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#791
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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