Miscelleanous Items

• Everytime I look in the medicine cabinet I see this:

• And I thank Sophzilla for that.
  

• Take a look at MelloVelo's post showing the video of a fire-breathing bicycle. I roared laughing when I thought of smoking someone behind me be they a rude auto driver or an unannounced wheel-sucking bicyclist.

• I installed platform pedals on my commuter bike the other day, because the bike shoes weren't warm enough. The boots shown below came with a label that said they were rated for -10 degrees F. Of course I didn't expect them to keep my feet warm to that temperature while cycling. However, I wish they worked at 10 degrees F above zero. My feet have been cold near the end of my ride to work over the past two days even with the boots, but not miserably so. I'm going to try and find some very thick wool socks. My current ones are medium thickness. Maybe I could use a complete sheep on each foot.

Mendota Bridge

This is the Mendota bridge. It's the last bridge on the Minnesota River before it meets the Mississippi River. According to Wikipedia, Mendota means "meeting of the waters."

I like riding over it. It leads me to places that don't feel like city. Sometimes I need a break from city riding. City riding contains constant interruptions. When I ride this route, at least at this point and on the East side of the bridge, there are few interruptions.

I need to make sure I get in at least one of these rides a week.

Saturday Offroad Ride

I rode the trail at Theodore Wirth Park on Saturday afternoon. It was really lonely. I saw one other rider. The neighboring golf course was even deserted.

The trail maintainers added a section of obstacles. The park is built on a dump from very long ago. They used some of the old asphalt chunks from a road to build the obstacles. I rode this new section once and avoided it on later laps.

I didn't ride the obstacles again, because I kept thinking of crashing on an asphalt chunk. The last time I fell on asphalt my body hurt so badly that I can still feel it. I was showing my son that I could bunny hop a razor scooter. I launched a couple little jumps and then fell down.

It didn't look like much, but it hurt like much. I might have said a bad word that day.

Anyway, I took these photos to show the long shadows of late afternoon in the fall (via CreepyCam).

I bought a new CreepyCam and I'll take some underwhelming shots with it on this afternoon's ride.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving


My daughter made this turkey hat for me.

Lung Cookie Festival

I was sick last week and didn't ride. For some reason, blogging and riding go together for me. That's why I didn't blog last week. The antibiotics are working and I rode to work today. It was a festival of expectorant. You could probably track me from my house to work if you followed the trail of lung cookies and boogers. I think it's part of the healing process.

I brought a camera and decided to take dark time photos of the Midtown Greenway Bridge (over Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis). I took some daylight photos two weeks ago and I've posted those too. To top it all off, I took a video while riding over the bridge. All you people from out of town can see what it's like to ride over a $5,000,000 bicycle/pedestrian bridge. I'm not knocking the price of the bridge. In the big scheme of road construction, that's probably a small project.


I like blurry night photos.

That's not the moon.


Here's the video. As Leonard Pinth-Garnell would say, "Perfectly awful!"

The Hiawatha Bridge

I altered my route home yesterday to take in the new bridge over Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis. I planned to cross it during the grand opening ceremony that I heard was from 4 to 6 p.m.

That's the bridge in the distance. The CreepyCam is pathetic in a good way.

I arrived about 5 p.m. and couldn't cross, because the official ceremony was in progress.

I'll remember from now on that opening ceremony means "find another route."

I'll try again on my way home today.

This morning I brought a camera, but it was too dark to get any photos. So I tried anyway.

Late Halloween Photos

Here are a few of my Halloween photos.



A friend who dresses convincingly as a witch.



Too much beer?




My son loves to decorate. You might have seen last year's vomitting pumpkin.





The gorilla and Mr. Hyde.





The gorilla with flash.

Miscelleanous Items

• My bike shimmies with the new laptop bag, but at least it doesn't do the death wobble.
• It's really nice to get on the bike and ride away in the mornings without hooking up the battery. The battery for my light sat in the main triangle and limited access to my water bottle and my front shift lever. Those annoyances are gone now that I have the dynamo hub. Are any of you Frank Zappa fans?
• Riding in the fall is fantastic. Getting back to standard time is pretty good too for people who get up early.
  

Shimmy

This bike is loaded less than what it looks like. The orange pannier contains a well padded laptop and is very flat against he bike. The bag on top holds my work clothes (a loin cloth and a dagger). The right side of the bike is empty.

I have a brief case/pannier that broke yesterday afternoon. I may be able to fix it, but the point is that it held the laptop horizontally and the orange one holds it vertically -- meaning the orange one puts the weight lower on the bike. This should make the bike more stable right? At least that's what the touring know-it-alls say, "Weight mounted lower is more stable."

It's not true in this case, because I felt shimmies all the way to work this morning. They felt like they were coming from the rear end of the bike and traveling through the frame to my handlebars. I realize it was a magnification of my imperfect pedaling style.

Despite that it was a fun ride in. The temperature was about 8 degrees warmer than yesterday, making it just right.

My Daughter Said ...

My eight-year-old daughter saw one of our women friends at a Halloween party the other night. The woman was dressed as a hillbilly. She wore overalls, blacked out a few of her teeth, and had her hair in pig tails.

My daughter looked up at her and asked if her nose hairs were part of her costume too.