infinity pedal might be a thing that works

It's too early to tell if this will be a "thing that works". but I'm impressed with early indications.

Friend Dave C forwarded this Kickstarter link about these Infinity Pedals:

Below, find a video about how they work:



They look like the engagement would be easy to hit through 360° of rotation, and the shoe cleat looks like it will fit in a standard Shimano SPD sole channel. They're light. And you can get a pair for $149 on the Kickstarter, which means the selling price, if they get offered, will probably be lower.

There's not a road bike version, but light SPD shoes are available. And they certainly look like they would clear mud and sand better than Speedplay pedals (two of my riding companions who use Speedplays travel with toothbrushes to clean out the gunk on gritty or muddy rides).

I'm impressed. I haven't supported the Kickstarter yet, but I might.

what has been seen...

Remember that buttcrack jersey from last month?

Scroll down.








Wait for it...

That oughta spoil your appetite for an hour or so.

Stolen from today's Oddman.

'nother bit of bike lug porn

I am not in the LEAST interested in bike racing. However, I can't get enough of beautiful stuff like this.

Between the stuff I find on Pinterest, and the stuff I find out in the wild and tag to Pinterest, Pinterest has become my new addiction. (One of the advantages of lug porn over standard porn is that I can drool over lug porn without creeping anybody out.)

would you sign?

When did unions become a bad idea? Capitalists have all the cards, make all the rules; the only thing the laborer has is his labor, and without a union, he or she might not even have that.

From today's Oddman.

laura leads a pick-up ride with a late start

Laura OLPH was going to be out last night seeing Waiting for Godot, starring Gandalf and Captain Picard, and she was NOT planning on being up in time for Winter Larry's ride today. Still, she wanted to go out, so early in the week she sent out an email asking about a ride with an 11:00 start. I got a dispensation from The Excellent Wife (TEW) for the late day, and agreed to go (I emailed a question: "Is this still happening?" and got the response, "It is now!").

I got to Laura's early and met Ron S there, who had come up for a use for all the snow, see the first of the pictures below. Laura was still getting breakfast, so, as it was cooler than we expected, Ron and I rode a bit to loosen up. As we did, Sean D drove up and asked ME if the ride was happening, and when he got the assurance it was, drove to Pennington to meet us there for a slightly shorter ride.

When we got there, Ed C was waiting with Sean, so the five of us did this route. We've been spooked by the fire at Peacock's, so Laura thought we should go visit Sun at the Sergeantsville store while that is still there (Sun has been trying to sell, but apparently no takers yet; I think his building is primarily a collection of construction and occupancy violations held together by good will and community need).

The most demanding line was Goat Hill Road; none of us were really in the mood for more challenge than that. We went on roads we've gone many times, and even I, navigationally hopeless as I am, knew where I was much of the time. Despite what I thought was a  prediction of warmer weather, I was cold much of the time... but it was a beautiful day, and we stopped a number of times for pictures (Laura stopped again to get the cows and calves in Mt Airy; when she has a photography retrospective, I suspect her "Mt Airy Cows Series" will remind people of the way Monet painted so many pictures of the cathedral at Rouen.)

On the way back, I had my second pinch flat in two days; I've been hitting those potholes hard. The holes in this tube are slits, not just punctures. My backup tube held air this time, though, and after a brief feud with Ed C over the merits of the Road Morph Pump vs. the speedy CO₂ cartridge, I got the wheel back on. As we were fooling with the wheel, Laura's friend (is her name Linda?) came up, and rode with us for a few miles to Pennington, and then a bit further.

I'm looking forward to more regular rides. I also hope there will be improvements to the road surfaces, but just in case, I'm laying in a fresh supply of tubes.

Pics. The first is Ron's impromptu snow-pile bike stand.

Along the road:

Below: Sean would be a lot of fun if he'd just loosen up a little.

And below, Laura defends herself against the paparazzi. Ah, the trials of celebrity!

I like the next several of these pics of the folks on the bikes:

At Sergeantsville. Ed was taken with the "Bikers Welcome" sign.

ed c leads a ride

Partly at the urging of a number of his friends, Ed C agreed to lead some rides, and put two in the book for this month. He had every intention of leading a hilly ride with a stop at Peacock's... but, as we now know, that's not gonna happen. Ed was beside himself, having set a goal not to use a chain convenience store with only commercial-and-wrapped food as a stop, and a after a flurry of emails (to which I was a party), Ed set a route that would have a stop about 2/3 the way through.

He was alternately afraid that he'd be alone, or that he'd have a tribe of thirty. We were all relieved when seven showed up, all fairly strong riders: in addition to me, Laura OLPH came to give him some pointers on leading (and then swore she'd never go on a ride he led because of the pace). Also accompanying were Eoghan (say "Owen"), John and Rick (Ed knows them from work, but I did not), and Alexei, whose name I'm probably mangling and who I've seen tearing up the pavement out of Cranbury (Ed had provided latitude/longitude coordinates for the start which baffled some of us; Alexei was a bit late, having been waiting in the wrong parking lot). Eoghan and Alexei did some pavement-tearing again today. I swept.

We wound up doing this route, which was more or less what Ed had planned, with a few last minute changes along the way. I was delighted to have a starting point less than fifteen minutes from home (which never happens!). Ed had a good idea: since the stop was going to be so far into the ride, he did a "sugar stop" along Harlingen Road, where we could eat some of the stuff we'd brought.

It was a great day to be out. While the roads were sloppy, there wasn't any dangerous ice, although there were still some places where the ice narrows the road. Many of the road surfaces have not wintered well; potholes and ruts abound. Still, everyone seemed to feel good and ride well; Eoghan and Alexei gave me a lesson on how to go up Dutchtown-Zion (I take solace in the fact that I'm almost old enough to be Eoghan's father). The ride went faster than I expected, and before I new it, we were at the stop at Bagel Bistro in Hillsborough.

And shortly after leaving, I hit a pothole too hard and got a flat. I find flats disheartening, and this one was doubly so, because the first tube I pulled out wouldn't hold air; Rick gave me one of his (I checked the other tube and the new one I put in my bag; these seem to be OK). I spent the next several miles staring at my tire and worrying that this one was going to flat, too. (How many Freewheelers does it take to fix a flat?...)

And then back to Johnson Park. As we came into the lot, a guy on an elliptical-bike (you'll see in the pictures) rode up; he runs with John and has suffered an injury, and the elliptical-bike allows him to use the running motion, but saves him the impact on his joints. It's a neat thing. You wouldn't want to take it up Dutchtown-Zion, but it's a neat thing.

Pics. At the start:

At the "sugar stop":

Back on the road:

Bikes outside the Bagel Bistro:

Below, Eoghan's Rivendell. I have a serious case of lug-envy.

That elliptical-bike and rider/runner:

our brains are different

According to this daily email from Delancey Place, the brains of liberals and conservatives are different:

"Researchers at University College London recruited ninety students, and had them confidentially place themselves on a five-point political spectrum. ... Their choices could range from 'very conservative' to 'very liberal.' Then neuroscientist Geraint Rees used magnetic resonance imaging (MRls) to scan each of their brains.

"The results were stunning. From the MRls, the scientists were able to accurately predict which of those individuals was more likely to be a liberal or a conservative. The more conservative students had a larger right amygdala; greater liberalism, on the other hand, was associated with a larger anterior cingulate. ... "

And, in general, We ARE either mostly conservative or mostly liberal:

"The National Election Studies, which are the leading survey of voters in US presidential polls, have found that over three quarters of Americans feel comfortable pinpointing their views on a two-dimensional political spectrum. ... Collecting people's liberal-conservative self-placements is useful because they correlate very strongly with their actual voting habits...

"The important point ... is this: ordinary people everywhere use the concepts of 'left' and 'right' to describe their political orientations. So the left-right political spectrum is universal. It forms a natural, bell-shaped curve...."

It doesn't surprise me, now, that we can't talk to one another. We're not even, mostly, wired the same.

Delancey Place provides a daily email on a range of topics of interest: science, history, art, culture, and so on. You can sign up here.

pretty close

It's pretty close.

In other news, my Pinterest addiction is completely out of control.

why i don't live in buffalo

My sister an brother-in-law, and now, my mother, live in Buffalo. I don't. This is one of the (minor) reasons why.

time sink

As I've been kicking around looking for images for my posts, I keep finding things that  are linked on Pinterest. Clicking on most of them triggers a "join" link, and I finally did.

Well, when you do that, you get a main page where you can go and put in a topic and get pictures back.

It's a time sink. It may suck up all of my free time.

If I ever miss a ride on which I was expected to go... if I'm missing from work... if I'm wasting away to nothing (or mindlessly gorging myself on fatty carbs and orange cheese)...

I'm probably clicking away on Pinterest.

(Save yourselves! Run!)

neat bike accessories

I stumbled on these bike accessory ideas at a site called DesignTaxi.

I like the rear-tire brush and the bell, but the hook and the bottle hanger look like they would interfere with your knees (although in the video, which I tried for an hour to embed and couldn't, it doesn't look like the Euro-hipsters on the bikes are riding as hard as most of the Freewheelers I can't keep up with). And I like the zip-on lights, below:

But check out the video. It was neat.

peacock, not phoenix

Regular readers will probably already know that Peacock's, at the foot of Lindbergh Road, has burned down.

Article here.

As I remember, there were rooms rented, in addition to the store. What will the people do?

And what will we do at Lindbergh Road, now? I feel a bit lost. (Well, that's nothing new.)