Quote of the month, if not the year.

commuterDude (muttered elsewhere on the Internets):

My daily scan of regional Craiglist feed, looking for touring/rando frames, came across advert from a college town which begins with "need to sell bike for gas money..." Um, dude...why don't you sell the CAR for bike spares, and ride it???

The man has a point. It feels like March outside right now. We've had perhaps two days that actually felt like winter this season.

I'm still alive. No, I haven't ridden more than a handful of times in the past month. It's complicated. I wish I could take 'dude's advice. Having a wife that practically lives in a hospital and/or requires constant care at the drop of a hat (up to and including zipping home over the lunch break a few times per week) is putting a serious damper on bike commuting. Like I said, the weather's been perfect for it. Grumble.

But hey! I got to meet A Midnight Rider face to face over some coffee 2 weeks ago.

The hard facts.

With my wife's medical issues, I really need to get my old Ford Focus back up and running. We've essentially been a one-car family by virtue of one of our vehicles simply being out of commission. Last winter killed the battery, which was last replaced in the summer of 2004 - it's long past due. I could probably throw a battery into it and it would run. But it needs new tires for winter. The ones on it wouldn't handle snow. Once it warms up there's an entire litany of things that I really should get around to replacing. It's more than a decade old, now, with a little under 120,000 miles on the clock, which means I've driven it less than 1,000 miles since this time last year.


My wife went to a doctor's appointment today, only to be admitted to the hospital. Not just any hospital, but one of the furthest away from my office. I had to swing by the apartment first to pick up a few things my wife needed, and I'm no stranger to loading lots of stuff onto the bike. I loaded up and rolled out along my old commute route from 2007-2008. Man, I miss this route!

Visiting hours are over at 8:00 PM, and it's going to be a close call as it is, so I'm hammering away as fast as I can given the sub-freezing weather. At the bottom of the last and most arduous climb to get to the hospital, my right STI shift lever goes totally limp, followed by a ratcheting noise from my rear derailleur and a massive increase in resistance.


Yep. The shifter cable snapped clean off, and it ghost-shifted all the way to high-gear right as I was trying to make a climb. With all the cargo on The Twelve, I couldn't make it up the hill. Not even cross-chaining the triple crank, not even standing up. It was 8:00. I was at the bottom of Rainbow Boulevard, and I was going to perform... THE WALK OF SHAME.

Of course, I was basically turned away after handing over my wife's belongings. I got to see her for a few minutes, but only out in a lobby. I felt like I had failed her in the most basic way one human can fail another: by not being there for her when she needed me. Had the Focus been road-worthy, this wouldn't have been a big deal. Ride home, hop in the car, and drive to the hospital. Get there with an hour or more of visiting time. This is far from the first time that our single-car-ness has led to major inconveniences.

Sure, having my own functional vehicle may increase my temptation to drive on some days, and I will probably give in to that temptation once in a while. I'm not here to prove how hardcore I am. I just want people to know that if a fat computer nerd can bike commute in all four seasons, pretty much anyone can do it. That said, I think I see a little more driving in my immediate future. You know, as soon as I save up for a car battery and some cheap tires.

October Recap

Man, what a month! Pretty much the usual commute thing, not much other riding. A little bit of driving to take care of some bizarre errands here and there that just couldn't be accomplished any other way.

Today, we turned the keys in for our old apartment. It seems like I've spent the last 3 weeks doing nothing but busting my ass at work, only to come home and bust my ass packing things into boxes, cleaning the old place up, moving boxes between apartments, unpacking those same boxes, organizing things and deciding what's going to remain boxed up for now. I'm a bit of a packrat. I gave away or discarded literally half a ton of random kipple that's been crowding my closets during the process of moving this time.

A lot of what's left had no rhyme or reason to how it was stored, with half a dozen large plastic bins all full of random computer, photography and bike stuff. Most of last week was spent finding a place for every thing, or a thing for every place, but I'm finally satisfied with how stuff is organized. Audio/Visual cables and hardware is finally stored in one thing. Networking stuff in another. Wall Warts and Power Bricks together. Bike parts together. I even have a 5 gallon pail completely full of ethernet patch cables. At least now I have a bunch of small messes of related items rather than one big mess sprawled across many different containers. I can't help but think I need to jettison some more of it, but you never know when you'll need an AUI to UTP transceiver balun or a NuBus Ethernet Card. Oh, wait. I needed one of each last week. Yes, really.

My plan for completing the 100 Pushups program fell completely apart as I encountered nights where I averaged 4 hours of sleep after an eight hour day working and an equal amount of time spent on moving tasks. The balance of my day was taken up by everyday boring stuff and a bike commute to keep me sane.

I'd imagine I have another week or so of getting settled in.

Putting additional stress on things, I barely listened to any music in October. Music gets me through things, and there just wasn't time to put the headphones on and get into the zone at work. And at home... you already know.

At any rate, I'm stoked for what November will bring. Stresses at work and at home are settling down. The temperature's falling, and we're going into one of my favorite times of the year to ride.

Cart rage in aisle three

I typically ambulate at a fairly good pace as far as plain old walking is concerned. The highly scientific and precise measurement as performed on a cheap home-gym dreadmill says I walk at 3.6 MPH, which, from what I can tell, is a bit faster than average.

I don't particularly care for walking. I avoid walking for transportation for all but the closest of destinations. If it's more than a few blocks and it's at all possible to ride a bike, I'll take the bike. Until such time as it becomes socially acceptable to ride one's bicycle through the aisles of the supermarket, that's at least one place I'll be forced to use my own two feet.

Despite my relatively quick gait, I actually had a lady behind me on my way out of the store this evening muttering "Come on. Move!" just loud enough for me to hear.

Related: I happened across a minivan with the license plate "KEWLGMA" that, according to another highly scientific instrument bolted to my handlebars, was incapable of exceeding 20 MPH in a 45 MPH zone. She was certainly a grandma. No, I didn't pass her. I drafted that thing! Thanks for the pull, granny. Perhaps that's how she earned the "kewl" label. I know she didn't earn it by holding up traffic.

* Title roughly based on a facebook comment from Bill Burns.

Random Tunage:
First State ft. Sarah Howells - Reverie
Alpha 9 - Come Home

Perimeter Lighting

While I'm going on about things that have been annoying me lately, let me talk about one of the most sinister automobile features ever: Perimeter lighting.

That's the name for the feature that turns on a car's headlights, tail lights, park lights, and (most horrifyingly) reverse lights when the owner unlocks the car with the remote key fob. That means when I'm leaving my own apartment at about the same time as everyone else in the morning, I get about 5 or 6 cars that suddenly appear to be applying the brake and shifting into reverse. Thanks to dense parking and dark tinted windows, there's often no real way to tell which of them will back out in front of me or if there even any drivers in the cars to begin with.

If it wasn't for the reverse lights, I might not be quite so annoyed. I'm convinced that there's a front row seat in hell reserved for the person who thought it was a good idea to engage the reverse lights when the car isn't actually in reverse.

Have a better idea?

I've written much on the state of the horrible railroad crossings on my new commute route. This is my usual approach to crossing them:


When I see a break in traffic, I creep out toward the center line to make it abundantly clear that I absolutely need the whole width of the lane. As I approach the crossing, I pull a zig-zag maneuver that lets me cross the rails more or less perpendicular. If I don't do the first step, I get cars that give me barely enough room to cross them in the direction of the road, much less the ability to cross the rails safely.

Have any better ideas? This trick earned my my first angry honk this morning. I suppose it's not bad for having to do this twelve times per day, five days per week for the past 2 and a half months.

Just take the lane.

A few things combined prompted this.

1. Dave Moulton had a nice rant.
2. St. Charles county wants to ban bicycles on certain roads.
3. People want to debate about bikes on roads and where they should ride.
4. I posted about "Gutter Bunnies" on BikeCommuters.com
   
5. Someone in Johnson County got injured badly by riding into an under-construction gutter seam.
6. Eric points out this awesome animation about the perils of a shy, cowardly curb-hugger vs. a savvy, confident cyclist.

Click the links. I don't have a lot to add here, other than to say that I generally ride my bike about where a car's right wheel normally sits in the lane, or 18-24" out from the gutter seam or fog line most of the time. I rarely have any problems riding here, and in the past few years of riding like this, I can count on one hand the number of times it's actually resulting in someone honking at me from behind in anger.

Weather Rage

Back in late July 2008, I rode home from downtown KC to Lenexa with an ambient temperature of 101°F, relative humidity of 37% and a heat index of 108*F. That was my hottest day on the bike of all time.

Today's ambient temperature wasn't nearly as hot, but at nearly 60% relative humidity, the heat index blew my previous record out of the water.

Let's ask Rage Guy what he has to say about this.

Rage Guy?


Yeah. That's about how I feel, too.

Random Tunage:
Orbital - Desert Storm
Libra - Anomaly

The Trains of Santa Fe Trail Drive

I go over six distinct railroad crossings each way on my commute. That's twelve per day. Lenexa doesn't really know how to maintain these crossings, as most of them are rough to ride across. This is amplified by the fact that these are local spurs with a very odd angle-of-attack, leading off the siding next to the mainline and into small yards where only a few cars at a time get dropped off to local businesses across the street.

Some people believe these crossings are vestigial rails, no longer used. Two of the six crossings have derails off the siding track. They are smooth and easy to cross because asphalt is butted up directly against the rails. Every so often, though, I see something like this on one of the remaining four spurs:

Hey, look! A caboose!

Cabooses are still often used on local deliveries such as this one, frequently book-ending the train with the engine somewhere in the middle. A conductor acts as the eyes and ears for the engineer. The caboose also contains a gauge showing brake line air pressure and enables the conductor to initiate emergency braking for the entire train.

In case you wondered, the little blinking red light (FRED, or Flashing Rear End Device) at the trailing end of most freight trains is a computerized device that provides roughly the same function as a conductor in a caboose. It monitors brake pressure through to the back of the train and has a blow-off valve to allow the engineer to expedite emergency braking from both ends of the air hose.

At any rate, I really wish someone would do something about these horrible crossings. The angle of these crossings plus the general blighted condition of the roadway near them often makes it uncomfortable for everyone. Cyclists have to find (and memorize) a safe line through each crossing, and motorists have to be patient, as it's one big no-passing zone. Santa Fe Trail Drive isn't terribly wide, but motorists and cyclists get along quite well. I've only been honked at one time and it was friendly (meep meep!) The right part of the road is in great shape with ample room for the Kansas-mandated 4-foot passing law, except at these crossings. There, I just take the whole darn lane as needed, but many cyclists are far too sheepish to do that.

Lenexa keeps piling asphalt into these crossings, but the locomotives keep rolling through, crushing and distorting it. I'm pretty sure Lenexa's doing it wrong, and I don't think it's anyone else's responsibility (e.g., land owners, railroad companies, etc...)

On a side note, today was my first commute on the fixie. I went on a little 3-mile jaunt last night, making a mock trip to the grocery store using small residential roads and mostly-empty parking lots to get myself familiarized with fixed-gear riding. Once I broke myself of my coasting habit, everything else fell neatly into place. It was an enjoyable ride to work this morning, and it didn't really take me any longer to get here.

Update: dvicci just linked me to this gem on Dave Moulton's blog via Google Reader. How timely!

Posting will still be light for a bit...

We had to kind of pick and choose what would get paid for while I was out of work. Obviously, rent came first. Without breaking out into some sappy sob story, I'll put it frankly: Flickr Pro is expiring in a few days, so many of the photos won't load. Not that I am really able to upload much of anything from home anyway. Our Cable TV and Internet was cut on Friday. That means I have to tether via my mobile phone for Internet access at home. It's slow and disconnects often. Basically, it's more trouble than it's worth.

I figure things will probably return to normal in mid-to-late June.

Look for another S24O announcement soon, a-la One Ton Paceline. I've got the camping itch BAD, but we really dodged a bullet doing the trip in August. I'm thinking June might be better.

Also: I just realized I bought The Twelve 3 years (plus a few days) ago. It has logged more than 10,000 miles, believe it or not. In fact, I have had the same front tire on that bike since late 2007 when I got sick of the OEM tires and switched to Bontrager Hard-Case. The front tire has about 8,500 miles on it, without a single flat.

Yeah. About those games.

"The Games" as I so irreverently christened them last evening, ended up being a 100% chance of rain at 33°F. FML.

Consumer Zombies

Bus stop at the Maul.


While I love frobs and gizmos just as much as the next geek, the whole Black Friday Blitz thing is not my style at all. I'm going to attempt to get excited make things for Christmas. I can bake. I have hand tools. I am deft with the soldering iron. I'll figure something out.

Thought / rant: punctuality

Of all the ways to be inconsiderate to others, I find tardiness to be the most selfish. Unabashedly demanding your peers wait patiently on your behalf expresses the utmost of disrespect for their time, and a narcissistic exaltation of whatever it is that happens to hold you up. Isolated incidents are easy to forgive, but when this kind of behavior occurs repeatedly, I can't help but feel personally slighted.

To all of you constant late-runners out there: Pack the night before. Go to bed a bit earlier if you struggle with the snooze button. Keep some breakfast bars on hand and skip the Starbuck's and McDonald's. Put off your TV-, Internet-, or whatever-addiction for a few hours.

You might expect this rant to be related to my personal life or my office environment; It's not. Most of the people in my personal and professional life are both prompt and meticulous. This one has to do with transit, as one of "the regulars" has taken to showing up to the bus stop several minutes late -- almost daily -- while expecting the bus driver to stall. This morning, it was to the point of asking a friend that was already on the bus to see if the driver could hang out a few minutes longer than usual. I find this action particularly repulsive because one person's brazen conceit directly affected the punctuality of dozens of others. Many transit devotees have transfers to catch downtown, or expect to be in their offices at a specific time.

Fortunately, the bus eventually left without the person on board, but it was still 5 minutes later than usual. Yes, I could have spoken up and rattled the bus driver's cage. Instead, I'm going to be curmudgeonly passive-aggressive about it. I can only hope that one of the late-runner's friends has a chat about punctuality and manners sometime soon. I'm growing quite weary of untenable tardiness.

Turning this around, I did meet another occasional bike commuter on the bus this morning. John works for a local bank, and has a nice road bike that he's planning on riding all the way home this evening. John, if you see this, contact me. I have the perfect route to get you back home, using some roads that for some reason or another aren't on Google Maps yet.

Octobber.

I figure I can finally post this since "Octobber" is almost over and I finally have next month's bus pass in hand. It has been pestering me all month.

Sorry for the "quality", I'm sending this from my phone.

Fender Kludge.

Props go to commuterDude today for his advice on affixing my new fenders to the brake stay... drill bit and "Go Lance!" yellow zip-tie style. I also discovered (and am here displaying) the fact that when Planet Bike sells you silver "polished aluminum bonded to polycarbonate" fenders, you get clear polycarbonate fenders with a layer of what appears to be mylar glued to the inner surface. This ply happily separated from the fender itself upon drilling. You can see the dent-like appearance of my fender as shown above. I am contemplating finishing the job by peeling this anemic layer off right now. I would be willing to bet that clear fenders look awesome until the first time you ride and they get all scuffed, stained and thrashed on the inside. Then, they would just look ugly and ridiculous. Now that I have them attached, I just need to find a way to adhere the wayward "polished aluminum" back to the lexan from whence it came...

An Open Letter to Hen House Market

To whom it may concern,

I use a bicycle as my primary mode of transportation and like most Americans, I tend to patronize shops that are basically in my neighborhood. It was with joy that I saw a bicycle rack in front of your Lenexa location, as I usually have to find a less-than-suitable spot to lock my bicycle up while shopping. I am happy that you've decided to accommodate bicycles as transportation and given them a dedicated place to park as opposed to posting signs that forbid bicycles, skateboards and rollerblades.

I do have one concern, however. As of Labor Day 2009, the bicycle rack isn't bolted down or otherwise secured in any way. The rack is light enough for one person to lift onto a pickup bed, probably even if there's a bicycle locked to it.

Please contact me if you need help or suggestions for properly securing the rack at this location and any others.

Thanks again!
--Noah
http://kc-bike.net/

Photo of the rack in question. Some have suggested that I lock it to the hood ornament of that nice Benz in the rock-star spot. Somehow, I don't think that would work too well. :)


Until this thing gets bolted down, I think I'll stick to locking my bike to one of the brick support columns. By the way, the above note was sent through the official online comment form to Hen House Market in regards to the location I saw this rack at.

"Only" two miles

I had to stop somewhere after work on the way home, and I'm testing some new stuff out on my mountain bike this week. Actually, just today. I think I found out what I needed to know after one day of use.

On my way out, a guy was on break, standing next to my bike. We talked for a bit while I unlocked it and got things situated. He asked how far I have to ride to get home. I said "Not too far, only 2 miles."

He repeated: "HAH! 'Only' two miles."

I think a lot of people have this recollection of "Running the mile" in gym class more than a decade ago on their high-school 400-meter ovals. When it comes to cycling, they fail to comprehend how oddly efficient it is -- likely because many people haven't ridden a bicycle nor walked very far in quite some time.

I haven't ever sat down to do the math, but I've heard experts say you can travel 4 times faster, 4 times further in the same amount of time given equal effort between cycling and non-mechanized transportation. I didn't break out into Wikipedia mode on this poor fellow, but I did explain that it's faster and easier than walking the two miles before I bid him farewell.

I think this kind of confusion is one of the biggest barriers to getting people out of their cars and onto bikes for short errands.

Does It Ever End?

May was hot (for may) June was a freaking scorcher, with temperatures and heat indices that rivaled solid August numbers. July was kind of May-Like, and August is feeling a lot like fall. What the heck is going on here?

Mad props to Mother Nature for tricking me this morning with an innocent-looking overcast sky that decided to unleash on me half way to work. You got me good. Such a prankster, you are!



On my way home, it looked like it was going to open up on me AGAIN. Fortunately, I beat the second storm of the day home by a good 40 minutes or so.




This whole month has been riddled with rain, overcast skies and vibrant thunderstorms. As I sit here, winding down for the night, we have another round coming in. This will be the 3rd batch of
storms in 24 hours. I'm really ready for my fenders to come in.



The storms might be unseasonal, but this little guy wasn't scared at all. My wife saw it while I was trying to catch lightning on camera. The above photo was the closest I got. I'm honestly surprised the next photo came out as clear as it did, using Program (AE) mode, manual focus and the lowest flash setting on my camera (EXIF Here). No doctoring, not even color adjustment or anything. I just cropped it. I'm amazed at the luck.



Oh yeah. Warning: There's a spider photo in this post. If that bothers you, don't look.

Haha.

Ambivalent, not apthetic

Karen alerted me to news that 20 cyclists participating in one of the weekly rides in Kansas City got pulled over and ticketed -- to the tune of $95 each -- for running a stop sign, presumably all in a group.

Now, I'm not going to point fingers DIRECTLY at the weekly ride, or the nefarious behavior of the local yacht bicycle club, but suffice it to say, I'm torn. I most certainly do not want to stand in their defense. At the same time, I can't say I feel sorry for them.

They had it coming, but their transgressions as a group aren't much different than the transgressions I witness frequently -- by motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike. It just so happened that this group was preyed upon because it was easy, predictable pickings. Entrapment? Please.

I feel that this will give a lot of the bike haters (and believe me, there are many in this town) a reason to say "we told you so!", and that sets a bad precedent. While I don't know how the math works out statistically due to how unbalanced the transportation mode shares are, I can say that I see a LOT of motorists doing the same things that they accuse cyclists of. And I see a lot of pedestrians pulling some of the most asinine and brazen of jaywalking stunts, too (and NO ONE complains about them)

If cops are going to get into the business of camping out near intersections for the purpose of issuing "failure to stop" tickets, I would bet that Warren can think of an intersection that might be a good candidate...

Our society has become fueled almost entirely by entitlement and superlative self-importance. We're talking about a culture of individuals who in the not-too-distant future may happily throw all of humanity under the bus to spare their own existence.

On "being green"

Some of you may know I don't consider myself "green" but it's usually the first thing people assume about me when they find out I use my bike for transportation.

I run into a lot of people who think "green" is cool. I also have started running into people who see environmental impact the same way I do, or close enough.

Here are some examples.

A guy I won't name is a pretty big sustainability geek. He's looking at any way to get as much as possible off the grid. Rain barrels, "alternative alternative energy sources" (think peltiers, piezoelectric, ambient/atmospheric electricity harvesting and the like) and some of the more efficient sustainable power generation technologies. Hint: Solar isn't there yet. Talking to him for a few hours, he told me I'm probably greener than I give myself credit for. I say bullcrap. I think he "gets it" when a good chunk of his peers fail at stewardship.

While having my mop chopped a few weeks ago, my stylist said he needed a new car and was looking at Toyota. I kind of rolled my eyes. He mentioned Scion and I breathed a sigh of relief. The conversation turned to fuel economy and eventually sustainability. He thinks people buying hybrids are playing an important role by beta-testing (and somewhat bankrolling) the technological bootstrap for highly efficient vehicles, but he doesn't understand why people think they're being green. He's also as perplexed as I am by on-grid charging of plug-in EVs and hybrids -- The fact is, they're practically coal-fueled and a lot more inefficiency is introduced in the delivery, conversion and storage of that electricity. The stuff just doesn't add up. This guy gets it.

Explaining how my bicycling habit affects the parts of town I'd be willing to move to to someone this afternoon, I had to bite my tongue when the gentleman sitting across from me decided to pipe up about his myopic adventures in being green. Recycling: okay. Civic Hybrid? Really? When he bragged about gas mileage, I couldn't resist telling him I can cover 30 miles on the energy contained in a decent-sized sandwich. The truth is, his hybrid gets worse mileage than some other small cars that use a small, efficient gasoline engine. They cost quite a bit less, and you don't send toxic batteries to the landfill (or at best, some re-processing plant) every 5-8 years or so. This guy doesn't get it.

Despite greenwashing's best intents, there are a lot of people shuffling resources around without actually doing anything good -- robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak -- people being "green" themselves without realizing that their actions cause problems elsewhere, to wit:

• Manufacture and disposal of large battery packs for cars that get such "good" (not really) mileage
  
• Allowing old, inefficient appliances and/or cars to remain in use (giving away or selling) or take up space in a landfill
• Manufacture and disposal of mercury-loaded CFL bulbs

I guess that's my curmudgeonly rant for the night. It comes down to stewardship, really. As a civilization, we've inherited something great. It's a gift to us, really. We can either do things that make it a better place or we can trample on it. Let's just make sure our efforts aren't all for naught.

Speaking of off-grid energy. I found a good deal on one of these:


I don't really want it because it's sustainable. I got it because it was inexpensive and I love gadgets. Plus, some cool features that will make it a serious camping winner:

• Small and light
  
• Hand-Crank charging
• Solar charging
• Flashlight
• AM/FM/Weather Radio
• Has a USB port so you can charge things with the hand-crank.

Playing around with it, it appears that it will take a good deal of cranking to pump a few minutes of talk-time into a dead mobile phone. The weather radio on this picks up a better signal than any other weather radio in my house, aside from the one built in to the alarm clock -- but it's powered by house current only.