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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Thu, 29 Mar 2007I'm definitely moving forward on the whole "selling the house" idea. Sunday, I packed the minivan full of my daily-use stuff, and carted it all down to Kristin's. Sunday night was my first night of being officially moved out. Of course, I haven't moved out in the sense of getting everything out yet. There's still plenty to pack up and move. Getting myself out of the house means that I no longer have real limitations on what I can and can't pack, though. If I feel like packing dishes and kitchen stuff, it's all open game, where before I would have had to think about it -- "Oh, hmm; am I going to use that before I move out, or not?" Now? Problem solved! So, the next task is to get everything else packed up and moved out. I have a depressing amount of stuff, even after cleaning things out and tossing all manner of things. It'll get better as I pack enough to get big furniture out. Moving tables and bookshelves will really look like progress, which will be encouraging. Right now, for every box I get packed, I end up making 3x more visual mess as I break things down into packable components. My grand plan didn't go quite as I'd hoped, unfortunately. I guess I'm still kind of in the packing section, but the plan changed from the original idea. Way back in 2006, I had this clever plan all worked out in my head: Toss/donate/sell unwanted possessions: 6 months. Pack everything: 6 months. Prep and sell house: 6 months. That was around June, 2006, and the goal was the have the house sold by December, 2007. That's still the goal, but a few practical concerns sprang up. The most important one is that houses sell way better during spring and summer than they do in winter. I also wanted to have those six "selling" months primarily consist of having the house on the market, rather than actually doing any prep in that time. So, packing got accelerated, and I'm hoping to have the house on the market by June 1 at the very latest, more likely mid-May. In any case, it's all a bit strange -- I've been living in that house since mid-2000. It's interesting to look back and think about what's changed and what's remained constant in that time, but that's a subject for a different post. Posted at 11:19 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 24 Mar 2007
I broke a spoke/it's not a joke!
Poetry! Run! (Eeeeek!) Yes, last night Kristin and I went out on her first real bike ride. It was fun, but dark. I think she said the last time she rode a bicycle was in her teens, so it's been a few years. Everything went quite well. No troubles with balance, and I saw marked improvement just in the few quick miles we rode. Now we have to follow up on all that to get her confidence up and work on the skills necessary to riding in "the real world." While we were out, I heard an odd pang! noise come from my back tire, and I thought I'd rolled over a rock or something. It was accompanied by a weird jarring sensation that was completely unlike rolling over a rock, though. After a short while, I noticed my bike was making a periodic rubbing sound as if there was something wrong with the wheel. Indeed, yesterday morning, I looked again and quickly determined that I'd broken a spoke on the rear wheel. I pondered for a moment, and decided that this probably wasn't a deadly condition, and rode into work as I'd been planning. No trouble. Then I did some poking around on our friend the internet, which suggested that actually, that whole riding-on-busted-spoke thing was a bad idea. Hmm, I did ride in with an expectant air of "When will this thing explode on me?" I called Free Range Cycles, my local bike shop, and asked them how difficult it would be for them to replace a spoke. The answer was swift: "We can do that, sure, just come on down." Easy. I walked the bike down to the shop (fortunately close to work), and let them have at it. Other than removing the gears (naturally, the spoke which went pang! was on the drive-side), it looked fairly easy. Easy enough that I'm much more comfortable with the idea of doing it myself next time it happens. Hooray! An odd thing the mechanic said: "You've got a leg up on most people -- you know how to change a flat." I looked incredulously at him. "You're kidding, right?" "Nope," he said. "It's all those fancy racer-guys in the spandex. Someone I knew was riding along and came across one of these guys who was sitting by the side of the road, bemoaning his [flat tire] fate. He had all the tools and patches, he just didn't know how to use them." Goofy. I'm sure that's not generally applicable to all spandex-clad racer-guys, but it's a funny image. Posted at 13:33 permanent link category: /bicycle Wed, 21 Mar 2007So, I was cruising around Ye Olde Internette, and came across this blog post. Just one of those random things. Go give it a glance, at least the first section and the comments. I'm right there with the poster. Sanctimonious bicyclists (of whom I've fortunately met none here in Seattle, although I've seen a few on the road) are annoying. Whining about not being afforded the rights of a vehicle and then breaking the laws which apply to those same classes of vehicles? Yeah, that's pretty annoying. One of the comments, however, really got me. I won't quote the whole thing, it's at the link, from Michael. Here's the part that's bugging me: The main example of this is running red lights. I will grant that many bicyclists do this in an unsafe manner, blowing through lights without stopping. But I think that as long as a cyclist comes to a stop and looks both ways before crossing (as a pedestrian would do), it is preferable to waiting for the light to turn green. I cannot disagree more. He goes on to justify that position, but it's a weak argument. If you want to be treated like a valid road user, you act like a valid road user. I don't blow red lights on a motorcycle. I don't do it in a car. Why should I be allowed to do it on a bicycle? I'm in traffic, expecting respect from the other road users, aren't I? One of his supporting arguments is that if he waits for the light to turn green, he's going to slow down other drivers, or get dangerously passed. Well, you probably have other choices. Maybe a different road would be better? Perhaps a different commute time? Just because I can legally ride on the nearly-freeway road that's a straight shot from my house to my work doesn't mean that I do. I pick the road with considerably less traffic, and a bike lane. Don't have bike lanes? Maybe you should be lobbying your town/city council about that. The bottom line is that, until there are traffic laws which apply only to bicyclists, people on bikes have to follow the laws of regular traffic, or they have to follow the laws of pedestrians. New laws which apply specifically to bicycles (and are sensible) need to be made, particularly as the new awareness of foreign oil dependency and climate change from fossil fuels grows. There are going to be more bicyclists on the road, and if they all learn from the lawless ones, it's going to be a problem sooner rather than later. It's something of a topic switch, but I'll get us started. Here are some suggestions for laws we might make to apply to bicyclists.
So, that's a start. Am I wrong about some of them? Probably. I'm not offering this as anything other than a seed of discussion. Tell me why I'm right or wrong. I welcome any feedback at reaper at obairlann dot net. Posted at 13:31 permanent link category: /bicycle Sun, 18 Mar 2007
The mysterious flat of mysterious (flat) mystery
I mentioned on Friday that the rear tire on my bike was strangely flat. I had no idea what would have caused it, but figured that it was something I'd run over. I went out to the garage tonight to see if I could figure out the problem. Off came the wheel, and out came the innertube. Looks ok. A bit of pumping usually shows the leak, no problem. Oh, hmm. No leak. Pump more. Nope. The tube appeared to be whole and healthy, yet the tire was flat. Maybe it was a fluke? So I put the tube and tire back on, and pumped up the tire. It seemed to hold air just fine. Weird. Maybe it was a slow leak. I left the tire to sit for a few hours, perhaps it would feel more like talking after a bit of the old solitary isolation. Several hours later, I went to look at it again. Nearly flat. Hmm. There are two likely explanations for this: one, the tube spontaneously failed. It's possible, and I wouldn't put it past these cheap Specialized tubes which keep ending up in the rear tire. Two, I picked up something pokey in the tire, at least temporarily, which put a miniscule hole in the rear tube. I pulled out the tube, and discarded it, figuring that pretty much takes care of option one (he said, pulling out another cheap Specialized tube... sigh). I'd checked the inside of the tire after I had it apart the first time, but I didn't find anything then. So, off came the tire entirely (so to speak). I carefully ran my fingers along the inside of the tire, feeling for anything pokey or out of the ordinary. I got 90% of the way around the tire when I felt it -- something sharp poking through the tire. I looked at the spot, and could just barely see that the inner surface looked disrupted. Whatever it was, it was small. I flipped over the tire and looked at the tread. There was a spec of dust, and something white in about the right spot. The dust brushed away, but the white thing didn't. Ah-hah! On closer inspection, "white" turned out to be "shiny." That's not right. With a bit of fiddling, I pulled the foreign object out of my tire: a 3mm length of about 22 gauge wire. It'd gone in at an angle, and was just barely poking into the innertube, and was just barely visible on the outside. Bleh! Well, I'm glad that one went flat after I got home. It would have been a really annoying repair to make on the road, just because finding that little thing would have been difficult. So, hooray for small favors! And (solvable) mysteries! Posted at 00:19 permanent link category: /bicycle Fri, 16 Mar 2007
Bikey tune-up, a new horn, and a flat
Around the 650 mile mark, the bicycle started doing some weird things. Mostly around shifting -- shifting got harder. So, I started poking around, and realized that, with the amount I've been riding in the rain, the ol' drivetrain has been basically washed free of lubrication, with road grit deposited in its place. Hmm, that might have something to do with it! I made a temporary fix by shooting some WD-40 (I know, not the right choice, but it's a quick fix) into the rear derailleur and shifting through all the gears a few times. I'm glad I've got that bike stand at work. Much better now. Then, the next day, I noticed that my shifter was behaving strangely. It has an index-finger trigger which upshifts, and then a thumb lever which downshifts. The trigger was working fine, but the thumb lever would sometimes just get stuck, and not spring back. This made it difficult to downshift again, such as when coming up to a stoplight. I kept having to downshift, then wonder why I couldn't downshift any more, then spring the thing back with my index finger so I could keep going. I figured (correctly, as it turns out) that the shifter was low on lubrication, so I tried the WD-40 trick again. This didn't work so well, and even after I got the little cover off and shot the oil exactly where it needed to go, it just wasn't working. Obviously, it needed to come apart and get some grease in there. Now, I'd never seen the inside of one of these shifters, but it obviously had a spring inside it, so I had a certain amount of trepidation that I'd open the thing up, and it would go SPROING! Springs and pieces everywhere! As it turns out, that fear was at least partially justified. The very first thing I did, in pulling off the cover, was to fumble the little tiny black screw the held the cover on, and see it dissappear somewhere on the ground. Hmm. The ground which is covered with little tiny black spots where people have dropped chain grease. Damn! Fortunately, it only took about 10 minutes' searching before I found it, where it'd skittered off a few feet and hidden under a table (naturally). Next, I got off the central nut that was holding the whole shifter mechanism together. Amazingly, I didn't drop anything else. Feeling emboldened, I started pulling out pieces, and was immediately greeted by the sickening SPROING! I'd been dreading. Nothing flew out, fortunately, but I knew a spring had just unwound, and I didn't have any idea how much pain I was in for to get it back together. I got everything apart, and surveyed the damage. It looked like I'd just pulled apart the world's weirdest clock. There was a heavy (well, heavy for a clock anyway) spiral spring, the two control levers (one of which had a spring-loaded pawl swinging aimlessly), a sort of central bushing, and two hair-fine washers. I didn't actually get all that out at first, thinking I could put it back together with some of the parts in place -- wrong, as it happens. I had to remind myself several times, "Someone put this together in the first place. There's got to be a reasonable way to do it." It's easy for me to get into the mindset that I just have to put it together exactly the way it came apart (ie, if you take off pieces A and B, you can't take out piece C in order to aid putting it together). This is not correct, and after 15 minutes of fiddling with the spring and the thumb lever, it became clear that I was making no progress. Pulling out the other lever was the key, and with that in hand, I was able to put it together in such a way that it seemed to work correctly. I even remembered to get some grease in there (which was the original goal before I got sidetracked by figuring out reassembly). It only took two tries before it was back together, and even seemed to be working right. Amazing! Only half an hour had elapsed. After I felt that SPROING! I figured I was going to be standing there for hours. I happily put it all back together, and wiped off the excess grease I'd gotten all over. Back in action. The night before I tried greasing the shift lever, I was huffing and puffing my way home in the final stretch. This is about a mile of "main" residential street, where a lot of intersections have yield signs for cross-traffic. I was approaching one of the yield-marked intersections, and I saw a car coming up on an intersecting path. I had right of way, so I kept plugging along, but kept my eye fixed on the car, and my hands on the brake levers. This is exactly the kind of situation where bicyclists get killed or injured, so I was ready. I thought of yelling to get the driver's attention, but decided it probably wasn't necessary. I watched the driver slow down for the yield sign. She craned her neck around and looked up the street, away from me. Nothing. She looked back forward, and instead of continuing the turn, her head stayed forward, and the car started moving faster. I slammed on the brakes (probably 15-20 feet from the car at this point) and came to a stop 5 feet before I would have T-boned it. I yelled, "HEY!" at the top of my lungs, which is my sort of default "horn" noise. The driver's head spun around, and she tapped her brakes. Her hand came up to cover her mouth, her face a perfect mask of "Oh my god!" horror. She sped off across the street. That was the point at which I decided I really did want a horn. So that night I ordered one of these air horns, which arrived yesterday morning. I got it installed on the bike (I really have to take a picture -- that bike is more gadgets than bicycle at this point), and ended up giving a lot of drivers a quick "Hey, I'm here" double-honk on the way home. It's definitely loud enough, although I wish it wasn't such a high tone. I would have used it this morning as well, but when I got out to the bike, I was greeted by a flat tire. My first "real" flat, I suspect, since that rim tape solved my flat-every-two-days problem back in October. I was already running late, so I decided that it wouldn't kill me to ride the motorcycle in this morning. I guess I'll have a flat tire to fix over the weekend. Hopefully the tire isn't too damaged. On the other hand, I realized that I've been basically riding a bicycle every day for a couple of months. That's pretty gratifying. Posted at 11:12 permanent link category: /bicycle Thu, 15 Mar 2007
Commentary on the previous entry
The entry just before this one (chronologically, at least -- it's the next one down the page) is a letter I sent to Alex Edge of Motorcycle Daily. Part of the reason I'm so unhappy is that I've previously seen MD do good articles that take a very "normal person" point of view -- that is, they don't bow to the pro-motorcycle freaks, and they don't bow to the anti-motorcycle freaks. To see them write up this loud exhaust system as if it were the best thing in the world is frustrating (as I'm sure you will get/have gotten from reading my email to them). I don't know MD's stand on EPA or loud pipes, but I expected better reporting from them. The token line about picking a different exhaust if you don't want to wake up your neighbors doesn't cut it. I had long considered MD to be a source of sane motorcycle news. I don't suspect they're going to stop being that, but this is a step in the wrong direction. If I wanted articles about InSaNe Power Mods! I would be looking in the appropriate publication (and there are a lot of them). So, I guess it's more of an "I expected better" letter than anything else. 'Cause, you know what? I expected better. Posted at 11:17 permanent link category: /motorcycle
To: Alex Edge <alex@motorcycledaily.com>
Referring to: http://www.motorcycledaily.com/07march07_zx14update2.htm I'm glad you're enjoying the bike, but I have a gripe. I know you've heard of the EPA and what they're doing, but for a quick refresher, take a look here: I'm not offering an opinion either way on EPA's actions. My complaint is that by selecting a self-proclaimed "loud" exhaust system to fit onto your long-term ZX-14, and then talking it up like it's the best thing since sliced bread, you're doing motorcycling a major disservice in two ways. The first way is that you're feeding the "gotta make it louder/faster" frenzy which has been lately demonstrated in the ever-larger motorcycles pushed by manufacturers. It's also demonstrated by people swapping out stock mufflers and intakes for aftermarket "off-road use only" (which I'm *sure* yours says as well) equipment. I don't suspect that particular trend is growing, but it still demonstrates the popularity of this kind of selfish bigger-better-faster attitude. For what it's worth, yes, I understand that people are buying the bigger/faster bikes (so the manufacturers are arguably meeting a market demand), but it's led to a dearth of reasonable-sized motorcycles, particularly for beginners. Doubtless this is mostly due to the small profit margins available on small bikes, but it's something of a crisis when the average beginner considers a CBR600 a good first bike. (This is a tangential issue, but I don't want you to think that I'm unaware of market pressures.) The second part of the problem is that every car, pedestrian (and most importantly) non-motorcyclist you pass with your new (and widely publicized) loud exhaust system is another pissed off voter. Worse yet, they're a lawyer or politician, and your growling rumble generator interrupts their self-important cellphone call or something -- now they're pissed, and all they see is some guy on a motorcycle. They don't see you, they don't see ZX-14, they just see "motorcycle." That happens enough times, and we get the superbike bill again. Seriously, do you think it won't pass this time? Our only real defense against anti-motorcycle legislation is to keep ourselves off the radar. It's very hard for motorcycles to make brownie points; it's very easy to gather negative points. Loud pipes and all the hooliganish behavior conjured by them (whether the rider actually being a hooligan, or onlookers just thinking he is) paint all motorcycles on the radar with a huge blip. This is not about personal freedoms, it's about everybody working together. In the same way I don't blast music on my stereo at midnight, I don't put loud pipes on my bikes. I could, but it would be really antisocial. If you want your ZX-14 loud and fast, great. Put it on a trailer, strip off the street gear, and run it on the track. It'd be a fabulous track ride, if a bit porky in the corners. That's where the loud exhausts belong. Not on the street, pissing off voters who only notice a motorcycle when it makes itself noticeable. I am a motorcyclist, myself. I've been riding since 1999, and if you're curious about me you can see all my different bikes on the link in my signature line, below. I would like to keep being a motorcyclist. I think that flaunting the EPA's laws, and flaunting public annoyance (whether statute or actual angry people) is a good way to stop me being able to ride a motorcycle when and where I want. Writing about it as if it's this fabulous thing is among the more negative contributions I've seen in a while. Please consider your words and actions more carefully next time. --
Posted at 11:00 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 06 Mar 2007I just checked the odometer on my bicycle's computer: 601 miles. Plus about 20 before I got it installed, but who's counting? Me. I bought this bike on the 16th of September, 2006, which is close enough to 6 months ago that I'll just call it that. In 6 months, I've ridden about 600 miles. That's not bad! Particularly considering that my other bike, which I bought in January, 1999, has 900-some miles on its odometer. If I keep going at this rate, I'll have surpassed that number before June. It's impressive to think that by my own leg-power alone, I've traversed those miles. On top of that, there's a lot of up-and-down that's not accounted for in a simple monodimensional number like miles on an odometer. This realization came about when I was filling out the calendar for Adobe's commuter bonus program for February. If you bike more than 50% of the time you come into work, they give you a little token, a gift certificate to REI or a local bike store. But in order to qualify, you have to fill out this form, including writing on every day that you took non-motorized transportation to get to work. As I was filling out the form, I realized that I commuted to work without a motor on 18 of the 20 working days in February. Wow! When I started out, I was kind of aiming for bicycling to work 3 out of 5 days in a week. That wasn't much trouble, and after a while I stopped thinking about it. Then, a few weeks ago, I realized that it'd been several weeks since I'd fired up either the motorcycle or the sidecar rig. That was when it first dawned on me: I've been bicycling a lot. I'm pretty happy about that. It's nice to know that it can be done. I'm no longer thinking, "I'll need a motor for that," and have started thinking, "I'd rather be on a bicycle for that." Next up: let's see if Norco will honor their theoretical lifetime warranty on the old bike, and give me a new frame. I brought in the old one a couple weeks ago, so here's hoping! Posted at 23:00 permanent link category: /bicycle Yep, I've actually started moving. After a surprising amount of calling around and gathering pricing and availability, I decided on a storage space 50 blocks north of me, on Aurora. Storage is damned expensive, at least in Seattle. Even so, I got what appears to be a reasonable deal, and I'm at least moderately confident my meager possessions will stay where they're put. I loaded up the minivan (busted head gasket and all -- at least it still runs) tonight: two sets of herculean-strength shelves, and 8 boxes of books which are destined for Deep Storage. Kristin and I drove up the ever-sign-encrusted Aurora Avenue, and turned into the deserted loading bay of the storage place. I got out, and typed in my fabulously long (8 digits!) gate access code. A moment passed, and the gate started grinding up. Success! I spied three cargo carts hidden behind a locked door, and confidently keyed in my code again. Failure! The "Call Manager" light blinked silently at me, the door remaining resolutely locked. I tried again; maybe I'd mis-keyed. Again, the red light winked at me, refusing to let me in on its secret. I jabbed the unlabeled button in the center of the little console. Nothing happened. I tried my code again. Again the imperious little light. Again with the button-jab. Still nothing. Apparently when they say "On-site managers" they're actually kidding. Remembering the Chinese definition of madness ("He who repeats the same actions expecting a different result is mad"), I moved on. Maybe the elevator would reveal a hidden treasure-trove of sturdy carts. Up to floor 4, where my unit is located. Nope, no carts there. Down to floor 1, below where we'd started. Ah-hah! Two carts, lurking nonchalantly outside the elevator door. I snagged one, and dragged it back into the elevator. Back up to floor 2, where the van waited. Cart successfully in hand, we loaded up the boxes of books, and trundled the gravid cart out to my space. Out with the lock, and up with the door. Behold! There is a small table-tent paper-thing. "Just like a hotel," remarked Kristin. The table-tent assured me that some lackey had swept the floor and greased the door, but had neglected to check that the light bulb was functional. Slackers! Fortunately, the light was working, so they were spared my considerable wrath. We loaded the boxes into the space, where they looked small and huddled. I went back down and retrieved the disturbingly dense (but oh so strong) shelf units. These are sold at Costco for $50 each, and claim that each shelf can hold 1500 lbs (which is to say, two portly motorcycles, or 1/2 of the average family sedan). Each shelf. Not each unit, each shelf. That's a pretty sturdy device. I'm unlikely to be testing those claims. But I know where I can keep my valuable lead ingots! I briefly considered trying to actually construct one of the shelving units, but was overcome by hunger and Kristin's sad look as she pondered waiting around uselessly while I swore and made clanking noises at her. We adjourned to the van, locking the unassembled shelf things and the forlorn books in their corrugated steel cage. So it's official. At a rate of $180 (plus tax, of course) per month, I have a new home-away-from-home for all my weird stuff. Better get cracking; there's nothing like spending money to get me in gear. Posted at 22:35 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |