Justifying a New Bike

How to Justify Buying a New Bike -
Use the "cost per mile" method: cost/distance. Get a new one when the cost is below your target level.

If your bike costs $2,000, and you ride it 2,000miles the cost per mile is $1.00. Once you ride it for 4,000 miles, the cost is now $0.50 per mile. At 8,000 miles, the cost is $0.25. At 10,000 miles the cost is $0.02 per mile. At 20,000 miles, the cost is $0.01.

If you average 1,500 miles per year, that's 13 years, which is long enough for a bike, if you don't have any accidents. The difference in bike technology over 13 years is enormous.

Hanging on Until Spring

Things are slow in the blogshpere. Not cold enough consistently for ice-skating. Too much frozen rain for in-line skating. I went skating last Sunday (1/25) and found black ice on the bike path.

This is the view today from my home office. ---->

On the positive side, I did find EXACTLY what i've been looking for since 1993 to prevent blisters under my ankle bones - reusable round gel pads called "Clear Clouds"..... I got them from a web site called "Skating Safe" (located in Florida). Excellent response times from this company.
http://www.skatingsafe.com/

I think I'll be skating more this spring than riding my bike... makes a nice change. My goal for 2009 is to learn to do cross-overs. Tried to learn it once, but it didn't take. I'd also like to learn how to handle hazards - sticks, etc. in my path.

Holidays to get us through the winter and spring:January - Lunar New Year
February - Valentine's Day; plus, the daylight lasts longer.
March - 21st - Vernal Equinox (SUMMER STARTS HERE !)
April - Tax Day, start of good water conditions for Kayaking.
May - Every day is a good day !!!

Dyanmic Music Videos

http://evanjacover.com/archives/2007/im-more-important-than-you

Check this out - it's a nice song that's a wonderful alternative to road rage, but the best part is that it uses random pictures from Flickr to create a potentially-new video every time you play the song. If you want to do the same, the site owner supplies the source code.

And the song is actually pretty good - i'd love to have it on my iPod to play in traffic - for those 'special' people on the road.

Morris Arboretum

Visited the Morris Arboretum this weekend. Highly recommend it.
The special exhibit was:



Many of the buildings were local Philadelphia institutions, but these are some of my other favorites are below. The entire exhibit is made out of natural materials, and appear to be bio-degradable. There's no information available about how the buidlings were constructed, which would have been really interesting, but they appear to be thin wood with a lot of epoxy of some kind. The trestles are made of wood.

No reflecting pool in front, but still impressive, on a small scale.









Guess where you're NOT ?



Detail from Independence Hall:

Buy This Book !

Who knows enough about shopping in Victorian England ? Not me !

This book is actually an easy read about the social impacts of shopping in Victorian England - how did they do it ? What kind of shops were there ? Who owned them ? Worked in them ? Who went to which kind of shop ? (or, shoppe ?). Is this a pre-cursor to the modern American habit of "shopping as entertainment" - a time when shopping occupied an important part of people's (i.e., women's) daily lives ?

Anyway, highly readable and entertaining.
Available on Amazon, B&N, etc.

Bicycle Cravings....

Just because 'bicycle season' is over doesn't mean that I don't look/ think about bikes, or that I stop riding.

I have found two bikes that I truly CRAVE.

The first is a short wheelbase tandem recumbent from Barcroft. The Columbia. I saw one on the MS 150 ride. My fondest desire is to do some serious touring on a tandem recumbent.... hope i don't have to wait until i retire to do that !


Since it doesn't look like tandem riding is in my near future, I have this bike lined up as a replacement if my Haluzak ever fails.... Titanium, and less than 24 lbs. I never wanted an over seat steering recumbent before, but this one has changed my mind.

Taking a test drive is worth the trip to Virginia !

Link to the Barcroft site.

Fun with George Orwell.....

Every time I read 1984, or anything else by or about George Orwell, I always think of the grammer streamlining in 1984 - double plus good !

Here's the idea for some fun: take a day and use only 1984-ish constructs in your written and oral communications - especially e-mails. I think texting would need something like 'GD++", and 'GD--'.

Better, and more fun, than 'talk like a pirate day'......




More fun with George/ Eric on the Orwell Diaries site.

MS 150 2008 City to Shore

Rode the MS 150 City to Shore on Saturday. 75 miles from Cherry Hill, NJ to Ocean City.


Rode the Sun EZ-1, which weighs 41 lbs unloaded. Added 75 ounces of water (which weighs slightly more than 16 pounds). Plus, spare tubes for the front and rear tires - because they're different sizes. So, that's more than 57 pounds to pedal for 75 miles, without clipless pedals - just regular platform pedals.




Total time - 7 hours; 15 minutes. Which is 9 minutes slower than 2007, when I rode the Haluzak. I think I could have done the century in 7 hours, if I had ridden the Haluzak.

Fixing the Economy - 'Trickle UP"

Everyone seems to have an opinion, so here's mine (and it costs a lot less than $700b U.S.)

Step 1: Take about $260B and invest in US bonds - something safe. We'll spend it gradually - later.

Step 2: Focus on the sub-prime loans. Let's skip the discussion about the greed, etc., that causes the loans to be made. The point is that there are people who have loans that they can't afford. The normal rule of thumb is 28% to 30% of your income should be spent on housing (including mortgage, taxes, etc.). For people with sub-prime loans, figure out what 30% of their income is. That's the amount of the loan that they're required to pay for their mortgage - set up at today's rate as a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. The difference between the % that they can pay, and the amount currently owed on the sub-prime will be paid MONTHLY for the next 30 years, out of the $260B invested in bonds.

Step 3: The holders of the currently-worthless paper can't sell it. They'll get paid, but only over 30 years. Too bad.

Step 4. This will probably solve the problem for 80% of the sub-prime loans; the rest will default anyway. That's life, but it's better than buying off greedy people who knew they wouldn't be helpd accountable.

Winter Project 2008/2009 - Carbon Fiber bike

Also known as "Crazy Idea #1". If I work through all of my current in-progress projects (making a 'watercolor' picture of the house, converting all of my vinyl and casettes to digital) and digitizing all of my 35mm slides, learning a few words of Welsh, and possibly other things, I know what I want to work on during the winter of 2008/9 when it's too cold and dark to ride.

I want to build a carbon fiber recumbent bike. I know some places where I can buy parts, and I can buy some plans to help me design (or at least avoid known pitfalls), and lots of people have already done this. So, it has to be possible, if you design well, and work really well and carefully, no ? It would be so cool to ride a bike that you designed and built by yourself. The lightness of carbon fiber-coated foam core would just be an added bonus. I've stripped bikes down to the frame and re-assembled them, but this is a whole new level of bike insanity.

Off to do some research, so I can think about this while finishing my current projects.