Commuting And Weather

So, yesterday, I was out and about over lunch and saw this atrocity hanging from the side of my office.


All I can think is that it's some huge rapper necklace that's supposed to slightly resemble the KC Skyline, mirrored four ways. Check out the massive chains, yo.


Taking a closer look, the chains are fake and made of plastic. Lame. I was going to steal some of it and use it to lock my bike up with, but I guess that's a bad idea.


This police officer actually made eye contact with us. Although his door was cracked open a bit, he let us pass without giving us the door prize. Personally, I still took a wide berth.


It was brutally humid and windy last night. I stopped under a tree and leaned my bike against a lamp post for a bit to let the wind cool me down while I sipped from my Polar Bottle.



Warning: Animated .GIF might take a while to load.

I woke up this morning to this:


I used CHDK with an intervalometer script to snap a 4 second-long exposure every 15 seconds while I went back up to my apartment to get stuff together. You can see some of last night's clouds rolling in with a longer animation here.

I didn't need the rain covers this morning but the skies were ominous enough that I used them just in case.


I broke a spoke about a mile from home. I'm not 100% convinced that it's from riding it around the parking lot last night with 50 pounds of extra weight on the back. I just bent the broken spoke around another spoke to hold it out of the way. I'll replace it when I get home. I think this is the first non-drive-side spoke I've ever broken. I won't even need to remove the cassette to fix this one.


After bending the spoke out of the way, I was off to work again.


It's hard to see here, but the smoke from KC's newest BBQ pit is visible here.


I rode up Summit again (UGH!) to get some better photos of the carnage.


Looks like dark storm clouds, doesn't it?


Until you see that there's a fire...


What you're seeing is the end result of lightning hitting a container that was holding 1.2 Million gallons of unleaded gasoline at a local refinery. 1.2 million gallons. Retail cost on that is about $5M at 3.93 per gallon (current price of regular 87 octane I saw on the ride in this morning).


Oh, and Praise Beef!


I saw this bike outside Starbucks today, too.


Random Tunage:
Way Out West - Mindcircus (You've GOT to give this a listen if you haven't heard it)
Quivver - One Last Tim

Fake Bicycle Camping

Partially jealous and inspired by Apertome's Bike Camping S24O adventure, and partially just curious as to how much CRAP I could load onto The Twelve and into the new Axiom Panniers, I decided to do the logistics of my own S24O trip.

Now, you should all realize that I will likely never go on an S240 trip on my own. My wife loves camping too much to let me have all the fun without her. You've gotta love a girl that digs the outdoors. Also, you should realize that her and I will not be doing a couples' S24O this year due to the obvious medical concerns. This is entirely a "Pie In The Sky" deal. A practice in quick planning, packing and unpacking, for all intents and purposes.

The result?









Fully loaded, she weighs in at 67 pounds. The bike itself with the rack and lighting on it is 19 pounds. Therefore, I've managed to shoe-horn almost 50 pounds of stuff onto The Twelve. And it's still ridable. Actually, I've had more weight than this on the bike when getting groceries, but it was only ridden for a little more than a mile. Taking it for a spin in the parking lot, I think I could manage to get out to my favorite campground that's within riding distance without a problem. Hillsdale Lake, by the route I mapped out, is about 30 miles away.

Just how much do the panniers hold, and what all would I load into them? Let's do a Fritz Style Bag Audit. On the rack is just my bed roll: A sleeping bag and a small 2-person dome tent. I wish the tent poles were shorter.


In the non-drive side, There's a pair of propane tanks, a lantern, a portable burner, mess kit, utensils and other cookware. The clothing bundle contains a complete change of clothes with two spare pairs of socks and underwear wrapped in a hoodie, because my upper body's usually chilly when I get up in the morning.


In the drive-side pannier, there's my shoes, 3 Liters of water, two cans of soup, peanut butter, a tupper with two slices of bread, my bike multi-tool, bike lock, and gerber multi-tool with matches and a magnesium/flint fire starter.

While putting things away, I got to thinking how bright my DiNotte 200L is, even on its lowest setting. The second propane canister and the lantern could easily be replaced by packing some spare batteries for the DiNotte. This would shave 3 pounds or so off of my bike's weight, or (more likely) provide room for something else like a travel pillow, even though I don't require one when backpacking. It's also worth noting that my drive-side pannier wasn't loaded to capacity, either. There was sufficient room for the equivalent of one of those propane tanks left over in the drive side.

My edibles would likely be substantially different than this, but it's all I had in the cabinet at the time and it would likely be enough to get me there, back and through the night. I'd likely pick up some fresh fruit as well. Nourishment chosen wisely, I could get away without cooking at all, but it's one of the things I really savor about camping. There are a plethora of other options I could consider regarding logistics. I could trim down other stuff, too. This is how I'd roll the first time, though.

Who else has dreams of bike camping? What all would you pack? What do you think I'm missing?

Muggy, Rainy, and Fast

I woke up this morning to find the sky overcast. The radar showed scattered storms, but a really strong wind out of the south. I figured it'd be a nice morning to ride all the way in. In the summer, pretty much any morning is a nice morning to ride all the way in. I don't really feel brutally hot until the heat index hits 90 degrees. It's never that warm in the morning around here.

The threat of rain kept my camera tucked away for the trip, but it was a nice, quick ride in with Karen this morning.

I forgot to mention yesterday that Chris hooked me up with a Shimano 105 brake caliper yesterday morning. My cheapo Tiagra front brake has been giving me problems for a few months. I threw it on the bike last night before the Monday Night Ride, and gave it a good shakedown. I put the finishing adjustments on it last night, and this morning it performed flawlessly. This brake is seriously beefy compared to my original calipers, and seems to clamp a lot harder. I may in the future replace my rear caliper with 105 as well. Not to get terribly cheesy, but this was an out-of-the-blue thing that was more or less an answer to prayer. I've been mulling over whether to replace, tweak, bend, or modify my crappy front brake caliper for a month or two now. Then Chris just asks if I want a slightly used brake caliper. Awesome!

I ran the WarCycle 3.0 setup again this morning just for gits and shiggles. It discovered about 1200 networks. WiFi coverage is getting pretty dense these days. Part way through the ride, it started raining, so I threw the rain covers over my panniers. They did their job quite well, but I'm more interested in seeing how well they work in a genuine torrential downpour instead of just a 10-minute-long rain shower. Here's the WarCycle gear all nicely arranged on my desk:


If the wind keeps up all day the way it was this morning, my homeward commute is going to suck pretty badly. I might cave in and use a bus.

Random Tunage:
Red Nex - Cotton Eye Jo
Alanis Morissette - Head Over Feet

June 2, 2008 in photos

Took a short walk for lunch. It was dreary out, with light rain.

Cathedral


A worker grinding on an iron fence


Inside the Folger's plant (through a window)


Someone finally figured out how to lock to these seemingly useless bike racks.


A little puddle on the homeward commute.


Lots of wind, of the head-on variety.


Off-roading


Some kids in an aquaduct, seen on the Monday Night Ride


Tim's new Surly Long Haul Trucker. Everyone is getting these! Friday, Tim takes off for the Colorado/Kansas Border and will ride this bike back here to KC for Biking Across Kansas.


I took a photo of Tim taking a photo of some of the other riders. But who's taking a picture of me? I think I gave Tim the Thumbs-Up on camera. Maybe he'll email it to me.


The Monday night riders cruising along.


I logged a solid 48 miles tonight. Looking forward to warm temperatures and a tailwind in the morning.

Random Tunage:
Nine Inch Nails - 6 Ghosts I
Hybrid - True To Form (Featuring Peter Hook on 6-string Bass Guitar)

Evening errands and morning commuter convoy

Jet contrail at twilight on my way to get groceries


14LB bag of cat food, 5 pounds of potatoes, some cheese, and a bunch of other stuff. 12 rolls of Shi... err "Poop Tickets" Tied to the rack with an old inner-tube. I couldn't find any of my large bungees, but inner tubes that are trashed beyond repair work great. I never throw one away.


These people still have Christmas lights up.


Human Detected.


This railroad crossing is blocked off pretty much without any warning. Chris (background) already carried his bike over. Karen and I are doing the same. Cars, however, had no choice but to turn around and get on I-35 via 18th street Expressway to get downtown. That's basically a 4-mile detour. I wonder how many people are late for work this morning because of this?


Convoy of three.


Random Tunage:
Dave Matthews Band - Ants Marching
Nine Inch Nails - Ring Finger

ANNOUNCEMENT: Monday Bike Commuter Convoy June 2nd

The temperatures should be somewhere in the Mid-60's tomorrow, but there's a pretty good chance of Thunderstorms. Here's the deal:

I'm riding in all the way tomorrow pretty much no matter what. I'm a dork and forgot to pick up my June bus pass. Unless there's a lot of lightning or a pretty severe weather threat that I don't think we can beat, I'll still go by the usual Monday Commuter Convoy Schedule.

If you feel like chickening out, TheJO has a Quivira (D) route bus that barrels through just about 10 minutes after our scheduled departure time. There are bicycle racks on board. Bus fare to downtown is $1.75. Drop-off at 11th and Central is about 6:40 AM.

See you in the morning (probably)

The WarCycle v. 3.0

Wardriving: The act of driving around with scanning equipment, searching for wireless networks (usually of the 802.11 variety). The "War" part of the name comes from the age-old practice of setting up a computer to aggressively dial thousands of phone numbers in a row, looking for other computers or fax machines, or "War Dialing". In and of itself, wardriving is not a malevolent practice. Wardriving, done passively, is totally legal in the US.

WarCycling, then, is the same tactic applied while riding a bicycle. WarCycle 1.0 was set up as follows.

Hardware:
Diamondback Outlook (Hybridzilla)
HP Jornada 680e
Garmin eTrex
EnGenius 200mw 802.11b/g high-power card
Two 19dBi Antennae

Software:
Windows CE HPC 2000
MiniStumbler

WarCycle 2.0 used my newer Jornada 720 which was more stable, and was installed onto a metal plate on my DB Sorrento (The Goat). Still powered by WinCE and MiniStumbler, though.

This time, though, I have made significant changes. For the price, you really can't beat the Wireless card that I've got, and the antennae are superb omni-directional antennae. Sure, better hardware exists, but this stuff is better than you'd find built-in on any laptop. Here's the new digs:

Hardware:
Trek 1200 (The Twelve)
HP Jornada 720
EnGenius 200mw 802.11b/g high-power card
Garmin GPS12
Two 19dBi Antennae

Software:
JLime Linux
Kismet

Of note are a different bike, different GPS, and vastly different software. The GPS12 isn't any more accurate than my (currently destroyed) eTrex but it runs quite a bit longer on a set of batteries. The software is where this rig really shines. You can see a review of this scanning setup (off the bike) on one the the other blogs I occasionaly write for.

What's it look like? Well, when I'm riding, it's pretty stealthy. You can just see a pair of antennae lashed to the top of the panniers, but laying flat. I could get more networks with them mounted upright, but I didn't have anything to mount them on and my aluminum rack isn't magnetic.


Unpack the gadgets and it looks like this:



I rode to church today, too. I only scanned for networks on the way home. Here are the obligatory photos du jour.

Getting ready to roll out. I didn't realize my panniers were on backwards. Whoops.


Lenexa Fire Department on Pflumm Rd.


At church. The green thing is a "Buy one get one free" for Mountain Dew.


As usual, I played sound engineer today. I actually had to re-wire a significant portion of our sound system before church. When we stopped using the subwoofer (we didn't need it really), someone botched the wiring and hooked stuff up all wrong. This is why I wish people wouldn't mess with it unless they fully understand it first.


My Dad and Christie's guitars. Kinda blurry, oh well.


Loaded up for the trip home. I just carried my bottles out in the panniers. I needed the mesh pockets for something else on my way home...


Tasty mountain dew! My favorite bike fuel. With my BOGOF Bottle Cap, this stuff set me back about $3.15 per gallon. Cheaper AND tastier than gasoline.


Miscellaneous Railroad Photography:


A train brake.


Me, being a trespasser. Oh noes!


Random Tunage:
Casting Crowns - Voice Of Truth
Plumb - Stranded