Clever decorations...

I'm not entirely certain what took my wife and I so long to make a visit to one of the area's SPIN! Neapolitan Pizza restaurants. I've always noticed that their restaurants are loaded with ample bicycle rack space, and my local bikey friends tend to frequent it a lot. I should have guessed that there was some kind of bicycle culture in the shops' DNA given the name. I did not expect to see gear clusters hanging from the ceiling, though. Also: darn fine pizza, salad and gelato!

Fixing Frank. MOAR HACKS.

My boss gave me an early start to the weekend, so I rode to the library to return a book on Tarantulas I had borrowed, and I sat in the shade and enjoyed the lunch I thought I was going to be eating at work.


What was I doing with a book about taratulas?  Oh, right. Meet dd. You knew I had a thing for spiders, right?


Anyhow, when I got home, I figured it was really time to dig into Frank's rack and get to the bottom of why it fell apart. I'd only barely put the rack back together when it happened. I was meeting some of my fellow nerds at a (very) nearby coffee shop. I knew that one of the assemblies holding the seat stay braces had come apart, and on the other side, the bolt holding the seat stay brace to the seat stay came out. I knew I was missing some hardware, forever lost in the middle of the road somewhere, perhaps many miles ago.

Here, you can see what the seat stay brace attachment is supposed to look like. Two pieces of u-channel aluminum sandwiching two roundish pieces of tube type material around the seat stay brace. It's missing from the other side because those pieces fell off when the rack fell.


I apparently missed one of the half-tube-like pieces when I scurried around the road looking for bits of hardware.


I looked around for anything that could be used to replace the missing piece, and finally settled on an outer plate from a piece of old chain.


It wouldn't quite fit, so I had to bend the plate a little. Pliers were getting me nowhere, so I tried the chain cutter. Success.


The finished bracket:




After finding a few more allen-head screws in my bucket of bike stuff and putting everything back together tightly, it seems to work great. Time will tell, I suppose.


The SuperFlash was just a little scuffed up. The mounting bracket is fine and the light itself still works and snaps securely into the bracket. Good news all the way around.

Three before dawn

It was another dark-and-early morning for me, and I left in a bit of a haze. The short story is that I saw three other cyclists on Santa Fe Trail drive this morning, all which which looked like commuters in some way or another. The long story is... Oh heck, It's been forever since I put anything up here, hasn't it?  I probably need to provide some back-story.

This kind of started with the Lenexa Midnight Bike Ride two weeks ago. I was once again called on for communications support on the hiking trail section of the event. I opted to take Frank this time, loaded him down with my Motorola GM300 radio. When I have panniers on the mountain bike, the Superflash does its best on the back of the rack.

Why am I telling you this? Because, all told, there was probably 30 pounds of crap on Frank's rack that night. Well, and I like to show off my nerdy bikeness. So what, though? 30 pounds seems like a lot, but I've loaded more than that before. I'm pretty sure that all that weight caused some screws to loosen up on the rack, though. I had a bit of an incident with the Rack last Satuday, where it became detached from my seat stays, pivoted on the remaining bolts near the rear drop outs, then dragged on the ground behind my bike, snapping my SuperFlash clean off the bike. I got off my bike and rescued the light. I think the light itself is okay, but the mounting bracket might be hosed. I lost the batteries from the light, and didn't bother scouring the roadway for them.

Oh, and I also depleted both my Blackburn Flea and my NiteRider Evolution headlight batteries on the Midnight Ride.

Now I can get on with my story this morning. So it's a bit past five in the morning and I have about half an hour to get to the office. This is when it strikes me that my helmet is drying on a clothes rack in my home office (I'd washed it in the shower a few days before) and that all of my usual lights are out of order or depleted.

I always have my 2xAA Mini Maglite with me, whether it's in my pockets, my panniers or my backpack, and I always keep the piece of cut-up inner tube in the bike's under-seat pouch that lets me rock the flashlight as a headlight in a pinch by strapping it to my handlebars.



So I used that silly trick again this morning. In my box of random bike crap (stored alongside the bikes in the garage) I found my old, hacked-up Blackburn Mars 3.0 tail light. I decided to tempt fate this morning without the helmet. I was running late. I finished off by tossing on the Vest Of Retina Destruction. Side note: one of the three other cyclists I saw this morning was wearing the exact same vest.

And for all the hackery I've done to make sure I had at least some kind of lighting, the fact that I ran across so many other people on bikes before the sun was up this morning was really the only remarkable thing.

Suburban camping

My schedule and family life have been crazy lately, but I needed to get out and spend a night under the stars. The mission was to find some wooded area right here in the suburbs, not marked with "no trespassing" or other such verbiage.  Since I was staying close and I knew I'd be off-roading, I opted to load up Frank for this trip. I didn't take many pictures, mostly because I really felt like shutting down all the parts of my brain that had anything to do with electronics.

I started with some fishing on the way out at a spot close to home. I caught bluegill by the dozen, and brought in the biggest red-eared slider I've ever seen (not even close to the size of a snapper, but big for a slider). I threw them all back in.



Then, I was off to find that perfect spot. I've been doing a lot of Google Maps Recon and I had a bunch of ideas for places to go. This seemed like a good place to set up camp for the night, despite being able to hear a deck party going on at a nearby $800,000 home.


Even before the sun was all the way down, it was getting pretty dark in the area I'd chosen. I only had one bottle of water with me, and I'd powered through most of it already. I went to a nearby stream with my water filter, got enough water for the rest of the trip, heated up dinner then called it a night.


It was a really short trip. I don't know if I'll use the same spot ever again but there are many others nearby to try. I needed it, though.

Response from Mike Boehm, Mayor of Lenexa

Mike was quick to respond to my inquiry, but I must say that several experienced cyclists do share Mike's opinion of Santa Fe Trail Drive and prefer to use other roads. I can only hope that making bicycling more visible in a positive way gets more people out on their bikes.

Thank you, Mike, for taking the time to respond. Our city isn't earning high marks from the sustainable transportation advocates, but it remains a pleasure to live, work, play and bike here, thanks also in part to local businesses who remain friendly to bicyclists as both patrons and employees, such as Hen House.

Noah,

Thanks for writing. I was pleased to see you referenced in the article and read your positive comments. Knowing there was significant truck and car traffic along that route and given the narrow nature of the roadway, without curb/gutter/shoulder treatments, my general feeling was that it would not necessarily be the best option for riders. Your experiences obviously prove that my concerns are unfounded.

Again, thanks for writing

Mike

Open Letter to the City of Lenexa

In this article, Mike Hendricks apparently quotes you saying that it is unwise to bicycle on Santa Fe Trail Drive.

I live in the apartment complex behind City Hall, and work on the southern reaches of town along Renner south of College Blvd. I'd be interested to know what route you would propose for getting to and from work. 87th St Pkwy and Renner are both high-speed thoroughfares without wide outer lanes or any other amenities that would make me feel safe using them during rush hour.

I might add that I got this job two years ago, and have found nearly all of the motorists to be courteous along this route. I also encounter many other cyclists on that stretch of road. Truck and bus drivers often log thousands of miles per week, and I have found that they are among the most experienced, careful and attentive users of the road because driving is their livelihood. I see little reason to be afraid of bicycling through the more industrial parts of town.

This was emailed to Lenexa Mayor, Mike Boehm. If I get any response, I'll share it.  Mostly, I was taken by surprise at the mayor's comment about Santa Fe Trail Drive. Certainly, he doesn't intend for cyclists to use the city's high-speed, densely used miniature highways during rush hour.

KC Star on the state of Bicycling in Johnson County

A few weeks ago, Mike Hendricks of the KC Star interviewed me. In the middle of Bike Week, Keith from the KC Star photographed me (and I photographed him).  I didn't know exactly where the article was going, but I gave my all to paint a positive picture of my route. After all, this is the best bicycle commuting route I've ever had, even though it's littered with diagonal rail road crossings.

Enjoy: Happy Trails to you, cyclists

KC Star did caption the below photo to indicate that I had made a hand signal to indicate my intent of taking the lane before cutting across the diagonal rail road tracks. I had also made eye contact with the Dodge driver behind me, and he'd slowed down to let me proceed. This plays out several times per day on my usual commute. Motorists along Santa Fe Trail Drive are usually pretty easy to get along with.

Photo of me from linked article. Copyright KC Star/Joco913

Freedom isn't free.

Freedom isn't free., originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

To all those who have served, and especially to all who made the ultimate sacrifice: Thank you.

Rager.

Rager., originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

Hooky

Whenever my birthday falls on a work day, I almost always schedule it off. If it's close enough to Memorial Day weekend, I have been known to schedule a whole block of time off. Today was no exception. 

Things I Cannot Afford Right Now:

Things I Cannot Afford Right Now:, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

A new rear tire (I'm hoping to go back to the Bontrager Race-Lite Hard Case) and Flickr Pro. You can only see the last 200 pictures now, and this Vittoria Randonneur's days are numbered. It served me really well, though.

Errands

Errands, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

Shadow Panda

Shadow Panda, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

From the workbound commute this morning, for Fritz's Panda Portrait Wednesday.

Photrographing the photographer

Photrographing the photographer, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

I guess I'm gonna be in the KC Star again. I'm really hoping it's a positive piece for bicycling in this town. There isn't enough of that. Keith got some good shots of me controlling the lane and safely maneuvering the railroad crossings on Santa Fe Trail Drive.

Snapper

Snapper, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

Bike Week 2012: Overland Park Deanna Rose Farmstead Event

Bike Week 2012: Overland Park Deanna Rose Farmstead Event, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

I seem to post this same photo every year. Again, it was good to see Drew and commuterDude at the booth. I'm not sure how many other events I'll make it to this week, but you can probably count on seeing me at Friday's OP city hall booth.

It's Bike Week!

Bike week 2007 was an enlightening experience for me. After 8 months of biking to the bus through winter and a bit of dabbling in longer distances, Bike Week was what really got me to take the plunge. Back then, the full commute route was 23 miles each way. That pretty much hooked me. So, fellow KC area folks, relish Bike Week and sign up for the car-free challenge. Get out and ride. I'll Be at some of the Overland Park events.

ANSI 107-2004 Class 2

ANSI 107-2004 Class 2, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

I don't always bike to work at 4:30 in the morning, but when I do, I prefer that people can see me.

Daylight Moon

Lenexa, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

Bit of a chilly bike ride to the office (50°F) but it was cool to see a daylight moon over old town Lenexa this morning.

Bikeness is getting contagious

Bikeness is getting contagious, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

This week makes two years at my "new" job, and today makes the third bike I've seen locked up on the re-purposed handrail bicycle rack our maintenance team set up. It's a yellow Univega road bike. The pink bike that I've been seeing a lot of belongs to someone in customer service that shows up a bit later than I do, so it wasn't yet parked when I arrived. I estimated that this "rack" would pretty much max out at 4 bikes if people played nicely together. I Still believe that's true. It's about to be full, just in time for bike week!