best-laid schemes

 

Steve S has a car engine in the back of his SUV for a project with his son. Ask him about it; you won't be sorry, because it's a great story.

As my ol' pal, Bobby B, wrote:
...The best laid schemes
o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley.

I was planning to do Steve S's a-little-under-40-mile-ride from Cranbury today, with Ralph and Naveen.

 

... but Naveen noticed a bulge in Ralph's front tire that turned out to be the tube coming out of a cut in the sidewall. Ralph booted up the gash...

...and then we adjusted the route to go to Ralph's to switch bikes, and then I got a message that made me change plans. I wound up with about 20 miles. Better than no ride at all, of course, and I'm glad I met Naveen. I'm sure I'll ride again with Ralph and Steve, and I'll have to plan to go on a ride that Steve leads, just to prove that I CAN finish with him - after all, we don't want this to become an omen, do we?

chance of dying

 A micromort is a unit of risk defined as a one-in-a-million chance of death.

According to this page, cycling 28 miles in a day incurs a risk of one micromort.

This page tells me that getting out of bed after age 45 incurs a risk of six micromorts. Going for a swim risks twelve; playing football (the American flavor, "handegg") risks 20.

You can keep your benighted high-viz-yellow cycling gear. Put that high-viz-yellow on your swim trunks and football jerseys. 

 

 

 

before the superbowl ride

 Well, if you had a picture that good, wouldn't you lead off with it?

There are riders who won't come on my C+ rides (average pace 13.0-14.9mph) because even though I ride within the average pace (unless everyone else is way off the front), they don't want to be left behind. I don't leave riders behind.

Sometimes I get left behind.

And sometimes, the fellow riders who could leave me behind, don't, and make sure that I catch up with 'em, and even let me lead for a bit. I'm sure it's partly to make sure that I keep listing some of these rides. (Mine was the fastest-paced club ride listed for today, for example).

Today's was over one of my usual routes. I call it "annoying hills adjusted". One of the riders asked about the "adjusted" in the name; I said I had adjusted the route to avoid one of the riskier turns from the original route. Another rider wondered if I'd adjusted out any of the annoying hills.

I had not. There's only about 1100' of climb on this ride, but much of it is steeper than you'd like, or otherwise unnecessarily unpleasant. (I'll have to think for a bit about "necessary unpleasantness.")

Above, my view for a substantial part of the ride. Below, one of the occasions when the riders were displaying politeness.

We stopped at Thomas Sweet, where I got out-of-focus indoor pictures.

And back. The riders were a bit more mellow after the stop... but I was still the last one in.

Ride page.

I'm hoping that as the weather warms, some of you club members who ride at a pace closer to mine will come out, so I can have some company, and so I won't try to show off to these faster folks. Maybe you can help save me from my worst instincts.

new sewing project

 

Regular readers may remember that I started learning to sew over COVID, and people who know me will not be surprised to hear (and may already have figured out on their own) that I like to be a little overdressed for any occasion. Decades ago, I worked with a woman (it's all I can do not to say "I worked with a girl..."; while she had the age to be a woman, she had attitude and irresponsibility I associate with girlhood) who had a suit consisting of a frock coat and flared pants. I have low-key wanted a coat like that ever since (it's basically a blazer with a knee-length lower hem). I've made four of 'em: neither of the first two was worth saving and are now banished from the house; I wore the third to an event over the weekend (and yes, I was a little overdressed for the event).

The last time I was in the fabric store, I saw some lovely suiting fabric, and decided I just had to try the frock coat again. Laura OLPH was rooting for purple with contrasting piping, but the ghosts of my WASP ancestors put their foot RIGHT down on that suggestion (I'm sure we'd find my homophobe father would be turning in his grave at the whole idea of my sewing at all ["No son of mine..."], if there were enough of him left to know he'd turned, but he was cremated, and how would you know if his ashes were restless?), but I did go for bright salmon lining in bridal satin, q.v. in the picture above. 

That's the bodice lining. It took me most of two days to assemble (although I don't work eight hours a day on it), partly because the original pattern doesn't include the inside pockets, which I had to design, cut parts for, and let into the pieces (a terrible, but unfortunately true riddle: Q: What's a man's blazer without inside pockets? A: A woman's blazer). I cut the pieces for jacket, lining, pockets, and all on Saturday, and between pressing, layout, and cutting, it took about five hours (I'm sure someone who knows what they're doing can cut it in less than half that).

The lining fabric is bridal satin, which is just a joy to work with; it's got body (unlike many thin lining fabrics) and stays pressed. The cut edges were shedding like crazy, but it's a polyester, so I figured that if I singed the edges, the fraying would stop. That worked a treat, but don't let the fabric catch fire when you're using the lighter.

The bodice lining includes the upper collar, and I was getting tired and cranky by the time I was putting that on; I had to cut the stitches and reassemble a number of times, which tells me it's time to quit for a while.

Next is the outer bodice, which should take a little less time (all the pieces are in the pattern, and I've made a few mistakes I can avoid on the outer, which is one of the reasons I do the lining first). And then the sleeves. Assembling the sleeve pieces is straightforward, but fitting them to the bodice (both the lining and the outer) requires attention: the sleeves are larger than the arm holes they go into, and the technique for fitting the sleeves is not forgiving. (You could have seen several ways to do it wrong on the ones I threw out.)

I've done enough of this stuff to know that when I finally get to the point that the lining and the outer are assembled, I'm only about 60% finished; there is a large amount of special finishing and hemming, and eleven or thirteen buttons to go on. I expect it to be complete in about a month.

For no reason, below find the side of the lining that will be hidden, showing the guts of the inside pockets:

Since I make 'em to suit myself, they're each large enough to hold either my oversized wallet or my cell phone.

No, I won't make one for anybody else. But if you need alterations...

low b, i mean c+, brownie, i mean chocolate chip cookie ride

 The title of the post is what Eric H called it on RideWithGPS:

(I couldn't lead with that because the sites I link this use the first pic as a thumbnail for the post, and that one never would have come out.)

I thought that this route would be shorter than the routes I usually do in this direction, if I cut out the run up Bayberry (and it probably was), but it includes a long, demanding hill on Carter. Still, despite that hill, and despite my warnings about it in the description of the ride, and despite cold, raw temperatures... still, eight fellow club members decided to join me.

We had riders (as I often get) with a range of abilities, and I thought I'd let the faster folks go off (as I do) and ride with the slower folks (as I do). But as the ride went on, it turned out that everybody was the faster folks, and I was mostly leading from the rear and watching the average pace creep up. 

On Kingston-Rocky Hill Road, one of the others asked me about what I'd done to lose weight. I told him about how heavy I'd been fifteen years ago, how I'd lost the weight over the course of about two years, then gained a substantial amount of it back, then what I'd done to lose it again, and my current struggles and procedures with keeping it off. But I'm not an expert with that, or with training, or fitness (although I claim a certain proficiency with a wrench [see my Ramblin' Wrench site], and another rider mentioned a plan to bespeak my services again).

(I can never remember where we are; I had to go look at the ride page to get the road name.)

We took a scheduled break at Boro Bean. The proprietor-fella said that he'd had the busiest day today that he'd ever had, although there were still a few things on offer (I got a contact from a fellow Free Wheeler saying that she'd had breakfast there with a houseguest, but had been sure to leave some muffins behind). One of our number got the last of the brownies, leaving another pining for its loss... and then he noticed that the signs were reversed: the (empty) brownie array was listed for chocolate-chip cookies, and the supply of chocolate-chip cookies was labeled as brownies. We had a certain amount of banter (and eye-rolling on the part of Very Truly Yours, Plain Jim), leading ultimately to the second obscure reference in Eric's title for this ride.

And back. If anything, the rest of the riders were energized after the break, and I mostly let 'em go on ahead (I started the group on 518 to the east, and when they all started to pass me after a bit, I confess a certain amount of relief). By the end, I thanked a couple of 'em for letting me make believe I could keep up with 'em. Albert laughed and said he thought I was pretty fast.

Hrmph. I'm not fast. They're polite. See the ride page. I'm sure all of their averages were faster than mine. I need some more sensible people to come on this ride to keep me company.

almost missed it

Tom H posted the listing for this ride on Tuesday, and sent an email around to his regulars in the Insane Bike Posse, but I put it off... and by the time I got my act together to sign up on Thursday evening, the ten allotted spots were full. I sent an email to Tom asking if I could register, and the next morning there was a reply offering his permission, so I went into the listing and did the web magic that would allow me to register for the ride. So there we were, with eleven registered for his limited-to-ten ride. Thanks, Tom, for your indulgence; I feel lucky and in your debt.

Getting ready at Etra Park:

Below: That's not the worst picture ever of Bob L (that's later in the post) but it's pretty bad.

 Tom had a route that rider Bob W recognized as one that Dennis W used to run with the Team Social Security riders that used to go out of Etra on Mondays and Fridays (and if it wasn't exactly that route, it was close; I recognized a number of the roads [and I'm lost all the time]). You can see the route on the ride page.

The first bit was easy going: it was flattish (except for a dip on Hoffman Station Road), and, despite our different preferred paces, we mostly stayed together. I rode mostly in the back, chatting with riders and listening to others spout off facts and opinions, except for occasionally taking a turn in the wind... which was beginning to pick up as we turned south and west.

We stopped at a Wawa on 33 near Manalapan, where I got an even worse picture of Bob L...

(I swear he's better-looking than that), as well as other pictures of other riders that were even worse, and weren't worth posting. (Bob is likely to say that the one just above also wasn't worth posting.)

We got started again, and the wind had found its style by this time. Tom mentioned that all of the climb on this ride was after the break, but the climb alone was not the issue; the climb plus the headwind made the ride back memorable. Twice, a rider who is registered for a ride I'm planning to lead tomorrow reminded me to call off the headwind for my ride, and I guiltily remembered that I hadn't ticked that box when I'd put in the weather order. Oh, well...

The group got separated a few times on the way back. I got ahead with the fast group at one point, and looked around for Tom and didn't see him, so waited for the main group to catch up; for the rest of the ride, I made sure to keep an eye on Tom (less out of any concern for him, and more because I've noticed that if you stick with the ride leader, your chances of making it back to the start location are above the 90th percentile. The strategy worked again).

So, unlike most Tom rides, no closed roads or bridges to cross on this one. I guess the headwind will have to do.

new cycling jersey

 

It's a shame I look like a dentist in scrubs in that picture, because that jersey pattern came out well, and is probably one or two iterations away from what I really want.

Yeah, I'm working on making my own jerseys. I'm not paying for the good ones, and I don't like the fit of the cheap ones, and I don't like the zippers. I'm never gonna pull down that zipper; keeping my scrawny, grey-haired chest covered is a spiritual work of mercy and a service to the community.

The fit is good; the pockets are deep in back without being so high at the waist that it's hard to reach into 'em. The fabric is sweat-wicking, and a good weight: not heavy, not too flimsy.

Regular readers know that I started sewing during the pandemic. When you start sewing, you wind up making an awful lot of stuff that turns out to be only good for rags. This is probably my tenth jersey, and I only have one other that I'd actually wear. I made two for fellow club members, but those had zippers in, and for the zippers and for other reasons, I'm not really happy with those.

There are a couple of more details I need to work on. But expect to see that seafoam jersey when then weather warms. (I might try a long-sleeve version next...)

On Facebook, I saw ads for this Ocean & San; one of their slogans is "Looks like a shirt; rides like a jersey" (they use a comma instead of the semicolon, but don't worry; I corrected 'em).  That's kind of the vibe I think I'm going for. It's recently come home to me that almost nobody I ride with or hang around with has the same ideas about bikes, cycling, or accessories as I do. Oh, well.

bbc on why i'm always lost

 See article on why people can't tell right from left.

Apparently, it's as common as one in six.