I missed this story last September

From Ink-Free News, Sep 24, 2019 @ 8:45 AM

WARSAW — Warsaw and Winona Lake police departments have recently
acquired two trek police electric bicycles. The bicycles were provided
thanks to a donation from the K21 Health Foundation and purchased
through Trailhouse Village Bicycles, according to a news release.

Warsaw and Winona Lake Police Departments are tasked with the
responsibility of patrolling several miles of bicycle trails and
parks.

The acquisition of these bicycles will allow these departments to
provide more frequent patrols and faster response times to
emergencies. Officers will be able to spend more time patrolling these
areas with greater efficiency. The goal is to provide a safe
environment for families to enjoy healthy outdoor activities together.

---------------------------

Most of the Chinworth Trail is visible from Old 30 and Zimmer Road,
but one would have to park the unit in a no-parking zone, jump out,
and pursue the miscreant on foot.

Come to think of it, there are a lot of fences along Old 30 --
chain-link industrial fences.

I rather like the Chinworth Trail on the rare occasions that I want to
go that direction -- most of it is through industrial-size lawns, so
one can see well enough to travel at street speeds. I've never seen
another bike, and very few pedestrians -- like the steps behind Aunt
Millies Outlet, this facility was built for my personal benefit.

Now that I mention it, I can use the trail to get to the bazaar where
I plan to have lunch tomorrow. I *knew* there was a back way to the
church!

Off to print out a map snippet.

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

On 3/6/2020 1:17 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:

...

I rather like the Chinworth Trail on the rare occasions that I want to
go that direction -- most of it is through industrial-size lawns, so
one can see well enough to travel at street speeds. I've never seen
another bike, and very few pedestrians -- ...

I dislike crowded MUPs, but I do like a couple unpopular MUPs around
here. The emptier, the better!

But it's difficult to use that argument when lobbying for them.

"It'll be great! If you build it, nobody will come!"


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Fri, 06 Mar 2020 13:17:32 -0500, Joy Beeson
wrote:

Now that I mention it, I can use the trail to get to the bazaar where
I plan to have lunch tomorrow. I *knew* there was a back way to the
church!

Off to print out a map snippet.

Oops, wrong church. The bazaar is at United Methodist, not Pathways.
I'll get there by Leiter Drive, and not go near Chinworth unless I
decide to go north on 350E instead of 150E.

If I get a filling lunch at the bazaar, I just might. The filling
station that is always out of stuff on the hot-dog rollers so I have a
Papa John pizza instead isn't far enough from the church for a second
lunch, and I don't like McElroy hill very much. Aside from having to
walk up, there is a stop light at the bottom and a steep climb on the
other side. Though the stoplight doesn't matter because that's where
the filling station is.

Map snippet in my pocket, notebook cleared, jersey patched, tea on the
stove. I'm going to let it steep next to the humidifier pot all
night. Double tea leaves. Drink it at noon and I don't crash until
an hour after I get home.

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

On Fri, 06 Mar 2020 23:08:07 -0500, Joy Beeson
wrote:

Map snippet in my pocket, notebook cleared, jersey patched, tea on the
stove. I'm going to let it steep next to the humidifier pot all
night. Double tea leaves. Drink it at noon and I don't crash until
an hour after I get home.

And then I perk up at bed time.

I've got fifteen minutes before time to hit the hay.

I learned another reason to keep your water bottles topped off on this
ride.

I did go north on 350 W, and decided not to go three miles out of my
way to avoid the gravel stretch on 300 N between Fox Farm and 150 W.

Three miles on pavement would have been *much* less tiring. Once I
got past the top of the first climb, there was less loose gravel --
and more washboard.

Once across 150 W, it was a thrilling downhill on new pavement with no
traffic --it being Saturday, school was closed-- until I got to Tippy
Downs. I usually turn here to avoid climbing up and coming down
again, but I wanted to see the new roundabout, so I dismounted in the
turn lane and began walking on the apartment complex's lawn, between
the newly planted windbreak and the road. (They really should have
planted twice as many trees, but when it's time to cut down every
other tree, the people who planted them are no longer around, so this
was the better choice.)

And now I have five minutes to brush my teeth and get into bed.
Man~ana.


Sunday, 8 March 2020

As I neared the top, I began to doubt that this lawn was continuous
with the lawn west of Sheldon Drive, where new stores will be built. I
forgot to check this detail when I got to the top. Google Maps
Satellite View shows that it would be quite easy to walk from one to
the other, but it also shows a place where someone might have decided
to build a fence during the carefully-concealed number of years that
have passed since the picture was taken. (A 2020 date on a picture
clearly taken before the roundabout was built in 2019? Not to mention
that I saw a whole row of completed and occupied apartments on the
other side of that newly-planted row of trees -- which were years too
old to transplant.)

So when a gap in the mounds of dirt appeared, I crossed into the muddy
strip where an absurdly-wide sidewalk will be built when it's
construction season again. The walking wasn't too bad because a thin
layer of straw had been laid on the subsoil when they downed tools
last fall.

The roundabout itself is complete and operating, apparently quite
well. It does have pedestrian islands so that one can cross one lane
at a time, in case a pedestrian comes along sometime. I did see one
in this area several years ago; she was taking a walk while waiting
her turn at a medical office.

There is no provision at all for blind pedestrians, of course.

The walkway and crosswalks were complete and operational around the
roundabout and possibly east to SR 15. I should take a typewriter
along and write notes on the spot so I'll notice what I've failed to
notice. And I should have measured the width of the sidewalk. But
I'd have had to use my pocket tape at least twice, and I didn't have
any sidewalk chalk on me. But with no worry about having to get off
suddenly, as when I measure bike lanes, I could have used bits of
debris to mark the ends of the measurements.

I didn't care to stand in the street while mounting up, particularly
actually in an intersection, and felt tempted to mount up and coast
down to the spot where a driveway will be built when the lot is sold.
Then I noticed some bike riders coming up the hill, and started to
walk, so as not to set a bad example.

I didn't need to worry about my example; it was two greybeard Amish
couples on tandems, one with a trailer. They went through the
roundabout with accuracy and aplomb. I've seen only one other tandem
around here, and Amish aren't all that common. Or maybe they were
Mennonites; I can't tell the difference.

Resumed walking; even though I'm out of the mud, the bike feels
draggy. Looked at brakes: I've got sticky clay, well bound with
straw, under my fenders.

I walked to where I could lay the bike on grass, found a twig, and got
most of it out. But there were smears of clay on my braking surfaces,
particularly in back.

One bottle of water sufficed to get my back wheel mostly clean, but
the other bottle was empty.

The drivers of two cars stopped and offered help while I was doing all
this.

In seventy-eight years, I've had only one guy yell "Get off the
****ing road!" (which left me wondering why, if roads can do that, we
need to build streets, lanes, and alleys). I wonder where you guys
find all those yahoos.

So I rode to Walmart, cabled to a sign, and took my bottles inside.
The water in the hand-washing sink ran so slow that I might as well
have refilled from the water fountain. Then the faucet -- and all the
other faucets -- refused to run for the other bottle at all. So I
finished washing with one bottle of warm water and one bottle of
chilled water.

I didn't realize until I read my notes that cleaning my wheels took an
hour and a half.

Which may be why I was startled to notice, after I'd packed up my
purchases and was about to bite into a (sob!) toasted bacon & chicken
ranch six-inch sub on nine-grain bread, that it was six o'clock.

I gobbled the sandwich, hopped on the bike, and made it home a few
seconds before the end of civil twilight even though I was too tired
to sprint on Sunset Drive as vigorously as I've been aiming for of
late.

That was less than an hour, and I'm pretty sure it's more than five
miles. Too late at night to Google-map it now.

But now we have Malt-O-Meal. I wonder why that cereal is so hard to
find?

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

Frank Krygowski wrote:
I rather like the Chinworth Trail on the rare occasions that I want to
go that direction -- most of it is through industrial-size lawns, so
one can see well enough to travel at street speeds.Â* I've never seen
another bike, and very few pedestrians -- ...

I dislike crowded MUPs, but I do like a couple unpopular MUPs around
here. The emptier, the better!

But it's difficult to use that argument when lobbying for them.

"It'll be great! If you build it, nobody will come!"

For the most part, I avoid the MUPs on my bike, because there's too much
clutter of traffic. I'm a fast enough rider that I'm quite content to
ride on most of the major arterials.

I've written about this before, but a significant issue (both for
planning and actual usage) is that there's multiple levels of usage for
cyclists, ranging from children and casual adult riders up to adults who
have more fitness and riding skills (including traffic). For children
and casual adults, it's really easy (especially for planners and
motorists) to assume that the bike is a toy (and often purchased at a
*Mart store), and where speeds are essentially more or less consistent
with pedestrians, often no more than about 5-7 MPH.

As a fitness rider, I'm typically doing 15-18 MPH on a flat, and as long
as I'm where I belong in the traffic flow, that speed is actually more
compatible with the 45-50 in arterial traffic than it is with dodging
slower traffic on MUPs.

I didn't comment on Joy's route marking post, but one of the things that
I think was important was the note about doing things in a way that can
be easily identified at speed. That has all sorts of applications, but
one of the disconnects between a pedestrian and a rider (much less a
motor vehicle) is that various forms of signage, marking and even
signaling have a significantly difference of proportion if the intended
reader is working at speed, whether on a bike or in a motor vehicle.


That said, for family members that don't have the riding skills, I want
them to be on the MUPs, and I also have no problems with using the MUPs
if I'm on skates.

Smith

On Sun, 08 Mar 2020 23:13:07 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

I've got sticky clay, well bound with
straw, under my fenders.

It was a fit day for hooking up the hose yesterday, so I took a bottle
of dish soap and an abrasive dish-washing sponge outside and scrubbed
my rims.

I got a wad of straw out of one of one of my fenders.

The sawhorses ended up well into the lawn, as I kept backing up out of
the puddle I was making.

------------------------

And then I thought, "brakes can be cleaned indoors; it's safe to put
it off until tommorrow."

Before typing that, I got up and cleaned my brakes.

When I got my 8mm wrench out of my toolkit, I discovered that I still
carry a patch kit -- quite useless because I don't carry tools for
getting the tire off the rim. On the other hand, I do need a place to
carry a chip of soap and a bandaid. Other items: the 8mm wrench.
There's supposed to be a 10mm wrench too, I'm pretty sure. An
adjustable wrench. A couple of 16" square rags. A pair of knee hose
for holding newspaper sleeves on my feet, but no newspaper sleeves.
But there are usually sleeves in my bag of bags.

Scrubbed the front blocks and thought it was a waste of worry; they
were perfectly clean.

Then I took off the back blocks!

I should be saying "shoes"; blocks come permanently installed in the
shoe these days, and can't be replaced. Which reminds me of an
article I wrote for MHW's Bikeabout about cleaning brakes, in which I
said that it was very important to install the shoes with the open
side in front so that braking wouldn't pop the brake block out.

Those of you who feel your hair standing on end will be relieved to
know that as I was rolling out the driveway on the way to the print
shop, I looked down at my front wheel, said "awk scrickle", and went
back home and re-did the page.

If I ever edit again, it will be for a literary club or some other
publication where mistakes don't kill people.

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

On Thu, 12 Mar 2020 22:38:39 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

On Sun, 08 Mar 2020 23:13:07 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

I've got sticky clay, well bound with
straw, under my fenders.

It was a fit day for hooking up the hose yesterday, so I took a bottle
of dish soap and an abrasive dish-washing sponge outside and scrubbed
my rims.

I got a wad of straw out of one of one of my fenders.

The sawhorses ended up well into the lawn, as I kept backing up out of
the puddle I was making.

------------------------

And then I thought, "brakes can be cleaned indoors; it's safe to put
it off until tommorrow."

Before typing that, I got up and cleaned my brakes.

When I got my 8mm wrench out of my toolkit, I discovered that I still
carry a patch kit -- quite useless because I don't carry tools for
getting the tire off the rim. On the other hand, I do need a place to
carry a chip of soap and a bandaid. Other items: the 8mm wrench.
There's supposed to be a 10mm wrench too, I'm pretty sure. An
adjustable wrench. A couple of 16" square rags. A pair of knee hose
for holding newspaper sleeves on my feet, but no newspaper sleeves.
But there are usually sleeves in my bag of bags.

Scrubbed the front blocks and thought it was a waste of worry; they
were perfectly clean.

Then I took off the back blocks!

I should be saying "shoes"; blocks come permanently installed in the
shoe these days, and can't be replaced. Which reminds me of an
article I wrote for MHW's Bikeabout about cleaning brakes, in which I
said that it was very important to install the shoes with the open
side in front so that braking wouldn't pop the brake block out.

Those of you who feel your hair standing on end will be relieved to
know that as I was rolling out the driveway on the way to the print
shop, I looked down at my front wheel, said "awk scrickle", and went
back home and re-did the page.

If I ever edit again, it will be for a literary club or some other
publication where mistakes don't kill people.


Just a note. Some brake shoes allow the changing of the actual braking
surface. See
https://tinyurl.com/ra6xhke
https://tinyurl.com/vqcfx9y

--
cheers,

John B.