly curvy section to beat us to said sign. Of course we arrived at the sign at the same time with us in the right and correct lane and him taking up three quarters of the left and wrong lane. As we paused together, I looked over to my left, with my helmet mounted headlight and illuminated the bozo as he was looking back at me. We both had frowny faces on, I could see his, but mine was probably masked by the high powered LED light shining in his eyes. This can be a tricky and semi-busy intersection, but fortunately it was not at 5:40 AM or who knows what would have happened.

The second two occurred on the way home and within an 1/8 of mile of each other:

2) Passing through one of the neighborhoods some guy in a pickup truck made sure it was clear to one side of him and started backing out of his driveway very briskly without looking our way. I reached for the brakes about the time Donna shouted very loudly, “HEY!” He hit the brakes, stopped and said loudly, “What did you say?” I let off the brakes and Donna repeated, “Hey,” as we cruised on by. I don’t know if he ever looked in our direction or he did and didn’t see us, but before the loud shout he looked very much like he would back right into our path.

3) About the time we calmed back down from the pickup incident and were motoring along down a slight hill when an aging, paint peeling Toyota Camry misjudged our closing rate or didn’t see us at all and decided to make the left turn in front of us. Because I could see that they were angling to cut across the intersection and we were already a couple feet into our lane avoiding the rough patches along the right edge, to avoid smacking into the right front quarter panel at 15 MPH, I steered almost into the other lane so it wasn’t as close as it could have been.

Considering how uneventful our commute to work usually is and has been, I guess the law of averages caught up with us today. Thing of it was we thought for sure that we would even see less than the typical dozen or so cars today because we figured everyone would have already left town to get an early start on the Memorial Day weekend.

So Tired, So Tired Of Waiting

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMcA-HGVo6o

We like to ride the tandem bicycle to work on Fridays. It sets a nice president for the weekend, kicks it off right.

It has been too cold or rainy on every Friday so far this year to commute to via bicycle. Ten weeks. And it is forecast to rain this coming Friday. Today’s weather on the other hand was to be sunny and about 15-20 degrees warmer than the average morning low of 41° and afternoon high of 66°.

We rode the tandem to work today.

Sunday

Water Tower Alternate

A 16 mile bike ride that accomplished bill paying and breakfast eating.
Home in time to watch CBS’s Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood.
I read a book made out of paper.
Wasted the rest of the day watching football.