Velocipedal Hillbilly

It occurs to me that the old homestead has recently taken on a certain resemblance to the local dump, only with more bicycles. Hmmm, and maybe a little bit like the local trailer park too...


Here we see the one working vehicle parked right alongside one of the less functional. That black Schwinn has a set of 650B wheels I'd like to try on a little Miyata I got at a police auction, which turned out to have a useless set of 597 wheels. And that'd be a bathroom sink right underneath it. Got the Wald basket and the tires on a little curbside shopping expedition.


Then there's the Schwinn that we pulled out of the river last fall. With a canoe. With 3 people in it. That's a story for another post. Meanwhile, it leaned against the pear tree all winter, cuz, what else am I going to do with it? That's a rusty cookie tin on the ground next to it.



And here's where the missus and I set to enjoy the kinetic art that the youngin' made. The loop of metalized dryer vent normally serves as a tire for one of the wheels on the sculpture. Good times.



Finally, the icing on the cake: a bike on blocks.

This, gentle reader, is how neighborhood organizations are born.

Sprummer

Sprummer has arrived here in Madison. Three weeks ago, we had 20-some inches of snow on the ground:


Today, we have temps in the mid-70's and absolutely no snow:


So, there you go.

Snow Ride

Four inches of snow overnight, a nice light, fluffy snow that quickly turned to grease as motorized traffic packed it down. I had one guy at a stoplight roll down the window on his minivan and ask me whether I had special tires for the snow. Yes. Then he proceeded to tell me that studded tires were illegal in Wisconsin, at which we both got a big laugh. He also thought it would be crazy to ride in winter without them. And then the light turned green.

Here's the very 3 bus I would have ridden were it not for the bike. I got to work before it did, but time-wise it ends up being a wash since I have to change clothes upon arrival.

An unplowed bike path along Lake Monona, parallel to John No-Lane Drive, between Broom and North Shore. Surprisingly easy to ride, given the really fluffy snow.

UW plant has a new shipment of coal in this morning. (BTW, that gray building on the right is the backside of the Kohl Center—home of the Badger basketball teams.)

Snowy front wheel on the Southwest path.

I'm tellin' ya Jim, you grow one of these and it's just going to accumulate a bunch of ice...

Cold Out

Five ways you can tell it's below zero in Madison without looking at the thermometer:


All of MG & E's stacks are putting out smoke


There's just the one icefishing shanty out on the bay


The UW's plant is running low on coal


15,000 people at the Garden Expo, but only one bike


More skiers than cyclistos on the bike path. Even the Hardpack Hardcorps seemed to be taking the week off.

Scraping Bottom

Yup, it pretty much is that cold.

Chincicle

What do you get when you combine a 10-degree (f) ambient temperature, 15 mile-per-hour headwind, knit polyester balaclava and 45 minutes of huffing and puffing? Yes, it's the eminently lickable and delicious chincicle! Yum!

New Dummy Photos

The Surly folk have posted some pics of the next step in the Big Dummy's evolution:



From the Surly blog:

We’re getting closer to production. We’ve got a short list of small changes to make at this point. At least one more sample must be produced and approved before we can place the Big Dummy purchase order. This is pretty typical of the pre-production development process. There are generally too many variables (tube spec, geometry, braze-on placement, etc) to design it perfectly in one shot.

I like the swoopy Instigatorish top tube.

It's so hard to be patient.

Untapped Biofuel

For the fifth consecutive year, President Bush used the State of the Union address to outline some hazy strategy for developing alternatives to fossil energy. But once again, he neglected to mention the most powerful energy source of all. (click the pic.) (Thanks, Errol Morris)

Look Out Below

Okay kids, now remember, when you get to the bottom of the hill, stand up right away and look back to make sure nobody is about to run you over. And if you see that big furry kid in the Carhartt coming at you on his blaze orange sled, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Batteries, schmatteries.

Last spring or so, I picked up a set of Reelights— LED blinkie lights for your bike that don't use batteries.


Reelights instead employ a pair of magnets that fasten to the spokes and Faraday's law of induction to create an open-air generator that makes the small amount of juice required to get the attention of your fellow road users. This is the same technology found in shaker flashlights and hand-cranked radios.


They're very simple. A metal bracket with a hole at one end mounts between the quick release nut or axle nut and the outside of the dropout. At the other end, about 3 inches away, a pair of LEDs are mounted in a sealed plastic enclosure. A pair of strong magnets in plastic brackets attach to the spokes. There is no on/off switch. Apart from the magnets being attached to the wheels, there are no moving parts at all.


They're pretty easy to install. Attaching the bracket to the wheel is easy. Getting the two magnets attached to the spokes is a little trickier. The 28-spoke wheel on this particular bike required that the magnet brackets be turned at a bit of an angle (visible in the very first photo at the top of this post) but this has no perceptible effect on performance. Then the light is adjusted inboard or outboard on the bracket until it's within 1-3 mm of the magnets. You just have to make sure the magnets don't rub on the light.

Properly adjusted, you don't really even notice them. They just do their thing, day or night.


Here's the rear (sorry for the soft focus—I took these in the garage and I was starting to lose feeling in my fingers by the time I took this one.) Plenty of room yet for a fender stay, but not so compatible with larger panniers.


Here's one with the rear wheel spinning at about 40 rpm, frozen by the flash. The LEDs flash in sequence, each lighting once for each pass of the magnet. Only the left one is lit here. The net effect is a nice blink blink ... blink blink ... blink blink pattern, visible from quite some distance. The blinking varies in proportion to the speed of the bicycle. Their brightness comparable to most blinkies currently on the market, with the exception of the Planet Bike Superflash (dang, that thing is bright!).

Reviewed here are the SL-100 model. My wife used these all season on her '93 Bridgestone XO-4, and has been quite pleased with them. Why? No batteries! You don't have to buy them, store them, install them, worry about when they'll wear out, recharge them or send them to the landfill when they're dead. Sweet action. They're also ridiculously simple and seem impervious to foul weather. You don't have to think about turning them on or off—they just work.

There are two readily apparent drawbacks. The first is that they are constrained to a location near the axle, which might conflict with panniers or disk brakes. Second, the SL-100 version doesn't remain on when you stop. This might be fine if you're well-reflectored and using a headlight. It looks like Reelight has come out with a capacitor model that continues to blink for a while when stopped (the SL-120) but I'm not sure whether anyone has brought these to the US yet.

For another description, including where they're from, take a look at Hiawatha Cyclery's write-up. I bought both sets from them and have been quite satisfied with their mail-order service. Amazon carries them too, and more reviews are available there. Maybe someday we'll see them in regular bike shops...