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

On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 10:11:12 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 11/24/2014 6:34 AM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 10:41:54 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 11/23/2014 7:34 AM, Joy Beeson wrote:

A spare pin in your
wallet is a good idea -- or three or four; safety pins have a lot of
uses.


Instead of all that, I simply use safety pins to pin my pants leg more
tightly around my ankle - or ankles, depending on how narrow the pants
legs are.

Now, I lube my chain using a hot wax/oil mix, so it's much less likely
to smear black stuff on my cuffs.

I've always got at least two safety pins clipped inside my handlebar bags.


Goodness, don' you have a "pants clip" that clips around your ankle to
hold your pants secure and prevent it from getting into the chain? I
thought all you "old Fellows" had one of those :-)\

As an old fellow, those are what I used way back in the 1970s. They
kept irritating me because my pants would gradually work their way out
of the clips, then get either caught or stained by the chain and chainring.

Then I tried large (2") safety pins. No more problems. And the safety
pins are lighter! ;-)

Or a turn or two of twine and a bow knot :-)
--
cheers,

John D.Slocomb

On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 16:25:07 +0100, Rolf Mantel
wrote:

Am 24.11.2014 16:11, schrieb Frank Krygowski:
On 11/24/2014 6:34 AM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 10:41:54 -0500, Frank Krygowski

I've always got at least two safety pins clipped inside my handlebar
bags.

Goodness, don' you have a "pants clip" that clips around your ankle to
hold your pants secure and prevent it from getting into the chain? I
thought all you "old Fellows" had one of those :-)\

As an old fellow, those are what I used way back in the 1970s.

Then I tried large (2") safety pins. No more problems. And the safety
pins are lighter! ;-)

At least during the cool season (temperature below 10°C / 50F), I put
the socks around the pants. OK, it looks horrible but it keeps me warm
and the pants stay outside the chain.

Hard to do if your wearing knee socks and sock garters :-)
--
cheers,

John D.Slocomb

On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 22:03:01 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

Rolf Mantel considered Mon, 24 Nov 2014 16:25:07
+0100 the perfect time to write:

Am 24.11.2014 16:11, schrieb Frank Krygowski:
On 11/24/2014 6:34 AM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 10:41:54 -0500, Frank Krygowski

I've always got at least two safety pins clipped inside my handlebar
bags.

Goodness, don' you have a "pants clip" that clips around your ankle to
hold your pants secure and prevent it from getting into the chain? I
thought all you "old Fellows" had one of those :-)\

As an old fellow, those are what I used way back in the 1970s.

Then I tried large (2") safety pins. No more problems. And the safety
pins are lighter! ;-)

At least during the cool season (temperature below 10°C / 50F), I put
the socks around the pants. OK, it looks horrible but it keeps me warm
and the pants stay outside the chain.

Back when I was a kid, my mum used to tell me off for that, because it
stretched out the socks so they kept slipping down :-)

I thought knee socks slipped down around the ankles was traditional
dress. At least that's the way mine worked when I wore "knickers" as
they were called in the U.S.. :-)
(For our English friends, "knickers" was a USian name for knee length
pants. Perhaps "Plus Fours" in the Queen's Own.


On a more recent cycle promotion in Cambridge, I got (free, which is
always the best price) some "slap-wrap" retroreflective leg bands,
which work very well. Being low on the bike, they light up like
beacons in a dipped beam headlight.
The inside is coated with some kind of flock material, which is very
good at stopping them slipping when worn as trouser bands, although
I've used them every time I've ridden at night since I got them for
the visibility benefit, even when in shorts.
--
cheers,

John D.Slocomb

On 11/24/2014 8:06 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 16:25:07 +0100, Rolf Mantel
wrote:

Am 24.11.2014 16:11, schrieb Frank Krygowski:
On 11/24/2014 6:34 AM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 10:41:54 -0500, Frank Krygowski

I've always got at least two safety pins clipped inside my handlebar
bags.

Goodness, don' you have a "pants clip" that clips around your ankle to
hold your pants secure and prevent it from getting into the chain? I
thought all you "old Fellows" had one of those :-)\

As an old fellow, those are what I used way back in the 1970s.

Then I tried large (2") safety pins. No more problems. And the safety
pins are lighter! ;-)

At least during the cool season (temperature below 10°C / 50F), I put
the socks around the pants. OK, it looks horrible but it keeps me warm
and the pants stay outside the chain.

Hard to do if your wearing knee socks and sock garters :-)

But once knickers (or for the Brits: plus-fours) come back into style
for men, these problems will be a thing of the past.

(I guess in Britain, if a guy's wearing knickers, it signifies something
entirely different.)

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 19:03:41 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 18:34:24 +0700, John D. Slocomb
wrote:

Goodness, don' you have a "pants clip" that clips around your ankle to
hold your pants secure and prevent it from getting into the chain?

Pants clips stopped working when cuffs went out of style.

Cuffs are out of style? You mean I can't cuff my levis up a turn to
show off my new alligator skin boots?
--
cheers,

John D.Slocomb

On 11/24/2014 6:03 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 18:34:24 +0700, John D. Slocomb
wrote:

Goodness, don' you have a "pants clip" that clips around your ankle to
hold your pants secure and prevent it from getting into the chain?

Pants clips stopped working when cuffs went out of style.


http://www.amazon.ca/ROSWHEEL-Cyclin...ds=bike+straps


http://www.amazon.com/Green-Guru-Nar...WPCNW237HPX9HX


http://www.bikelegstrap.com/

http://www.mec.ca/product/4001-405/c...pants%2Bstraps

My favorite LBS has a candy jar on the counter full of these fluorescent
green wide elastics with Velcro fasteners. I don't remember the brand.
Seems like there are a lot of options that aren't clips.

On Tue, 25 Nov 2014 08:27:51 -0500, Duane
wrote:

On 11/24/2014 6:03 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 18:34:24 +0700, John D. Slocomb
wrote:

Goodness, don' you have a "pants clip" that clips around your ankle to
hold your pants secure and prevent it from getting into the chain?

Pants clips stopped working when cuffs went out of style.


http://www.amazon.ca/ROSWHEEL-Cyclin...ds=bike+straps


http://www.amazon.com/Green-Guru-Nar...WPCNW237HPX9HX


http://www.bikelegstrap.com/

http://www.mec.ca/product/4001-405/c...pants%2Bstraps

My favorite LBS has a candy jar on the counter full of these fluorescent
green wide elastics with Velcro fasteners. I don't remember the brand.
Seems like there are a lot of options that aren't clips.

In long pants season I always wear the reflective bands just above the
shoes. I've only lost one in many years of using them.

On Tue, 25 Nov 2014 08:06:59 +0700, John D. Slocomb
wrote:

Or a turn or two of twine and a bow knot :-)

I lost a safety pin on the "I forgot my wallet" shopping tour. (Not
one red cent to spend, &*%#&!!!) Lacking a pin, I tied a square rag
from my emergency kit around my ankle. Worked better than the pin,
but had people asking how I got injured.

(There are now both money and safety pins in my emergency kit -- which
is slowly regenerating after a tragic loss; perhaps I should keep a
list of what's in it in an off-site backup. I've replaced the
tube-repair kit, but the only list of what was in the hide-repair kit
was written on the box.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 10:41:54 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

Instead of all that, I simply use safety pins to pin my pants leg more
tightly around my ankle - or ankles, depending on how narrow the pants
legs are.

On last Friday's Tour d'Warsaw, I used only pins because there were
too many layers for garters to work. My pants rubbed on my knees even
though the two innermost layers were tights.

Not so I couldn't stand it, though. It helped, perhaps, that the
outermost layer was ripstop that slid easily over the sweat pants
underneath.

The pins left holes in the ripstop, so I'm going to have to think up
something else -- after I get through my three-page "to sew" list.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

While dressing by dawn's early light, I picked up jeans that I'd
dropped on the floor while undressing in the dark the previous
evening. Something black lay crumpled under them. ?? -- I'd hung up
all my black garments, what could this be? A closer look revealed a
white line against the black, and I realized that it was a bright-red
T-shirt with an outline map of Indiana printed on the back.

Red makes you stand out in a crowd, but it turns black at sunset, and
even in bright daylight, red isn't all that visible from a distance.

Orange is famous for visibility.

My spouse and I used to wear matching orange T-shirts on organized
rides. He was easily visible to the casual glance on a hilltop a good
mile away.

Once, when I was a passenger on a multi-day drive on I 90, a fleck of
orange at the edge of a woods in the distance caught my eye. Careful
observation revealed that it was a hunter in a blaze-orange vest
walking toward me. He was far enough away to stay in sight for quite
a while and I had nothing to do, so I watched him. Something seemed
odd about the way he moved; eventually I realized that he was paying
attention to something to his right. I looked at the focus of his
attention and managed to make out a hunter in a bright red vest.

Orange is required by law in a great many places because tests have
shown that it's the most-visible color -- but only in bright daylight
when seeing isn't much of a problem. At twilight, orange is
indistinguishable from khaki.

Yellow is my default.

By day, yellow is second only to orange. At night, yellow is almost
as visible as white and much less likely to be mistaken for a shred of
fog or a reflection off a wet leaf. And yellow is the only color that
can shine through rain and fog, hence its frequent use in raincoats
and firemen's turnout gear.

Green is the color to which the human eye is most sensitive, and green
can be perceived as colored far later into dusk than any other color.
"Slime green" *does* stand out on a city street, and I admired the
visibility of a lime-green jersey I once followed through the
Voorheesville "tunnel" in my car.

But we evolved sensitivity to green because there is a *lot* of green
around. Once, looking out an airplane window, I saw a column of
smoke. Trash-burning or disaster? I could see flames, but from
nearly straight overhead I couldn't see what was burning. A thread of
white against the flames: ah, someone is trying to put it out. I
followed the stream of water to see who, and saw a lime-green fire
engine. It didn't contrast with the grass-green vegetation at all
well. I don't think I'd prefer a lime-green jersey for a ride in the
country.


I don't think anybody has ever proposed blue or violet as a visible
color. Pity, because they are right purty -- but purple doesn't wash.
That is, when it fades, even a tiny little bit, it looks dirty.

A light shade of any color beats the deleted out of black.



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