hamster huey and the patchouli ptui

more rain right now, just gentle. we had quite a deluge this afternoon around 1:00 or so. i was stuck at the office, and could only watch through various windows. by the time i left at 5:30 it had stopped, completely, leaving only humid air and a rather stiff wind from the northwest, which kinda cramped my riding home style.

but then i took the dog for a walk in the woods (bird hills) and there was ample evidence of the storm. some big pieces of red oak, parts that took decades and decades to grow, but just seconds to snap off and fall to earth. and the clay paths washed clear and hard, piles of leaf and twig debris here and there and deep scour holes behind the larger roots and rocks. a regular network of freshets, and i missed it. but oh! then we come upon the low spot, with its still wet pool of silty organic ooey gooey kablooey. and all, a total steambath. they say it will be cooler tomorrow. we shall see.

after we got home i couldn't resist riding the white bike into town for a gelato (mmm...p u m p k i n g e l a t o), oh i am so cool to ride a bike with no brakes. but the streets were dead; it was like everybody left for the art fairs and then forgot to come back when they were over. but hey. the kids will be back, and i'll be sitting there with my awesome bike and my little cup of gelato. and they're going to have to deal with me.

prelude to the afternoon of a chili dog

good grief it's close here. 79 °F, and dew point is 74 °F. and it's 8:00 a.m.

yesterday ms. cicadashell and i went to the movies (more on that later) and when we got out of the theatre at quarter of seven we were met with this ridiculous blast of hot, moist breeze. and the hazy sunshine and the waving ornamental grasses outside the quality-16 had me thinking i was already down in coastal north carolina, save for the smell of the brackish sediments of the estuarine cape fear river. and then later, sitting out on the deck grilling a ribeye, and just steaming there with an almost cold bell's amber listening to the annual cicadas buzzing it up, in one tree or another, passing the buzz song from tree to tree and going around my head better than any quadrophonic setup could, or even a dolby 5.1 whatever the hell that is anyway. certain moments can only occur here in late july, or at least they occur most often then, and that was certainly one of them.

so we saw war of the worlds, which i had very much wanted to see as i like everything by mr. spielberg. i had read mixed reviews but don't really put much stock into the movie writing that goes into the newspapers. i did read about some backlash from new yorkers and others close to the wtc attacks and while it struck me as petty i understood how deeply affecting that experience must have been and i wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, and see the movie before weighing in on the subject.

well, after seeing the movie i can understand the feeling of violation. mr. spielberg made full use of images whose evocative power was not, i believe, widely understood by the public, nor by most film directors, prior to the attacks. the images that moved me probably the most at the time were pictures of dozens of persons gazing up in horror at the unfolding scene. certainly, interviewers understand the power of the "reaction shot", and have used it to great effect, but i can't really recall a commercial action/disaster film in which the camera lingered over shocked and bewildered and fearful faces in this same way. and then the dust everywhere, the white dust on mr. cruise's face - persons in the demolition business knew about the dust already (friends who watched the implosion of the hudson's building in detroit from an adjacent 12th-floor office window tell incredible stories about the dust) but again, it wasn't really used to the same effect. another image clearly taken from those events, but that did not ring true in this film, was a wall of handmade signs, looking for so-and-so, so-and-so is missing, has anyone see this man? both my wife and i thought the same thing - where would people find the time to make these signs? they were all fleeing the horrible tripods.

so. is this okay? i have always championed the artist's need to remain insulated from the subjective response of the "audience"; indeed, for many artists the purpose is the provoke, or at least evoke, something in the viewer. you can't really follow your ideas if you are concerned about hurting people's feelings, or offending their sensibilities, or (shudder) making them feel guilty about themselves. this principle becomes muddled somewhat, however, when an artistic medium like film is used also as a commercial medium, distributed to the masses with some expectation of commonality of experience in the same way we are all expected to eat at mcdonald's together. there ends up being some give and take, although i suspect it is mostly between the director and the studio and the ratings board.

so i think a film director of mr. spielberg's abilities needs to be free to use whatever imagery he feels will best tell his story; indeed, his work is all about images and he is very, very good with them. but i can't help feeling that if he were more connected to new york (like martin scorsese or spike lee) he might have approached this a little differently. there is no requirement, i believe, to consider your audience's feelings. but it would be totally human to do so.

the first lieutenant lost his head

you know i like this packaged udon you can get in the stores these days. add some tofu and you have a tasty lunch. maybe it's the bonito powder that does it...

i need a break from this SWMM EXTRAN business. why don't my control structures back up any more flow into the combined sewers when i make the orifices smaller? this is going to take some more investigation but i don't really want to do that, not at the moment somehow. this toledo project has been going on long enough, thank you.

well my injuries are healing well enough. i took yesterday off from riding into work, albeit partly so i could drive over and watch the younger boy rehearse his play with the young actors' guild, at their summer day camp. i thought this was necessary because i was going to miss the performance on saturday, going to the vélodrome with the older boy plus a friend and the friend's dad. we had to cancel that, however, because it turned out that the older boy was leaving for camp michigania (with yet another friend and his family) on saturday instead of sunday like we thought. so it is sad not to go to the cycle race track, but it is also good because 1) i can see the younger boy's play and b) i will be healthier the next time i go.

it rained last night, and it was still quite damp this morning: 70 °F, dew point 69 °F. we have had a very wet july. i was nearly run off the road by some cowboys on their way to a big roundup. or at least that's what they may have been thinking; to the casual observer, they were merely landscaping clowns hurrying their way to the job site. hot date with a roll of sod, i can dig it.

the night before last i cleaned up my track bike from its 200+ mile road ride over the previous weekend. i repacked the headset, which had gotten a little gritty. then i cleaned the chain (the park cyclone is a decent tool but using it on a fixed gear machine is a job), filed out the drive-side track end so the chain tug would work better, removed the front brake and swapped back the other track drops. my baby! my white bike! yes, the vélo, we're going to the vélo! i imagine my track bike feels the same way about going to the vélodrome as my dog feels about going to the woods. now to break the news that we're not going tomorrow...

thank you to those kind readers who posted comments. i am still pondering the best way to respond to your thoughts - i suppose i could add a comment to the string of comments? is that what people do? anyway, when i have decided, you will know.

song of the day: in the head i hear "insomnia" by chris stamey from his recent release travels in the south. i think i will always identify this record with hot, hot weather, after listening to it so much on my recent trip to the black mountains, and now getting it out again as we roast our way through july. street art fairs, anyone?

yeah, it's a bumper sticker someplace

okay, so i'm back on the bike to work today. feels great it does. the weather service would swear on their mother's hygrometer that a cold front passed through yesterday, and i guess there were storms to suggest it was so, but the goddamnit dew point is still 67 °F and i am sweating like a, well, a thing that sweats a lot. i suppose it less humid than yesterday, when the dew point was 75 °F. egad!

starting tomorrow we will be having the annual street art fairs in our fair city, which are always a sore point for those persons whose well-being revolves around the time it takes them to drive to work. it seems, however, that this year some folks don't even want to wait until tomorrow - they are rude and pushy and willing to take great risks to arrive at the office 20 seconds earlier. as if anyone would even notice! well good morning, perkins! peckins, it is? well, how long have you been with us, peckins? twelve years, you say? well, perkins, good to have you aboard!

i re-read my account of my ms-150 ride and it seemed as though i was in a hurry to get it down, and didn't think of some of the more subtle things. there was a point where the road dropped into a low swampy area, and there was this tremendous chirruping of insects, i'm not sure what kind (not cicadas, i'm pretty sure), but there were clearly thousands and thousands of them, totally in their element and proud to let everyone know about it. i saw fewer squashed songbirds than i had remebered from before along that route; there were many goldficnhes flitting about, sometimes perilously close to my spokes. i did see a couple of sandhill cranes in a recently-mown field of hay, around 7:30 a.m. with mist and dew everywhere, probably the prettiest sight of the weekend (that cinammon roll from quality dairy may have been a close second or third).

so yeah, i didn't spend the whole time thinking about the mechanics of my spin, or who i was passing. i did make it a point to think about the people who pledged their support, some of who, thanks to the internet, were complete strangers whom i can only hope to help out in the future. thanks to all!

it's just like mitchell lane

well, i did it. rode 212 miles in two days on my track bike. in some ways it was not as hard as i thought it would be, whereas in other ways it was really really hard. let me tell you what i remember about it...

saturday i started out early, just a little after 7:00 a.m., which is when they “officially” open the course. certainly one of the guilty pleasures in riding a fixed gear in an organized ride is passing roadies, but i sort of cheated myself out of that with my early start; i didn’t see hardly any other bikes. i passed a few casual riders, and then was passed by a guy who had the full aero bar setup and flames on his jersey (he was also going downhill). i kept telling myself not to chase him, but he did not gain all that much. at the first rest stop, which was only just getting set up, i needed some gatorade so i stopped and refilled and this other guy kept going and disappeared, which was cool because i could just keep what seemed like a more relaxed but still insistent pace. of course i didn’t see anyone else, either. i rode by what must have been the second stop; there was a bank of portable toilets but no people in sight. when i turned to head west i was suddenly behind flame jersey again. i didn’t try to chase him this time either, and he didn’t really gain that much on me. we pulled into the third stop at the same time and chatted a little. while we were standing there, another guy rode by without stopping. flame jersey left soon afterward and i gave him a minute; eventually i lost track of him altogether.

all three of us were at the “lunch stop” at 10:00 a.m., and they were just getting set up as well; this was after i skipped the fourth stop because they weren’t set up at all. did i really leave that early? were we really going that fast, ahead of everybody? through a series of grunts and murmurs i learned that they were both intending to take the century loop, as was i. they left (separately) while i was still pushing a pb&j into my mouth. i did not see them on the century loop, but when i got to the century rest stop they told me i was the third person to get there, which was i think my major bragging right of the weekend. third rider to the century stop! excellent!

i continued to see exactly zero other riders until i got to where the century loop rejoined the main route, another rest stop, which i needed because my knees were bothering me. the usual soreness in my left knee (inside and outside) had actually come and gone, but my right knee had something different going on, something sharper. rest seemed to help, however, as did the knowledge that i was just 16 miles from the end. i had already gone 90 miles! it didn’t seem that far. so i got a few ego-boosting comments from riders at the stop (and, fading into the distance, from ones i passed) and basically finished after about 6:10 - i had been keeping loose track of my stopping times, about 40 minutes, so i figured i rode the 106 in 5:30. i thought that was pretty good. at the finish i saw i guy i knew from the track who said he was the second person to finish, a little after noon, but he had just done the 75 miles because he raced the night before.

at the finish area things fell apart. me right knee totally gave out, my luggage and all my clothes were wet (there had been some heavy rains back east, which delayed a lot of riders), and my cell phone was on the fritz. i located the clothes dryer in my dorm and found a pay phone to call home and started gobbling ibuprofen, so things got better. i cleaned up my bike some (i mean, it is white after all), to remove the pieces of insects and other crap that gets thrown up when you ride in the rain - there was a little light rain on the beginning of the century loop, just enough to get everything soaking wet but not of pelting intensity. grit in drive train and headset will take some more serious maintenance this week before i take the bike back to the velodrome on saturday (am i really going back to the velodrome on saturday? geez-o-pete...). after dinner i actually got back on my bike and rode around east lansing a little, just to see how it felt (it felt okay). but i was in bed by nine, trying to pretend the dorm room wasn’t hotter than fuck and that my knee didn’t hurt.

i ate a huge dormitory cafeteria breakfast the next morning (i watched this woman picking through the fruit bowl who had one piece of french toast on her plate and thought “exactly how far are you planning to ride today?”) and was on the road before 7:00. lots of others started early; i must have passed 40 riders on the way to the first stop, which was where the century loop split off. i thought, well, i’m feeling fine, so here goes. i was chugging a little bit and heard the noises of a paceline coming up behind me, and the lead guy was all enthusiastic about fixed gears, saying “hey look at this guy he’s a total animal” which gave me a boost. i hung with them, at what must have easily been 25 mph, to the rest stop. the one guy was telling me he had a fixed gear and had gone on some long rides but didn’t quite feel up to 100 miles yet. it was nice to have some company, and the drafting thing was good too. one of the guys they had picked up along the way turned out to be flame jersey from yesterday. at the stop, he wanted to get going sooner than they did, so the two of us paced each other for a while, and eventually the pack caught up, and i hung as best as i could, but it started to get a little difficult, and it was impinging on my enjoyment a little - working too hard, not seeing anything but the next guy’s wheel. so they didn’t want to stop where the loop rejoined the main route, so it was see you later. i did talk to flame jersey again at the finish; he said it never got any slower, and that it was tough to take his turn at the front.

as the day wore on it got hotter and my pains came and went. one thing i found was that, after stopping, even for just a few minutes, it took me a little time to kind of spin up again (like a hydrodynamic circulation model, i was thinking). after maybe 15 minutes or so, however, i would just kind of suddenly get loose and pick up a bunch of speed, which i could then maintain for a while. in the last 15 miles there were two rather major climbs (for this part of the world, anyway, moraines not mountains) that were kind of brutal in the heat but i prevailed, somehow, and finished after about 6:40 total time, maybe just under six hours of riding time. my knee wasn’t as bad as it was saturday, but it was tender and swollen, and it still is today. an informal examination by two neighbors who are doctors comfirms that there is nothing the matter with my kneecap, thankfully (one guy kept doing all these motions and proddings, saying “does this bother you?” and it never did, which i took to be a good sign). i think i got a little dehydrated because i have some of that thick-headed, hung-over feeling this morning.

but it was all good. i may even do it again next year (he he - i certainly wasn’t thinking that yesterday). i was glad i had listened to the remastered whatever and ever amen on the way in, because i had songs like “mitchell lane” and “air” running through my head most of time, which was peaceful.

thanks for reading.

all we are

so i drove today, trying to rest just a bit before this weekend and the back-to-back fixed gear centuries...but i did not hate myself, i was very good. it seemed like traffic was unusually light.

last night i put in the 107 mm spindle and i can see it will have an effect on q-factor. there is only the slightest amount of clearance between those fat sugino glp crankarms and the bottom bracket cups. it will be okay, but it is noticeably narrow. i haven't messed with removing the cog and a spacer yet, however; that will have to wait. it looks like i will be able to get a nearly perfect chainline with a lockring outside the cog. certainly the smooth way the wheel turns under its own inertia is encouraging.

there is a television commercial for an suv that subaru has named the "tribeca". personally i am waiting for the hyundai "bowery"...maybe a little more my price range. but what gets my gourd is the use of kansas' dust in the wind as the jingle. it is a classic, of course, and well-placed, but it's also a little disconcerting to have that song pop into my head as though i had somehow returned to that era, or worse, never left.

by the time

so this morning the temperature at the airport, as i rode past it, was 73 °F; the dew point was 68 °F. it is humid, and we will likely be getting thunderstorms. ah, summer!

yesterday on the way home (on state at research park drive) a fellow told me to "get on the sidewalk", through the open passenger-side window of his pickup truck. we were pulling up to a red light, so it was a perfect opportunity to engage, but i decided not to, opting for a withering look into his rearview mirror, followed by contemplation of my front wheel. it is hard not to feel somewhat cowardly for taking this approach, but i know it was the right thing. experience has shown me that persons who say things to bicyclists are not usually interested in a contructive debate on the merits of vehicular cycling; it is more likely a case of misery loving company. there really are very few, if any teachable moments in traffic. we are all usually too wrapped up in near-field experiences to handle abstractions like rights and responsibilities.

it can be hard to remain calm, all the same. i get filled with righteous anger when my well-being is threatened by someone who is sprinting for, in essence, nothing: a "good" place in line at the next red light, or that last sprinkle doughnut in the coffee room. but i just let it go, let it go...go mellow, a-go-go.

the song that won't leave my head this morning is "you to thank" by ben folds.

time to get to work on something. then we can talk about the tour de france.

we are climbing jacob's ladder

it was a mellow trip into the office this morning. nws proudly proclaims the dry bulb temperature to be 74 °F (already, at 08:15), and alleges the dew point to be 65 °F although it feels even steamier after last night's rain, courtesy the final remnants of dennis. all that moisture made for eye-catching shafts of sunlight between the trees, up in the heights. there were damp smells in the air as well, making me feel as though i were in the forest somewhere. ah, tree town, thy name comes honestly!

todays's band name: remnants of dennis

this morning on the way in we had 66 °F dry bulb, 64 °F dew point, and “calm” winds. it was mellow-reeny, macvouty. this was my first commute with the new gear ratio, 44:17 versus 45:20. that’s 70 gear-inches versus the 61 i was turning previously, a 15% increase. it was noticeable on the flats and descents (such as they are), but didn't really kill me on the climbs (such as they are). i will notice more on the way home, getting up to the robin hills of vesper heights. what was also noticeable was the total quietude of this 1/8" drive train, thanks to my total mastery of the redish-respace process, and my totally excellent chainline that totally resulted from what i, like, did. totally. of course there is still no lockring so i can't show off my total skid prowess yet; that will have to wait for the new spindle, and the creative removal of the extra cog spacer, and the fiddling and the tightening and the tensioning and the micro-fine adjustments to the ahh...

well yes anyway it was a nice ride, despite the occasional rude boy and his noisy toy.

cleanliness anyway

god certainly noticed that i showed up at church this morning only to buy large quantities of equal exchange coffee for home and office. but god also knows where my heart is, so we're cool.

so it is quiet at the office this morning, the ideal setting for working a little magic with SWMM-EXTRAN and DOS , or what passes for DOS these days. yes, it is still possible in this modern age. tomorrow morning i will be able to tell whether there is any benefit, it terms of reduced frequency of overflow from a proposed CSO basin at Oakdale, to restricting the flow from Wood County, Ohio. no, the names were not changed to protect the innocent; i am relying on total obscurity here.

yesterday we had a great morning at the track. my 10-year-old decided he didn't want to try riding, and although i thought he could probably do it, and that the people at the 'drome would certainly give him lots of encouragement, i didn't want to push him into something that could be discouraging. we will work on different things at home. but the 15-year-old got out there and rode around quite a bit. he is strong, but needs to get more comfortable riding close in a paceline. he tended to drift back, which is the same thing he does when he follows me on the road. i believe he can keep up, but he doesn't seem comfortable being right on my wheel, and then he loses the advantage of drafting and it gets harder. so we'll work at that. my self, i had a fine time slashing around. next time i want someone to time me on a flying 200. i mean i know i suck, but i still want a point of sucking reference, to judge relative suckitude and see how i progress over the summer.

and the commuter fixed was whisper-quiet after applying chain lube, which we confirmed riding to washtenaw dairy last night for some ice cream (see? i got them out on bikes a couple of times yesterday!). of course i couldn't show off my punkazoid street cred skidding awesomeocity with no lockring yet, but when the shorter spindle arrives it will be only a matter of time.

no try

pray dear reader do you ever get the faint impression that you may be competent? well that is nearly the case this evening. i have embarked on a multi-phase journey toward a better chainline, after last night's debacle, and so far success is nigh. picking through the spindle bins at the local bike shop yielded nothing usable (but oh! so many italian jobs) so i ordered a 107 mm spindle online. then i redished rather severely (a full turn and a half of each spoke) and that really did the trick - right now, without the shorter spindle, things look pretty much okay, which means that when i get the shorter spindle in there i'll be far enough ahead to take off a spacer and make room for the lockring. so we shall see. as it stands, however, i think it may be rideable. i'll put the tire back on tomorrow.

driving home from the office this afternoon i went through a magnificent thunderstorm. heading north i approached this tremendous darkness, all a-crackle with brilliant white bolt from cloud to ground. beneath the clouds were the grey sheets of rain, which i am learning means it's really pouring like all hell under those clouds, because once i got into it (about at state and packard) it was a total deluge, with some hail even. but that was over as quickly as it began, leaving torrents along the gutters even as the sun came out. there is no place quite as stunning as earth, i do believe.

deus ex machina?

last night i undertook a bicycle tinkering project that i had been awaiting for some time. i wanted to change the gear ratio on my fixed-gear commuting bicycle, and convert from a 3/32" to a 1/8" drive train at the same time. going to a taller gear was a practical desire, as i had been spinning out with my existing 45:20 combo (although getting that loaded steel beast up hills was certainly no problem). going to the larger chain was more a vanity thing, thinking it somehow truly meet and proper (as it were) for a singlespeed. after finally procuring a 44-tooth 144 mm bcd front chainring, to go with the 17-tooth track cog i already had in my parts box (one of at least a half dozen clementine boxes, actually) i set out to make the switch.

the work went easily enough, given that the existing cog had been secured with blue loctite since last october. but the results were disappointing for a couple of reasons. first, the chainring had roundness issues. i got the rear wheel snug at what seemed like a good chain tension, only to have it sag and tighten as i turned the cranks, in perfect synchronicity with their rotation. i adjusted the location of the ring, which helped a little, but not completely. perhaps in the light of the day i can get that a little better.

second problem is chainline, and the fact that the 1/8" chain is far less forgiving than the 3/32". the cog is out as far as it can go already - too far, in fact, to put the lockring on. this is because the loctite from before got into the spacers and i couldn't get them off. a shorter bottom bracket spindle would help - i am using a found-it-laying-around shimano spindle that is 113 mm - i need to get hold of something meant for a triple, more like 108 or 109 mm. the wheel could also be dished less, to gain a couple of millimeters, which i will need once i get a spacer off to make room for the lockring.

the third problem was related to the lack of lockring and the glue not being dry when i took it for a test spin to get the cog on good and tight. just a little backpressure was enough to totally spin the cog off. ass! my bike went from completely rideable to completely unrideable with just an hour's effort. this is what most people would call a failure. at least i wasn't planning on riding it to work today anyway. but damn. i was hoping god would appear, hanging off the end of my chainwhip perhaps, but it was not to be, not last night anyway.

time to get to work. tomorrow we go to the velodrome! haha! and i can fuck around with the bike later...

and continue

okay. so today i drove instead of riding, so there wouldn't have been a post on bikeforums anyway. but maybe i would have written this anyway.

sometimes i say "i hate myself when i drive" but today i was nice. there are so many opportunities to get caught up in pettiness and greed when attempting to share the road with other motorists. i really don't understand where people learn to drive so poorly - watching others, i suppose. that and generally poor comprehension of the physical realities of traffic flow - that you really don't get where you're going significantly sooner by driving as fast as possible, all the time. it's the lights, and the other cars, that control your average speed.

anyway i did not hate myself today - i was gentle and kind. and slow! (he he)

start here

okay. everything starts, that ends. i expect to end someday, so i'm obligated to start. why here? why now? those are good questions. i won't answer them yet, however.

it occurred to me (this is a partial answer) the other day that i had been posting in a thread on the commuter forum at bikeforums titled "how was the commute today?" regularly, for months, and that it amounted to a so-called blog of sorts, as my daily post often included some observation of the moment that may have had little to do with the commute itself. so it was some sort of "log" of what was happening. i may continue doing that. but i will also continue here.

other ideas and links and so on will probably also appear here, as well.