Rain and skates don't mix very well...

Bah.

My rain bike...

Okay, I just have to address this:

I'm sure that this is common in other wet locations like Seattle and...um...Seattle.

Cyclists that have a "rain bike".

What the hell is a "rain bike"? I have a modest selection of bikes spanning a wide time-line. Not one of them is a "rain bike". They have all been in the rain. They have all been raced. They have all been muddied (a couple more than others). They have all been commuters and errand-bikes.

A rain bike? Unfortunately there is not a "scorn" style-button in Blogger otherwise I'd be combining it with bold and italic. What, does a rain bike shed rain? Is it water-proof somehow?

Puh-leeze.

Maybe I'm missing something and just being an annoying, reactionary, no-good dumbo nothing jerk.

Sorry rain-bike folks-- I have bikes.

Feh.

The perfect seat bag?

I'm in search of the "perfect" seat bag.

I have one-- it's an old Pedro's Blow-Out bag made from (supposedly) used innertubes. I got it in 2001. It holds a Crank Bros. Power Pump (the smallest one), a tube, three Park tire levers, Crank Bros. multi-tool, and a Park glue-less patch kit. It's stuffed. All straps are embroidered with the Pedro's logo. Strap uses an adjustable side-squeeze buckle. It tucks up behind the seat perfectly and doesn't rub the inside of my thighs. One seam blew out but I sewed back myself a few years ago and it's still going strong.

I got another one in 2006. It was a shadow of the 2001 bag. A cheap shadow. The reflective tag on the back that's supposed to hold a blinky light? Ripped. Cheap, flimsy straps and lame-ass buckle.

Lame, Pedro's. Lame.

Anyway. I got a Crank Bros. Power Pump Pro (small alloy with gauge) for my road bike and needed a bag that would hold everything nicely. Picked up what looked like a decent bag at Performance Bike. The Trans It "speed wedge". Pffft. The cursed thing rubs on the inside of my thighs. After quite a few miles of "bzzzup-bzzzup" and fiddling with the bag I just had to remove the damn thing.

I went to REI and looked at what they had. Holy crap-- most of their stock is sized to hold the kitchen sink! Timbuk2 had some nicely done (almost overdone) bags but they had no provision for holding a blinky light-- a serious, deal-killing oversight. The bags were lined. Good grief-- I'm only jamming tools and tubes and stuff in it, not a BlackBerry.

Back to Performance Bike. I thought I had found a pretty good bag-- it was the right dimensions and had a little loop for a blinky light (it appeared to be a bit unorthodox...). And it was on sale!

FAIL.

The bag passed the thigh rub test and held everything nicely. However, the straps were positioned in sugh a way that the bag wanted to hang more vertically than up under the saddle. The strap that was supposed to go around the seatpost instead had to go under the seatpost collar. Bleah. The "unorthodox" blinky light holder? Yeah-- rendered useless. Actually, in experiments with the bag off the bike I could not successfully use the blinky light loop. No matter how I oriented the bag. So apparently Performance designs stuff like this without even thinking about it.

Why am I obsessing about a seat bag? Why does something so seemingly simple and necessary have to be such a bewildering hassle?

I finally settled on a Pearl Izumi bag (the only one they make) and it seems to do everything I need and has a nice big tab on the back that's reflective and holds a blinky light in a useful fashion. It seems a little lightweight though, so I'm concerned about long-term durability. But it's on the road bike, so...

What? What happened to summer?

It's summertime and the living is easy...

It seems like I've got just a few more days of that. It doesn't help that my wife is a teacher and she stays busy with summer-school-- she winds up with just a few weeks of actual off-time. And those seem to go by so quickly.

However, we no longer have a deck in the back of our 70's ranch-style home. Just a frame right now. Watch your step out the back door-- it's a doozy and then you'll wind up breaking yourself on a couple of the joists. Oof!

My dad came up to help but the weather hasn't cooperated. First we had temps breaking 100 and then it was followed by rain! Oh and then there were the damn termites and carpenter ants busy eating my house.

So what does this have to do with me and the bikes? We haven't seen much of each other the last 10 days. Boo hoo.

This weekend, though. The forecast looks sunny and I plan on being out there.

Yeah yeah... the deck will get some attention, too.

Stop the madness! Again! Some More!

Carbon nanotubes bad for your lungs? The environment? (Your lungs.)

Okay, maybe I'm being something of an alarmist, but one really can't ignore stuff like this outright:

Carbon Nanotubes That Look Like Asbestos, Behave Like Asbestos

New study shows inhaling long, thin carbon nanotubes may result in asbestos-like health effects.

This is the head and sub-head of an article on The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies website. It's based on a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology that reports on a study done that indicates that carbon nanotubes, introduced into the body (the tests were conducted on mice), have an asbestos-like pathogenicity.

Remember asbestos? If it got into your lungs, you were pretty much toast. Asbestos fibers were long, thin fibers very much like carbon-nanotubes.

Go here to read the PEN article: http://www.nanotechproject.org/news/archive/mwcnt/

Go here to read the abstract of the Nature Nanotechnology article: http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v3/n7/abs/nnano.2008.111.html

I was turned onto this by a post on the Cozy Beehive. (In the same post there's some love for Thomson components-- which are NOT carbon composite!)

Why am I bothering with this? I'm not a huge fan of carbon composites in general. Now I'm not a "Luddite" but sometimes I think we humans have a tendency to do things because we can (Times like this I'm always reminded of the joke about why dogs lick their balls...)

We've created this wonderful amazing material, but what is the net effect of its creation and disposal? I mean, c'mon-- go Google "snapped carbon steerer" or some variation and you'll doubtless turn up plenty of scary reading material. And that's just for steerers-- not handlebars, forks, seatposts and even frames.

I'll mention this again-- do carbon composite materials degrade into healthful fertilizer when they're disposed of? Or do they shed harmful component chemicals and dangerous particulate matter?

I know I'm just scratching the surface and not touching on other toxic manufacturing processes involved in the manufacture of metal alloy bicycles and components.

Still... I guess it's good to ask questions, right?

Going from 2 to 8 wheels...

So I finally got my speed skates. After the 1994 series of skate races held concurrently with the twilight criterium in Boise, I vowed to return the next summer with speed skates.

Okay, well, 14 years later and one state over and I've done it.

Getting ready to head out to PIR I had the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something. My bike! It felt really strange heading out fully kitted for riding but no bike.

I went out for only one skate last week. The streets around home are terrible and my street in particular is not even paved! I felt like I had never skated before-- all wobbly and feeling like I was just going to keel over. I was rather shocked! My experience on the speed skates was nothing like I had imagined. It wasn't even fun! I had always imagined myself just gliding along-- a good strong push and I'd just coast along... then touching down with my other foot and pushing off again. Instead I felt terribly uncordinated and kept overbalancing on the outsides of my feet. After a pathetic 15 minutes I went back home worried that maybe I had wasted my money.

Silly me. First, the frames weren't even lined up properly on the boots. Thanks to some helpful skates on the Inine Planet forums I was able to get my frames in a good neutral spot. I practiced in my living room by standing on one skate at a time. After the adjustments, I could easily stand on one stake and not feel like I was tipping over.

When Monday came and it was time to head out to PIR to meet up with the other skaters there I was just beside myself.But I was worried that I would just flounder around out there. Would it be a horrible ordeal? Whould I remember how to skate? After my first test run around the neighborhood I wasn't sure. I also hoped that I wouldn't fall and lose any skin or shred my shorts.

The asphalt track at PIR was awesome.

It was everything I had dreamed of all these years. It was exactly like I imagined that speed skating would be. Unless you've skated -- really skated, tucked in and just sailing along -- you have no idea how incredible it is. I guess it takes some work to get there and I'm glad my body remembered what to do (mostly) but the payoff is totally worth it. I love bikes and the sensation of movment and the wheels spinning, but this is totally different.

I had a fantastic time out on the asphalt. The time we had to skate just flew by and before I knew it it was time to get off the track and make way for the cyclists. I wanted more skating but my back was complaining and my legs were all noodly feeling. Altogether a very pleasant sensation-- let's you know that you've had a good run.

. . .

I took a few minutes and I can't really properly describe it. The sense of movement while skating -- of pushing with one leg and gliding on the other is, I think, the core appeal to me. The speed, too. That's important, too.

Sadly there's just two more sessions out at PIR until the skating's done there for the summer. Then what? Maybe indoor this fall?

I'd better cut my reverie short and get back to work.