already got that covered

 

Of course it's too small; original here.

So the gal on the right wears my preferred cold-weather gear, the black turtleneck; do you think her sentiment reflects my attitude? (Hint: I'm afraid I do.)

giving up on latin

 Those who know me, know my intellectual snobbiness goes deep. But the little humility I've got demands I point out the limits of my learning. As my ol' pal, Desiderius Erasmus, wrote, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." He wrote it in Latin, so there's some latitude on the exact translation.

I'm giving up on Latin. I've just seen that there is an animated entertainment to be released entitled The Legend of Vox Machina. It's a Dungeons & Dragons story, and not my cup of tea. But that's not what I'm whining about; I'm old and cranky, and I find fault with almost everything that began after about 1980 (we can probably blame Reagan and his supporters).

The title, specifically the Latin, doesn't make sense. Latin uses word endings to determine how a word is used in a sentence, which has the advantage that you can completely upset the word order for the purposes of emphasis (one example of word endings changing to determine meaning in English is the use of 's to show possession; English, however, generally uses word order to determine word use: "man bites dog" is fundamentally different from "dog bites man").

And the word ending of Machina is wrong; it's the ending you would use if the machine in question were the object of a preposition. If you want to say "The Voice of the Machine", you'd say vox machinae.

I'm sure they took the term deus ex machina, "the god from out of the machine", and just yanked the word into their title (the term comes from drama. You can go ask your high-school English teacher about it; it refers to a practice in ancient Greek plays of getting a situation all messed up, then having a god come down from on high to clean things up [sometimes lowered on a mechanical platform, the "machine" in question]. They evidently liked that; modern critics and audiences consider it cheating [if you're gonna have a device fix everything up in act three, you have to set it into your play in act one]). In the case of deus ex machina, the ending of machina  is correct because machina is the object of the preposition ex, "out of".

It rankles just enough that I wrote this post about it. And I know so little Latin, that I usually have to go back to my textbooks (from 1973-74) to make sure I got stuff correct.

There are probably twenty people in the world who would see the title of the show, know enough Latin to know it's incorrect, AND get cranky enough to "spill some ink" about it (is it spilling ink if I'm blogging?).

Enough. I think it's time to give up on Latin. Nobody cares, and I don't need to broadcast any more examples of just what a wacko I am.

road ride on a cold day

 

My announcement for today's ride included the following:

It's been too cold to ride, and it's going to be cold again... but I got out with some Freewheelers this week, and I missed it so, and then another member sounded disappointed when I wasn't gonna lead on Sunday, and I remembered a year ago another leader and I were talking about short, no-break rides for the pandemic...

Laura OLPH listed a trail ride (we had discussions about what to list, and who would go on which ride), but I decided to do a road ride - a 25-mile ride, with the only break to be at a porta-potty. My original listing ended:

As I write this, I have no idea if anybody is interested, and it sounds like a daft idea, even to me. Nonetheless, registration limited to 20. 

I was flabbergasted. At one point, sixteen people had signed up; even with a flurry of cancellations this morning, I had twelve registrants, and all of them showed. 

They were/are almost all much faster than I, and I had already decided to ride with the two who I thought would be at the back... but then the two of them were among the cancellations. As my ol' pal, Bobby Burns, wrote, "The best-laid schemes..."

We had a near-tragedy shortly after the start: we crossed a patch of ice that surprised all of us. One of our riders went down... but was back up again in an instant, and the only mishap he reported was the near-loss of his car keys (that were recovered). I made a bit of a pain-in-the-ass of myself with my repeated queries about any pain or other problems after the tumble, but he complained of nothing, and completed the ride at his usual speedy pace.

It stayed pretty cold. At one point, referring to our discussion that I needed to find a winter hobby, Peter P mentioned that it looked like I'd found one.

I had posted the route, but made a couple of changes to the mapped route. The picture at top was after a decision in Rocky Hill. Below, I had planned to pass the Montgomery Arboretum for a toilet stop, but the folks in front made a turn on Harlingen before we got there. I went on and enjoyed the toilet, then found the group waiting on Harlingen... and I decided to change the route to avoid the possibly-icy trail at Magill. 

Do you think they look properly penitent for riding ahead?

After that, they were a bit better-behaved, and allowed me to make believe, for at least a few miles, that I could actually keep up with 'em.

At the end, a few mentioned how glad they were to get out on a ride. I was glad, too.

Ride page. Despite changing the route, we still brought in about 25 miles (as I'd advertised), and despite cooking to keep up with 'em, my average came in at 15.3, within my plan for my "Lo-B" pace.

joining the team

 

I stopped work before Thanksgiving, and officially retired December 1, 2021... but, given the weather, my early-retirement mishaps, and their schedule, I haven't been able to get out on a Team Social Security ride. So when I saw Joe M had one scheduled for yesterday, I signed up, even though I had no idea where Northern Community Park on Groveville Road was. Aren't they supposed to start from Allentown on Wednesdays?

Well, yeah, but... well, the toilets have been locked up in Allentown since about the start of the pandemic, and the toilets at this park are open. And when you're dealing with a number of people of the age of this team, toilet availability is A Consideration. This is an issue which has become of concern to me; we need not elaborate further.

Above: Andy A's Bianchi is so pretty.

With the predicted wind and cold, Joe had planned 31 miles with a short stop. The wind certainly came through; we had one of those rides where we could turn 90°, or more, and still be fighting a headwind (and "fighting" is the term to use; it was substantial. Laura OLPH says, "Y'know what riding into a headwind is good training for? Riding into a headwind").

This ride wasn't as fast as some of the TSS rides get, and I got a chance to chat with some of the guys (I hope to have more chances, as I ride with 'em more frequently, if this cold ever breaks). I was complaining what a failure I've been at retirement to Pete P, and he suggested I needed a hobby. I replied, " I've got one!", as I continued to pedal, but we agreed maybe I need a winter hobby.

We stopped in Columbus; you may have recognized from the building in the background in the picture at top.

(Hrmph. Abut half my pictures didn't come out: schmutz on the lens. I need to take better care of my gear.)

I had such a good time on this ride, that I decided to post something for the weekend, even though it's gonna be way colder. I need some #$%&ing rides, dammit.

Ride page.

the idle mind...

 Oh, my stars, but when it hasn't been too cold for me to ride recently (a number of the Hill Slugs have apparently done a trail ride), it's been too wet. I've been sitting home idle, trying to avoid being completely overwhelmed by self pity. 

I got to thinking about the organizer bags I use in my seatbag to manage my CO₂ cartridges, multi-tool, and the like. I got about a dozen or so at a dollar store than has since gone belly-up, and I haven't seen the like elsewhere to replace them. They're zipper bags, about 5x7", with a layer of plastic on the fabric so they're at least nominally water-resistant... but the fabric is thin and wears out, and the zipper gives up at the slightest sign of overfill.

I've got this fabric that I used to make saddle covers (the plastic I got initially proved to be too thin, so I got some polyester canvas with a rubber coating). I got way too much, thinking that I'd need to make several saddle covers until I found a design that worked... and then I hit on an effective design on the first try. I've got two saddle covers, so if The Excellent Wife (TEW) and have both bikes on the car, we can protect both saddles (only mine is leather, but there you are).

I had to get a zipper for another project, and got a couple of blue-jeans zippers to play with for this (although I'd use heavy plastic zippers in future; the brass resists zipping on these bags). At first, I thought of a rectangular bag (bottom left, above)... but I got the corners wrong, and it turned out not to fit neatly in the seatbag I use (at top, above, the Topeak Large Aero Wedge; it's the biggest underseat bag I can find that doesn't require a separate frame and doesn't seem TOO stupid). The bag fits, of course... but it makes it hard to also fit in the two tubes and the VAR tire tools I like to carry.

Then I got the idea of making a bag that was the shape of the seatbag. I tried tracing the bottom, but that turned out to have too much "pinch" at the narrow end. Then I traced the side, and that worked better; you can see the bag at center bottom, above (bottom right is the pattern I traced). I can push it in to one side of the bag, and get the two tubes next to it.

It fits two CO₂ cartridges, my "detonator", my Crank Brothers M-19 multi-tool, and my Lezyne aluminum tire levers. It doesn't fit the pill bottle full of a dozen-or-so quicklinks in 9- and 10-speed sizes (I know from experience that I can use a 10-speed link on an 11-speed chain), but that can sit in the narrow nose of the seatbag*. I figured the angled zipper on the side would give me easier access than a zipper on the end (and I was right). My two tubes, the VAR tools, a set of Allen wrenches, and some tire boots also fit in the seatbag (though not in the organizer).

*I have had to use these exactly twice in my decades of riding, but I make it a point of pride to have with me what I need to get you going again. There's probably not enough therapy in the world to fix me.

I need to think of another project; it doesn't look like the weather is improving soon.

glad to be back

 A couple of days ago, I posted about how I was looking forward to going back to the New Brunswick Bike Exchange.

My second night was last night. I'm so glad to be volunteering there. They've done a great job with it. I've got a project I'm working on.

Life is good.

friend networks

 If your network of friends and acquaintances isn't growing, it's shrinking.

Some of the folks who said they wanted to keep in touch after my retirement... appear to be less interested now.

qualifying for team social security, and new stuff to do

 My Social Security payments have started (and thanks to all of you who are still working and paying into the system). I'm an old man; it's official.

In other news, I started back at the New Brunswick Bike Exchange (although the Facebook page might actually be a more useful link) It's now led by Harv Moy, who was a student in one of my bike maintenance classes. He wants me to start doing the classes again. 

They have a corps of regular volunteers, and they're in a great location.  I'm very impressed with what they've become, and early indications suggest that it will be  good fit for me (if I can manage to avoid pissin' 'em off). The new volunteers I met were SO FRIENDLY, and treated me with a deference I'm sure I have not earned. I was working on a bike with a trashed bottom bracket, and showed off the ground-up ball bearings and retainer, to a certain amount of oohs and aahs.

I'm REALLY looking forward to going back.

copyright is still broken

 My dad, a published author, held that copyright should be sacrosanct and permanent. He was wrong. I've had a few posts on it.

Now "Skepchick" Rebecca Watson is weighing in. She's right, because she agrees with me.

Why aren't you checking her out regularly?

first of the year

 

I didn't post this listing until late in the week, due to worries about weather and possible real-social-life conflicts. I still got fourteen (some of the faster folks went on other rides, which works out better for everybody; I want this to be a recovery ride, and a ride for people just at the edge of the "B" range).

Above, Ming's brought a cake to celebrate my retirement. She had one at the Holiday Party, to which The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I couldn't go because we were quarantined. Not to be denied; she made another and brought it today. I'm flattered! Thank you so much, Ming!

We did a modification of one of my regular routes, taking a real-estate tour in Hillsborough before proceeding down East Mountain, and then turning off 601 onto Dutchtown-Harlingen instead of proceeding down to Elm and Sunset (popular opinion appears to hold that today's change is an improvement, as not all of my changes are). From there, we took my regular roads to a stop at Thomas Sweet.

I'd been low-key worrying about crossing the canal at Griggstown all day. The Griggstown Causeway is the lowest canal crossing by far, and the rain last night might have put it under water. When we got to the Causeway, we saw it was passable, but just barely...

I felt something like Moses at the Red Sea.

When we got back, we had at the cake that Ming had brought. The next three pictures are from Luis C; the cake pic is mine.

Many thanks to Dave H, who brought back the remainder of the cake to my house, so that TEW could have some!

There were a number of discussions about my brief tenure as an employee at Sourland Cycles. It's a good shop, and the mechanics are efficient. It was just a poor fit for me. I've got some other plans for my time and energies.

Ride page.