End of the year post

It's been over ten days since I bored anyone with a post here. I don't know that there was any particular reason, other than I've not thought to post anything for over a week.

Yes, there was the legal holiday, er, holly-daze last Fried-day. Today is something of another noteworthy day--we flip the calendar over to the teens decade from the aughts decade tonight.

It's customary to have and share year-end thoughts, or plans for the coming year, or something. I kind of like the attitude my cat takes on the topic, though--it's just another trip 'round the sun, another time the sky outside gets light, another day to enjoy watching birds. Cats have much to teach us.

I didn't ride to work much over the last ten days--not at all this last week, in fact. Temperatures have been below my thresholds, or the combination of cold and wet has been outside my range of "willing to be out in it for an hour on a bicycle."

I've been working on improving some practices at the store over the last couple weeks. I've implemented some inventory-control measures that will help us be more profitable this year, and better serve our customers in the process. It will take time to get all the staff "up to speed," but we are already seeing benefits. We started carrying Specialized as a brand a couple months ago, and I think it's going to be a great help for us--Specialized has a great range of products, with full-on race bikes, time trial bikes, kid bikes, and the Globe line of urban bikes, not to mention the Body Geometry lines of gloves, helmets, shoes, and saddles. We get to drop some lines of bikes that were not doing well for us. We will get to be a destination store instead of "Oh, yeah, there's a bike shop in Oldham County, now, too. Wonder what they sell?"

Oh, and we are the only shop in the Louisville area selling Specialized's "S-Works" products.

We've got a couple of Park Tool School sessions coming up--one this month, and another in February. The January session is over half-full as of this afternoon, and the students seem like good folks. I know of a few others who are interested (which reminds me that I need to call a couple folks this weekend...).

Tomorrow will see the Club have its annual Polar Bear Ride, pot-luck chili dinner, swap meet and club meeting. It's going to be a bit chilly during the day, so I don't know who will be riding. I plan to ride over, since the party is less than a mile from the house. We'll have to figure out what we are going to carry and how, but unless we ride the tandem for the first time in over a month, I can easily haul whatever food we take in the trailer.

See y'all next year!

blog-reading finds

Poking around on blogs can be one of those "black hole of time" things. Sometimes, however, interesting nuggets of information can come out of the clutter that is the internet. In terms of bike safety, some of the posts I've seen are thought-provoking.

This one, for example. It's an article on a recent study done in England, showing that cyclists' deaths are not commonly due to poor behavior on the part of the cyclists. It's usually poor behavior on the part of the motorists. A quote from the article: "With adult cyclists, police found the driver solely responsible in about 60%-75% of all cases, and riders solely at fault 17%-25% of the time." Wow. That differs from my sense of the data taught in LAB-certified classes.

Even so, a quote from the study is interesting:

"We believe this report strongly supports our view that the biggest problem for cyclists is bad driving. With that in mind we are greatly concerned that the government still seems fascinated with analysing (sic--British spelling) and promoting cycle helmets, the value of which appears to be inconclusive. We believe that the government should now focus on tackling the causes of injury which appears to be mainly inconsiderate and dangerous driving. Reduced speed limits, stronger traffic law enforcement and cycle-friendly road design are the solutions."

A brief digression: To read the source study, you would have to register to receive the .pdf download. It doesn't cost anything, unless you want to have them send you a printed copy.

Getting back to the study and the article, I mentioned that it's thought-provoking. I have an assortment of ideas that come immediately to mind, in no particular order. Based on a quick read of this article:

• "Bike Ninjas" will claim that they can continue being such
• "Wrong way riders" will make similar claims
• "Sidewalk pedalers" will echo the claims above
• Motorists, or rather, "Anti-cyclists" will gripe that all the blame gets put on them again when "the roads are meant for CARS, stoopid! and get those dratted bikes off the roads!"

I'll keep riding as part of traffic, though, thank you very much, and I'll do my usual things to remain visible to other road users.


Also found, in responses to an NPR article on cargo bikes (well worth reading, BTW), was this gem: "If you divide the number of miles you need to go by the amount of time you spend in your vehicle PLUS the amount of time you spend to pay for it, for gas, and for insurance, you may find that a bike is faster than a car. This kind of calculation yields what is called 'effective speed.' For most people in the United States (yes, here) bikes have a higher effective speed than cars.

My effective cycling speed is around 7mph. My effective driving speed would be about 1.5mph. (I don't make a lot of money and don't need to go very far)."

I'm no mathematician, so I'm not sure how to set up that equation. Still, it's an interesting concept--that time it takes us to pay for stuff affects how cost-effective that stuff is in our lives. It makes sense to me, but I can see how it would confuse many folks who are dependent on their cars.

Of course, cost-effectiveness isn't the only reason we do things. We are emotionally driven animals, after all. On my to-read list is Cotten Seiler's Republic of Driving, in which he explores some of the emotional baggage associated with automobiles and their (mis)use. Of course, the Louisville Public Library seems to not have this book, so I'll have to cycle over to Carmichael's to order a copy.

Morning errand

As a club officer, I am sometimes called upon to help make club business happen quickly. Today is such a day. We have a mailing we must get "out the door," as the information didn't make it into the last newsletter.

I volunteered to fetch the printed matter from near U of L, and host the labeling/stamping party this afternoon.

I also have been putting off a trip to get more cat litter, and the Feeder's Supply location where I usually stock up is not far off my path.

It was about 20F when I was getting ready to go.

Jenn has my truck today.

What's a somewhat logically-minded person to do?

Ride a bike. The Raleigh, specifically, pulling the trailer.

It wasn't the quickest way to do what I planned to do, but it worked well. I was not cold (save for my fingers, and they were not intolerably cold). My shirt even has a fair bit of sweat in it.

On the way home, I stopped at Nancy's Bagel Grounds for some yummy bagels. I also felt a desire for some sweets, so a stop at Plehn's Bakery happened before I got to the house.

I'll share some of what I bought with Rachel, as she is (hopefully) going to help me with some chores today.

I kind of sort of took a day off today. It wasn't carefully planned, so I wasn't off all day, but I got to have some fun and ride a bike for a while.

I did have some things I wanted to do at the store, of course. I had to follow up with some customer requests from the weekend that required I talk to a live person at each of two or three of our suppliers, and then report to the respective customer.

I had a couple bearings I needed to fetch for a repair, so that was first on the ride trip list. Of course, it was the opposite direction from the store.

I'd spent some time over the weekend riding the Raleigh, just for a change. I still like the bike, especially for short-distance work. It's fairly easy to lock to whatever is handy (tree, light pole, etc), too. I rode it to Albert Crush Bearings and Drives, on Baxter Avenue, then stopped at the Feeder's Supply to look at the cats they have for adoption before heading home (and no, I didn't adopt any cats this trip--we have enough cats for the time being--but I did pet a few that were awake and tell them that I hope they find good homes soon).

When I got home, I changed the bearings in the idler for the repair bike, then decided that since I was only going to the shop for a little while, and coming back in daylight, I'd ride the Raleigh out just for the change of style.

Until now, I've considered the route segment from Westport at Collins Lane or so to the other side of Pewee Valley hillier than I would enjoy on the Raleigh--that thing is NOT the climber my Ryan is, and the Ryan is no "mountain goat bike." The Raleigh also lacks the level of headlight I have on the Ryan (although I suppose I could move the light system over easily enough, should the need arise). My ride today did not do much to change my perspective--I know I'm capable of the small hills I encounter on just about any bike I'd be willing to ride, but I still think I'd prefer to ride the Vanguard as my daily get to work bike.

It was a grand day to ride, too! The temperatures were MUCH warmer than those of just two days ago, although the wind was something of a challenge, and more of one on the trip home. It was cloudy as I rode home--it looked like a storm front moving through at some point. Still, I arrived home after making the round trip to Crestwood in shirt sleeves, as the jacket was simply too hot!

On the trip home, I had one twit in a pickup truck blow his horn at me repeatedly, as if to say, "Get the @$#% off the road!" When he passed me, his passenger flipped me off. I mainly ignored them, until I saw that the next traffic light held them up to the point that I could pull up beside them and say, "See how far ahead of me you got by being jerks?" By then, however, their windows were closed, and both guys waved with fake smiles. I just shook my head and let them go--I'd not shown them any indication I was paying attention to them when they were behind me, and didn't want their oafishness to ruin my day.

My ride was brightened quite a bit, though, when I passed Plantation Racquet Club. There is a garrison-sized American flag flying by there, and it has been replaced within the last few days. The one that had been there was tattered terribly, and was saddening to see. It's good to see a new flag there, and the wind had it flying straight out. Now if some of these other places with tattered flags aloft will replace them...

Once home, I changed loads in the bag and took some books back to the library. On the way home, I stopped for a sandwich at Jimmy John's on Shelbyville Road at Saint Matthews Avenue, where one of Jenn's daughters works. I got to see her and talk to her for a moment or two without interrupting her work.

It's good to be able to say I like both of my step-daughters. My goal for my relationships with each of them is that I be a positive influence on their lives. I want them to live well, and happily. They are good people. The world certainly needs good people.

Night images

A few weeks ago, there was a discussion regarding headlights on the kycyclist, a local list-server. One poster mentioned that it's a good idea to see how one looks at night--one suggestion is to have someone dress in your night gear and have that person ride for you and see how visible your friend is while you are in a car.

Not wanting to burn the gas for that, I took some pictures in my driveway.

Awkward-seeming pose notwithstanding (I was wearing a down vest under the wind shell), here's a side shot. Hopefully the only time motorists will see this, they already know I'm moving along as they are waiting for a safe opportunity to enter the road. I like the reflex band on the rear tire. When the front tire wears out in another year or three (it was installed early in 2002), I'll replace it with the current Schwalbe Marathon with reflective stripe. I didn't have the headlights on when I took this.





Here's a close-up of the Urbanize helmet with the reflective stuff I added. This thing shows up quite well.

I'm not as enamored of the lights in this helmet as I had hoped to be. I still like the lid, as it fits well and is readily adjustable. I'd like for the lights to be brighter, but they still are an improvement over simply passive reflector stuff.



My biggest complaint about my camera is that the flash is fairly weak. I can't "reach into" a nightclub stage to pull images of, say, the drummer unless I'm right up by the singer. In the image below, though, the weak flash is kind of a good thing. It's showing how visible I am with partial headlights on me from behind. This is the view that most motorists see as they approach me to pass, at least if I'm signaling for a left turn. If the car has good headlights, I would be even harder to ignore.





I may still have someone ride the bike for me so that I can get a motorist's-eye view of things. I figure that most motorists don't have any interest in marring their driving records by hitting me, so I might as well make it easier for them to find me. Almost half my bike miles are after dark these days, so it makes sense to me to have good lights and good reflectors.

Still chilly

My wallet is, indeed, a bit lighter, but not because of the shoe covers I mentioned yesterday. They don't fit over my sandals.

In general, I'm finding that stuff from that brand (Pearl Izumi) runs a bit small--I typically wear large men's trousers/tights, and the AmFib ones are XL and snug. We have a pair of Pearl Izumi lobster gloves at the store, and they fit my hands pretty well--they are XXL. I don't think I want those, anyway, at least until I ride regularly in sub-20F temps.

The tights work well, though. My feet were much more comfortable on the ride home last night. I'm sure ambient temperature was a factor, but haven't looked to see how much warmer it was. My Campagnolo jersey was damp with sweat when I got home, too.

Yep, my low threshold has gotten lower.

Another Fried-day

I wound up driving yesterday, in part because it was colder than I like, in part because I had cargo to haul out to the store.

A supplier of BMX bikes we sell has a warehouse in Bluegrass Industrial Park. Rather than have bikes shipped, we sometimes pick them up at the warehouse. Since I was going to use Hurstbourne Parkway at least part of the time, I offered Jenn a ride to work, and took her bike with us for her trip home.

However, I decided that I needed the bike miles this morning.

Last year, I lowered my threshold for winter commuting rides to the mid-twenties, by adding better gloves. A friend showed me some gloves he has that have a fluid sac in the palm. Heat from his palms warms the fluid, which then gets pumped out to the fingers to keep them warmer. Seeing these, and talking to him about riding temperatures, I found myself compelled to ride in cooler weather yet.

So today I did what any sane person would do: I rode the bike to work.

I have a couple of winter jerseys that haven't seen enough use, so I wore one of them today. I wore a pair of matte lycra shorts inside my coldest-rated tights, with two pairs of socks, my trusty pair of Rocky Gore-tex socks and sandals on my feet. I wore one wind shell, and found that just right, when combined with a fleece balaclava and the aforementioned cold weather gloves.

My only complaint was that my feet were almost cold by the time I got to Crestwood. They weren't painfully cold, but they weren't comfy, either. Warmer than they were would have been better.

I've long held that part of the key to keeping one's feet warm is to keep one's legs warm. My legs were cooler than I would prefer, which contributed to the mild discomfort in my feet. At the store, I found that we have a pair of winter tights in my size that are better quality than what I've been using. We also have a better pair of shoe covers than my current ones, and they happen to be ones that my friend recommends highly.

I can see that my wallet will be a bit lighter before I go home tonight...and my low temperature threshold will be a bit lower this year.

Wow, it's windy today!

I'm glad I'm not working today--riding to work in wind like this is challenging, to say the least. Unlike many of my car-reduced/car-free pals, I don't have the option of riding TARC most of the way to work, then pedaling a few blocks, so when it's bad enough that I'm not going to ride, I have to drive a (gasp) car to work.

Of course, one of the family motor vehicles is in Georgetown this week, so if Jenn needs to not ride, and I need to not ride, we have to coordinate things. Her contribution to such coordination today was to take the bus to work. I'll have some more odds and ends to accomplish today, but will do most of them from home (I do have a trip to Bluegrass Industrial Park to make today or early tomorrow...).

Not much else of note, although I did get the new monitor in use last night. It's quite different...a 23" wide-screen/flat/thin unit--much larger and with much higher resolution than the old CRT-based one (which was new circa 2003). I may have to watch a movie on it, just for the fun of it...

New week, new challenges

Yesterday morning, I awoke to the sound of my cell phone ringing. It was my sister, asking how I dealt with snow when riding my bike--did I use chains or studded tires? As my alertness level adjusted, it occurred to me to answer her that I could, indeed, get studded snow tires for my bike (thinking of my Ryan, of course).

As it turned out, though, the snow accumulation was limited to grassy areas--the streets were merely damp. I rode to work, despite my mild head cold.

Yep, I also discovered that I had a head cold yesterday morning. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be a bad one, and generous application of Zicam probably helped. I felt much better when I got up this morning.

When I got home from work Monday, Jenn was working at her new laptop, getting it configured for use. She has a router that supports wireless device use in the house, but that function was not switched on. In the process of reconfiguring the router, something went awry, and now we have no internet service at the house.

I spent an hour or so playing telephone games with our ISP before running up against a time limit (had to get to work), with nothing accomplished other than exacerbating the DSL disconnect. I'm typing this during a break at work. As I told Jenn, some time when I have a spare hour or three (or five) to kill, I will get back on that project. She won't have time until at least Wednesday evening, so I may do it tomorrow. Such adventures always try my patience.

I realized this morning that with all the activity over the weekend, I managed to forget getting to the library to pick up the book they had waiting for me. As it's now been five days or more, and I haven't thought to call them to ask that they hold on to it for another couple days, I'm sure it's been sent back into circulation. If it's the book I have in mind, it's already happened once, and I've been waiting to read this one for several months. I just can't bring myself to buy it, as it's only out in hardback at this point. Phooey! On the other hand, it may be a book I had requested for Jenn, in which case I'll simply request it again--I don't think too many folks are waiting for that one.

Sunny-day morning

I didn't get to ride to work as much as I would prefer this past week. Tuesday afternoon, I picked up a trike (while not as fancy as the Team Dual on the web site, still a large, heavy "sociable tandem") that was to be repaired at the shop. Later that evening, another friend dropped off her bike at the house so that I could take it to the shop with me Wednesday as well. So, with a load in the truck, I drove to work--in the rain.

Given my preference for NOT riding in the rain, my timing worked pretty well.

I rode again Thursday, and received quite a few "Weren't you COLD!?!?" comments during the day. In fact, I was not cold at all during my rides to or from work, simply because I've learned to dress fairly well for commuting. Would I have wanted to ride sixty or seventy miles in those conditions? Probably not that day, although I've done centuries at near-freezing (above and below) temps.

Friday (or, as I often spell it, Fried-day) morning was one of those, "Oh, phooey! I can't get going" ones, and I wound up driving. I don't like using the car as a fall-back option, but there it is.

Saturday was a day for other things. Jenn's younger daughter asked us to attend her soccer team banquet at Georgetown College, so we did that, and brought her home with us afterward. She is taking one of the cars back to school with her today for a couple weeks, so any "fall back option" driving will have to be coordinated a bit more than usual. Basically, it means I have to be more disciplined about riding to work.

During the two days I rode to work, however, I had a couple of bothersome incidents with motorists. The more aggravating one was with a tow truck driver who cut me off as I approached a traffic light. As a supposedly-professional driver, he should know better, but as a former wrecker operator in a prior life, I know that many of the drivers don't share my knowledge of road rules and laws. He certainly didn't, although his employer will soon receive a letter (a copy of which will go to the police department) suggesting he learn a bit more.

I find that I get many more such experiences in my commute to Crestwood than I did when I was commuting to N'Awb'ny. I've mentioned this in prior posts, and it is one of the reasons I don't enjoy this commute as much as I did the older one.

I still prefer riding to driving, of course, it's just that the ride is not as much fun.

In those prior posts, I mused on the reasons why I'm not having as much fun. I think the largest one is the perceived animosity from motorists I encounter. This behavior from motorists is in keeping with an observation I've made for some time: there are zones in which motorist attitudes are better than others, and along my corridor I see the demarcation pretty clearly. I'm treated more equitably inside the Watterson than outside, better west of Hurstbourne Parkway than east of it, and generally better inside the Jefferson Freeway (or as some insist on calling it, the Snyder Freeway--although I've also heard it called the "Shameless Political Hack Freeway") than beyond it. Once near Crestwood, I usually don't have any troubles with motorists, although there will be exceptions there as in all my zones.

I won't get to ride today, sadly (or not). I've got family things to do--Jenn wants the seasonal tree-like object assembled (both of her daughters are helping with this, so I get to see them as well), and a cousin is coming through town later today on her way to some westward destination. I'll spend the afternoon with my stepfather, helping diagnose a problem he's having with one of his tractors.

Back to the preparations for all this...

That was different...

I scheduled my day off for today so that I could help at Seneca High School. Mr. Keswani, a teacher there (who also rides to work fairly often), asked for someone to do a presentation for his first-hour class, then participate in a panel discussion with a few other local folks working to make our community a healthier and more sustainable place to live.

Of course, I rode a bike to get there.

Having done a presentation in Mr. Keswani's classroom before, I know it's on the second floor. I opted to ride the Raleigh this time, simply to make navigating the stairs less of a hassle.

On the way to my next errand, though, is where the title originates. I was pedaling along Hikes Lane, a bit east or north of Klondike Lane, when a motorist passed me with almost no room to spare (with no other traffic going our way, she could have used the left lane, but...). Being the person that I am, I yelled out a variant on, "Hey! Watch where you're going!" To my surprise, the motorist stopped--in the middle of the right lane of a four-lanes-with-left-turn-only-median roadway--and waved me up to her window. She said something along the lines of, "I'm not trying to start nothing, I want to apologize for not moving over further. I'll be more careful in the future."

I was gobsmacked. I asked her to please give people she's passing more room in the future, and let her go on her way.

It's a first for me, to have a motorist stop and apologize (albeit in an unsafe manner, stopping in a traffic lane as she did).

In my travels today, I've had a surprising number of motorists stop, without need (i.e. stop sign) or legal suggestion, to allow me to make left turns from, say, Breckenridge Lane to Grandview Avenue, or from Grandview to the entrance for the public library branch (separate trip), or similar sites. I don't know how to tell these folks that I'm perfectly happy to wait my turn to turn left, and I don't want them creating a disruption in traffic flow (and thus a potential safety hazard) to be so polite. I usually wave them on and wait anyway, but one guy today wouldn't go until I had made my turn. I don't know if having the kid trailer on my bike had anything to do with it, or just what his thing was (the first two times it happened today I did not have the trailer attached).