Dustings of snow…

and yesterday there was a hint of freezing rain and sleet. It’s the weather saying “okay, you need to get ready; we’ve been nice, but sometimes slick happens.”

So I’ve just brought my Gazelle in – the abused creature that deserves a better home than mine because I don’t have the skiklls or tools to take care of it in the manner it’s accustomed to… and those studded tires asked me if they could get on the glitter bike.   (Okay, I realized that the glitter bike might be the *perfect* winter monster bike. There are more studded tyres in the world. )

If hte glitter bike became the MOnster Winter BIke  (except… rim brakes?) then… the Gazelle would have less abuse.

Of course, if the glitter bike is still Too Tall then that won’t work.

Glitter

I am blaming That Greg Hooterville Mayor Anderson .
I volunteer at The Bike Project. I talk the talk. I help with … flat tires. I do NOT rebuild bicycles.

I actively neglect bicycles. See my profile picture. It’s the nasty, rusted out axle nut on my Gazelle.
It’s a little slow at The Bike Project.
I was there when the Glitter Bike arrived last September, with… yes. It had an arrow — bow and arrow arrow — ziptied to its top tube. Somebody had … covered up the original paint job with paint and … glitter.
It was slow at the Bike Project.
I walked around. I saw this Free Spirit with BIG YELLOW FENDERS and red reflective tape and thought, “wow! a person could take an innocent frame and … make a statement!”
I walked around again.
The Glitter Bike. It is still there.
It starts talking to me.
It says “I was once a Schwinn.”
I don’t let it get to me. I say to myself, “I get no joy from rebuilding bikes.”
I am back at the glitter bike.
It says, “Schwinn. Chicago Schwinn. I once had an arrow on my top tube.”
It says, “Give me fenders.”
I walk away. Somebody else could bring it joy.
It calls me back. Its tag says “10/22 — greased seatpost.”
It says, “I can be a bike again.”
I peel away the bikes around it… I stop. I get no joy from rebuilding bicycles.
It says, “somebody coudl slap me together or… I could be a bike again.”

It wheels me around to where peopel are working on bicycles. I hear myself say, “What would *you* do to make this a bicycle again?”

“It’s already a bicyle.”

“well, okay…”

“REbuild the hubs.”

… I am walked through the process of Taking The Hub Apart.

Rebuilding bikes brings me no joy, but I have seen hubs.
This is not the hub of an old Schwinn left outside or in a garage or the attic.
I see shiny, happy ball bearings in GREEN 21st century, dip-your-fingers-in-it grease.
This bike has been LOVED.
(I can’t remember its donation circumstances… I amthinking a rental property left-behind?)
I am told “Yea, they look pretty good, you could re-do them or put another daub of grease on it and just put it back togehter.”

We have blue and red grease. We do not have green grease.
Plus, if I re-do this bike it shouldn’t be *worse* than it started… so I (with much coaching and instruction) take it apart.

(Fourth Partie:) “You are wanting this bike?”

“I don’t know.  It just… spoke to me.”

“It’s too big for you. STraddle it. It’s monstrous.”
I straddle. “Well, yes, if I had junk it would be touching it.”
(THird Partie:  ) “yes, but those are huge tires; swap them out and you’ll get an inch and a half… oops, those are wide rims…”
” I could swap out the rims, though, eh?”

…. NO.

And, indeed. Here I am, five mintues later, applying fine steel wool to very fine rims…. rims that are old but *not* corroded, neglected… and now they are SHINY HAPPY:) GLEAMING!!!

I do not know that I shall be the rider of this bike, but…. whoever gave this bike its first 20+ years of love and lubrication… know that it will not be left to rust.

The… beginning

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

… Christmas lights It’s going to rain today; temps will be in the mid 40′s.

I realized I was probably riding less because the weather is better; can’t gloat as much    I set up the trainer — had to undo the skewer for the trailer. Suppose I’ll have the stuff of gloating if I rehook it, put the trailer on, put trainer in trailer and ride through the downpours to the Champaign Cycle training ride tomorrow night.

Passing on the right

I realized twice today that… drivers seem reluctant to do it around here. There I am, sitting at Lincoln in the steady rain, and there are four cars in the left lane… but only the front one is turning left. The rest are just … waiting. Not a one pulls ’round.   I saw this two different times, today.

Makes me more convinced that it’s a *really* bad thing to do on a bike (with exceptions).

Yes, it’s rainy today, but 52 degrees. I do believe last year at this time that Snowman Incident had already happened. (47 seconds and they only almost said the S word.) I am reveling in temperatures above freezing, remembering how interminable the deep frigidity was. Yes, tomorrow it’s supposed to drop back down to 29… but that’s the low.

Update

… stop reading right here if you don’t want speculations about How It Happened.

there wasn’t damage to the big ol’ truck that allegedly hit him (well, the man said he’d been hit by “the big truck, but he can’t say any more) that would “indicate fault.”   Much damage tot he front end of the bike (so a “statistically typical” non-rear-ender).  I wonder if he were traveling  North … and the truck had to swing wide and he was riding out in the lane … or maybe there really wasn’t room.   The report didn’t mention the underpass but I don’t remember exactly where it is in relation to the intersection.

It’s also a place where people don’t ride much, though it is the best way to get out to North of the Interstate,  so it doesn’t get the kind of “we need bike facilities here!” attention that the more common routes do — though we have discussed exactly that fact at planning meetings. Wretchedly, maybe now people will say that…

Michael Costa killed

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/courts-police-and-fire/2011-11-29/autopsy-set-wednesday-bicyclist-who-died-following-crash.html

Wide roads between businesses … cold and rainy…– Market Street is the the best but still bad way out to North of the Interstate   … life… ended.

And… update. Seems commenter thought this was unsympathetic and sanctimonious, and I remembered that … when I want to find out if something horrible happened to somebody, somewhere, extremely recently, I Google news and blogs with the name. So, it’s not the blog to talk about me.  Defending my post as “well, still reacting” — well, I posted it… and any comments should be given the same appreciation for “reacting.”

Time to ride to work.  (Sanctimonious three-sentence rant about the evils of motor vehicles removed.)

Gleaning ideas…

At the last Champaign County Bikes meeting, it was suggested that we add to the next meeting’s agenda: ways to reach out to more casual cyclists.

At the Bike Project, someone mentioned “gleaning rides” — gleaning being going out to farms and harvesting what hadn’t been harvested for whatever reason (Jewish tradition being *not*  to harvest everything so’s the wandering soul or poor person could do so).     There’s a page for that here… National Gleaning Day.   It’s happened twice.

My Racer (Schwinn, one-speed, 1968) has been rendered ridable again via Carl down at The Bike Project, who stood on the fork until it was straight again; what my father would have called “gentle brutality” or “creative brutality,”  but I think the former:  gentle application of enough brute force to get the job done…. *without* causing collateral damage.  It was all I could do to get back on the Xtra for shopping

Other amazing news  — I was SHOALED last week!   Somebody actually did buzz by me (and the cars) at a stop light…. I *did* suck his wheel. One house close to here is Christmas treed and stockinged… I have to say that I”d imagine that kind of makes the whole “this is a special day” concept a little dimmer… more like “okay, htese are the decorations for this couple of months…”

And now, back to Messing with Maya…

“on the prairie”

Well, Church Street is close enough — I decided to practice the high notes since I’m tryin’ that second soprano stuff for the Christmas Concert. Guys in contractor’s trucks as I rode by were singing back at me.  See why bikes are better than cars?

I really did have time to snap the bent light fixture at Bradley & Country Fair, but it probably wasn’t yesterday’s winds… more likely a construction vehicle.

On Country Fair yesterday I heard a resounding crash behind me… then wailing and crying and thumping on the roof by the driver (from the outside).   Another day/month/whatever ruined by a car.

LED knockoffs?

Maybe it’s a sign that LED lights are finally coming into their own?  Project 3 in my Digital Arts class is to do a 3-D model in Maya that uses light, so I sent Google searching for bike light images. http://www.pludeal.com/silicagel-steel-wire-light_p4395.html was the result — and they seem to have a small variety of almost-but-not-quite-like knockoffs of NiteIze and Frog (knog) products.

I’m afraid I yielded to the temptation, and went to NiteIze and sprang for their newest model of itty bitty spoke lights, plus two clip-to-your-belt bags that will hold phone/camera/tools.   I have yearned for a gadget holster forever…

all I want for Christmas is…

http://rockthebike.com/store/products/23-fully-assembled-biker-bar.html a biker bar… the generating kind…