Shop Door

I think this was the back door to a shop or might have been a privite residence behind the shop.

At Mom's

Somehow we started talking about the dogs we'd had growing up.

The confusion started with my mother calling a Boston Terrier a Boston Bulldog.

Mom: Didn't we have a Boston Bulldog here?

Me: You mean Boston Terrier.

Mom (not sounding convinced): OK.

Me: We had PeeWee, but that was at the old house. He ran away. Supposedly.

Mom: But we had another one here besides Joe Lee.

Sis: Howie.

Me: Yeah, Howie. He supposedly ran away while we were on vacation, but I always suspected that Dad just had him removed while we were gone. (I'd brought Howie home without asking.)

(Mom looks confused. Not sure if Dad really didn't do that, or he just didn't tell her.)

Sis: And there was Pockets of course.

Mom: The shepherd.

Me: No, he was a poodle!

Mom: We had a poodle?

Sis: Yeah, he was mine, we got him from the B-----s, remember?

Me: And he got poisoned.

Sis: What?

Me: He got poisoned twice, that's why we had to give him away.

Sis: No, he bit the mailman, that's why he had to go.

Me: No! Poisoned. I remember clearly. The first time the vet thought he might not live. The second time wasn't so bad.

Sis: But they told me he'd bitten the mailman!

(Nobody else remembers the mailman story. Joe Lee did start nipping at repairmen's heels in her old age though.)

Me: He went to live with Dad's friend who had a place in the country.

Mom: No, we gave him to a lady at church. I remember her telling me when he died.

Me: I might be thinking about the chicks instead. I know we gave them to W---- out in the country.

Niece: You had chicks?!

Hubby: Maybe it was Little Buns.

Me: I think we gave him Little Buns too. (That was a rabbit.)

Niece: Can we get some chicks?!

Me: Later on we realized that it probably wasn't a person poisoning the neighborhood animals deliberately -- it was pesticide runoff from peoples' yards.

Mom: Yes, Mr Y----'s dog died. The shepherd.

Sis: No, it was one of those miniature collies. A Shetland Sheepdog.

(Mom looks confused.)

Brother-in-law: Are you sure you all grew up in the same house?

-----


Current crazy dog, a Great Pyrenees named Jasmine.

Friday Ark

Seatpost Setback and Related Matters

A couple of days ago I replaced the seatpost on my Rivendell Sam Hillborne with one that has zero setback, and the change has been interesting. Before I go any further, I will warn you that this is a continuation of the long top tube post. So if that one gave you a headache, please stop reading now and save your sanity! Or, continue at your own risk.



For those new to the concept of setback, seatposts come with different amounts of it. One of the things the setback does is move the saddle clamp back, thus altering a bike's effective seat tube angle. Say your bicycle frame has a 74° seat tube, and you buy a seatpost with 2cm of setback. Unless you counteract the setback by moving the saddle forward along the rails, your bicycle's effective seat tube angle will be 2° slacker, making it more like 72°. And you can make it slacker still by pushing the saddle further backward. By contrast, a seatpost that goes straight up with no setback leaves your frame's natural seat tube angle unaltered. Seat tubes today tend to be steep, so it is rare that anybody wants to make them steeper still. But with a zero-setback seatpost, it is possible to make the effective angle a bit steeper by pushing the saddle forward on the rails.



The other factor influenced by a seatpost's setback is the reach from saddle to handlebars. The more setback a seatpost has, the further the saddle moves away from the handlebars. Here it is worth noting that bicycle fit experts typically warn against messing with seatpost setback and saddle positioning in order to alter reach. Instead it is advised that one's saddle position preference should be fixed in relation to the bottom bracket. At least that is my understanding.



Getting back to my bike, ithas a 52cm seat tube and a 57.5cm top tube - the latter being unusually long given the former. Additionally, it has a 71.5° seat tube angle, which is atypically slack. In previous posts I explained that when I ride this bicycle, I feel as if my body is not sufficiently forward. The long top tube will not allow me to fit the bike with a stem longer than 7cm, and the slack seat tube puts me further back still.



Originally the bike was built up with a seatpost with generous setback, making the effective seat tube angle even slacker than its natural 71.5°. Eventually I replaced it with a seatpost that had only minimal setback, but even that did not feel as if I were sufficiently forward. I was reluctant to go with a zero-setback seatpost, because everyone I spoke to acted horrified by the idea. "Zero setback? What are you trying to do, turn it into a racing bike?" However, after the "long top tube" post I came to the conclusion that a zero setback seatpost is the most obvious solution. Far from making the bike "racy," it would simply continue the frame's already slack seat tube angle without slackening it further. Or, I could move the saddle a tiny bit forward and make the effective seat tube angle a rather normal 73° (as it is on my other two bicycles with drop bars). So, that is exactly what I did.



The welcome side-effect of the new saddle position is that the long top tube problem seems to be resolved. My reach has been reduced considerably and I can get a longer stem if I want. But even with the current stem I already feel myself positioned significantly more forward on the bike than before. The subjective sensation of this is greater than I would have predicted: I feel more in control over the steering, and I feel that the bicycle is distinctly faster to accelerate and to start from a stop. Although visually the saddle comes across as being too far forward now, its relationship to the bottom bracket is actually quite normal for a roadbike (off-the-shelf road frames in my size typically have 74-75°seat tube angles). I need to take the bicycle on a longer ride before I can say more, but I think this setup may be just the thing.



It's been exactly two years since I received the Sam Hillborne frame as a holiday gift, and this bicycle has given me over 2,000 happy miles. I've changed a lot as a cyclist over this time and the Sam's frame is quirkier than I initially realised. But I am going to try and make it work for me - hopefully learning a thing or two in the process.

Pumkin By the River

Our walk down by the river was the day after Halloween. We found a large pumkin and took a few photos of it. It would have been a heavy pumkin to carry that far.

A Slo Afternoon

A Slo Afternoon, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

Cerro San Luis is a special place. Uncrowded and varied in environs, it's an awesome mountain to climb. The view from the top is spectacular - the morros of SLO county line up and stretch all the way to the Pacific.

Traveling by Bike

As you may have noticed, we are staying on the coast for a little while - our annual working vacation. This is something we've been doing at the end of every summer for the past six years. When we lived further North, we used to go to a place in Maine, and after moving to Boston we began staying on Cape Cod. I've been writing about that for the past two summers, and it's funny how over time our trips became increasingly bicycle-oriented. Two years agowe went by car as usual, but for the first time took bikes and cycled around a bit during our stay. Last summer we arrived by car again, but got around entirely by bicycle once there and attempted some high mileage day-trips. This summer we no longer have a car and really did not want to rent one just for the trip. So after discovering that Cape Ann was accessible by commuter rail, we decided to come here instead and do the whole trip on bikes. Another reason for choosing Cape Ann, is that it is a popular starting point for long rides up the coast of Northern New England. There are no decent routes north directly out of Boston, and what cyclists often do is take the commuter rail up here before proceeding north. So that was the plan: To arrive on our bicycles, to get around by bike, and to cycle up the coast as far and as often as possible in the course of our stay.



Our main challenge was figuring out how to transport our belongings. This is not a bicycle-specific trip, so we needed more than a change of cycling clothing and rain gear. We are living here for two weeks and doing all the same things we do at home - including work-related stuff. We needed our regular clothing and footwear, personal hygiene products, bedding, towels, laptops, a variety of electronic devises, some necessary books and documents, and our camera equipment - in addition to the cycling clothing, tool kits and raingear. And all of that we fit into the luggage you see here.



For a number of logistical reasons, we decided the most practical course of action would be to turn one person into the pack mule - and since I already had a front rack and a large handlebar bag on my bike, it made sense that this would be me. I had planned to eventually get a touring-specific rear rack for my Rivendell anyway, and so that is what I did. Between the two of us, we packed a total of five bags for the trip - four on my bike and one on the Co-Habitant's.



The rear rack on my bike is a Nitto Campee with removable lowrider panels, to which we attached a set of Carradice panniers, while using the rack's platform to support a Sackville SaddleSack. These bags plus the Carradicesaddlebag on the Co-Habitant's Surly contained our clothing, bedding and laptops. My Ostrich handlebar bag contained camera equipment, electronics and various other miscellaneous items. Everything was packed very tightly, and I estimate that my bicycle weighed around 100 lb when all was said and done.



The ride to the train station from our house is 4 miles through some of the busiest parts of the city. I have never ridden with my bike loaded up like this before, and the prospect of trying it for the first time in Boston traffic was nerve-wrecking. Overall, the bicycle handled fine. Once it got going, I could not feel the weight at all, and the heavy handlebar bag did not affect steering. But at very slow speeds - especially when starting and stopping - there was a fishtailing effect in the rear that took some getting used to. Also, with so much weight on the bike, the brakes were less effective than usual, which I had to keep in mind when stopping on a downhill. The frame itself had an interesting feel to it - as if it was "yielding" to the weight (mildly flexing?). The resulting ride quality was in some ways nicer than with the bicycle unloaded. Having survived this ride in traffic, loaded touring on the open road does not seem in the least daunting. Going slower than usual is, of course, a given - but the reduction in speed was not as drastic as I thought it might be. Even cycling uphill (which I got to experience once we arrived to Cape Ann and rode from the train station to the place we are staying!) was not as difficult as I expected. Thanks to a helpful reader after my description of our previous commuter rail experience, we were able to board the elusive bike train, which made the trip more pleasant still.

Once we arrived and settled in, we removed the lowrider panels from the rear rack, transforming my bike from a full-on pack-mule into a lighter ridethat could still carry food and equipment when necessary. I will write more about this particular rear rack in a separate post; it is pretty neat and versatile.



The place where we are staying is somewhere between a cabin and a shack on the architectural spectrum and is the size of a small garage. It is situated on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean, and there is a beach down the road. Despite the stormy weather, we love being here - just the two of us and our bikes. Yesterday the sun finally came out and we did a 50 mile "warm-up" ride, hoping for more soon. And it feels great that we were able to drag all of our stuff up here without needing a car. It was important to us that this did not feel like a compromise compared to the previous times we've gone away, and it most definitely does not. We were able to fit everything we need into our bicycle bags, and not having to deal with a car here feels extremely relaxing. I highly recommend giving traveling by bicycle a try!

Vermont and New Hampshire Barns From My Window

And my favorite barn that we've seen so far. It wasn't the prettiest, but I loved its endurance and character!

And while I'm writing, can I say how good it is to be back? When we were in PA, we had no cell phone service and very limited internet. As in, I could not even read Pioneer Woman's blog. So I didn't bother doing much posting there. I'll have to see if I can go back and cover what we did see and do there sometime.



I have missed blogging so much though. I told Nathan tonight that it truly helps to cultivate gratitude for my life when I blog. When I'm going throughout the day, I can easily fall into a mindlessness about what we are doing. When I look at the pictures and write the words to capture the day, it makes me stop and be very mindful of this wonderful life we are living right now and all of the neat things we see each day. It's good for my soul!



Living the life in Vermont!

Shady Lady: On the Necessity of Sunglasses

This might sound obvious to experienced cyclists, but I've discovered that good sunglasses are a must, especially when riding through the countryside. Not only will sunglasses protect the eyes from harmful rays and the delicate skin under the eyes from wrinkles, but they also shield from the debris and insects that hurtle toward me at top speed.



Yes, insects! Assuming that your bicycle has no windshield, be prepared for your face to be hit by flies, bees, butterflies, and God knows what else. If you keep your mouth open, they will fly into your mouth. And if you don't wear sunglasses, they will fly right into your eyes or get trapped in your eyelashes. Based on personal experience, I can promise you that this is not pleasant.



To be useful as a shield, I find that the best sunglasses are those that cover as much of my face as possible. Conveniently, the "Jackie O." style is popular right now and every shop seems to carry them in many variations. I opt for cheaper sunglasses, because I have a knack for losing or destroying mine. The darlings pictured here lasted two weeks before I crushed them in my handbag -- which reminds me that I must buy another pair if I plan to cycle again over the weekend.

More Glove Love: Convertible Mittens

With the arrival of colder temperatures, my crochet cycling gloves were no longer cutting it. The Co-Habitant came to the rescue with a welcome gift: convertible mittens in a luxuriously soft wool. I love these things!

The convertible mittens are basically fingerless gloves, with extra "mitten flaps" above the knuckles. The flaps can be unbuttoned and folded over the fingers to create mittens. The thumb is full-fingered. The Co-Habitant bought these at the Banana Republic outlet store. They were available in this heathery beige colour, and also in black. Apparently many mainstream apparel manufacturers now sell versions of these.

Aside from being clever and cute, these convertible mittens have several features that make them particularly suitable for cycling. Having the tips of the fingers exposed allows for optimal shifting, braking, and other machinations (such as camera clicks) that do not work so well when the finger tips are covered. The mitten mode makes them versatile as on/off the bike gloves. The 100% wool is great for warmth and moisture-wicking, and is not slippery on the handlebar grips.

An additional benefit, is that these gloves are extra long, which is excellent for protecting cyclists' wrists when they get exposed to the cold air due to the stretching of the arms to reach the handlebars. All those jackets, coats and sweaters with sleeves not long enough for cycling can be supplemented with long gloves like these.

Convertible mittens in action. For those of you who knit, this might make a fun and worthwhile project (see instructions in pdf). Just make sure to use a soft 100% wool yarn (or wool and silk blend) and not an acrylic blend, and to make them extra long.

Copenhagen panoramic views from Christianshavn

Confession time. I do not really like heights. I mean, I appreciate panoramic views but an open-air setting, in a balcony or a tower on top of a very high building? Oooooh, that makes my knees wobble. Nevertheless, I still push myself every time because I have the gorgeous views at the end of the climb in mind.

You can see the architectural wonder, the Oresund Bridge that connects Denmark (Copenhagen) and Sweden (Malmo) from the top of the Church of Our Saviour in Christianshavn. The tower and spire stretches to 90 metres.

So when I stopped over at Christianshavn my goal was to really just explore the area quickly and then go to Christiana, the infamous autonomous enclave in Denmark. However, while walking around I saw the beautiful tower of the 17th century ‘Vor Frelsers Kirke’ (Church of Our Saviour). The spire on top of the tower I believe was finished half a century later.

I love the black colour of the impressive corkscrew spire against the eye-catching gilded railing and balusters of the external winding staircase that leads to the top. The gold colour flutter playfully against the sunlight. The spire looked so pretty from afar so out of curiousity I decided to inspect it closely.

Climbing the church’s tower wasn’t really in my plan but when I looked into my cOPENhagen card booklet, it states that it’s one of the free attractions. Well, it is not free to the general public but if you buy the cOPENhagen card your entrance fee to climb the tower is waived.

I was tempted. Soooooooooo tempted. And before I knew it I was climbing the stairs to the top!

Come follow me and see the beautiful views of Copenhagen from the top of the Church of Our Saviour in Christianshavn through my pictures below =)

There are 550 steps to the top of the tower, the last 150 steps are the external gilded staircase.

I did not really go all the way to the top because the human traffic was dizzying me. Plus the fact that the more you go up, the more you realise that there is nothing up there anymore except for that spire and the golden ball. I was probably just a few steps away to the golden ball! But the thought just kind of stays with you especially when you look around you, and uh, below..... ugh help! Haha.

Why do I keep torturing myself from these height-related activities?

The climb is highly recommended because the views up there were just amazing. You cannot get this higher in Denmark I believe, plus it is open-air!

Do take note that it can get crowded. I was quite lucky as I did not have a mass following when I went up, however, when I went down, the narrow wooden staircases were packed. Children and adults were queued up and moving slowly to go up the tower.

The Kennedy Space Center

In-between Sebastian Inlet and Anastasia Island, I made a stop at The Kennedy Space Center, near Titusville, Florida, about 50 miles east of Orlando.

I've always been fascinated by the thought of going into space. As a sophomore in high school I remember writing an essay for English class in which I was welcomed back to Earth as the first woman to walk on the moon. Quite a stretch of the imagination for someone who couldn't “get” algebra or trigonometry and disliked science immensely. Well, it was just a work of fiction. At any rate, The Kennedy Space Center was on my list of places to see.

The entrance fee of $38 (+ tax, making it $40 and change) is a bit high, at least in my opinion, but there is a lot to see and do. I got there at 9 a.m., which was opening time, but the bus tours and the Imax Theater presentations don't start until 10 o'clock. So I wandered through the outdoor displays of the different rockets, getting a refresher course in our quest to get to the moon and beyond.

I was reading the brochure that I received when entering and saw that they had something called the “Shuttle Launch Experience” that looked interesting so I headed over that way. It only lasts about 20 minutes but I had just 15 minutes until the Imax movie started so I decided to return later.

They offer two Imax movies but due to time limitations, I was only able to view one of them – Man on the Moon. Now, I've been to Imax movies before but had never experienced one in 3-D. It was magnificent. Really. It was almost worth the price of admission just to see this movie. Talk about in-your-face reality. It just can't be described. I wish I could have seen the other one about the building of the Space Station but it wasn't showing until later in the afternoon.

After watching Man on the Moon, I returned to the Shuttle Launch Experience. The brochure promised that I'd experience the same sensations and feelings that the astronauts do when they launch into outer space. Honestly, I wasn't disappointed at all. You may not feel exactly everything as they do, but you get the sensation of 3-Gs pushing you into your seat and you feel the shaking and bumping just as they would, only not quite as severe, obviously. And once you get “into space” you get that sensation of weightlessness too. This Experience, combined with the Imax movie, really is worth the price of admission!

But that wasn't all. They have guided bus tours to three areas of the Complex (an observation gantry, the Apollo/Saturn 5 Center, and the International Space Station Center). As you go from one area to the next, they show short videos and the bus driver keeps up a rolling commentary about what you are seeing. Once you get to the area they show an 8-10 minute movie and there are displays to see. (And at each stop there is a refreshment center and souvenir shop that they encourage you to visit.) Again, due to time contraints (I had to be at Anastasia State Park before sunset and it was a hundred miles away), I cut my tour short and missed out on the International Space Station Center portion.

I highly recommend a visit to the Kennedy Space Center. However, there is no way you can see and do everything in just one day. If you are going to go I suggest making it into a two day visit, if possible. Your ticket allows for one return visit within seven days of purchase, which is nice (it has to be validated before you leave the first day though). Wish I had known that in advance, I would have gone there the afternoon that I got to Titusville instead of waiting until the next morning. Also, if you get there at opening time, go to the Shuttle Launch Experience first; it starts operating when the Center opens.

Astronaut Snoopy greets you at the entrance to the outdoor display area. Another one of those gray, gloomy days. It was actually a nice day though a little on the chilly side. The sky cleared a bit later in the day, but the clouds never went away.

The videos play as the driver takes you to another stop on the tour.

The business end of the Saturn V rocket.

The Space Capsule sitting atop the Saturn V rocket. You just can't appreciate the size of that assembly until you walk beneath it. It's huge!

As an extra bonus, which was (we were assured by the bus driver) a rare site for the average visitor, as we were heading back from the second stop, we saw them preparing to move the Space Shuttle to the launching pad for its next mission in early February.

'Fork's Bent?'... Suspicious Cracks in the Paint Cause Concern

The phrase "fork's bent" has become a private joke of sorts in vintage bicycle circles. Almost any time somebody posts a picture of their "awesome vintage find," there will be that one person who comments that "the fork looks bent." Most of the time, the fork is not bent and it's just something to say - or maybe the angle or the lighting in the picture are misleading. Nonetheless, the possibility of a bent fork or frame is certainly something to watch for in vintage bikes. If a bicycle is steel, a bent frame or fork is not necessarily tragic - steel is flexible and the bent portion can usually be straightened. Cracks, on the other hand, are of greater concern.



During my visit to Geeekhouse last week, the guys were looking at my Gazelle and pointed out that the bits of cracked paint underneath the fork crown could indicate cracks in the surface of the fork itself. Needless to say, my heart sank.



I noticed the cracked paint before, but didn't think anything of it. The fork blades in of themselves are not deformed and there are no indicators that the front end of the bike has been in a collision. In an impact strong enough to bend the fork, surely there would have been some other damage - but there is not a scratch anywhere. The bicycle also handles absolutely fine - better than fine - with no indication of anything "off" in the steering.



It would be easy to dismiss the cracked paint, if it were not for one red flag: The cracks are symmetrical - right underneath the fork crown, on both the right and the left blade. How did they get there, and how can we tell whether it really is just cracked paint or an indicator of some sort of trauma to the fork?



I was speaking to a local frame-builder yesterday, who advised to check for similar paint cracks in the back of the fork blades. There are none; the paint is cracked only in the front. To him, this was an indicator that the fork could be fine - as stress fractures typically happen in the back and not in the front of the blades. He also pointed out that even if the fork has been bent and reset, or even if there are hairline cracks, a massive Dutch fork like this can probably take it, without it being a safety issue. No doubt there are loads of people in the Netherlands riding ancient beaters with visibly bent forks.



But the bottom line is, that we simply don't know what's going on under that cracked paint. To find out for sure, I would need to remove the paint from the fork blades and thoroughly examine the steel underneath - which I am reluctant to do, as the original paint is so nice. Is there any way to diagnose while keeping the paint intact? Any suggestions or thoughts are welcome.