Howl-o-ween!

It seems that if I have something to say, it's brief enough or pithy enough that it just goes on Facebook. If I have something complex to say, I might put it here, but I haven't had a lot of complex thoughts bouncing around of late.

I'm still bummed that we had to cancel the Cycling Savvy class for this weekend, but I'll get over it.

To improve my mood a bit, I indulged in a little "cash therapy." I try to avoid doing this most of the time, as its benefits are usually pretty short-lived. However, when I do indulge, I try to get stuff that I'll be able to use rather than stuff that will simply sit on a shelf.

Today's purchase was the Surly "Nice Rack," to add some flexibility to how I haul stuff on the Big Dummy. I have mounted a pair of smaller panniers that I bought for the Globe (they are in the same style series as the rear panniers on that bike). I can, alternatively, use my JANDD grocery panniers (sized for paper grocery sacks). Or, following Ian's lead, use a pair of cat litter buckets converted to panniers with a few bucks' investment in hardware.

A couple weeks ago, while riding home from a job site, I realized that some of the cargo in my right cargo bag was pressing against the rear derailleur, preventing use of the outer two cogs on the cassette. Since my load was also a bit heavy, I wasn't too worried--I would have been more concerned over not being able to use lower gears--but I still missed the functionality.

I stopped at a local bike shop and found a derailleur guard that came off a 24-inch-wheeled kids' mountain bike, and finessed mounting it.

I haven't had that sort of load on the bike since installing this cage, but it should alleviate the problem.

Many people express amazement when they learn about this bike and what I can do with it. They can't seem to grasp that human-powered vehicles can be used to carry so much. I, on the other hand, keep finding myself hauling stuff I don't WANT to haul with a car--too dirty (bags of mulch), or too long (ladders), or too awkwardly-shaped (my kayak).

Life got in the way, again!

Sometimes things just don't go as planned. Sometimes life interferes.

To the point that I've had to put this message out in several places:

Friends,

Unforeseen circumstances have arisen that have forced us to reschedule the Cycling Savvy class. If you have registered, we will be in touch to discuss your options. If you have not registered, please watch the Commute Louisville web site (http://commutelouisville.com/) or the Commute Louisville page on Facebook for our spring schedule. We look forward to your participation as we move forward with launching this program in Louisville.

And, of course, I'll be saying something about the class here when I'm ready to have folks register.

Cycling Savvy tour pre-ride

I have spent some time trying to create a tour route for the upcoming Cycling Savvy class here in Louisville. An important part of the creation process is what we call "ground truth" examination. This gives us a chance to look at the features we want to teach in real life (instead of using the satellite view and Google car camera view), in part to be sure that a road that appears to go through actually does, to get up to date information on road conditions, and better decide where to situate the gatekeeper and receiving instructors for each feature.

I finally got to ride my route today. Jenn will get to ride it with me over the next few days--indeed, I may give her the cue sheet and have her ride it herself and compare notes afterward, then hit it one more time over the weekend and fine-tune things a bit.

For some reason, I was thinking about my bike miles today, and wondered how many miles I've ridden in what I think of as my bike-driving era, compared to how many lifetime miles I've ridden. I have no way to even guess at the latter number, as I didn't really keep track of such things until I got my first recumbent bike in 1992, and then only sporadically until the beginning of 2010, when David convinced me to start using MyCyclingLog.com to track my riding.

In 2003 or '04, I had a minor crash while riding my Bacchetta Strada in Iroquois Park. At the time, I figured I had ridden something like thirty thousand miles since getting my Linear recumbent bike in '92. I probably rode an average of twenty-five hundred miles a year between that time and my first posts on MyCyclingLog.com, for ten or fifteen thousand more miles--I'll call it forty thousand from 1992 to January 2010. My stats on MyCyclingLog.com show that I've ridden over twenty thousand miles since January 2010, and over a third of those miles in 2011 (my banner year).

This number pales compared to many racers' results, and even compared to several club members I know. However, it's significant that I've had few crashes, NO car-vs-bike crashes (I count my fall on the Frankfort Avenue rail crossing as a solo crash, even though it was partially influenced by a motorist who cut me off), and no crashes that required hospital visits.

Well, not really significant, when one considers that cycling is safer than many more mundane activities, like being in a car (by half, based on injuries per million hours of exposure), or taking a bath, or walking in a room where there are loose rugs.

Savvy Cycling

I don't know why I haven't posted on my blog of late.

Especially troubling is that I haven't mentioned Cycling Savvy here lately, knowing that there are a couple of folks who read this who don't necessarily keep close tabs on the Commute Louisville site and its blog, and/or dutifully ignore Facebook and other social media sites.

Anyway, Cycling Savvy is coming to Louisville!!

The class cost is $75, for which one gets a nine-plus hour class. The first three hours or so are indoors, and it's not necessary to bring your bike (although bicycles will be welcome...). That segment will be on Friday evening, November 1. We call this class session "Truth and Techniques."

The rest of the class will be on Sunday, November 3, and will consist of the sessions we call "Train Your Bike" and "Tour of Louisville." The Train Your Bike session is a series of drills held in a parking lot, to help folks master handling their bicycles and learn some tips for easier riding. The Tour segment is not an exhaustive tour of the city's sights, but rather a ride to a series of features--intersections or sets of intersections--that give participants a chance to try for themselves the strategies we help them learn.

Oh, and if you are an experienced cyclist, there is very likely a bit of learning you can find here as well. A long-time commuter took the class in Saint Louis a while back, hoping to learn one or two new things. He reported that he learned six new things, and that was just in the Truth and Techniques portion of the class.

The registration form is here, if you already know enough to sign up without following the other links I've offered.

September catch-up, and it's October!!

I keep having gaps in my interest in writing, then a flurry of posts, then another gap...

To update on a couple things: I had a tree company haul off the limb that was leaning on the house a couple weeks ago. I haven't gotten the bill, but the estimate was pretty reasonable, given the scope of work involved. I fixed the roof that Saturday. I spent more time on it than I expected, mostly because the pitch for that section of my roof is steep enough that I wasn't comfortable working on it. It wasn't bad, but I felt it appropriate to take my time, rather than fall off.

Yeah, I've heard the expression, "It's not the fall that hurts, it's the sudden stop at the bottom." Add the abrasions of sliding down a shingle roof, and, well, it seemed better to avoid the experience altogether. I took my time.

The shingles turned out to not be a really good match, but I'm not worried. The angle is such that most folks driving by won't notice the difference. I know my roof isn't leaking, so I'm okay with how it is.

This first picture is of the roof deck, once I removed the damaged shingles. It's easier to see the size and location of the hole this way:

 It took less than a third of a sheet of Oriented Strand Board (OSB) to fix the roof deck. I bought a bundle of shingles, and used less than a dozen of them. I used a piece of Roofer's Felt about five feet long. First the deck repairs:

I didn't bother taking a picture of the roof between this step and having installed the shingles. It's just a roof, after all.

However, the shingle color difference is striking when viewed from above. Part of this is that the original roof on the house is now fourteen years old. It's probably a twenty-year roof, but might have been done with twenty-five year shingles. We are planning for replacing the roof within the next five years, based on the wear I noted while playing around on the roof this time.

I was able to straighten the drip edge (white aluminum seen in the second image) enough that it looks fine from below. The shingle color difference isn't as striking when viewed from the street.

One thing that came out of my several trips up on and off of the roof was that my ladder was beginning to worry me. If you know much about ladders, you know that they are rated for their weight capacity--Type IA, Type I, Type II, and Type III are common ratings, with Type III the lightest, at two hundred pounds capacity. I jokingly called my ladder a Type IV. I found it beside a dumpster behind a paint store seven years ago, and kept it around because it was good enough to do most of what I needed it to do. However, the locking mechanism on one side had a recently-broken spring, and I was only willing to carry a couple shingles up at a time (rather than an entire bundle), lest the thing fail on me.

I decided that it was time to buy a good ladder.

I rode to work (my part-time job at that orange box store that sells lumber, shingles, and all manner of other home repair and maintenance stuff) the next day, pulling my trailer so that I could bring home a good ladder.

The old ladder was nominally a sixteen-foot extension ladder, meaning that its full extension was roughly fourteen feet. There are a couple of places on my house that I cannot safely reach, so I opted for a longer ladder. I now own a 20' Type II extension ladder.

And, yes, I used my bike trailer to get it home, for a couple of reasons: I could, and it was actually a better choice than using the car. To use the car, I would have had to use padding of some sort to protect the roof, PLUS ropes to tie it to the car. I would still have worried about tearing up something on the car. The trailer almost looks like a ladder to many who ask about it, so it was a simple matter to haul the ladder home. Jenn needed the car that afternoon, and I typically ride to work anyway, so...

The hole in the roof deck shown above came with a corresponding hole in my soffit. The soffit pieces are aluminum, and I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to straighten the damaged pieces enough that they would look okay.

The soffit after the storm:

 

After I spent about five minutes actually working on the pieces and reinstalling them:

I was surprised at how good the repaired soffit looks.

And, since the tree outfit removed the big pile of debris from my driveway when they removed the limb, I can get in and out of my garage much more easily!