Car-Free Happy Hour--almost

Jenn and I rode the tandem to Car-Free Happy Hour tonight. We met some folks who decided it would be fun to ride as a group from the formal entrance to the UofL Belknap Campus, but...

not before having a flat tire. Not just your normal, run-of-the-mill flat tire, but a blowout. On the front. On the tandem. It was my first front tire blowout in YEARS, and the tire is flexible enough that it made the bike unmanageable immediately. Fortunately, we were only going about ten miles an hour at the time, so the fall was not so bad. I booted the tire with a folded dollar bill, as I teach in all manner of classes. It held for about eight miles. The hole in the tire was just too bad.

We were on our way home by then, on Eastern Parkway nearing Poplar Level Road. The tire simply let go--again--with no warning other than the thumping every revolution that I knew (or thought) meant I had a bulge from the failing carcass plies. I managed to keep the bike upright the second time, but we decided without even doing any more looking that the tire was not going to get us home. We weren't willing to trust it again. I called my stepfather, and he was willing and able to bring his truck to haul us home.

As it happens, with RAIN coming up in two weeks, I recently ordered a spare set of tires for the bike. I suspect that I bruised this one when on the gravel roads during our trip Tuesday, as I had noticed a slight bump in the tire when we were nearing home. I had noticed it again on our way to Car Free Happy Hour, but the tire didn't feel like it was going to give out so soon. I'll be ordering another front tire tomorrow.

Lesson 1: if you feel a bump in a tire, inspect it closely. Replace the tire rather than ride on it.

Lesson 2: dollar bills work for a while, but not as well on tandems with the extra weight they carry. Park Tool makes tire boots that work better.

Lesson 3: Maybe it's a good time to find a place to carry spare tires on the bike...

Overnight trip

Jenn and I had wanted to do more riding this year, especially since we were not doing the Race Across America thing. The Bike Virginia summer tour always appeals to me, although I've only made use of three opportunities to ride it. This year's adventure returned to southwest Virginia, the same general area I got to enjoy the first time I did their tour in 1993.

Sadly, it wasn't to be for us this year. The reasons are not really but so good; one was that I never felt the store had adequate staffing to deal with my absence, the other (and larger) was that I put off registering until I figured we'd have staff, and found that I missed the registration deadline.

Jenn, of course, had scheduled vacation months in advance, so she's off this week regardless.

Not being the best planner around, it took me until yesterday to finalize routing and destination for what became our two-day self-supported tour. Self-supported, in this case, includes things like two CPAP machines (ten or twelve pounds each), a tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bags (forecast lows in the high 50s for our destination), a change of clothing, and a way to carry some food. All of that stuff got stuffed into the Burley trailer. That trailer has developed a tire-scrubbing behavior that will need some attention--with the load, it reduced our average speeds from sixteen or better to less than twelve. Crawling up some long grades at less than four miles an hour on roads like KY 146 or US 42 or US 421 out of Milton is quite an adventure in traffic "calming."

I'm still not sure whether the destination was more important or the journey. It was good to get out on the bike. It was great to ride with Jenn, even if we were both feeling a bit out of sorts that last ten miles getting home (shifting when one is tired can be a bit less smooth than is ideal, and dealing with the captain's tired shifting is apparently an even larger challenge). We didn't fight over it, of course, but worked on dealing with the fatigue a bit and went on.

Our destination was a friend's farm in the hills behind Vevay, Indiana, not far from Bennington Pike. The road to their place used to be gravel from end to end, but got paved some time in the last ten years--at least from one end to their place. From their place to the other end (the shorter distance, of course) there is a steep hill that Switzerland County has not had the money to pave. The end of the road at the bottom of that hill features a creek crossing as well, and links to another gravel road that has its own problems--a wash out a year or two ago has closed the end nearer to our route, and the resulting lack of traffic means that the gravel is often VERY loose coming from the other end. Since all that gravel was on the shorter distance for us, we wound up walking a mile or two, including that aforementioned-steep hill, at the end of our ride when we were already tired.

I suppose well-traveled gravel roads are not as bad. This one had a LOT of loose 5s and 7s on top, with not a lot of dense-grade dust mixed in to stabilize things. It hasn't been rolled or graded or oiled in I don't know how long. There was mud from recent rains. Some folks like riding on such roads. I like staying upright on my bike, especially when the penalty for falling is gravel embedded in one's (and one's stoker's) skin.

For the return trip, we opted for the paved route. Although longer by a few miles, it was far more comfortable, and yielded better average speeds.

As much as I would like to put more about our trip on here, though, I'm tired. Jenn is off to the bus station with her older daughter, as my stepdaughter is going to study for a month or so in Quebec. Jenn's very tired, as am I, so it's time for me to get the bed ready for her return to make it easier for her to simply fall into it.

One more fun factoid: Our little tour poked my June 2011 mileage total to make it my highest month since I started recording on mycyclinglog.com. 854-point-something miles for the month, and we still have car-free happy hour tomorrow (and a few errands beforehand).

I can't help it...

As of my return home today, I have logged over 4000 miles of bicycle use this year. This includes 3561 miles of bicycling instead of driving since the beginning of the year, split among five bikes: My Vanguard, with 1255 miles, my Strada, with almost 89 miles, my Raleigh, with 525 miles (yeah, I rarely ride that one now that I have the Globe), the Screamer tandem, with 421 miles (Jenn and I plan to put a fair number of miles on that in the coming week or three), Jenn's Giro, at 48 miles, and the new-in-March Globe, with a bit over 1660 miles (yeah, it became my "it's threatening to rain or it's raining" bike, and April and May saw a LOT of wet days).

June isn't over, but I've logged more miles in June 2011 than I did in all but three months of 2010, and I'm only a few miles shy of besting one of those months. I don't know whether I'll beat my May 2011 numbers, but it's possible. I have a few days off from work this coming week, and since I fouled up and didn't get us registered for Bike Virginia before the deadline, Jenn and I will try to do some day tours on the tandem. We might even sneak in an overnight trip somewhere just to do it.

My CO2 miles are still at a bit more than 18% of the Louisville Bicycle Club's Commuting group miles. My nearest competitor among that group is more than 900 miles behind me in overall miles, and over two thousand miles back in CO2 miles. I'm sure some of the mileage junkies in the club have more bike miles, but I haven't done all that math, as they are mostly club miles which are not why I'm crowing.

More numbers games

In my recent crowing about mileage numbers, I had missed one that had been amusing me earlier in the year: how my YTD miles for 2011 compares to my miles for 2010.

At the moment, I am over one hundred miles ahead of my 2010 numbers for the end of August. By August 31, 2010, I had logged 3693 miles. I've logged over 3800 for 2011 so far, including over 3400 CO2 miles. My CO2 miles alone get me beyond my total for July 2010 by 500 miles.

At this point, it's quite possible that I'll reach eight thousand miles for 2011.

Another boring mileage post

As I got home from the New Rider Clinic David is teaching at Iroquois Park this evening, I hit a double whammy. 3800 miles year to date by bicycle, and a sort-of weird one. At the start of the year, I set the annual goal on mycyclinglog.com at six thousand miles. At this point, I'm obviously over half-way there, and the year is not half over. I've been watching the "average daily miles needed to reach the goal" stat with some amusement over the last couple months, as the number keeps dropping. As of now, I need to ride an average of eleven miles a day to reach six thousand for the year.

Nothing really special about the CO2 miles (as in, ridden instead of driven) number right now, except that it's over 3350. It will probably break 3400 this weekend.

It was raining a bit when I left for work this morning, but quit part-way to Crestwood. It decided to rain on me for the last mile or so, just because it could. I did manage to get to the store ahead of the heavy weather that came shortly after I opened. I was glad. There was lots of lightning, and I prefer to not ride when there is lots of lightning.


Oh, and I made the Ergon blog the other day. I had Jenn take a couple pictures that would, hopefully, show I was using the grips and gloves, and put one in a prior post. I'm still pleased with the gloves, aside from that they are a bit small (the largest they offered was XXL--I could probably wear XXXL in their sizing), and hard to get off my hands.

I recently ordered another kilt from SportKilt. It arrived yesterday. I haven't had a chance to wear it, and may not get to. I ordered a large based on the extra-large I already have that is a bit too big around for me. The large is a bit too small. We'll see what the manufacturer says about things...

Where did the weekend go?

I needed to be at a Club Ex-Comm meeting at four yesterday afternoon, so I drove to work. It would have taken me an hour and a half to get there by bike from the store, and I knew better than to think I'd get out of the store before 3:00. I missed a nice riding day.

Today, we had stuff to do around the house. Jenn has a Premier Jewelry Party coming this week, so the house needed to be spruced up a bit. It's not quite done, but we are a lot closer. We hadn't let it get too far away from us this time, which helped. Still, I missed a nice riding day.

Shortly after I got to work yesterday, my mother called me to inform me that my sister was having to have her cat euthanized. Caruso had been with her for thirteen years, and was probably four years old when he came to her. He had one of the more musical purrs I've ever heard from a cat. She is grieving heavily, as she (like yours truly) is very much a cat person. Neither of us has had children--we have had cats instead. I feel bad for her, as I know what heartache it is to lose such a close friend. I wrote on this blog in April of 2009 about losing my cat Aloysius Ebenezer Qat, Esquire, and what a friend he had been for the thirteen years I had him in my life.

We know our cats won't outlive us, but we get another, anyway. They bring us joy and entertainment in many ways. We miss them when they go, and somehow we never forget any of them. I've had some wonderful feline friendships over the years, and still think about each of them from time to time.

trying to catch up with things

Again, it's been ten days or more since I posted here. I haven't had much to say, aside from the occasional mileage boast. What I have been wanting to do, though is post a couple images of my new Ergon gloves. Sadly, I don't have any good ones yet. I do have this, though, showing off my wicking t-shirt from Commute Orlando:

I've been saying for a while that other gloves don't seem to do as well with these grips as riding bare-handed. However, since receiving the gloves earlier this week, I've been impressed at the comfort improvement, despite the distinct lack of padding compared to typical cycling gloves. My only complaint with these gloves is that the XXL size is a bit small for me, and thus takes a while to get off my hands.

It's almost disgusting for me, a long-time die-hard recumbent guy, to have put so many miles on this bike since I got it early in March (something like 1500 miles to date), but I've enjoyed having a new bike. I'm also getting spoiled on having disc brakes. This bike is my typical choice if I'm teaching (it's the closest thing I have to the bikes most of my students ride) or if I'm attending meetings downtown (easier to lock than my Vanguard). I also tend to prefer it if the weather is nasty--and we've had a BUNCH of rain this season.

Timothy made a comment on a Facebook post suggesting that I had left recumbents behind, based on the miles I've been putting on the Globe. A look at my stats for the year showed me that I had been neglecting my Vanguard too much of late, so I rode it to work today, and plan to ride it tomorrow. I won't get to ride to work on Saturday, as I have a time crunch after store hours. Still, I have half again more miles on the new bike than on the Vanguard, and it will take time to catch up. I'll have time to ride it a lot in the coming months, though. It won't take but another month or two to get another five hundred miles on it.

David Wittry has begun his New Rider Clinics out at Iroquois Park. I'm being a volunteer as much as I'm able with store hours, figuring that I can learn from him and better teach my own students. The round-trip to Iroquois adds thirty miles to my day, plus whatever riding we'll do for the class, so I get some fifty-plus-mile days every week for a while!

I'll likely ride the Globe to work on Mondays and Wednesdays for a while, due to commitments to New Rider Clinics. I get to ride the Vanguard the rest of my work days, though.