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AG: Aunt Granny's Advice, or How to become an elderly cyclist:



 
 
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  #811  
Old June 15th 18, 02:14 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Thursday's ride

On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 12:19:58 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

One of my personal sadnesses is the realization that potholes form much
more quickly where trees shade the road. And in bright sunlight, the
dappled shadows make it hard to see those potholes.

I love trees and I love smooth roads. I wish they weren't in conflict.


I haven't noticed that, perhaps because around here tree-lined roads
tend to be roads used only by the people who live on them.

When I lived in upstate New York, and trained for the September
Century every summer, I was much puzzled by the brown line on my left
calf. Eventually I realized that whenever the sun was to my right, I
was on the shady side of the road. I still have a tendency to put
more sunscreen on my left leg.

When planning tomorrow's ride, I noticed that Google Maps will now
allow me to ride a bike over Chinworth Bridge. Previously, I had to
map two separate rides.

So I switched to walking mode: they still won't let me step over the
curb between KCH and the Beyer Farm Trail. I suspect that they can't
figure out a way to let walkers use routes that aren't in their data
base without letting their automatic route maker route people through
buildings.

I do walk through buildings when I haven't got the bike with me. When
I was in college, I regularly cut through the State House to get to
the state library. And always reflected on how IMPRESSED I had been
the first time I saw the inside.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
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  #812  
Old June 15th 18, 02:42 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default I hope this one sticks



Tomorrow is what feels like my fifteenth first long ride of the year.
I did go to Leesburg during the winter. And brought back duck confits
that didn't quite fit into the insulated pannier. (I had thought that
I could re-pack them, but the packets of meat had been tossed into the
box any old way and they froze into odd shapes.)

I considered printing out the Friday specials and asking Dave what he
felt like, then reflected that it's going to be ninety degrees (30 C)
out -- stuffed chicken breasts are the only thing that I know for sure
will fit compactly into my insulated pannier and fill up all the
space, with just enough room for Black Ice at each end. And we are
out of stuffed chicken breasts. Chicken chips can wait. (And I've
still got plenty of confit.)

This will be the first time I've worn cleated shoes. I'll have
sandals in the other pannier, of course.

Switchel is cooling in the fridge. I boiled a bottle of water with
some ginger shavings, a teaspoon or so of honey, a coffee measure of
red-wheat flour, and three stalks of rhubarb. Three because they are
spindly and don't have much flavor. It tastes pretty good. Enough
water boiled away that I can add a little orange juice in the morning.
I have small zipper bags of ice cubes in the deep freeze with the
Black Ice, so I can add ice after I've drunk some.

I'm going to need tea. But I need a bottle of plain water, I don't
want to take a non-disposable bottle that isn't in a bottle cage, and
tea should be in a bottle that I can drink from. Inspiration struck: I
put a teaspoon of leaves into a "pill pouch" (tiny zip-lock bag) and
added it to my emergency-food bag. If I can't buy tea at Sandy's
Sports Bar, I can eat the leaves. And at ninety degrees, it wouldn't
take all that long to cold-brew it.

I got my long-sleeved linen jersey out of storage. Much to my
surprise, it is in good repair. The outer pockets are tighter than I
remember; when I make my new one, I'll see whether I can steal a
centimeter from each end of the middle pocket.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/



  #813  
Old June 16th 18, 03:11 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default I hope this one sticks


The dime dropped during this ride: I should make my switchel
extra-strong, carry it in a disposable bottle, and use it to flavor
water I pick up along the way. Since an eighth of a cup of flour
didn't thicken it at all, I think I could put a quarter of a cup into
an imperial pint without making it too thick to strain. I've read
that acid can thin starch-based sauces, and the rhubarb was quite
tart. And it's oxalic acid, which is much stronger than vinegar.

(Looked it up. Cornstarch is particularly known as unsuitable for
thickening acid dishes. It's impossible to discuss white sauce
without expressing great horror at the possibility of "the taste of
uncooked flour". As I child, I picked wheat and ate it right off the
plant. It's *good* raw!)

I took a one-quart disposable bottle of water along, and still had a
pint in it when I got home.

To my surprise, I didn't feel tired at all when I got home. Perhaps
that is because Stacy's Sports Bar served my tea in a quart glass, and
when I'd nearly finished it, the waitress topped it off with more tea
(because the ice had melted) than had been in it in the first place,
and it was quite strong. When I finished my soup I poured the
remaining tea -- about half a pint -- into the bottle I'd planned to
ask her to fill with water. (The quart in the pannier had not been
touched at this time.) The ice in the tea went into the switchel, and
when I packed the chicken breasts in Black Ice, I added ice from the
sandwich bags I'd packed with The Black Ice. The ice cubes went on
top of the newspaper over the frozen food, and most of them went into
the switchel at various stops. At the last diluting of the switchel,
I dropped the ice onto the concrete. I rinsed each cube with a squirt
of water from the bottle I'd refilled inside, put most into the
switchel, and a few back into the bag. All this made a surprisingly
small mess on the concrete.


On Thu, 14 Jun 2018 22:42:13 -0300, Joy Beeson
wrote:

I got my long-sleeved linen jersey out of storage. Much to my
surprise, it is in good repair. The outer pockets are tighter than I
remember; when I make my new one, I'll see whether I can steal a
centimeter from each end of the middle pocket.


I thought I'd been flipping my cookie, as items I thought I'd put in
the end pockets kept vanishing and turning up, to my vast relief, in
the middle pocket. Turns out that my row of pockets has internal
leaks.

I suspect that the leaks may be deliberate, as I end dividing stitches
above the fold to eliminate lint traps. Most likely the stitches came
undone, but it's possible that I made the spaces too big in the first
place.

I haven't examined it closely to see which because it's wet. I was
obliged to walk through a patch of poison ivy, so I undressed into the
washing machine -- which I'd have done anyhow: most of the tea,
switchel, and water that I drank ended up on my skin. I ran my
sleeves under the faucet at Aldi, and twelve minutes later, when I
stopped at Owen's, the sleeves were bone dry.

I can't say the same for arms inside them.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/



  #814  
Old June 18th 18, 03:16 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Thursday's ride

On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 12:19:58 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

And in bright sunlight, the
dappled shadows make it hard to see those potholes.


I was reminded of this conversation last Thursday. On my way to
Leesburg for frozen stuffed chicken breasts, I turned onto the
Chinworth Bridge Trail.

Actually, I crossed Zimmer Road after walking through the Zimmer
campus, changed from walking shoes to riding shoes while leaning
against the Mile Zero post, and remounted.

As I rode around the first curve, I reflected that I must be alert for
the trench across the trail just outside the fence around the
City-County Athletic Complex. I've been threatening to take Dave's
spray can of yellow paint with me and mark that trench, but even if
I'd thought of it, I wouldn't have wanted to haul a can of paint to
Leesburg and back.

Just far enough in to be concealed by the curve, there was a patch of
dappled shade the full width of the pavement. I'd been on the Trail
recently, and knew that the trench was the only notable flaw, but one
can't really count on that: witness Winona Avenue two or three weeks
ago, when I would have crashed, and might have fallen under the wheels
of a heavy vehicle, if I hadn't already had both hands on the brakes.
On Saturday, the hole in the "bike lane" was more dangerous than ever
because cars had splashed the gravel around, but I saw it sooner.

But that was the only such place on the whole trip, which Google Maps
says was nearly thirty miles. (28.2 miles, give or take five) There
were lots of trees, but either the shade was solid or it extended only
a little bit into the lane, so that I could ride around it.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
  #815  
Old June 18th 18, 03:38 PM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Thursday's ride

On Sun, 17 Jun 2018 23:16:59 -0300, Joy Beeson
wrote:

Winona Avenue two or three weeks
ago, when I would have crashed, and might have fallen under the wheels
of a heavy vehicle, if I hadn't already had both hands on the brakes.
On Saturday, the hole in the "bike lane" was more dangerous than ever
because cars had splashed the gravel around, but I saw it sooner.


This morning a worker at Grace College maintenance radioed another
asking him (or maybe her; I didn't hear the reply) to find out what
fiber-optic cable company had dug up the campus, because he wanted to
do some major-league cussing. They had damaged a sewer line, and
they'd left a hatch open that a student might have fallen into.

He added that they had done this all over Winona, so I think I know
the cause of my narrow escape from disaster.

Just looked up my training log: the narrow escape happened on 9 June
2018.

Would you believe, Google Maps marks Winona Avenue as particularly
suitable for bicycles? They also mark the part of Wooster Road that
I'll go miles out of my way to avoid.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
  #816  
Old June 25th 18, 04:34 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default AG: A Sunday Ride


I had trouble getting out of bed this morning, so I thought it wise to
ride my pedal-powered wheelchair (AKA "Trek Pure") to church.

On the way home, I took a tour of the Grace Campus in the hope that a
little extra distance would make up for missing my Sunday walk.

As I was passing one of the dorms, I saw a row of schoolyard-wreck
style bike racks with a slight twist: they still hold the bike by the
wheel, but by the *top* of the wheel instead of the bottom. Something
pushing against the bike couldn't get as much leverage as with the
dish-drainer style -- and the triangles hanging down from the top of
the rack cover a larger area of the wheel than the dish drainer.

I could see myself parking the Trek in one of these, but I'd continue
to cable the Fuji to the end.

In downtown, on the other hand, both of the rack designs installed by
the City of Warsaw support the bike by the frame.

Whoosh! While trying to find the names of the two styles of rack
(serpentine and decorative Sheffield), I learned that in Washington
D.C., a garage capable of parking one hundred fifty bikes was built at
a cost of eight million dollars. My calculator just gave up the
ghost, but my naked brain and a sheet of paper make that
$53,333.33/bike. That sounds like Washington. (The bogus precision is
all my own.)

While on the campus, I rode on a crosswalk, not only without getting
off the bike, but without stopping. Yes, I inveigh against this
practice, but the visibility was good. Not to mention that this was
in a school parking lot on a Sunday, during summer break. And the
right-of-way crossed wasn't so much a driveway as a neck between two
parts of the parking area.

When I found the entrance to the Heritage Trail after exploring the
campus, including an extra loop so that I could look at a one-way
drive -- the only car that I saw moving on the campus came out of that
driveway, so I didn't feel like being a scofflaw -- I noticed that a
bike lane painted on the pavement of the parking lot appeared to be
intended to be the main route to entrance, so I followed it to see
where it came from. It followed the edge of the parking lot for a
while, then changed to crosswalk paint where that parking lot branched
into a smaller one, and became a sidewalk on the other side. I
swerved onto the smaller parking lot and rode alongside the sidewalk,
only to discover that the parking lot ended and the walkway continued.
So I rode over the grass dividing strip without dismounting, which I
wouldn't have done on the Fuji, but the fat thirty-pound tires on my
wheelchair don't make grooves in grass. The walkway led to a sidewalk
along King's Highway.

So I turned around and rode across the crosswalk again. Just inside
the gates of the Heritage Trail, there was a worn spot beside the
trail. I parked the Trek on it and walked back to the parking lot to
take some notes. Just as I was preparing to walk back around the
gates, a bike rider wearing what bike-haters call "spandex" came out
of the trail, and said "Hi" as he passed in the general direction of
the dormitories. He overtook me shortly after I completed the steep
downhill portion of the trail; whether he had climbed the hill for
exercise or had a very short errand on the campus, I've no idea.

I've done this loop in the other direction on the Fuji, but I wouldn't
even start it on the Trek -- I have to get off shortly after crossing
the bridge over Wyland Ditch, long before I get to King's Highway.
(Though it was a short ride from the entrance to the road by sidewalk,
it's quite long by Heritage Trail.)

Hmm . . . How can I go down so much on the Trail, and along the level
on the sidewalk, when there is no noticeable hill on Pierceton
Road/Kings Highway? Google Maps gives no clue. Pity Top Maps are no
longer available.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/



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  #817  
Old June 28th 18, 04:36 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default AG: What's the opposite of a triangle?


Preparing for tomorrow's dump tour with return through Sprawlmart, I
leafed through today's Big R ad to see whether I want anything other
than cat food when I stop there.

I came across a "paper decal" of the SMV triangle: "Universally used
for all slow-moving vehicles".

Just where, I asked myself, would you stick that thing on a bicycle?
Then I realized that what we really need is a "This is not a
stationary object" sticker.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

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  #818  
Old July 8th 18, 04:45 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Thursday's ride


Been a busy week, no time to write.

There are probably some ideas in all those untranscribed notes in my
notebook. I've started keeping a folder in the notebook case to stash
notes I haven't dealt with yet. There are at least two notes in there
that need to be posted to my bookkeeping program.

Thursday's ride is probably the most-significant one of the
untranscribed notes -- I went to the Beyer Building for x-rays. The
paperwork clerk said that she hoped that she was as active at my age.
I didn't tell her "start now!", but I did mention that I can't drive
very far because sitting still touches off my bad leg.

Today's Farmers Markets tour was a bit involved. I was so intent on
not using Market Street on my way downtown that I was nearly there
before I remembered that I was on my way to the fairgrounds. Since I
had egg cartons to dump, I turned back onto the usable end of Market
Street, then cut over to Smith. I passed near the health-food store
on my way back downtown, so I dropped in for sesame sticks and bought
toffee-coated peanuts instead. I also stopped at every garage sale I
noticed. (And after getting back, I made a tour of the island to find
one that I'd seen advertised in the paper. It had been thoroughly
picked over by then. But I was slightly tempted by a vintage copy of
Mad Magazine.)

The crack-candy dealer was at the downtown market, and said that she
will be back again in two weeks, but I approached just as another
customer was walking away with her last bag of crack candy. The
vendor where I'd bought tomatoes last week had also sold out.

Then I took a few loops checking out a new clothing store I'd noticed
on First Friday. There were a few shirts hanging around, and I
noticed a pair of short short-shorts on my way out. I peg this as
another economic development that will close as soon as the start-up
money runs out. Returned to Owen's, where I'd made a pit stop
earlier, to pick up a box of Greek rotini salad for lunch, then
realized that crossing Detroit on Fort Wayne takes me right past
Subway and I haven't eaten there in months. Will be many more months
before I try again. Music so loud that when I asked for a moderate
amount of hot peppers I got a huge amount of sour peppers instead. The
doors were locked, the menu had been reduced, and the "nine-grain"
bread was mediocre. Whatever bread it was that I used to order had
been removed to make room for "flatbread" and "wraps".

Thence home by way of the Beyer Farm Trail. It felt weird to pass
both the emergency room and Owens East without stopping. Probably
could have taken magazines if I'd thought of it, but the Kroger side
of my shopping list is completely empty.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/



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  #819  
Old July 13th 18, 07:09 PM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
mac[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10
Default AG: What's the opposite of a triangle?


Preparing for tomorrow's dump tour with return through Sprawlmart, I
leafed through today's Big R ad to see whether I want anything other
than cat food when I stop there.

I came across a "paper decal" of the SMV triangle: "Universally used
for all slow-moving vehicles".

Just where, I asked myself, would you stick that thing on a bicycle?
Then I realized that what we really need is a "This is not a
stationary object" sticker.


https://www.adventurecycling.org/cyclosource-store/sp/jogalite-cyclists-safety-triangle/?nocache=1

On tour i usually hang it on the rear panniers
--
mac the naïf
  #820  
Old July 15th 18, 03:54 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Litter



Back in the sixties, the National Speleological Society had a slogan:
"If you packed it in, you can pack it out."

I was reminded of that yesterday*, when I was looking around for a
place to put the foam box my lunch came in.

*Thursday 12 July 2018

I'd made arrangements to be picked up if I didn't feel like riding
home, but an MRI is quite restful. First time in weeks that I've lain
on my back for an hour without touching off my sciatica.

So I stopped at the emergency room to drop off magazines and buy
lunch, went to the Beyer Trail and sat on the bench under the walnut
tree while eating, then went shopping.

I dropped the box into a trash can at the store while packing my
groceries.

--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.



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