June 20, 2008
The cycling week in review
I rode to work each and every day and also took longer rides at lunch.
I played The Game for the first time this season and likely for the final time ever. And I'm going out on top with this year's score being me with one and hoodlums zero. The reason we're done with the game is I've decided boys can't help themselves and just shout things for no reason other than they're guys. I caught up with the "yelling guy" today and we had a pleasant chat at a light. He wasn't trying to be an ass; he was just a guy.
I hit 37 mph coming down the side of the overpass that I hit 33 on last year. I'd have made 40 but as I was coming down the hill doing about 30, in a 35 zone, a white van eased by me as he couldn't bear to be behind a bicycle doing 30. You'll note he didn't race by me; it wasn't like he was in a hurry. He pulled away from me for a bit as I continued to accelerate to 37 at which point I was gaining on him but still had plenty of room to hit 40. Until he got on his brakes because he thought the upcoming turn was his. As it happens his turn was a mile down the road at the light.
I have received more than one suggestion that I'll never have sex again if I continue to wear my underwear on multiple days.
A deer ran out of the woods about 20 feet from me as I sat at a stop sign.
Tonight as I pedaled home I came around a sweeping curve and there were six baby bunnies in the mowed part of the grass. I'd swear if you could have measured the distance between them they'd have been space equally at 15 feet or so apart.
A very large truck cut a corner as he came at me and would have hit me had I been a car. He didn't come close to hitting me but that's because I saw him.
I returned the wireless cyclometer I bought. It kept recording my MAX SPEED at 59.6 mph which is a good deal faster than I've ever gone. Even with a tailwind. It also had me going 5 mph as I sat in my recliner with it reading the instructions. Cadence never worked.
I picked up a Cateye Strada wired cyclometer and installed it.
Technorati Tags: Cycling, Health
Posted by delmer at 11:21 PM | Comments (6)
June 19, 2008
Biking to Work
Today we'll make some assumptions.
We'll assume:
So, at the end of the week, having bicycled to work every day, I'll have driven 20 fewer miles than I normally do and I'll have saved one gallon of gas or $4.00. I'll have put it in the face of the speculators that are driving the price of oil up. Big Oil will have been my bitch. I'll have given OPEC the finger. I'll have kept The Man down. I'll be this much closer to helping OJ find the real killers.
I'll also have burned about 8500 calories (or enough to offset 31 cups of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream) as I typically expend 1700 each day when you take the trips to and from work and the lunch ride into account (which may explain why I'm hungry all the time). It might be worth noting that while it's fewer than two miles to work I stretch it out to about five each way. And the calorie calculation is an interesting one when you consider the software I use says I burn more calories the faster I go and I'm pretty sure I'm burning more when I'm going slower and struggling against the wind (especially if I'm vacationing on Fire Lake in Kathmandu like a Ramblin' Gamblin' Man); oh well, it's not like any of the software I use interfaces with an anemometer.
Another oddity with software that calculates calories burned while pedaling is that some programs suggested I was burning almost nothing over the course of an hour while one or two seemed outrageously high to the point I'd have been reduced to a pile of powder after a short ride. I finally settled on the formula used by software on my PDA as it is close to the calories Bicycle Magazine says I burn; both closely match what my Garmin Forerunner says.
(To keep my life simple, when I'm doing the math in my head I calculate 1150 calories an hour. This should be the low end of the spectrum and I figure that against the wind one way vs with the wind on the way home all evens out. Oh, these calculations are based on a body that weighs 240 pounds. You may have unhappy results if you go on the Ben & Jerry's diet and think riding a bike 90 minutes a day will keep you even Steven.)
Anyway, we were talking about what tomorrow will bring assuming I ride the bike. One of the things I've yet to mention is that I'll have worn the same underwear five days in a row. Think about it, it isn't hard to wear the same pair 24-hours straight (though, now that I think about it, I normally go 12 hours between changes) and the underwear I've been wearing daily is a pair I leave at work and slip on when I get there.
I'll also have worn only two shirts this week — again, only at work — and I'd have made it just one shirt had I not had dinner with a friend last night. I keep a couple of shirts at work (the ones with delmer.com on them, I feel a little nerdy wearing them out into the real world) that I put on after I take the Lycra off. (So, yes, for a brief period of time I'm in my office totally naked. And yes, once with the door shut, a female person walked in without knocking. But just once, and I had drawers on. But, dammint! the door was shut!)
I should probably take more underwear to work.
By the way that's one of the two shirts I wore to work this week. You can see the delmer.com just above the pocket.
Technorati Tags: Cycling
Posted by delmer at 5:10 PM | Comments (14)
June 6, 2008
A Health Update and Obliques Question
I get blood drawn on Thursday to have my hormones checked. I expect that my prolactin will have gone up just a bit as I couldn't be taking a smaller amount of Cabergoline. We'll see what happens.
On the cycling front I have have a question for any other cyclers (or just people with opinions). And maybe I should explain what happens. On The Mighty Schwinn I'd get various aches and pains after pedaling around for a while; I recall thinking that I could do 45 miles each and every day without any leg burning as that's when they seem to go to hell — and then, of course, I had a day of 50 or 60 miles without any thigh discomfort which led me to write down everything I'd eaten that day as it may have been a nutrition issue. (The interesting thing about the thigh burning is that by the time you get it you're tired anyway and want to take a break but not pedaling hurts more than pedaling does.)
Anyway, the leg discomfort doesn't always come along.
What does always come along is a pain in my obliques and I remember the first time I got it. I thought something like, "What's up with my obliques?" and then slipped into, "What makes me think those are my obliques? How would I know that's what they are? Where have I heard that term? How come my high school physiology teacher isn't around when I need him to witness that I actually remembered something from his class? Is it too late to get that "B" changed to an "A"?
And then the muscles I thought were my obliques would pain me a bit and I'd sit up and stretch some. (I Googled for this when I got home, and the muscles are my obliques; they run on either side of your torso just under the love handles.)
Two years ago I read about exercises I could do to strengthen them (riding a bike makes then uncomfortable but does nothing to make them stronger). Unfortunately, one of the exercises was not reading so just reading about what to do was not enough to do any strengthening of the core. Oh, whenever you read about obliques it's often part of an article called something like, "Strengthen Your Core and Meet More Chicks." Okay, that's not true and it's my guess that obliques get overlooked as they have no chick-drawing ability. But "core" is always there.
The "core" muscles, and I'm not going to do any sort of fact checking, are the abs, back, obliques and maybe one or two other things. If your abs were Scotland and your back were England your obliques would be Wales; seemingly unimportant, off to one side, and rarely thought too much about (but lovely in the spring). [Forgive me as I type "Wales" and "Wales" two more times; I needed them for the links.]
And this is part of my problem. I do squats several times a week and had been sort of hoping they might be catching the obliques some. Yes, yes, yes! I know how muscle groupings work and am aware that squatting doesn't catch everything and is unlikely, for example, to provide bulging biceps. However, squatting does hurt just a little bit sometimes (in a good way) and requires good posture so as to not get hurt. As you may recall from elementary school good posture was the key to happiness, fame and fortune and when you combine the good posture with the knowledge that squats work the glutes (ass) lower back and is often mentioned in sentences that contain, "to improve your core strength," I hoped they might be catching the obliques in peripheral sort of way.
(Even though a part of me knew that was unlikely.)
And that's how we got where we are today.
On The Mighty Schwinn the obliques eventually get to aching but it likely comes at 90 minutes.
On The New Bike I'm getting uncomfortable fifty minutes.
I'm stretched out more on TNB due to the bike's geometry (and who said you'd never need geometry after you left school?), and this is probably good as I'd get to feeling cramped on The Mighty Schwinn toward the end of a ride (I've taken steps to stretch the Schwinn out a bit). I've had TNB adjusted a couple of times to decrease the amount of stretch and weight on my hands (that is, I'm not in a very aggressive riding position; my handlebars are about an inch higher than my seat). The point is, TNB seems to be set up right, or at least more right.
What I need to know is: Has anybody had any success getting the obliques to quit aching while riding? Do the exercises help? Will there always be some discomfort? Do I just need to butch up a bit?
I've been doing an exercise that mimics chopping wood as if you were chopping from left to right and then right to left (using 9 pounds). Also some crunches that focus more on the obliques.
Are there any other tricks?
Technorati Tags: Cycling, Prolactin, Pituitary
Posted by delmer at 7:22 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
June 5, 2008
Bleh bleh bleh
This year has a decidedly un-summer-like feel to it. I know it isn't technically summer yet, but something is still missing.
I was thinking about it this past weekend (I made some more video clips that I'll link together) while I was having breakfast at Chef's. The only thing I can come up with is that the weather is such that it's been hard to ride often enough and enjoy the riding I do like I did last year.
Last spring I rode the bike to at least one track meet. Track has been over for about a month and there's no way I could have pulled off a ride to one this year; the weather was unfavorable.
I've also not gotten any long rides in; I think 32 miles are about as far as I've gone.
This whole feeling of something's not right is normally driven home around 9:15 at night. I'll notice it's still daylight out and have a shit, it can't be that late in the year feeling.
Unfortunately, I can't blame the suckiness of this post on the weather. I'm the smallest bit sick.
This is how I looked when I typed this:
Technorati Tags: Cycling, Sick
Posted by delmer at 5:49 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
June 4, 2008
Loss
The last two times I've gone cycling, if you don't count tonight or Monday, I've lost bits and pieces of my bicycle or gear.
Last Saturday I had The Mighty Schwinn out for a spin on the bi-directional wind tunnel that also serves as our bike path. I'd just crossed one of the streets that breaks up the path when a couple of things happened all at the same time: I felt something slip at my left hand and I heard a harmonic-like tiiiing.
The great thing about the human mind is that while it may lose track of your car keys on a daily basis it is able to take simultaneous yet seemingly disconnected events and throw some commonality at them so you are able to recognize a bad situation and take steps to make it from getting worse. And, while that is admittedly a little melodramatic, the combination of the two events I experienced, combined with my knowledge of my bike, told me I needed to stop before a bushing fell out of my left hand brake. And I stopped just in time to catch it in my right hand.
The ting was the most troubling part of the whole thing as it was a signal that the screw I'd lost had likely hit a spoke on its trip toward the ground and had just as likely been launched off in a direction I might not expect. At least that was my theory. And it was a theory I'd eventually prove. (I know that having a theory first and then finding the facts to support it is bad science, it's just the way this thing worked out.)
This past Sunday I had The New Bike out and came to a point in the trip during which I felt the need to pull a tool out and do some piddling; I decided to adjust the tire pump mount with a set of Allen wrenches I had with me.
This particular set of Allen wrenches is a self-contained unit of eight wrenches packaged like a Swiss Army knife with four blades that extend from either end. As I extended one of the wrenches the bolt that secured one end of the knife-like package slipped out and into the grass. To my credit I caught the nut.
I spent 15 minutes on my hands and knees poking around in the grass for the only thing in the grass that should not have felt like grass or dirt. Even though I had seen right where the bolt fell I am not sure I was ever even close to it. Part of the reason I had trouble is that I didn't have my glasses on and it's my near vision that is weak; I'm pretty sure that had I been on the moon I would have spotted the bolt right away.
Of course, then my reach would have fallen a little short.
Technorati Tags: Cycling
Posted by delmer at 9:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 2, 2008
My Sunday: Part II
[Technical difficulties have made this even later than I'd thought it might be.]
In yesterday's post I told you all about the exiting gardening life I led on Sunday. Due to the extreme amount of sunshine that Sunday brought with it I decided to knock off early to take the new bike (TNB) on its First Big Ride.
I say First Big Ride, not because it was going to be the longest for TNB (though it turned out that way) but because the route would take me the farthest I'd been from home on TNB — a bike that sorely lacked any of the survival tools the Mighty Schwinn had attached to it.
So I thought I'd better get some.
Having had a good bicycle-buying experience at Bike Source I decided to let them fulfill my wedge bag and tire-pump needs. I was on their doorstep at 4:15 and by 4:15:10 had verified, without a doubt, that their Sunday hours ended at 4 p.m. Ah well, Performance was just down the road.
I'd tried to buy a wedge bag a few days before but had gotten lost in all the choices and gone home empty handed. Sunday, however, my favorite blonde salesgal made the mistake of asking if she could help me and in short order I'd picked up a wedge bag, frame-mount pump, bottle carrier, inner tube, and a so-cars-can-see-me headlight.
I got a carbon fiber bottle carrier as I don't want to start putting heavy bits and pieces on TNB. Well, that's not really the case; as I've mentioned before I come in at 242 and I find it hard to believe that, unless I start using lighter-than-air add-ons or components made by Briggs & Stratton, anything I mount to the bike is going to affect performance that much. I got the carbon fiber bottle carrier because it was sleek looking and the same color (sort of) as TNB.
Blah blah blah… I had everything mounted and was on the road by 6 p.m.
About five miles into the ride I noticed I'd left my water bottle, full of ice water, at home. Right next to, I'm guessing, my tire levers. Oh well, the best laid plans.
My original intent was to put in 20 miles doing ten out and then ten back. Since the wind was beating me up on the way out I figured it would be pushing me on the way home, making those miles free sort of. So I called an audible and went for 15 out that eventually became a smidge over 16.
TNB rides very well; I can't believe how smooth it is. And while I'm guessing it's a bit more aerodynamic than The Might Schwinn I still possess the air-tunnel footprint of a Kenworth. Which is to say that most of the first 15 miles required a fair amount of pedaling to produce an average speed of just over 15 mph (at some points I was globbing along at 12 and 13).
Then came the turnaround. I honestly expected to be cruising around at 25 mph without too much effort; it's happened before on The Mighty Schwinn, and it's always dreamy when it happens.
It was not to be, however. Sure, 16 and 17 came without too much trouble and there were periods of 22 mph, but never did I feel as if I were being rewarded for putting up with the amount of wind I had to tolerate on the way out.
(Good Lord. I just reread that and you'd think I was out there trying to build the pyramids with a kid's pail and shovel instead of pedaling a bicycle around. Woe is frikkin' me.)
Did I mention I got laid at the end of the ride?
I didn't.
Technorati Tags: Cycling
Posted by delmer at 3:48 PM | Comments (7)
May 31, 2008
Geek Squad on Two Wheels
I decided to make today an automobile-free day. Which isn't really a big deal, I guess, unless you consider I wanted to get some things done as well.
I normally start my child-free weekends with ten or fifteen minutes of crying due to sadness. I only mention this as I'd like my boys to be aware of it should one of them happen across this entry at some point in his life after falling into a big pile of money (which, hopefully, raises his gullibility quotient).
The crying always makes me a bit peckish and following some tear wiping, nose blowing, and hand washing, I'll head off for breakfast.
Today breakfast was all the more sweet as I had a coupon for Hometown Buffet. I have video of the meal but haven't loaded the editing software on the new hard drive so you'll just have to trust me when I say it was spectacular (I chose my breakfast based on (1) nutritional content and (2) how it would look in the video — I am the Sam Peckinpah of morning meals).
If you are curiouis, Hometown Buffet is about five miles from where I live.
During breakfast my buddy Paul called. He'd asked me to do some computer work for him and I told him I'd zip over when I was done eating. As I worked my way through a second helping of scrambled eggs I plotted my route. While I knew I'd end up on Riverside Drive (which doesn't have the safest feel to it) I calculated that my time on it would be short enough that the chances of getting smashed would be rather small.
Paul and I made a trip to the computer store (his car, so I still count is as automobile-free for me), installed a new optical drive (which sounds so much more professional than "installed a DVD burner") and then went out to a late lunch (um, more driving in his car).
The skies got a bit ugly after we finished eating and I made a hasty, windy-as-hell, retreat toward the house. All told I put in just under 21 miles — and it was on The Mighty Schwinn (I have a big honkin' lock that fits on the Schwinn's rack … I lack a locking-it-up scheme for the new bike.)
I got home just in time to have a big nap, followed by a sandwich, then bed.
Technorati Tags: Cycling, Friends
Posted by delmer at 8:17 AM | Comments (6)
May 26, 2008
Bicycle Conversations
Samson and I were outside today and I was watching him ride his bike. It has a dirt bike look to it but it has something like 21 gears. As he stopped next to me I reminded him to not shift while he was standing on the pedals. "It can be bad for the equipment," I said.
"You mean the gears?"
"No, I mean your testicles. I think you're more likely to bang your cookies into the top tube while shifting."
My theory being the chain is more likely to slip or the change in pedal speed might throw a person off and either one could result in cookie crunching. I may be totally wrong but if you smash the goods just once every 10,000 shifts it's still a good precaution to take.
A short while back I was all Lycra'd up and riding with a some people.
"You look like you've been pooped on," one of them said, looking at me.
"Does it still show," I said, "The divorce was two years ago."
Maybe you had to be there but we all laughed. And the "poop" was something I'd bumped my helmet into while in the garage.
Speaking of poop. As I rode along today I felt two rain drops hit me; one on the cheek and one on the side of the mouth. I stuck my tongue out to get the one that hit the side of my mouth and developed an awareness of two things: (1) that the rain drop seem to have a little more mass to it than I would have guessed and (2) there didn't seem to be any other drops falling.
While I was a little concerned that I'd been Cyndee Laupered I figured there wasn't much I could do about it and set my mind to trying to remember why bird poop was white. Is it high nitrogen content? Albino worms?
I gave the mouth a wipe and didn't notice any poo on it (of course, I could have done a pretty good tongue job). I stopped a few minutes later and noticed I seemed to be bird-poop free all the way around.
I'm not sure what the extra massiness was.
Technorati Tags: Crying, Friends
Posted by delmer at 6:27 PM | Comments (11)
Big Loads
I took the new bike out before breakfast this morning. I've read that you burn more fat exercising on an empty belly and figured what the hell. I've no idea if that's true as I read a lot of things and a lot of it contradicts something else I've read.
I don't often bicycle when I have the boys as I'm afraid someone will smash into me and one of my children will answer a knock at the door to find a police officer there and me, in the background, strapped across the hood of his car. But, it was Sunday morning and I figured if I got on the road early enough I could beat the churches letting out. (Christians will smash into you just as fast as the heathen hordes. Catholics are especially likely to hit you as they often have trouble seeing a bicycle past the St. Christopher statue they have mounted to their dash.)
As I pedaled along — and it was a beautiful morning with a lot of bicycles and joggers out — I happened across something that I thought had good blogging potential. As I approached a narrow cross street there was a woman jogger. She'd entered the road a bit and was jogging in place as she waited for traffic to pass and I couldn't help but think, "take a break, lady."
I am fully aware of how I look when I cycle. As a matter of fact the new shorts, with the better padding, make it look like I'm carrying a big, lumpy, load in my drawers if you catch me from the back (this photo has some underwear lines, too — a bonus for all the WADLL readers):
I accept this as the same shorts, from the front, give the impression I'm carrying if not a big, at least a pointy, load. The kind of load that I like to suppose would lead a woman to say to herself, "I wonder what that might feel like?":
Anyway. Cyclists are a colorful and well-padded lot and those of us who don't take ourselves too seriously realize we look just a bit goofy. And we do. (Except for the women who are all incredibly hot, and not in a human-furnace kind of way, in Lycra.)
So, there was the gal jogging in place in the road which led me to the "take a break" thought. And the reason I had that thought is that it looks odd. I know it's supposed to keep the muscles warm but, really, we're talking about jogging in place for ten seconds or so. How cold are the muscles likely to get? I don't pedal backwards at stoplights (I use this time to gasp for air).
As I pedaled along it occurred to me my real "issue" with this is that I knew a guy who was a royal asshole, know-it-all, egomaniac who, I was sure, jogged in place not so much to keep his muscles warm but to say to the world, "Look at me. I'm jogging in place." (You had to know the guy. He's the kind who'd wear cycling shorts to tell the world, "Look at me. I've got a pointy man-tool.")
And I decided to get over it. I mean, what's the harm in having women who are in pretty good shape jogging slow-motion like (in all their jiggly goodness) here and there. Hum some bad jazz or the theme to Baywatch and it wouldn't be hard to fill your drive to work with periodic snippets of soft-core porn.
As I said earlier in this post I hit the road early to try to beat the post-church exodus. And I almost made it. As I was pedaling down Dublin Road (and composing this post in my mind — it's a lot funnier with a bit of oxygen deprivation working for you. Try holding your breath and rereading it and you'll see what I mean) I approached one of the Methodist Churches. There was a red SUV getting ready to pull out and, like I always do, I made eye contact with the driver. He looked at me, looked left, then right, and surely noticed there was no other traffic for as far as the eye could see. He then said, "Goddammit! I gotta get to the buffet! Fuck this guy."
At least that's what I think he said. It was the body language he sent when he pulled out short in front of me.
[Despite anything I've said here, I think Hilliard/Columbus is rather bicycle friendly. I rarely feel like I'm going to get hit and choose not to ride when I have the kids just in case. We have nice, wide streets, and I think people pull out in front of bicycles, as in the above case, because they can't understand how fast we might be going. You just need to be careful, like with anything else.]
Technorati Tags: Cycling, Drivers, Women
Posted by delmer at 12:59 PM | Comments (12)
May 18, 2008
Poor bicycling etiquette
Let me start by saying that I did a bad bicycle thing today. I broke a rule; that's out of character for me (see my Ink Blot posts).
I was in traffic and stopped at a light. Not too far ahead of me something had developed that looked like it would provide a good opportunity for one of the nearby drivers to smash into me and I got a bad feeling. I'm not one to believe in bad feelings but, you know, you don't want to end up bashed into and left thinking, if only I'd followed my gut. (Which we all do anyway simply due to the way we're assembled.)
So, I cut into a driveway. Normally when I do things like this I stop and pretend to tweak something on the bike or empty something out of my shoe. I don't want to make it look like I'm trying to gain a traffic advantage of any sort.
This time I took to the driveway and as I cut by the obstacle thought "screw it" and got back into traffic. (I was on my way to interact with someone I've been interacting with too much lately and may not have had the clearest mind working. Despite my stupidity, I want some bonus for taking my bike and not my minivan.)
A moment after I got back in traffic, in the curb lane, an SUV passed me in the second lane. The passenger was hanging out and yelling at me. He was very colorful but most of what he said involved how the same traffic rules that apply to autos apply to me too.
You may recall that I'm not big on having people yell at me from passing autos and I sometimes chase them down. This guy needed chased I thought — for he was right and I wanted to apologize and let him know I knew he was right.
So I started to do the math on the distance involved and decided I'd catch him at the next light which had just turned red.
And then the driver of the SUV ran it.
Yes. As the guy is hanging out the window and yelling telling me that the same traffic laws that apply to autos apply to me the driver of the SUV he's in ran a red light. And I don't mean accidentally ran it, like it was close and he'd had a brain fart over whether he had time to stop. He was tailgating the guy ahead of him who'd had to creep through the light due to the traffic. It wasn't like yellow-then-red when the guy went through; it was red the whole time.
I might have been able to catch them at the light after that but I didn't want to break up the tongue lashing the passenger was probably giving the driver about how the same rules that apply to bicycles apply to SUVs.
[All kidding aside, I was at fault. When I took to the sidewalk I'd been stopped at a light and I cut around it.]
Technorati Tags: Cycling, Drivers
Posted by delmer at 10:17 PM | Comments (6)
May 15, 2008
National Bike Month
May is National Bike Month. It's halfway over and I just found out.
I started the month off well enough by buying a new bike (and, soon, I'll go on about it more) and then sort of dropped the ball. Not by design, things just happened; and, like I said, I didn't even know about National Bike Month until just the other day.
This past week was Bike to Work Week. It was also a week I had the boys and with boys come things like stinky shoes and midday trips to school to take care of things. Yesterday was the only day I could have ridden and it was rainy or rainy looking. If I ride today (which is Bike to Work Day), and I'll post this at midnight and won't know by then, I'll have to take the boys to school then go home and get the bike and start my ride then.
I really want to ride as I need to get some more time on the bike as I don't think it's fitted to me the way it should be just yet and tomorrow evening would be a good time to take it to the shop. I'd like to try for a 50-mile ride on Saturday.
Bicycle Magazine just had an article on the best biking cities in the nation and I took a look to see if Columbus was listed; I think the area is fairly bicycle friendly. We weren't in the top 10 but did receive an honorable mention. The most exciting thing about this for the city, I think, is that Columbus was mentioned as simply Columbus not Columbus, Ohio; and Columbus so dearly wants to be a one-name entity… like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Boston and Cher.
I read about National Bike Month in The Other Paper and they were kind enough to mention in their article that bicycles have just as much right on the road as autos. I'm not sure that drivers are always aware of that. (I also found out I'm saving Columbus. Well, Hilliard I guess. And I think there's a good bit of BS there.)
(As I say above I live in Hilliard which rubs up against Columbus' backside like an intoxicated prom date so my bicycle-friendliness feeling may be misplaced. One Letter to the Editor, written to The Other Paper in response to their Bike Month piece, mentioned getting discouraging yells from drivers; his wife had the same experience. Maybe he should chase them down.)
Technorati Tags: Columbus, Cycling
Posted by delmer at 11:32 PM | Comments (2)
April 29, 2008
The Schwinn's Companion Bike
I just bought a new bicycle. It's a Specialized Roubaix Elite and is very nice. It's all carbon fiber with a gray-and-orange paint combination that makes you wonder what the design team was smoking when they drew it out; maybe the color will grow on me. (Really, it's not bad. It just isn't the mostly black with green accents that was The Mighty Schwinn.)
I took it out for a test ride…
Wait, before we go there, let me tell you about the other bike I saw at the bike shop. There was a younger guy, we'll say 24, pushing around something that had once been a 10-speed but was now missing the shifters. I got close and noticed it was a black Schwinn World Sport so I struck up a conversation. By looking at the date stamp on the Schwinn nameplate (something he'd not known about) we determined the bike was built on the 155th day of 1984; making it the older brother of The Mighty Schwinn (also a World Sport and born the 322nd day of 1987). I think we could both sense that my bike was just a little bit sexier.
I took the Roubaix out for a spin — ah, another aside, the sales gal said pan-ee-aye not pan-ear, just like I thought — and ran it over some breaks in the pavement like I run across out in the country. I realize not all cracks are created equal but had I not seen the breaks I never would have known they were there. The ride is that smooth. It will be interesting to see how it handles one of the country roads I frequent that has seen far too much harvester traffic.
Naturally, inasmuch as I have a new toy, it may be days before I'm able to get out and ride it around.
Posted by delmer at 4:07 PM | Comments (5)
April 24, 2008
The Mighty Schwinn may be retired
I'm considering replacing The Mighty Schwinn. She's twenty this year and I think I've gotten my money out of her. Per the stamp on the logo badge The Mighty Schwinn was built the 322nd day of 1987; I probably bought her in the spring of 1988 then.
I've hesitated replacing (I refuse to say "upgrading." This is a bicycle, not a wife.) as I approach riding the bike as an exercising activity. I figure if my
bike is a little harder to get going then I'm probably getting a little bit more in the way of conditioning out of it. The other day it hit me that if output is measured in watts and I'm putting forth X watts then I'd likely continue to put forth X watts on a new bike… I'd just get a little more out of my effort, I'd have newer components, and I might be sitting atop something that doesn't telegraph every bump and jar into my numbing hands.
So, I've started to do some research.
I'm a little taller than most other riders (heavier too, but I imagine almost any frame will support me) and want to make sure I find a bike that's a good fit. Tuesday night I was at the Columbus Outdoor Pursuits ride and started looking at what other people were riding. As I looked around I saw a fairly tall guy, someone I thought was taller than I am, and decided to walk over to see what sort of bike he had.
As I got closer I could see that he was, in fact, several inches taller than me… and, that he was riding the same exact bike I was. Same color, same year. And with a kickstand.
"You might have one of the best looking bikes here," I said.
"It's a hand-me-down. My dad had it," he told me. Which made sense. And I'm sure his dad put the kickstand on the bike as that was not standard equipment.
The guy was 6'8" and had been looking around for tall bikes. He hadn't found anything yet and I suspect his search will be a bit more trying than mine.
In other news I've also purchased a new pair of Pearl Izumi shorts. They are one of the nicer pair I've purchased and will replace the Nashbar house-brand that are two years old. I figure I ride enough to buy better gear. I've also wearing better gloves; I'd thought that numb hands were just part of riding — I may have been wrong.
Posted by delmer at 12:39 PM | Comments (9)
April 21, 2008
Clipless
Samson had First Reconciliation this past Saturday. For the non-Catholic among you, that would be his first confession.
He was just the smallest bit worried about it but after his mother and I explained it was sort of like testing the confessional waters — that is, he didn't have to be perfect — he chilled some. And really, he's 10. What type of sins can he have? I know that when he's with me he's pretty good and I doubt his mother is taking him to titty bars. (But I don't know, I've got to say the separation/divorce caught me off guard.)
It had been my hope to put something close to 80 miles on The Mighty Schwinn this weekend and was tickled to see the sun shining early Saturday morning. It shone throughout Samson's First Reconciliation and through the paying of the check for the celebratory late lunch. It started raining as I walked home from Otie's (and continued to rain until evening.)
I've recently considered getting a Pannier, which I think is pronounced pah-knee-ay though I've been assured it's pan-ear, and thought I'd shoot off to the bike shop to see what was available; it was raining after all. There are three bike shops around me that are likely to have panniers for sale. One of them has an attractive blond woman, who is old enough that I don't feel bad acknowledging the fact that she's attractive, working there and that's where I decided to go. (Simply because if a bike shop is going to go out of business because they've fallen $50.00 shy in sales I don't want it to be the one with the cute blond.)
Without going into all the details let me just say I never got Panniers. Instead I got clipless pedals, and shoes.
One of the reasons I've put off going clipless is that I wear a size 14 shoe and wasn't sure I'd be able to find a pair big enough for my feet. The largest shoe the bike shop had was a 48 which translates to a 13.5 and is just right. It seems that what cycling lacks in the way of consistency when it comes to jersey sizes — I once bought an Italian XL that would have been tight on my 10-year old — they make up for with their variety in shoe sizes; it's not often I see 1/2 sizes past 11.5.
Another reason I've not gone clipless is that I'm a grumpy old man who hates change. (And I have a biomechanical worry. But simply saying that would deny me the fun of the grumpy old man comment.)
Oh, by the way, I saw the attractive blond and we had a lively conversation that started, "May I help you," and ended with "If you have any other questions, let me know." (For the record, they do not have unpadded Lycra shorts nor do they have tall jerseys.)
So, $200 later and still without pah-knee-ays or pan-ears I headed home.
Fast forward to Sunday evening and I'd put the pedals on the bike, the cleats on the shoes, the shoes on my feet, and I was sitting on the bike balanced in a doorway and practicing snapping in and out of the pedals. After a few adjustments I was ready for the road where things went swimmingly until I came to the first right turn and noticed huge, dark gray storm clouds (that still, five hours later, have produced shit in the way of rain or lightening) and figured I should cut the ride short.
So the goal of 80 miles was reduced to an output of five.
The short mileage today didn't bother me. I'm pretty sure it's best to have some short outings to check for things like knee pain. As it is, I'm pretty sure the right cleat needs some adjustment so my toe can point out a bit.
And it was five miles in which I didn't find myself unable to unclip and falling over.
Posted by delmer at 12:06 AM | Comments (4)
January 1, 2008
Ode to The Mighty Schwinn
[Unless, of course, an ode involves rhyming and anything resembling song. If it can be described as free-form BS, well, I'm dead on.]
As you know, I love The Mighty Schwinn. And The Mighty Schwinn, I think, loves me in the way that only a cold piece of metal can love a person. Not necessarily like a Sybian; it would be a more spiritual love.
Sure, sometimes The Mighty Schwinn and I have something of a Sado-Masochistic relationship more than anything else, but most times we get along like faithful lovers. Our outings always result in a lot of heavy breathing and a happy ending. Sometimes I squeal and more than once, toward the exciting climactic end of a particularly long romp through the countryside, I've chanted oh f*ck oh f*ck oh f*ck (I don't know why, but that really seems to help).
The Mighty Schwinn is happy to spend hour after hour between my legs, (which, I guess, makes me its bitch) gently massaging … wait a minute… there's nothing gentle or massage-like about that!
And come to think of it, I do all the work — all the pumping!
Alright, as a lover, the Mighty Schwinn might fall into the 'selfish' category. But as bicycles go, it's a darned fine one.
Lately The Mighty Schwinn has been sort of noisy. There was the grinding noise of the bad bottom bracket. There was the twang of the broken spokes. The chunka chunka chunka of the freewheel that eventually seized. The tink that arrived not long after the bottom bracket was replaced. The new, lighter, chunka chunka chunka that appeared in the same gear position as the first one that made me wonder if the freewheel had been the original cause despite the fact it did seize up, and the most recent tink tink tink that appeared when the right crank arm was at 4, 5 and 6 o'clock.
I said the new chunka chunka chunka was lighter, but there were times it was bad enough that I'd quit pedaling if I was biking past pedestrians. I already look like a goof when I'm on the bike, I don't want to sound like one. Oh yea, when it got that bad I could feel it through the frame.
Anyway, this year I've replaced: The bottom bracket (the original disintegrated), the rear wheel (and I had all the spokes replaced in it following the replacement), the bottom bracket (yes, again, searching for the chunka chunka chunka and the tink), and the freewheel (gears on the back wheel, after it seized), the chain (it was just time and I was running out of things to replace that might be noisy), and the rear wheel again (I got a much nicer one).
A few days ago Samson and I took The Mighty Schwinn to the bike shop. I'm always willing to ride something until it breaks and waiting for something to fail is a money saver over replacing things that might be the problem; as I continue to prove. But really, there's more to it than that. I'd much rather spend a bit of money to fix something that doesn't need fixing in the hopes it will solve a problem than run the risk of being out somewhere and have something break. The tink, as non-problematic as it sounds, I'd have gladly dropped a few bucks on just so I didn't have to hear it.
Cutting to the chase, the other day I replaced the freewheel again, and this took care of the lighter chunka chunka chunka; so the freewheel I'd purchased a month or so ago came with its own problems (and since you don't expect a new item to be noisy, when the noise continues, it sort of makes you wonder about other components). I also replaced the pedals, and this took care of the tink tink tink.
What blows is that I almost replaced the pedals this summer as I'd thought they may have been responsible for the tink. But the other pedals were only a year old then and the pedals those replaced had been 16 years old. Of course, the one-year old pedals may not have been of the same quality and by the time this summer rolled around may have had more than 2000 miles on them. They certainly had over 3000 miles on them by the time I replaced them.
Anyway: The Mighty Schwinn is now super quiet.
[It seems I replaced the first bottom bracket at Christmas last year.]
Posted by delmer at 9:06 PM | Comments (8)
December 23, 2007
More Driving and Riding
Just the other day I made comment about people having trouble with green lights. In two instances I'd noticed a guy and then a woman sitting through green lights to the point they inconvenienced other drivers. In a third instance a goofball (and I'll prove he was goofier than originally thought) was sitting several cars back from a light trying to trip the green arrow.
Let's discuss this third person first. The light in question is at Davidson and Avery. The green arrow would signal Davidson westbound traffic to take a left onto Avery. I was at that light twice yesterday — once on a bicycle (behind a car) and once in the minivan. In each instance I got a green arrow and in each instance I was pulled up to the light as traffic engineers would have planned. So, it would seem that approaching this light without trying any sort of driving trickery gets the arrow. (It may be worth noting that in each instance I'd been stopped for just a second before the light changed. Maybe I tripped the green (or the car in front of me had when I was on the bike) as I slowed for the light. If this is the case I'll place an edit here. Edit: I had, and apparently when I was on the bike the car ahead of me had, tripped the light as we slowed just a second before it would turn. Today I sat at the light and did not get an arrow; I'd sat ten or twenty seconds at the red.)
Do you recall the guy that sat through the green light and took it on the yellow which held up the van (then me, on the bike). And I'd complained that the lady in the van had not honked? At that same intersection, yesterday afternoon, traffic in the left-turn lane got a left-turn arrow that the driver in the first car missed as he was setting up his cheese fondue set. The car behind him, perhaps not a fan of finger foods, gave him a long, very pleasing, blast on his horn. Bravo.
At the Britton Parkway/Davidson Road light I was stopped on the bike as I headed east. Traffic coming from my left has to turn either left or right and there were a couple of cars in the left-turn lane. I've already said I was stopped. Their light turned green and the first car made a left turn so he'd be in front of me when I got my light. The second car, driven by a woman, pulled up to the light and sat there like it was a sign. She eventually went.
Later, something happened that hasn't happened in a while. As I pedaled down Dublin Road a carload of girls drove by me and gave me a "Wooo-hooo!" They got hung up at the next light and I was behind them before it turned green. They sat through the green just a moment because, I think, they were trying to get a look at me; they'd turned around and I made eye contact with the driver through my sunglasses. In all honesty, they could have been sitting through the green just because they were women.
I think I've been clear in that I don't really care to have people yell or honk at me when I'm on The Mighty Schwinn but that women woo-hooing me are the least offensive of these behaviors. I think I've also been clear when I've said that I don't think young women are honking at "me." They're honking at a guy on a bike. I had enough gear on that I could have been Michael Meyers on my way to my next Halloween Party and they'd have never been able to tell. I was also old enough to be their father.
Posted by delmer at 11:02 AM | Comments (4)
December 19, 2007
Pet Peeves
I'd like to start this post with an apology to all my cycling friends. Tonight, I'm afraid, I did something that didn't make us look good. The upside of this is that there were only two cars that saw what I did and one of those had a dumbass driving. I also think that the vehicle with the non-dumbass driver may have not minded what I did.
As I've said before, I try to be a model cyclist. I stop at all red lights and I don't typically run yellow ones (as when I'm in a car, it depends on my position on the road). Depending on the situation (that is, are there any cars around to see what I'm doing) I either stop for or slowly coast through stop signs.
When I'm at a light I keep my position in line; I don't pass the cars and make my way to the front. I figure people don't want to pass me twice.
There is a left turn I make on each ride that goes up a hill with the road narrowing. The turn is at a light and if there is traffic behind me at the light I swing wide into a dead space in the road and let traffic pass so I don't hold them up on the hill (there's plenty of room but people hesitate to pass).
There's another left that's harder to make on a bike than in a car due to the acceleration properties of each; if there's traffic behind me I'll let the cars go first.
The point is, I try to be a good cycling representative.
Tonight's ride went pretty well. It was about 30 F (-1 C) and windy when I started the ride which seemed sort of unfair as it was 37 F (3 C) and not so windy this morning and was supposed to get to almost 40 F (about 4 C) today. Oh, and I did just over 20 miles.
At one point I was sitting third in line at a light. This, by itself, doesn't sound all that interesting, I know. And while this next point isn't any more interesting I feel compelled to point out that the light was green as I sat there and when it was red I'd been fifth in line. When the light turned green the first two cars, inhabited by people who realized they'd be driving after they seated themselves behind the wheel of an automobile, pulled away leaving the rest of us trapped behind a guy who could have only been thinking what the hell am I supposed to do now? At some point he caught on and ended up running the light on a yellow he should have stopped for. I don't understand why the lady in front of me didn't honk. (If I'm right behind a green-light sitter I'll yell, "go!" I wasn't sure my voice would carry over the van ahead of me.)
Another time, at the left I mention above where I pull into the dead area, as I was facing north I watched as a woman who was facing west sat through the left-turn arrow up to the point that it turned yellow. Her mind filled with thoughts of, fuck the eastbound traffic I'm going now goddammit! she zipped through the signal just in time to let her dumbassery delay oncoming traffic for just a second or two.
As I've said before, if you're not in the mood to drive, stay out of your car.
And really, none of this has anything with the thing I did. They're just things I saw. I also saw a dime in the road.
So, what did I do?
As lovable as I am I do have a few pet peeves
One of them involves people who stop at a light several car lengths back in order to trip the arrow for a left turn. I can't even explain why it bothers me other than it's just rude. It probably has something to do with the person doing it thinking the rules of common courtesy don't apply to them.
Of course, there's also the chance they just don't want to be first in line and they're hoping someone will pull in front of them to lead the way. I've considered doing this in the minivan but have never really been in the mood to take a left turn I didn't need and it has never been practical, due to the size, to swing around a car to make a left I do need ahead of goofballs trying to trip arrows.
So, tonight, as I approached Cemetery Road on Davidson, there was a goofball parked several car lengths back trying to trip the left-turn arrow. There was also an SUV going straight in the right-hand lane. I swung around the car and took position in the left-turn lane ahead of them (you know, to lead the way). The light turned green… the arrow didn't trip; not that it mattered as there was no oncoming traffic for this ding-dong to beat by getting an arrow.
The whole thing reminded me of the guy who was ahead of me as we approached a red light. Rather than wait through the light to make his right turn he pulled into a school to cut around the light. Traffic was so heavy that he was not able to get out and he eventually pulled in behind me after I passed him sitting in the school's driveway.
Posted by delmer at 5:03 PM | Comments (10)
December 1, 2007
My Big Morning
I was up until the early hours of this morning watching things I'd recorded and was sort of surprised when I noticed 2 a.m. rolled around. I wasn't terribly concerned though, I was meeting some friends for breakfast at 10:30, so I still had time to get in eight hours.
At 8 a.m. the phone rang. Our ERP database wasn't up and the accountants needed to do the month-end stuff. I told the caller I could fix the problem from home but decided against it after I hung up. I needed to install a new tape drive and, due to month end, was going to have trouble finding a time to do it that didn't have me at work at midnight or wasn't a problem for the accountants. I'd done a lot of the prework, so all I needed to do was slide the drive into a bay and connect a few cables.
I drove into work and shut off the server. I slid the tape drive in, made the connections, and had the server up in under 15 minutes. I did some testing and in fewer than 30 minutes I'd made the accountants happy and I'd accomplished something that would keep me from having to make a late-night run to work.
It was very sunny on the drive back home which made an early-morning bike ride seem like a good idea. I checked the outside temperature and when I noticed it was 18 F (-7.7 C) I realized that if I moved fast enough I could be on the bike and pedaling before the temperature hit 20 F… which, I think, was my previous coldest ride (a quick check of the archives suggests 21 F might have been the coldest).
Prior to Lycraing up I made a pit stop. It is only important that you know I made a number 2 as when I went to flush I found out the water to the house had been shut off. Fortunately, my diet had been celery heavy the last couple of days and it wasn't the problem it could have been, you know, had I been having a lot of steak and beer.
Fifteen miles later I returned home from a very pleasant ride to find the water back on. (I noticed some Water Department work going on about two blocks from where I live during the ride.)
So, to summarize: In two and a half hours I had fixed a database problem, installed a tape drive, tested the same drive, found out I had no water, biked 15 miles in 18 degree weather, and showered.
By 11 a.m. I was eating donuts. (But just two.)
Posted by delmer at 10:05 PM | Comments (4)
November 26, 2007
We have a winner!
A wise man once said something similar to: You can spend a lot of time trying to track down an intermittent problem; but as soon as it breaks you know what it is.
Now, while you may not want to apply the above rule to things like mushy brakes in a Buick, there are plenty of other areas it works just fine.
Like with a bicycle. And to be totally honest I didn't apply the purest form of the rule to my situation as I sought to sort out the chunka chunka chunka noise The Mighty Schwinn would periodically make. I kept trying to fix things. However, whenever whatever I'd changed failed to fix the problem and The Mighty Schwinn would start making the chunka chunka chunka noise, I'd do whatever I could (i.e., keep pedaling in the same manner during which the noise appeared) to keep the noise and vibration going... for ah knew (and please be sure to apply some television-Baptist minister to those last three words) that something would eventually break.
And it happened last Tuesday night.
I rode The Mighty Schwinn to a friend's house to service her home network. On the trip over to service her I thought I'd felt some odder-than-normal oddities going on with the chain but, due to traffic, was unable to spend too much time looking down at the moving parts.
The same thing happened on the way back to Hilliard.
And then, after my McDonald's break (an extra large Diet Coke and a Fruit & Yogurt Parfait) I noticed that when I'd quit pedaling the chain would sag as it came off the rear cog. I couldn't coast.
I pedaled all the way home (three more miles) where I pulled the front wheel off the bike and loaded the Schwinn into the minivan. Still Lycra'd up I took it to The Schwinn Shop where the tech diagnosed the problem as a bad freewheel (which may also be called a cassette and will certainly be recognized by all if I say rear cogs).
The tech took the cassette off and tried to give it a spin; it didn't spin well at all.
He dug through his big box of cogs and came up dry.
Ten minutes later I was at Bike Source, and three minutes after that I had a new cassette. They didn't have the same size gear set as my original so I got something that's going to provide… what? more high-end gears? The gears are all smaller so my uphills will be a little harder on me but I should be able to have a bit more speed going downhill. A better way of saying this is that with the old cassette if the bike was going 33 mph I was out of pedaling room. With the new cassette I imagine I'll finally be able to get up enough speed so that I'll be able to slam into the side of someone's car, as they pull out in front of me, in excess of 35 mph.
As for the uphills... well, the bike is a 12 speed but I treat it as a six speed and never shift onto the smaller front cog. (As you know, I'm in central Ohio. It's pretty flat here.) I don't imagine it will be a problem.
The photo of the day is of my boys at Granny and Big D's last summer:
Posted by delmer at 5:52 PM | Comments (9)
November 25, 2007
The Thanksgiving Bike Ride
I finished the post of two days ago with: Be sure to come back to read about my bicycle trip. And then, of course, I didn't blog about it. I The next post was about delayed onset muscle soreness (a fancy way of saying I had trouble walking after playing basketball).
Today, finally, the post about the bicycling in Franklin. It was written Thanksgiving day.
When I'd loaded the bike up I'd noticed the back tire was flat. I wasn't terribly surprised as I'd ridden through something the night before and, well, things like this happen. I typically have an extra inner tube with me so this wasn't a big deal. When I went to change the tube, after we had Thanksgiving, I was a bit surprised at the size of the hole and the lack of any corresponding hole in the tire itself. The tube looked like someone had used a 3-hole punch to remove a bit of it. It was apparent that it had failed after I put the bike up after the last ride as a hole this size would have resulted in an immediate flat. Ah well. I figured I had tube with a weak spot. I put the new tube in and pumped the tire up. As I stepped back from the bike the new tube blew. WTF? I had, believe it or not, even another tube with me (This surprised dad and led him to comment that when he was little they were lucky to have one extra tube.). That tube, I'd patched and, well, I just wasn't happy with it. I went to Wal-Mart and picked up the last 27 x 1/4 tube they had. I put it on the bike and pumped it up. Samson, my helper throughout all of this, looked at my work and said, "Dad, there's something over here." The something was a sidewall failure that was allowing the tube to bulge out between the tire and the rim. Even as I guessed that the soon-to-come micro-explosion would leave a hole that looked like someone took a 3-hole punch to the tire, I got busy letting the air out of it. Back to Wal-Mart for a tire. Of course, they didn't have one. I have one on a shelf in my garage, 90 miles away from where I am now. There was no ride and, so far, no pictures of the cute little town I grew up in.
Posted by delmer at 12:06 AM
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While this might sound like a cycling entry at first, and while you may be tired of those, if you can manage to make your way through it you'll find that it's more about life, luck, and love. Saturday, as you know, I went out for a ride on The Mighty Schwinn and just over a mile into that ride I broke a spoke. What I failed to mention when I first blogged about this was that when the ride started I was in an incredibly-good biking mood. The blog entry for that day was going to be something short that encouraged everybody to buy a bike and get out on it once in a while. Such was the weather, traffic, and saddle-induced butt tingle surrounding the start of Saturday's ride. And then I broke a spoke which led to the evening ride in the dark. When I picked the bike up from the spoke replacement I also bought a new chain. I've got some sort of clunking thing going on with the bike that may be happening only when the bike is in the second-largest gear in the back. Really it doesn't matter. What does matter are that there are just a few things that can go wrong with respect to the drive train on a bike. I'd already replaced the bottom bracket and I'd had everything else looked at and tightened. The chain seemed like a good thing to buy and the tech, upon inspecting it, indicated I had a lot of extra play in it. Last night it looked like I was going to get out in time to ride in the daylight. As I pulled the bike out of the garage I remembered I wanted to change the chain and, as it takes about 10 minutes to do, thought I'd get on it. You know how it is: when you buy something new that you think will solve a problem you want to put it into service as fast as possible. I whipped out my chain breaker, pushed a pin through the old chain, and went to back the chain breaker out. It sort of hung. Rather than go into all the details, let me just say that twenty minutes later, making use of a giant clamp, a workbench, and a box-end wrench I used to add some leverage to help me screw and unscrew the only moving part of the chain breaker, I had broken it. No ride Sunday then. Today I got up bright an early and went into work. It's supposed to be pretty warm today, for November, and right around 10 a.m. it got sunny. It was then I decided I'd take a 1/2 day off to put some time in on the bike. I left work at 12:30 and was home a few minutes later. It still wasn't as hot as it was supposed to be so I decided to clean out the minivan and garage. I also raked some more leaves. Around 1:30 I got busy putting the chain on the bike (I'd purchased a new chain breaker on the way home). I probably had it on by 1:40. I'm thinking it started to rain at 1:41. It was just a light sprinkle so and I came in to check weather.com. You'll notice that on the entire map there are but two rainy-looking areas. The one that was sprinkling on me is the small patch that is on Dublin in this picture. Hilliard is just about where the 270 shield is. What are the odds? Well, it looks like the "bad" weather is by me. I should probably get on it. (I realize the sprinkles I'm getting might be so light they don't show up on radar. I just thought the radar had a coincidental look to it.)
Posted by delmer at 2:23 PM
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Oh people. It's been a big day. My goal was to do a bit of shopping and put 50 miles on The Mighty Schwinn. As you may remember, all good bike rides start with breakfast at Mel's Diner. Mel's, unfortunately, is closed for remodeling and the first order of business for today was to find an emergency-backup breakfast place. I settled on Chef's House just down the road from me and on the way to where I intended to go shopping. I had a western omelet, home fries and toast. I don't always have breakfast potatoes; if I know I'm going to be riding later, and burning them off, I'm more likely to order them. After breakfast I shot off to the Eddie Bauer Warehouse Store to buy some pants. As I got out of the van I realized I'd left my 20%-off coupon at home; since I was going to be getting just pants I decided to forget the savings rather than drive the 6.5 miles back home for the coupon. Well, pants that were originally (theoretically ...) $45-$65 were $9.99. Additionally, I found some long-sleeved shirts that fit and were $12.99. And there was the leather jacket that had been marked $245.00 (and was a tall) and was 75% off. I never, ever, ever buy clothes. As a matter of fact, one of the sweet things about wearing jeans to work (and being a guy) is that I can wear the same pair every day for a week and who's to know the difference? Anyway, I'm trying to justify my purchases, and really, I just needed the pants and shirts. Since I'd gone beyond a single pair of pants I thought I'd drive home for my coupon. It's a 6.5 mile drive and I should have been able to make it in about 10 minutes if I caught the lights. It took about 20, maybe a few minutes more, with traffic. The only reason this is worth noting is that in the time it took me to return to Eddie Bauer and pay, the OSU/Michigan game started. That return trip home took about 10 minutes; the streets were mostly empty and I caught all the lights. Today it was in the mid-40's and rather pleasant so I threw the Lycra on and prepared to ride to Mechanicsburg. One point three miles into the trip I broke a spoke. Thirty minutes later I was at the bike shop. Rats! I was still eager to get sweaty. As the women readers seem to be unable to take any sort of hint, specifically: You might also want to mention that your kids go to your ex's Friday night and will be gone until the next Friday Hold on, with Mel's closed you probably have no idea how to catch up to me. Anyway, I thought my best shot at working up a sweat might be to do some work in the garage. The bike shop called around 4 and I picked up the bike at 5:30. I made a quick stop at Kroger to buy groceries (turkey was $.49 a pound). Right at 8 p.m. I left the house and put 22 miles on The Mighty Schwinn.
new, hip, gynecologist.November 19, 2007
Spitting Rain
November 17, 2007
Saturday in Review
Mel's is closed for remodeling.
This is Chef's House. I'm guessing you'd have known that without my pointing it out.
This is the parking lot for the bike path area. On a day as nice as today it would normally be pretty full. On an OSU/Michigan Football Saturday, it is totally empty. I don't get it.
Posted by delmer at 10:45 PM | Comments (9)
November 13, 2007
Thanksgiving at Work
Today, at work, we celebrated Thanksgiving. The company provides turkeys and a lot of us bring in a covered dish. Some of us, guys who blog better than they cook, kick in some money.
As I've said before, I work for one of the best companies ever.
In addition to today's Thanksgiving Feast we also had kick-ass weather and I decided to take the bike on a 17.5-mile lunchtime spin. (I had my Thanksgiving feast at my desk while I worked on some things.) When I was out I snapped this horrible picture of the Outback Blimp. I've no idea why it's in Columbus and I think it's mere coincidence that it's been headed toward our Outback the two days I've seen it. Both times, by the way, I was out on the bicycle at around 1 p.m.
It was my intention for this photo to show what a nice day we're having. As you can see, that's hardly the feeling one gets from this picture.
Anyway, it's about 61 F (16 C), sunny and nice.
Posted by delmer at 5:12 PM | Comments (8)