I managed to pry myself out of bed yesterday at about 5:20. My goal was 5 am of course but the magic of snooze is a powerful thing. I so wanted to be in bed a little longer that when I accidentally turned off the alarm instead of snoozing it, I actually reset the alarm. After the alarm went off a few times I started to feel a little guilty. Brian hadn’t signed up for an annoying early awakening.
The night before I had carefully removed all the barriers to action that my powerful morning rationalizing brain could get a grip on. My lights were charged. My clothes for the ride were gathered into a heap. So I got dressed and got on my bike around 5:40. It was pretty dark. I could barely make out the vague shapes of horses as I rode past the pasture.
A car totally ran the stop sign at the corner. They always do. At this corner anyway.
As I rode around the block the sky started turning from black to red. All the scenery in the foreground was still in darkness back lit by red. Eventually the red started to fade out and was being replaced by blue toward the end of my ride. The sun still wasn’t up when I got home but it was light enough that I didn’t really need to have my headlights on anymore.
It was a perfect time of day to ride. I think it was in the high 60′s but it was into the 90′s by mid day.
I didn’t manage to get up to ride this morning but I’ll still get out this evening. Maybe when the temperature drops down to 80.
I’ve got my shiny bike lights on the charger getting ready for day one of round two of 30 days of biking. I’m going to do better this fall. I’m going to use this opportunity to get my butt in gear and train to ride around Seneca Lake. It’s supposed to be pretty hot tomorrow and I don’t have my commute routine streamlined at the moment so I plan to get up at five and do 4 or 10 miles near home. I am writing about it here now to try to seal the deal. So when I try to go back to sleep in the morning I will feel the threat of having to shamefully admit my lazy ways and I will have to ride in the heat after work.
Join my in my September #30daysofbiking quest! It’s easy. It’s fun. Here’s the offical party line:
The only rule for 30 Days of Biking is that you bike every day for 30 days—around the block, 20 miles to work, whatever suits you—then share your adventures online. We believe biking enriches life, builds community, and preserves the Earth.
You can register here… if you want to be all official about it.
After some attempts to aquire a Dahon Vitesse and discovering that no one had any we went over to the local bike shop and picked up a Mariner instead. It will still do everything we want it do and it was significantly cheaper. We just thought the other bike would require a little less maintenance in general. But I suppose then I wouldn’t get as much practice.
New Mariner
There have been a few design changes since my aunt and uncle bought their Mariner’s. It’s interesting to compare them.
If we were patient people we could probably get the Dahon Vitesse D7HG. Apparently they are all back ordered because we’ve tried at multiple places, including online and it looks like no one can get one before October.
But the local bike shop has a couple of slightly less awesome folding bikes. We’ll probably wander over there to check them out. I imagine we will get the Mariner.
The problem with shopping for bikes online is that it makes you want stuff that nobody has in stock. And maybe if you’re more committed to the whole shopping process you can get what you want. I’m not really that person though.
I am a fan of House Industries. Their design and fonts and whatnot.
Chalet and Neutraface are both fonts that I have lusted over for some time. I would like the entire collection. But for personal use, I don’t know about spending $299 for the whole collection. In a freelance capacity I tend to be more of a shoestring designer, working with what we have to keep things cheap for my clients. “Hey… you know what this project needs? It needs me to buy the entire Chalet collection. This 35 print run of xeroxed Bed and Breakfast brochure will surely rake in the money then.”
I got my occasional House Industries email today. I was going to deleted it but clicked through anyway and found that they’ve got some bike themed stuff for me to needlessly want. I am semi mystified at how my font lust and my bike lust could be wrapped together in on package.
Velocipede Shirt - but who doesn't iron a shirt before photographing it for sale?
I will be attending a conference in Cincinnati this fall. I’m going out a day early so I’ll have time to explore the city. I like exploring new places and doing it on foot is OK but I keep thinking about how much more fun it would be and how much more ground I could cover on a bike.
Last year my conference was in Milwaukee and I was really excited when I found a place that did laid back bike tours. They had pub tours, and Milwaukee history tours, and food tours. I really didn’t care what kind of a tour… it just sounded great. I was really excited. But then I found out they were on vacation the week I would be there.
Dag.
This year I was researching renting a bike for a day in Cincinnati. That may be what I end up doing. I think it’s about $40 for a hybrid, they provide a helmet so you don’t have to try to travel with one. I wouldn’t have to try to check crazy baggage on the airline. And it might still be an option, but the shop is closed the day I would have time to do a lot of riding.
And now that Brian is buying the Dahon, and I learned that Dahon also sells air travel bike carriers, well, now I’m thinking about how awesome it would be to have a bike with me the whole time. I could easily travel to the interesting coffee shop a mile or two away as opposed to the hotel Starbucks. I could easily make it to the zoo and the botanical gardens on my day off. But I know that airlines have crazy baggage rules, and some of those rules apply to bikes and I’d hate to be stuck paying as much as the stupid travel case costs to get my bike to and from Cincinnati.
It is possible to bring antlers on the plane for an extra fee. ($200)
Canoes are not accepted
Javelins are accepted but are subject to size and weight restrictions and fees, due to their large size.
No more than five pistols and no more than 11 lbs. (5 kg) of ammunition
Vaulting poles are accepted, but may not be greater than 80 inches (203 cm) in length.
There was also some stuff about bikes and I’m pretty sure it would not incur the $200 bicycle fee as long as it was semi-disassembled and in the travel case, but I’d want to know for sure before I bought the official case.
It would be so great to be able to have a bike with me the whole time. I can rationalize that it would be cost effective because I usually go to one conference every year so, by not renting a bike every time… it would totally pay for itself. …Right? But sometimes you don’t do stuff because it’s cost effective. You just do it because it would be great.
I just wonder if the hassle of air travel with potentially complicating baggage would outweigh the awesomeness of having the bike with me.
I’m still feeling pretty sad about Iggy being gone. Every time I go into the bathroom I notice her absence. She used to hang out there on the window sills for most of the day. And it’s not a room I can avoid, unless we build an outhouse. When I feed Maude there’s only one cat and it sucks. We just had the two of them for so long it seems weird to see one and not the other.
The vet called today to see how things turned out which was really nice of them. I wish I had a happier story to tell.
I am glad we found out it was her heart. If we hadn’t, I’m pretty sure I would have been convinced that she had gotten into poison or something while we were outside and Maude would probably have never gotten another field trip outside ever again due to my paranoia. Though I think I may have to overcome a little of that anyway before I take her out again. I’ll have to have a few good trips outside before I stop associating it with badness.
I know this is another depressing post. Sorry about that. But I gotta write what’s on my mind. I feel like 2010 has not been a very good year for me. I’m sure my overall sense of it’s badness is is only related to my current state of mind but I’m tired and still trying to adapt to a lot of new routines in my life. I can handle change in technology better than change in my life.
On the up side we’re probably going to order the folding bike in the next few days. Brian is almost convincing me that I need one too. I’m a sucker for bikes, so it’s not that hard of a sell.
Also my weight is still declining. Yay diet. I haven’t been biking a lot during the week but I’ve been doing some longish rides on the weekend. My aunt and I, and maybe my cousin, are planning on trying to ride around Seneca Lake sometime this fall. I believe it’s about 77 miles. I’m hoping to commute at least once this week and really pick it back up when Brian starts school next week.
We lost our cat Iggy last night. We’ve had her and her litter-mate, Maude, almost since we moved in together 12 or 13 years ago, or maybe it’s been 14 or 15 years at this point. It’s hard to keep track. After we took the cats outside yesterday she was panting and wheezing like her lungs were full of water. We have no idea what triggered it to happen right then, but she had had a heart murmur for years, which resulted in a severely enlarged heart and eventually, heart failure. As soon as we saw her breathing this way I called the vet. It was 5 o’clock, they were just closing. We rushed her over there and they did the best they could, but suggested that her best chance was to get her to the emergency vet up in Rochester. We headed up there as fast as we could but we didn’t make it in time. It all just happened too fast, which probably means that even if we had gotten her there quicker, it was probably just her time to go.
We feel really lucky to have had her for as long as we did. Though, I’ll be honest, I’m feeling mostly just sad right now.
She was a really sweet cat. She wasn’t always good… but she tried to be. There was that time she pulled a whole ham steak off the table on to the floor, but she was too excited to be casual after the fact. So she got caught. She’s nabbed a lot of sausages over the year too. She would only sit on your lap if there was a book or magazine there so she wouldn’t get human cooties. She would demand to be petted by grabbing your hand with her paw and pulling it across her face.
I feel like I should think of more to say but I haven’t written a lot of cat obituaries. I’ll just embed a little slideshow of the photos I have. I know there are more to add but I can’t find them for some reason.
Brian is going to be at RIT this fall and he may try a multi-modal commute or maybe just keep it in his car and use it to get around campus quickly. We’ll save money on parking by parking in distant lots but spend money on a bike, something that keeps on giving after the semester ends. We figure it’s a win win because even if Brian turns out not to like it that much I will definitely ride it around.
My aunt and uncle lent us their Dahon Mariner. So we got to test it out and see what we thought. They’ve had their Mariners for quite a long time and their in pretty good shape considering all the salty ocean air they’ve been exposed to. Folders have strange proportions but they’re actually quite comfortable to ride. I wouldn’t want to try to ride around Canandaigua Lake on one, just because the wheels are small and I think that extra effort would add up, but for getting around the city or a multi-modal commute they’d be great.
I think we’re pretty settled on the Dahon Vitesse D7HG. I think it might be better for riding in the all season grunge because it has internal hubs. Of course that means, I’ll have no idea how to fix it but hopefully that won’t be an issue for a few years. I’m very excited about getting the bike, even though it will be Brian’s. I know he’ll let me ride it when he’s not using it.
Now I’m trying to decide if it’s worthwhile or just a splurge to get the air travel case. I would love to have a bike with me when I’m at a conference. I love to explore but I never get that far on foot. I usually go to at least one conference every year so it might be worth it, but generally I don’t do a lot of air travel.
I think I mentioned before that I’m doing the South Beach Diet. So far, I have lost 10lbs. I hesitate to get in to numbers but whatever… as of today I’m at 10lbs. I’d like to lose another 40.
There are a lot of diets out there so you may not know the laws of the South Beach. It is pretty much all about eating lots of vegetables and lean proteins, and restricting the amount of grains you eat and limiting those to whole grains. Fruits have lots of sugar so they are limited too… and sugar is right out. No sugar.
Anyway, I’m far enough in to the diet that I can eat a few whole grains. Due to my laziness I keep a big can of rolled oats at work. It means that even if I get up late, there’s always something I can have for lunch.
Today I got up extra late. I decided I would do oatmeal but brown sugar and raisins are not on the approved list, so I decided I would finally try something like Brian’s savory oatmeal. I had a little package of lively run goat cheese that I love but haven’t been eating for lack of crackers. So I stirred about an ounce of that into a serving salty oatmeal and added about 1/4 – 1/8 tsp of black pepper to the mix.
Holy crap! It was so delicious. It was something like risotto, something like a sharp mac and cheese. I started to wonder what Canadian Bacon and cheddar oatmeal would be like. And then I started thinking again about peanut butter oatmeal, maybe with some red pepper flakes and soy sauce… something like the west african peanut chicken stew I made the other night.
I know… this sounds freaky. But seriously, try salty oatmeal with goat cheese and black pepper before you make up your mind. It tastes great and it’s way less likely to lead to diabetes than brown sugar and raisins.
We figure it’s a win win because even if Brian turns out not to like it that much I will definitely ride it around.
