bike

But it’s still only 9:30pm, so it’s not over yet. So I’m going to enjoy it for a while longer, before I spoil it all by writing about it.

Even my journal’s lounged since Friday morning.

I’m going to have some tea and watch 300 with my wife.

Two weeks ago, Dan helped me put a crate on my bike. He even traded me this frikkin sweet red one. I should write about it more for the bike site, but it’s perfect for this particular Photo Friday: Exercise. Because riding four miles home from work, all uphill, with weight in this baby, is exercise!  I’ll write up directions/how it works on the bike site.  There you go.

Now I can take all my crap to work without getting sweaty. Plus, I wonder what effect it is having on potential thieves. It’s not all that cool looking, unless you’re a Fred. But it’s awesome just the same. A family member saw me riding home one day and identified me by that big red red red crate.  And it’s a great canvas for stickers, which adorn it currently.

Dan’s awesome backpack he’s taken everywhere, even to the hospital when his adorable daughter was born, with a Czech army bag I bought in Philly two weeks ago.  I might need to rethink my baggage for going to work.  Rainy days where I need to bring clothes and my big Klean Kanteen require a second bag, which is a pain.

[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.

In celebration of Paps’s birthday today, NBBB is having a casual ride to Fell’s Point.  Here is the poem I will toast with:

I’m off’n wild wimmens
An cognac
An sinnin’
For I’m in loOOOOOOOve!
~ E.H.  Paris, ca. 1922.

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.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that my grandmother was staying with my parents in Hampden this spring.  She went home to Canton three weeks ago.  Everything was fine, and then she could not move yesterday.  So my mother, her twin brother, her older brother and I spent yesterday at the hospital.  We were there pretty much the whole day.  They X-rayed my grandmother’s hip; couldn’t see anything.  We sat around for an hour and half waiting for someone to get her and take her to get a CAT scan.  Finally, the nurse got fed up and took her down herself.  Nothing was broken.  All day in the hospital for them to tell her to take Tylenol.

But what’s very weird to me is seeing her re-arranged rowhouse.  While the couch, chairs and TV set have been replaced a few times, the arrangement of the furniture in my grandmother’s house has remained unchanged since I was born.  Seriously.  Even before my parents were married, according to photos I’ve seen.  Now, the dining room table is gone, and there’s a bed there.  Large wooden things have been moved around, and the plasma TV my least favorite uncle bought has been ignored in favor of a smaller TV closer to the bed.  It looks like a different house, and it signals something sinister to me.

That my grandmother is on her way out, not a pleasant thought.  Nor what that means for my mother, her brothers, the ton of grandkids and greatgrandkids.  Not a pleasant thought at all.  I don’t really know what/how I think or feel about the downwardly-sliding situation.  I am really trying not to do either of them.

I do know that it’s frustration to be able to do nothing.

Geez, with the bike blog and with my free time being tied up in bikes right now, I’ve been neglecting this blog. Sorry. Go on over to NBBB for more on Ikea bikes.

But I won’t do something jerky like make that my “this weekend I spent hours fixing bikes” blog.  That’s this one!  My pal needed work done on his front derailer (Sheldon’s spelling), and Mrs. P. needed both of hers attended to.  Thing is, I forgot about the moving sun where I was working, and I got a bit of a sunburn.  I’ve gotten a few of those this year.  That’s not going to help the fact that I already look older than I am and have reached the age where that’s not good news anymore, just news.

But fixing things is always fun, and when you’re helping people to keep biking, that’s awesome, too.  Sunburn be damned.  A liter of water, an energy coffee drink dealy and Chinese food, and I was ready to face the world.

Which I did that evening, and Mr. Dan and I blasted all over North Baltimore, in search of a milestone on his new cyclometer.  We celebrated with cold drinks and chocolate, Mr. Dan’s treat.

I recently watched all six Star Wars films, too, in chronological order.  That is, in the order of The Force, not The Box Office.  Mrs. P. had never seen them, and I tried to keep my mouth shut.  I really did.  I hate how they changed the song at the end of Return of the Jedi, one of the most [musically] triumphant movie endings ever.  The other CGI stuff, I don’t know.  Whatever.  I’m pissed about that song!

Where are all these frikkin storms?

Damn.

Dudes, you gotta check out North Baltimore Bike Brigade site.  It’s getting written on, yo.  It’s here.

[Larger.]

Bikes locked together at the Ecofestival a few weeks ago.  Mine is on the right.

Photo Friday: Difficult Shot.

Shyte’s been whacky lately.  Have a lot to think about.  I sewed stuff tonight, too, after making one US gallon of homemade salsa for my mother, for M-Day.

We were out riding Saturday, hitting Lake Roland at Robert E. Lee Park. We were blowing down Bellemore Road in North Baltimore, a super drop. I mean, you’re running at 25 mph pounding the brakes, and you get back up 10 more miles per hour inside twenty yards if you let off the brakes. It’s not a drop for a problem. Toward the bottom, something sounded like it bounced off of my bike, my helmet visor and my glasses. Dan turned around. We stopped at Falls Road, and I wanted to touch my rims, to see how hot they were. Dan said he thought he snapped a brake cable, that something shuddered through his entire bike. I was like, “Yeah, you hit me with a rock!” I was thinking of how crappy the situation would have been if it had hit me in the tooth. We stopped for coffee drinks, hit the lake, chilled, cleaned out our brake pads and got moving.  A nice, relaxing ride.

Dan’s wheel was wobbling and hitting his brake arms. What the frikk?

We decided to walk the four miles home, rather than risk an injury or further damage. Dan was afraid that the heat of the descent warped his rims. I thought maybe he snapped or bent an axle. I mean, I can true a wheel like a sumbitch (for not getting paid to do it and having very little experience, that is). But I didn’t have any spoke wrenches on me.  We got home fine, though, and all was well.  I ate half a pizza for dinner.

Talked to Dan Sunday, and he found the problems. Bent axle, but also a snapped spoke. It was still attached to the nipple (huh huh huh), so we didn’t see it. No prob! We hit the shop, bought a spoke and went about getting it on. The freewheel was being a bee-otch and had to go into the bench vise.  The lockring tool had to, that is. That took a while. But then it came off, got cleaned up, Dan put the spoke on, and I got the wheel nice and trued up.  Working on bikes is a hell of a lot of fun.

Also, I was introduced to Lava Soap. Awesome.

[Also for Photo Friday: Professional.]

You a damn fine freewheel,
Won’t you back that axle up?

The sidewalk chalk area during the Ecofestival in Druid Hall Park last week.  North Baltimore Bike Brigade!  I really have to finish our website and get a ride together and go seriously public.  For Photo Friday: My Little Secret.

Geez, there’s a lot going on. Sorry for the absence.  There’s a lot to tell, from the Ecofestival, to teaching cycling to job hunting adventures and family visits.  More to come.  But here is what I rode to teach cycling with.  The blue box is full of bike tools.  This load [larger] was heavy enough that I almost dropped my bike down some stairs and did drop my cool new frame pump.  We had a little group ride across The Avenue Friday night.  If you heard bike bells going nuts and saw a line of bikes, I was second from the end, with two red lights and a big butt.