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



 
 
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  #791  
Old March 25th 18, 04:58 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
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Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Bottles


If I don't ride, I have nothing to say.

If I do ride, I don't have time to write.

My Sheriff Goshert bottle has been acting up lately -- the valve keeps
closing itself, even when it's up-side down as I try to squirt a
little water into a recently-emptied tea bottle.

So a few days ago I stopped in the Trailhouse to look at bottles. They
didn't have very many, and they all had the same lid. It has some
sort of swirly double-ended lever at the base of the valve; in
retrospect the swirl reminds me of bas-relief handle of the emergency
feed on some paper-towel dispensers. The label said it was a lock to
prevent -- I've forgotten what it prevents, but I do remember thinking
that it was something that doesn't happen. No setting of the lever
appeared to open or close the valve, and pushing and pulling on the
tube above the lever, which looked very like the tooth-valve on a
bottle I purchased a year or five ago, had no effect.

In addition there was a deep dirt-trapping hole in the valve-homologue
which appeared to lead straight to the contents. This is the hole
that is filled with a round plug when an old-style bottle is closed.

This led me to examine my bottles after leaving the store. The
Sheriff Goshert bottle is flat on top when closed; if I got dirt on
it, I could wipe it off with my thumb. The plunger of the bottle I
bought a year or five ago has a shallow dimple on top, with a peak in
the middle. I could still clean it with my thumb, but only if I'm
wearing gloves.

Today I went for an exercise ride. I was disappointed when I couldn't
make it more than eighteen miles. (In the planning; I have yet to
make Google measure the way I actually went. I kind of miss the
knotted string I used to use; it was a lot quicker than feeding in all
those waypoints.)

But I think I get credit for twice that. At one point, while riding
east on a straight road through fields, I had to use my lowest gear to
ride down a hill. There were several mild hills that I walked.

It was somewhat better when I turned south. And when I reached the
westernmost point and started back, the wind dropped. I thought it
was just because I was riding with it, but I didn't see the slightest
motion in fine twigs and drooping dead leaves on the trees, and I did
encounter a pretty good gust just before I turned west again after
riding north for a mile or so.

The northernmost point of the route was Goodwill on Anchorage Point
Road. (Hey, I forgot to check the cutlery for brownie servers.) When
touring the plastics aisle, I saw two red bike bottles with black lids
advertising "Growing Kids Learning Centers", which I have never heard
of. [DuckDuckGo] They are in Elkhart. Why would somebody in Elkhart
shop in Warsaw?

Having taken my bottles in with me in the hope of making them less
cold, I was able to compare the Growing Kids bottles with the Sheriff
Goshert bottle. Exactly the same height to the shoulder, exactly the
same diameter. They looked smaller because they are of cheaper
construction. I decided that if they were still there after I'd
looked at the clothing, I'd buy them, but forgot about it until I was
at Panda Express. After lunch, I rode and walked and rode back to
Goodwill (the Meijer driveway is one-way for a very good reason, and
its sidewalk ends in a parking lot), and went straight to the plastics
aisle.

Coming in from this direction I noticed a greeny-blue bottle obviously
of the same manufacture. Despite being quite opaque, it is stenciled
"Clear Object". Much to my surprise, searching on that common phrase
proved fruitful. It's a company that appears to sell bafflegab
vaguely connected to computers. I did not click on the link.

My spouse, who never had a three-doctor incident and doesn't have
cataracts or epiretinal membrane, was able to make out "garyline" in
teeny-tiny embossed letters on the bottom. Garyline sells a lot of
interesting (and very cheap, minimum order fifty) stuff. I didn't
find any translucent bike bottles, but they jumble all their bottles
onto one page, so I can't say they don't sell them. I did find the
model Growing Kids and Clear Object bought.

Anyhow, I'm bottled for the foreseeable future. I'll use the bottle
brush vigorously before using the bottles. I usually just shake water
in a bottle before filling it, but heaven knows where these bottles
have been.

Time for bed already? [checks clock] Yup.

--
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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  #792  
Old March 28th 18, 10:18 PM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Changing Seasons


More signs of spring:

After using the hose yesterday, I left it attached to our frost-proof
faucet, reasoning that if a hard freeze were predicted, it would be
unusual enough to remind me to run out and unscrew it.

Today I unearthed the spading fork and went to the garden to harvest a
few winter onions to put into the meatloaf. Halfway there, I realized
that I had nothing to cut the roots with. It's time to resume pinning
a knife into the pocket of my slopping-around pants.

--
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.

  #793  
Old March 29th 18, 05:46 PM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Changing Seasons

On Wed, 28 Mar 2018 17:18:14 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

After using the hose yesterday, I left it attached to our frost-proof
faucet, reasoning that if a hard freeze were predicted, it would be
unusual enough to remind me to run out and unscrew it.


At dawn tomorrow, the temperature will dip below freezing briefly.
Probably not long enough to freeze a faucet, but unscrewing the hose
after I cleaned the cat box today appeared to be the better part of
valor.

Weather Underground also says that the rain will stop tonight and
tomorrow will be cloudy with winds below ten miles per hour. Beats
shifting down to ride downhill, as I did on my latest excursion! But
they will shift from out of north to out of the west at about the time
I turn around and start going south. (The route to Leesburg is pretty
much due north, with few windbreaks.)

Weather Underground also says most of the clothing I start out wearing
is going to come back in the pannier: freezing at dawn and close to
48F from 16:00 to 18:00. Sunset about eight, civil twilight until
half past.

Now to work up some enthusiasm for going someplace. Perhaps if I show
my spouse the e-mail from Duck Down & Above, I can talk him into
asking for some frozen meat. If I thought I could jump straight from
twenty miles to thirty, I'd go to Spring Creek.

Cool! Google Maps now shows a chart of elevations when in bicycle
mode. Or maybe that's only when I log in with Firefox; XP crashed
when I tried to open Pale Moon to check. Well, it didn't crash, it
just said it wouldn't open it until I re-booted. (Agent and Pale Moon
are on different computers, so I can continue writing while XP
resets.)

--
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.
  #794  
Old March 30th 18, 05:28 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Changing Seasons

On Thu, 29 Mar 2018 12:46:48 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

Cool! Google Maps now shows a chart of elevations when in bicycle
mode. Or maybe that's only when I log in with Firefox;


With Pale Moon, Google works as it always has.

I've been less elated with the elevations that I can see on Firefox
after a route that I studiously avoid because the road up one steep
hill doesn't have any comfortable place to walk was rated as "mostly
flat". So I reduced the route to that one climb and was assured that
it was a gentle slope -- downhill. Perhaps the chart puts the
destination on the left?

With the "gentle slope" bit I have no argument. Fifteen years ago I
could have managed that hill without so much as switchbacking.

On the other hand, I accidentally discovered that the draggable
waypoints that were removed a few years ago are back! Moreover, when
you hover over a waypoint, the directions for that point appear as a
tooltip.

So I'm using Firefox to plot tomorrow's ride.

Up until now, I've been using Firefox only for reading PDF files.
Which I hardly ever do, because converting a file to PDF is so easy
that most of the PDF files on the Web are random slop.

My spouse just printed out a PDF giving instructions for planting the
asparagus we just bought. *That's* what PDF is for!

--
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.

  #795  
Old April 3rd 18, 04:01 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default AG: April Fool


Saturday night I was in too much pain to write, and on Sunday evening
I was too stupid from having skipped my nap -- not to mention four
hours in the car -- so there is no 1 April 2018 post.

The pain in my leg was just like over-doing injury, and I had taken
this year's longest ride on the previous day -- but in only one leg?
My annual visit to the N.P. is the day after tomorrow, and I'll talk
to her about it.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
  #796  
Old April 3rd 18, 06:41 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
John B.[_3_]
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Posts: 5,697
Default AG: April Fool

On Tue, 03 Apr 2018 00:01:30 -0300, Joy Beeson
wrote:


Saturday night I was in too much pain to write, and on Sunday evening
I was too stupid from having skipped my nap -- not to mention four
hours in the car -- so there is no 1 April 2018 post.

The pain in my leg was just like over-doing injury, and I had taken
this year's longest ride on the previous day -- but in only one leg?
My annual visit to the N.P. is the day after tomorrow, and I'll talk
to her about it.


Perhaps you are pedaling harder with one leg then the other. I know
that sounds sort of odd but some years ago I started an exercise
program of one leg pedaling and discovered that my right leg was
stronger then my left.
--
Cheers,

John B.

  #797  
Old April 8th 18, 02:31 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default AG: A curious incident


Since it's a glorious day and an incision on my forehead means I can't
wear my rear-view mirror, I decided to take the Trek Pure (aka
"pedal-powered wheelchair"} around the block. The shortest block was
as far as I cared to go. The Friday before yesterday, I took a
twenty-seven mile ride on my Fuji. Which is not curious at all; the
Trek Pure is emphatically and by design not a road bike. I sometimes
suspect it of being designed to keep Granny from wandering off.

The tires were soft, and it had been so long since I pumped up a tire
that I let the remaining air out of the back wheel while remembering
how the pump worked. It's a bit awkward to attach a pump to a
Schrader valve that just sinks down when you push on it, but I
managed, and the front wheel went much more smoothly.

What I find curious is that my pump's gage has a ring with an arrow on
it that one can turn to point at the desired pressure, so that one can
read the gage without bending over. This ring was set for thirty
pounds.

Which strongly suggests that the previous pumping-up had also been on
the pedal-powered wheelchair.

It's not really possible that a fat thirty-pound tire in good
condition would lose air faster than a skinny ninety-pound tire. I
must have re-set the ring for some reason.

Or maybe I should pump up the Fuji's tires on general principles.

--
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.
  #798  
Old April 12th 18, 03:44 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default AG: A curious incident

On 4/7/2018 9:31 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:

What I find curious is that my pump's gage has a ring with an arrow on
it that one can turn to point at the desired pressure, so that one can
read the gage without bending over.


After years of squinting at the gage on my floor pump, it occurred to me
to use a marker to put a line at my preferred pressure reading. Since
then, my eyes have gotten at least 10 years older, but the mark still works.

--
- Frank Krygowski
  #799  
Old April 15th 18, 02:56 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Kidical Mass


This morning I'm catching up on e-mails that have to be read on my
secondary computer. (My primary computer supports a browser that can
handle hypertext, but crashes when asked to read GraphixML, so I dare
not click on links in e-mail.)

One of the links was to a blog that called my attention to a group
called "Kidical Mass".

The very first entry in the Kidical-Mass FAQ says quite firmly and in
detail that Kidical Mass is nothing like Critical Mass. Which makes
me wonder why they deliberately chose a name that's an obvious
reference to a notorious anti-biking organization.

Unlike the League Against Bike-riding, Critical Mass isn't a case of
the Tragedy of the Volunteer Organization. I was a newsletter editor
when Critical Mass was organized, and when I needed a file name for
their very first press release, I filed it as "Cold Chills".

I was amused that Kidical Mass goes on very long rides: often a whole
mile, and sometimes as much as four! Then I remembered that all these
children are on department-store toy bikes. Despite having worked up
to twenty-seven miles on my road bike, I can just make it around the
block on my Trek Pure. (And these are not Indianapolis-style
eight-to-the-mile blocks.)

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

  #800  
Old April 22nd 18, 04:22 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Joy Beeson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,638
Default AG: Ice


On a car trip on a hot day, I noticed that there was no ice in the
six-pack cooler of beverage my sister had brought along. Instead, she
had frozen a bottle of bottled water. No mess in the cooler, and
there was ice-cold water in case of need.

Which reminds me of a sack lunch I was given at a convention once:
it contained a frozen juice box, which had nearly thawed by lunch
time. Pity they had had the even-more clever idea of making "celery
sticks" and "carrot sticks" by running celery and carrots through a
julienne machine with dull blades. The few edible bits were buried in
puree that had begun to rot before they put it into the sack.

I used to freeze different amounts of water in bike bottles, so that
each had only a little ice left when taken out of the cooler and put
into a bottle cage. Then one scorching day it didn't thaw as fast as
I'd expected, even though I took all the bottles out of the cooler and
exposed them to the wind as much as I could. I had to stop every mile
to shake each bottle vigorously and drink the few drops that had
thawed.

If you repeatedly freeze liquid in a container that wasn't made to be
an ice mold, it will break, and you won't notice until the
worst-possible time. But if you are careful that the expanding ice
doesn't stretch the sides of the bottle, you can freeze as often as
you want to. I put in a small amount, and prop the bottle tilted, so
that the area exposed to the air in the bottle is as large as
possible. The shallow layer of ice can't get purchase to push against
the walls of the bottle, and all the expansion goes into making a hill
in the middle of the exposed surface. Then I put in a little more,
and tilt the bottle another way,

I thought that I could get out of freezing tea in bottles by making
tea ice cubes. Alas, the tea separated from the freezing water. I
not only got ice cubes that diluted my tea, it took prolonged vigorous
scrubbing to make the ice tray fit for use again.

I used to carry spare water in a square Rubbermaid quart bottle that
took up no more room in my cooler than a twenty-ounce bicycle bottle.
(A quart is thirty-two ounces.) But it took up the same amount of
space when it was empty, and if there was ice in the bottle and even
the teensiest bit of head space, it rattled continuously when the bike
was in motion.

And then the cork on the pour spout took to popping off. I figured
that this was due to my habit of storing it in the freezer; a film of
water inside the pour spout would push the lid loose, and make it seem
to be tight until it thawed. For a while, I was careful to pack it
with the pour spout on top, and continued using it.

Nowadays, I carry just three bottles: two bottles in the cages, and a
bottle of tea in the insulated pannier to swap out at noon. I may
also have some small semi-disposable containers of frozen switchel
concentrate, to add to water I pick up along the way.

I put a tray or so of ice cubes into a zipper sandwich bag. If I
recall correctly -- I didn't work my way up to long rides before the
end of hot weather last summer, and it's likely to be even worse this
summer, when I'm starting over from scratch in May. It feels like the
fifteenth re-start this year, but there hasn't been time for more than
three.

Anyway, I *think* that I still had some ice left of three bags after
being out all of a scorching-hot day, while occasionally filching a
cube to put into a lukewarm water bottle. At intervals, I drain
melted ice into a bottle, but never more than a quarter of a bottle so
that I can drink it up before it gets warm. The ends of the zippers
make excellent pouring spouts. And if you partly-close the zippers,
they hold the ice back.

-------

Last spring, I won an extravagant door prize at A Taste of Ag: a
space-blanket tote bag filled with frozen Maple Leaf products. There
were two packets of "Black Ice" in the bag to keep them frozen.

I went to the Black Ice Web site, but it was written by a professional
ad man/self-styled Web designer, so I have no idea what's in the
packet, nor do I have any idea what "perfect temperature" the
phase-changing contents change phases at. But I do know that Black
Ice is good. My other reusable-ice packets last a long time because
they melt well above freezing. Black Ice keeps the temperature below
freezing, and they haven't melted on me yet.

When I cut a coupon for really-cheap stuffed chicken breast out of the
paper, I found that Black Ice packets fit my pannier perfectly,
exactly filling the space left at the ends of a box of stuffed chicken
breast. And they kept said chicken (and a package of duck bacon)
solidly frozen for three hours, only softening a little on the side
next to the newspapers I insulate the panniers with.

It wasn't hot that October day, but it wasn't particularly cold,
either. When I made a couple of Maple Leaf runs in March, The Black
Ice remained quite firm. As did the duck confit that stuck up to be
covered only by newspaper and a plastic bag of crumpled plastic bags.
I thawed that package first anyway. (Writing this reminded me to take
the second two-pound package out of the freezer. Enough time has
passed since we ate confit for days that we can enjoy doing it again.)

This year's A Taste of Ag was at least as extravagant. After a free
meal, I went to the check-in (there had been a line stretching clear
out of sight when I arrived) and won a peach pie. A very tasty peach
pie from Maple Lane Bakery, which is nowhere near Maple Leaf Farms.
Everybody got a bar of goat-milk soap.

--
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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