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

From News Now on Monday, 12 August 2019:
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A Goshen man is in critical condition after he was struck by a vehicle
while riding his bicycle.

It happened late Thursday afternoon in the 11000 block of Pierce Road
in Madison Township. Investigators say a Jeep driven by a 30-year-old
woman was traveling westbound on Pierce Road and collided with the
back of the bicycle. The 49-year-old bicyclist was wearing a helmet at
the time, but the helmet came off after he was struck.

The victim was airlifted to the hospital with a serious head injury.
The driver is cooperating with investigators. Alcohol and speed are
not believed to be factors.
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Note that the man was not wearing a helmet -- he was wearing a
helmet-shaped head decoration. Actual helmets come with chin straps
that can be adjusted to keep the helmet in place during acceleration.

The investigation must be complete by now, but there is never any
follow-up to crash stories unless one of the participants is the
target of wide-spread hate. The only one I recall off-hand is the
incident that inspired the almost-readable poster I saw today. Since
I'd seen a picture of the lawn sign in the news, and because I was on
a bicycle, I knew that it was urging drivers zooming past at four
times my speed and distance to refrain from passing school busses when
their lights are flashing and their stop signs are out.

And then the follow-up wasn't on "how did it happen?" but on "is she
in jail yet?".

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

The bad news: I came down with a virus on the nineteenth of
September, and I'm still coughing.

Just when I thought I was ready for the hilly thirty-mile Spring Creek
tour, too.

The good news: last Thursday I drove to Rentown, almost sixty miles
round trip, and didn't hear *anything* from my rotator cuff.

And Rentown has cheeses that Spring Creek never heard of.

I didn't miss any of the Saturday rides to the farmers' markets --
which is part of my complaint; I'd intended to go to the Tomato
Festival on the first of those Saturdays.

Today, I not only didn't come back the short way, I hit a Safety-Day
festival, a rummage sale, and a garage sale. I didn't hit Carniceria
San Jose`, but that was because I scored a basket of small peppers at
one market and three jalapen~os and a poblano at the other.

My nap took longer than usual, though.

I have an 8.6-mile Sprawlmart tour planned for as soon as I can work
it into my schedule. I hope to work back up to thirty miles before
the roads go bad.

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

Yesterday (Tuesday, 10 September 2019) I had a couple of hours to
spare, I was already dressed for leaving the house, and I'd been
wanting to buy some whole coriander at the Spice Merchant in The
Village at Winona.

After about three steps on the gravel of the drive, I reflected that I
really didn't feel like walking that far and I've got a perfectly-good
pedestrian accelerator in the garage. Thumb-tested the tires, rolled
the Trek Pure out, stepped through the frame, noticed that my pants
were rubbing on the crankset.

I don't want to fray the hems of my only seeing-a-lawyer jeans, and I
don't keep safety pins in the left-side pocket. So I went back into
the house again to get the safety pins out of my very loud
flowered-linen jeans. But won't it be almost as easy to hang up the
black jeans and move my stuff from one set of pockets to the other?

Then, ugh! This flowered shirt looks *horrible* with flowered jeans.
So I changed shirts too. I did keep my shoes and socks on. (A good
thing, too. It takes what feels like five minutes to lace up the
sandals I was wearing.)

Almost turned back a third time, but what reminded me that I'd
forgotten to dump the stale water in my bottle was the sight of the
fancy new three-button fountain in the park. One button for the
drinking fountain, one for the dog dish, one for the bottle filler. No
sink under the bottle filler, but the tap was only a few inches from
the drinking fountain. And I think the nearby grass would have
appreciated a drink, had I thought of it.

After buying the coriander, I realized that I had made my last and
final batch of sweet-spice pickles that morning, and whole coriander
will be of no use before next summer.

Got home to find my partner on the porch, and amenable to "swiss melt"
for supper, so I stashed the coriander, dropped three bungee cords and
a cardboard box into the basket, and went back to the Village.

The first two bungees hooked onto the rack, but the third had to hook
onto the basket. The basket is the currently-fashionable perforated
sheet steel, so the bungee clung rather precariously to the wire
around the edge. I shook the bike and concluded that the lengthwise
bungees had sufficient sideways resistance to prevent disaster if the
crosswise bungee slipped.

I was thinking that I needed to punch some holes in the sheet metal,
which would be messy, but the holes in basket are large enough that I
could wire some D-rings on.

So I may be dropping in at the fabric store to buy bike parts.

Not that a Trek Pure is actually a bike . . .

--
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.

On 9/11/2019 8:19 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:

Yesterday (Tuesday, 10 September 2019) I had a couple of hours to
spare, I was already dressed for leaving the house, and I'd been
wanting to buy some whole coriander at the Spice Merchant in The
Village at Winona.

After about three steps on the gravel of the drive, I reflected that I
really didn't feel like walking that far and I've got a perfectly-good
pedestrian accelerator in the garage. Thumb-tested the tires, rolled
the Trek Pure out, stepped through the frame, noticed that my pants
were rubbing on the crankset.

I don't want to fray the hems of my only seeing-a-lawyer jeans, and I
don't keep safety pins in the left-side pocket. So I went back into
the house again to get the safety pins out of my very loud
flowered-linen jeans...

I keep a couple of large (2.5"?) safety pins on each bike. On most bikes
they're pinned under the lid of the handlebar bag. On the one bike with
a basket instead, they're clipped to the brake cables - even though I've
never needed them on that bike. It's specifically set up to never harm
my pants cuffs.

One problem is rust. Our grocery run last week was the first one in
months chilly enough for long pants. I rolled out the driveway with
unpinned cuffs, then stopped a block away to pin them. The safety pins
had rusted enough they were difficult to get out of the handlebar bag's
fabric.

When I got home, I exchanged the steel safety pins for brass ones. I'm
sure they won't rust, but there's another problem: They are thicker,
probably because the brass is weaker than steel. They're actually harder
to push through denim.

I'm still wishing for high strength titanium safety pins. Maybe hollow
ones to save more weight. ;-)

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Wed, 11 Sep 2019 21:15:40 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

I keep a couple of large (2.5"?) safety pins on each bike. On most bikes
they're pinned under the lid of the handlebar bag. On the one bike with
a basket instead, they're clipped to the brake cables - even though I've
never needed them on that bike. It's specifically set up to never harm
my pants cuffs.

One problem is rust. Our grocery run last week was the first one in
months chilly enough for long pants. I rolled out the driveway with
unpinned cuffs, then stopped a block away to pin them. The safety pins
had rusted enough they were difficult to get out of the handlebar bag's
fabric.

When I got home, I exchanged the steel safety pins for brass ones. I'm
sure they won't rust, but there's another problem: They are thicker,
probably because the brass is weaker than steel. They're actually harder
to push through denim.

I'm still wishing for high strength titanium safety pins. Maybe hollow
ones to save more weight. ;-)

I have a more-modest impossible dream: I'd like safety pins labeled
with the diameter of the pin, as straight pins are.

Brass pins don't rust, but they do corrode, and patina is just as
permanent in fabric as rust is -- though not as rough when you try to
pull the pin out.

I carry an assortment of pins stuck into the fabric of my wallet,
which eliminates both rust and corrosion. But I wasn't wearing a
jersey or carrying a purse, so I didn't have my wallet.

Of course, there are also safety pins stuck into my jeans-pocket
wallet, but I particularly wanted the brass pins stuck into my jeans.

Not to mention that I had forgotten that I was carrying a wallet. My
paper and plastic were in the "passport pockets" of my jeans, and the
wallet and phone were in the pocket on general principles.

All of which reminded me to get up and put a few pennies into the
pocket wallet. When I paid cash for the coriander, I tried to give
exact change, and couldn't.

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

Friday 13 September 2019


It takes a while to reverse the direction of every hair on my head, so
when I noticed that I'd want to pin my hair up again on Wednesday, I
didn't take it down Sunday night.

Then an unexpected invitation to a barbecue canceled my usual Saturday
ride, so here it is Friday night and I'm still wearing my hair in a
Gibson.

From Sunday to Sunday -- eight days pinned up must be a new record!

I may go for eleven: I'm driving home from Fort Wayne on Wednesday,
on Monday I'm staying home to do the wash, and I don't want to push
myself on the day before Wednesday. I did a major shopping today, so
I probably won't need to take a short ride. (The nearest grocery is
so close that I've ridden there on my Trek Pure, and before the
sciatica, I walked it more than once.)

Perhaps I can start getting my leg strength back on Thursday.

At any rate, I haven't thunk up any bike-riding topics this week.

But if'n you want a very good recipe for pickled garlic, I could
pontificate.

--
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.

The subject line refers to a joke that's older than I am -- the
preacher didn't approve of his congregation's hair styles, so he
preached on the passage "Top knot come down."

When they looked up the chapter and verse, it turned out to be from a
prediction of a major calmity in which everyone must run for his life:
"Let him who is upon the housetop not come down to take anything that
is in the house."

On Sat, 14 Sep 2019 22:57:27 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

I did a major shopping today, so
I probably won't need to take a short ride.

This evening I got a call that my pills were ready; my first thought
was to drive the car to pick them up, then I noticed that the sun sets
at eight, it was only six, and sorting out the pockets in my jersey
doesn't take any longer than sorting out the pockets in my jeans.

So I got a mile and a half ride in today. Tomorrow and Wednesday are
booked, and I'll probably be tired on Thursday.

I just took six of the pills, and the package says that they might
cause dizziness. Any ditzyness in this post I'll blame on them.

So I combed out the Gibson on the ninth day.

--
Joy Beeson, U.S.A., mostly central Hoosier,
some Northern Indiana, Upstate New York, Florida, and Hawaii
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.

Joy Beeson writes:

I don't want to fray the hems of my only seeing-a-lawyer jeans, and I
don't keep safety pins in the left-side pocket.

Never tried safety pins. I tight-roll the hems 1980s style, works
great.

--
Vladimir Sedach
Software engineering services in Los Angeles https://oneofus.la

On 9/18/2019 12:19 AM, Vladimir Sedach wrote:
Joy Beeson writes:

I don't want to fray the hems of my only seeing-a-lawyer jeans, and I
don't keep safety pins in the left-side pocket.

Never tried safety pins. I tight-roll the hems 1980s style, works
great.

Starting back in the 1970s, I tried tucking my cuffs into my socks. The
cuffs slipped out. Then I tried rolling the cuffs up. That took too
long, and if not done perfectly, the cuffs slipped out. I tried pants
clips made of spring steel, and reflective ones made of nylon fabric and
velcro. I tried thick rubber bands.

Most of those would work for a while, but eventually come loose enough
that my dress trousers (when I was riding to work) would end up with
some chain grease on them.

Safety pins work for me. I flip the front of the cuffs to the outside,
wrap them tightly around my ankle and pin them. They stay pinned and
never come loose.

Switching to a waxed chain helped too, but the pins are more important.


--
- Frank Krygowski

Frank Krygowski writes:

Then I tried rolling the cuffs up. That took too long, and if not
done perfectly, the cuffs slipped out.

The trick with the tight-roll is one more roll after the one that
secures the pinch. That tightens things up to where it is good for a
multi-hour ride.

I flip the front of the cuffs to the outside

Neat. I am going to try that technique with pin.

Switching to a waxed chain helped too, but the pins are more
important.

Another great tip. Wax is the way to go. I only use oil lubricants on
my motorcycle chain anymore.

Finally, black pants help a lot!

--
Vladimir Sedach
Software engineering services in Los Angeles https://oneofus.la