spring fling 2022

 

Yeah, I led a C ride on the Princeton Freewheelers Spring Fling today, and The Excellent Wife (TEW) came along.  I don't appear to be in trouble with her (thanks to the excellent Randy B who swept, and who apparently kept her entertained). 

The pic above is a group pic of my riders.

Ride page here.

But what you probably really want is the photo album. Go see it at the "Photos & Albums" page on the Freewheeler website. There are instructions at the top of the page for those of us who do not find these things intuitive.

 

needs to be said - philuminati

 I'm posting this here partly so I can find it again.

It's obviously a reaction to the Velominati Rules, which may have been tongue-in-cheek once upon a time, but with time, limited imagination, and arteriosclerosis, have developed followers with all the flexibility of the adherents of a persecuted religion.

Phil's right, of course... but despite his Rule 10, I will always have a hard time giving up these two:

• Rule 9: If you are out riding in bad weather, it means you are a badass. Period. I will adhere to this, despite the good sense of Mr Gaimon.
• And, of course, Rule 5: Harden the fuck up. 

Meditate on that last one for a while, and you'll see the truth of it.

But for the rest, Phil's right. Especially that last one; it covers pretty much everything.

this one was a little weird

 So after having eight, ten, twelve, fourteen riders on my rides over the fall and winter, I was a little curious (and not a little disappointed) when I only had three other registrants for today's ride, one of whom was completely new to me.

I was even more disappointed when one of them cancelled yesterday afternoon.

I have a hard time expressing my emotions when I saw that another cancelled this morning. The only one still registered was the person new to me.

I got an email from Laura OLPH that she might meet us on the way, so I rode to the start location for the 9:00 departure to tell the new rider about the plan.

At 9:02, he had not arrived, so I gave up waiting, and I rode to the place where Laura said she was planning to meet me. She wasn't there; I rode around the way I thought she might be approaching, but I didn't see her. 

My phone went off; she had texted that she was far beyond the meeting point. We had apparently missed each other. We agreed to meet on Route 27, and we did; we continued along the route I'd picked.

A short while later, another rider overtook us. It was Yuval B, the new rider. He'd gotten to the start at about 9:05, after some minor mishaps loading up the car for the ride.

Well, that made me feel better; at least I hadn't been completely abandoned!

Here's Yuval and a few degrees of Laura at Bayberry Road in Hopewell:

Bayberry Road! I'd chosen this route because I'd heard it was open again, and it's part of a couple of my favorite routes. We'd been along there after storm Ida, and had had to portage around the bridge that the storm had destroyed. But it's fine now!

New concrete, new retaining fences, new everything. Plan on a ride through there that includes Pretty Brook Road in a few weeks. It will give us something to complain about over coffee at the Boro Bean:

(Not even gonna apologize for the bike pics.)

After the stop, Laura rolled off, and I tried to keep up with Yuval. He was kind enough to let me believe I was almost in his class.

I hope to see him again. I hope to see some of my regulars again, too! And I hope to find out where everybody was this week. Was it something I said? Do I need to apologize? (Again? As usual?)

Ride page.

this bike p-sses me off

 

The more I look at this bike, the angrier I get.

The Excellent Wife (TEW) brought this home from work as a donation to the New Brunswick Bike Exchange. It was in the hatch of her Prius, with the front wheel removed, and I remember thinking, "This wheel is remarkably heavy...". When I removed the bike itself, it was ALSO remarkably heavy; heavy like a mild steel department-store bike. As I replaced the front wheel, I wondered why: after all, the frame was aluminum...

Let's start with the wheels:

See that deep-section, supposedly-aerodynamic rim? It's made of aluminum. Aero rims are made of carbon, because to make an aero rim of aluminum, so much material has to be used to make the shape stable and safe, that the supposed benefits of the aero shape are swamped by the huge weight gain due to the extra aluminum. This wheel appears to be pretending to be something it is not.

Wait, what's going on with that cabling? Is it possible that this bike was sent to the purchaser with the cables disconnected, in the expectation that they would have to do it? Apparently, yes; the donor said they knew they were in over their head. And anybody who knew anything about bikes would point out just what was wrong with this bike as they worked on it. Read on.

Wait; what's up with that awful front cabling? And why does the bar wrap stop so far out from the stem in the center?

Oh, I see. It's because the manufacturer has stuck shifters meant for flat bars on this drop-bar bike. There's no good hand position from which you can get to both the brakes and the shifters. And the shifters are right where you would want to put your hands when you're riding on the tops.

The frame welds are unobtrusive. Of course they are; they're not very good, but they don't have to be. There's no evidence that the aluminum tubes are butted or thin. In fact, given the weight of the bike, I'll bet the tubes are thicker than aluminum conduit, and could have been welded by a tyro in his first week of trade school.

But wait: what about all that fancy machining around the cap and the headset? Yeah, don't worry about that. It looks good now, but the machining isn't polished. It will oxidize to a dull grey as soon as the bike sees a little weather. 

A quick web search shows that this bike is available for around $150-260 (why such a large range?). For that price, go get yourself something used that works better. This POS is a shonde.

one of the benefits of retirement

 One of the benefits of retirement is that when you're not busy with something else, you get to go out on a Club ride on a Monday morning. I tagged along with Eddie L's ride from Etra Park yesterday.

Above center, in black: Al P. His wife died recently; it was good to see him out among folks he sees and rides with frequently.

Many of these guys ride together often, and, with the weather warming*, more of them are starting to come out. I'm hoping to become a semi-regular, although this month already has conflicts either planned or looming.

*"Warming" here is, of course, relative; there was ice on the car when I was loading up the bike yesterday morning, and there was discussion about the wind, and how many layers I wear under the long-sleeve jersey I wear as an outer layer. (The answer was four layers, plus the jersey, yesterday; sometimes I go as many as six under,)

These guys are easy to ride with, generally. The C+ ride I did had riders with a range of abilities and some go off the front (and wait at turns); some ride at the back, Some who ride at the back choose to do so.

We stopped at the Jackson Wawa:

It was a good way to spend a Monday. Ride page.

That was yesterday. For today, other commitments, including delivering to the New Brunswick Bike Exchange a bike that makes me angrier every time I look at it. Check in tomorrow when I post my rant about this fraudulence.

back again

 

I just looked it up: I hadn't been out with my usual riding pals (variously called the Hill Slugs, the Insane Bike Posse, or the Usual Suspects, although with the people who come on my Sunday rides, that last one is losing definition) in almost a month due to weather or other commitments, and I hadn't been on ride ride led by Laura OLPH yet this year. So when she posted one for yesterday, and I was gonna be able to go, you can be sure I signed up. I ain't got so many friends that I can afford to let them slide.  

In her listing, she posted 45-50 miles, and offered extra miles from her house to the ride start. Rickety G and I took her up on that.

We rode to the start, and picked up the others; there were eight of us. Laura had set a route to Lambertville that included a number of the usual roads, but we didn't often do them on the way to Lambertville. There were also a few changes I found welcome.

We got to Lamberville, and stopped at Union Coffee. (Rojo's is apparently still closed.) I had mistakenly thought that Laura didn't like the place, but I'm wrong. Seating is not ideal, and the line is long sometimes, but the comestibles are good, and those who know something about coffee tell me the coffee is good. (As you may remember, I'm a Dunkin' Donuts coffee barbarian.)

Also, they don't hate us.

On the way back, two welcome changes: the first was a little detour that meant we did not have to cross 31 at Rocktown Road. I hate that crossing; it may be enough that I may make it a deciding factor if I'm going to choose to attend a ride again. On this ride, though, we rolled a little ways south to the crossing at Rocktown Hill Road. So much better! Visibility is much better, and it just feels safer. Some leaders resist doing it in the other direction because it requires going the wrong way on the Route 31 shoulder, but to me, the increased safety is worth the inconvenience. I had done it once before, crossing towards Lambertville, I believe on a pickup ride with Peter G, and I'm sold.

The other was taking the Harbourton road from 518 down to Pleasant Valley. It was trafficky, but it avoided a pair of hills that are often not welcome this late in a ride.

Catching our breath at the end prior to riding back to Laura's:

I had thought to do a ride today... but the rain predictions got increasingly dire as the week progressed, so I cancelled. As I look out the window, I'm glad I did.

Edit 4/4: I forgot to link to the ride pages. Here's the ride to the start, the Lambertville loop, and the ride back.

what i did today

 You may not remember that first class I taught when I went back to the New Brunswick Bike Exchange, but I do. I especially remember this pic:

 

Ever since seeing that, I've been thinking about that bald spot. (The Excellent Wife [TEW] is graceful enough to call it a "thin spot", but, in an occurrence rare for her, I think she is showing more tact than honesty.)

Today, I made this hat to cover up the bald spot:

I found a not-too-expensive pattern for the flat cap, and, knowing that I usually have to go for the largest hat size available, made up the pattern in the largest size... and it was way too big. So this hat is an adult small. (It's my third try; the second one fit, but I made it up in a print that nobody should actually be seen wearing.)

The print on this hat is skull-and-barbed-wire; Rickety's son had brought some home for some project or other, and this was left over. When he heard I was sewing, Rickety gave me three or four lengths of fabric, and this was among them. I love it for this hat, mostly because I'm so not a skull-and-barbed-wire kind of guy.

I'm going to wear it at the Bike Exchange, and it's gonna get grungy. I'll have to make a successor. (It actually requires some skills; there are some tough curves to match up when pinning it together. Also, the pattern is lined, so it looks a bit of quality.)

The vest in the pic is also my handiwork. I back-engineered the pattern from a vest I own, and then fitted in the pockets. It's mostly a glorified cell-phone carrier, because I'm tired of getting the rolled eyes I see when I use those belt carriers some of us old guys prefer.