bicycling

Monday, I was at work between my normal workday and a community meeting I had to go to at night.  My knee was bothering me again, so I read up on what a trainer in college told me I had.  She was crazy, but I think she was right.  Except about the part about surgery.  Turns out it’s almost always exercise/PT, often involving cycling.  The inflamation is worse when sitting.  Yes.  So I took the long way to the meeting, and my knee felt a good bit better.  Yesterday also.  But I thought I’d rest it today and took the bus, which I’ll do for the rest of the week.  Okay, maybe it’s a wuss move, but at least I’m not driving, right?  The bus is its own kind of fun, actually.

And I met another cyclist in the church basement at the community meeting Monday who wears the reflective ankle straps I wear to keep my pants out of my chainrings.  I told him I was glad to not be the only one to have them, and we talked about favorite jeans ruined by chainrings and chains.  I also became less anal about wear-and-tear on my bike yesterday, through realizing that getting upset about a new scratch on my fork blade, when there are dozens all over my bike and that it had some from the shop anyway, is just stupid.

Either deal with it, or hate my bike and never ride.  Never ride?  F@#$ that.

And I finally have shoes on!  I realize there are people at work who have never ever seen me in shoes.  This is funny.  The purchase process was almost too good to be true, for someone who doesn’t wear leather but doesn’t want to drop $150 on shoes either.  First place I looked, got em.  Very nice price, too, with free shipping to boot.  Picked up my package at someone else’s house, strapped a large box to my bike (bought two sizes to try) and rode home in rush hour.  It was awesome.

But I don’t want to portray myself as a constant consumer, at least not of anything but notebooks, coffee/tea and bike innertubes.

My bike is getting rained on right now.  And there’s nothing covering the seat.  I am going to have a squooshy ride home.

Dear Lady in the Beat-Up Green Malibu:

It was pretty funny yesterday afternoon, how you blew your horn at me on my bike for a full second, as we approached 25th Street.  It was a good joke when I was in the straight lane so as not to block folks making this legal right on red and  how we weren’t even stopped yet.  I’m so polite that I’m a joker.  It was all very funny.  How you couldn’t even make your turn after you scared the shit out of me because of the traffic.  How we were uncomfortably face-to-face when my heart was racing and your window was open.  I felt like I should say “Hello” or something.  Oh, but I was laughing too hard inside!

Oh, and you were on your phone.

That’s why you were a bitch?  Yeah.  If I were a braver man, I’d have reached into your car and taken that phone.  I wouldn’t have touched you.  Don’t worry.  But you’d never see that phone again.  Part of me hopes that you got two flat tires or rear-ended a parked car and didn’t hurt anyone but instead caused yourself a lot of trouble.  But that’s not the funny part of me.

Here’s to hoping that you dropped your phone later and that it was run over by the fattest cyclist in Baltimore.

Go to hell,

This Dude

A few weeks ago, my friend and I embarked on a milkcrate installation and tire/tube replacement on a quiet Saturday afternoon. It was very spur-of-the-moment and got more so with the addition of snacks and beer. I got some photos of Mr. D doing funny things with his knee brace, but I’ll keep those to myself.

This probably makes it look like we’re whinos. But this was definitely a treat for both of us.

Photo Friday: Spontaneous.

(I know; we have a bike blog. But I’ve been dominating the posting lately and have been neglecting this blog, so here you go.)

It’s a bee-otch. I have been having a lot of tire trouble lately. Or, maybe, I’m just riding more and getting more flats. I officially blame the Jones Falls Trail, particularly the part under the Howard Street bridge. Of my recent flats, three were caused by glass from right there. And after my recent adventures, I’m rocking Kevlar-belted tires. That didn’t help yesterday when three huge slivers of glass that looked like quartz stems stabbed my tire. I came out from work and suspected someone was messing with my lock and noticed my rear flat. I didn’t feel like patching, so I put my spare tube on. Those tires are pain to get back on, so it took a bit for me to figure out the trick. I was running low on air, so I stopped to put some air in when I got to the trail and realized why: busted valve stem. While I was examining this, some dickhead wizzed by me on his bike without a word, bell, etc. (I hope your trunk bag fell in some mud, wanker.)

What’s up with the rude cyclists lately? Are they pissed that they have to ride because of gas prices or something? I mean, I love the greater number of cyclists. But there was a time when most of the people I passed greeted me back or even first. You know: last year!

Anyway, I went to some shade to patch my tube after taking off this new and busted tube. Some old guy came over and silently watched my work. Told me I have a nice bike. That I should get some tire strips and that I would have payed less for my bike at the bike shop he likes. I didn’t feel like getting into how tire strips rub and then cause flats, how the price of my bike did not differ (in fact) from the different Giant dealers in the Baltimore area in October 2006. I just finished, thanked him for his company with a handshake and went on my way.

I was stupid enough to try to plug the hole in my tire tread with rubber cement. Did a number on the rest of the rubber. I think it’s Okay for a while. But I patched the inside of the tire, ordered two spare tires and some more spare tubes — just in case. Overhauled my brakes last night, too. Replaced my front pads, which were doing a number to my rims. Poor things.

I rode a different way to work this morning, avoiding my usually sylvan ride in favor of riding through traffic the whole way. In some respects, I like it better. Though I’m probably upping my chances of getting hit. When I was on the Maryland Avenue bride this morning, I turned around and saw four other cyclists riding to work and school. Five bikes on that little bridge at once!

Biking in Baltimore is coming around.

I wish I could sit home with a good book on a day like today. I like my job. Here I am, hyped up on coffee and with a few minutes to spare. And I’m blogging on company time, on a computer that is supposed to be “monitored.” But, like I said, I like my job. A lot. Being a VISTA is great, and I have a nice little office with nice people in nice little offices up here on the top floor.  I have a lot of lunch meetings, but not today.  Today, I get to do my favorite thing aside from biking up to Charles Village to meet Mrs. P.: get a coffee/snack and hole up in my office for an hour reading a good book.  It’s a good way to spend lunchtime.

I wussed out and took the bus to work today. I rode the bus three days last week, but that’s because The Duke was tire-less. I’ll ride my bike in the rain, and I have. But “severe storms” — no. Not if I don’t have to. Not today. The bus picks me up outside my apartment building and drops me at Penn Station, across Charles Street from my office. It’s a good deal. I am soaked now from a coffee run with a co-worker. My sandals are on the AC vent drying. My bike is at home with new rim tape, new tubes and new tires with frikkin Kevlar in them. I feel like I’m cheating or being disloyal.

I am tired. I went to see Candlebox with my brother Sunday night, tickets to which show (along with a Tshirt) were my birthday gift. It was a hell of a lot of fun, but I was beat yesterday. Yesterday, I worked from 9am - 8pm and ate pasta and green beans when I got home and watched TV and went to bed. I’m still tired, but that could be the weather now that I think of it.

This blog got all “this happened, and I did this, etc.” all the sudden.

[Larger.]
Not my bike.  (My rims are black.)  This is what happens when you don’t notice there’s no air in your tire and then try to ride off.  Busted valve stem; Slime didn’t help.  I sanded this rim for this person.  Because I like playing with sandpaper.  And because I like this person.  A lot.

Photo Friday: Awful.

This is a neat article on the environmental benefits of being lazy. Funny, I didn’t know that I have been saving the planet my whole life!

Yeah, but, uh, just so you know, person in article: not buying stuff does not make you a “transcendentalist.”

From the same source, a piece on kids never going outside. This is strange to me. When I was a kid, not going outside to play was a punishment or my parents being strict because of rain. We rode bikes, created our own baseball league with stats kept in copybooks, played guns, got into minor trouble, socialized sans playdates, etc. But the kids I work with on cycling, most of them, don’t do anything like that. If they go over one another’s houses, its by car and their parents’ permission. Two made it to thirteen without learning to ride a bike at all. But with cycling, you have to go out, learn, risk, engage. It’s very different from the online video games these kids use as social interaction.

I think that’s why they’re taking to cycling like they are. One young man has taken his bike as transportation a few times that I know of, trips of a few miles for which his parents would usually drive him. I think that’s awesome. A few of them seem to enjoy learning how their bikes work, and most of them are amazed when I tell them something like, “That wasn’t hard, was it? We just rode thirteen miles.”

There’s hope! And, ahem, it seems like bikes certainly help.

Next month, Waverly Main Street and Greater Homewood Community Corporation are hosting the National Night Out Kick-Off parade, which includes a Bike Pageant.

Download the flier here, which I host with permission from GHCC’s PR person.

People can ride in the parade by signing up.  I might do it in a dress or some other feat of daring.  Daring because I don’t have a step-through frame, not because wearing a dress is necessarily brave.  I played a little gig in a nightgown once, in college.

Even more info can be found at Waverly Mainstreet’s blog.