Line of Sight Conversation Devices

This morning I rode in with my friend Anne. We did a little bit of chatting while talking. I wish it were easier to talking while riding single file down a street with lots of cars. Actually, that brings to mind a great idea.

A couple of months ago I read a Nancy Drew book. Actually it wasn’t JUST a Nancy Drew Book, it was a Nancy Drew: All New Girl Detective book. I was only reading it because it was a bike race mystery. . It was called Nancy Drew: A Race Against Time.

The book itself was rather forgettable, but they did have some neat gadgets. I like that Nancy Drew and her pals are all high tech. I wonder where they get the money?

So the best gadget was a helmet radio transceiver. I don’t know much about racing, but I can’t imaging that most racers would use them cause they are probably heavy.

Now what I’m thinking would be cool would be to set up a kind of CB radio system for people on bikes. .I’d only want to do line of sight. It would kind of be like the Nintendo DS (I once talked to some people in a different car on the interstate in Pictochat), but we’d be talking verbally.

Of course, we’d only be talking in one ear and would still be able to hear everything else going on around the bike, but having a better means of talking would definitely make group rides much more interesting for me.

I’m sure a product like this already exists, but it would be even cooler if everyone had one and you could just beam your voice directly to the other cyclists. It would probably also serve to get rid of a lot of miss connections on Craigslist.

Now, if it were like CB Radio I wonder what my nickname would be? JamisJami? GarbageDay? Balloonbiker? The possibilities are endless.

Bike Dreams

It was actively snowing today, so I rode the train in to work. Not my favorite thing to do, but I’ve been impressed lately that the trains are a lot faster. Since I didn’t ride, I’m going to do something very annoying and talk about what happened in some recent dreams. Sorry.

I’ve been having biking creeping into my dreams. I’m usually a fairly vivid and action packed dreamer. Sleeping for me is kind of like going to the movies and having the bikes thrown in is definitely exciting.

Two recent ones were entertaining. In one I must have been on my cross county bike trip because I was at my Aunt’s house in Anacortes, WA. We got in a huge fight so I stormed off on my bike down to the little convenience/grocery store that is a couple of blocks away. Well, it was no longer a convenience store, it was now an Ethiopian restaurant. I wanted some food, but I needed to find a place to lock up my bike. We went out back and I talked to the Ethiopians and hung out by my bike. That was about it, not very exciting at all.

The next dream was much more interesting. I was biking around Ravenswood Manor in Chicago. As I approached an intersection I noticed a bike parked and I guy just kind of standing around. This immediately clued me in…this was a stop sign running sting! Well, that pissed me off cause, but I still ran the stop sign. The guy (who was an Active Transportation Alliance volunteer) started running after me with the intent to tackle me off of my bike. I knew he was going to do that, so I went to out run him, and was successful. Once I was clear, I got off of my bike and starting yelling at the guy. I was pissed and basically yelled until it was time to wake up.

Oh, I think that somewhere along the line my bike’s brake lever broke and that made me even angrier. Damn stop sign nannies.

To love your bike is to maintain it

My boyfriend Zach has this idea of getting a bike that that never requires any maintenance is super light and also very cheap. It’s probably just an excuse for him to not have to buy a bike since what he wants doesn’t exist. However, with any machine, you should expect a small amount of work. For a bike that generally means cleaning chains, wiping gunk off the frame, wheels and gears and adding air to the tires.

I’m not a biggest fan of bike maintenance and like most things I procrastinate on doing the job. My chain doesn’t usually get cleaned until there are a couple of rust spot, and right as we speak the bottom dropouts are encrusted with black gunk. I’m a bad bike mother. However, I always like the way my bike feels after its had a good chain cleaning or tune up or anything else nice for the beast.

Case in point: I’ve been feeling pretty sluggish lately and I have been suspecting that my tires are low on air. I came to that conclusion because I’ve been riding a lot, but I haven’t put air in the tires since early November. It’s really not much of a surprise, is it? I meant to do it this weekend, but didn’t…then I ended up skipping a riding to work day on the excuse that I don’t like riding with a low tire. Very lame and self defeating.

Finally this morning I forced myself to go down 5 minutes early and put the stinking air in the stinking tire. I’m not the biggest fan of doing this on my road bike since it has presta valves and I lost the presta adaptor that came with my pump. So I have to use the little portable one that goes with a tire. I find it to be kind of a pain in the neck, but I don’t want to buy a new pump. Once I got everything adjusted and check the pressure I found that my tire was only at 40 psi. I actually can’t remember what it’s supposed to be, but I pumped it up to 80 psi.

It was amazing to be able to ride so much easier. I’m always amazed at how much of a different I feel after basic maintenance. It always makes me do an internal pledge to do it more….I probably won’t soon, but I can dream. Now I just need to get Zach to get a decent bike, even if it isn’t super light and might require maintenance. At least we’ll be able to do it together.

Fw: To the dentist

This morning I rode back out to the Oral Surgeon that I saw last week to get my wisdom teeth out. The last time I had ridden out there was in August and it was a lot easier. This morning there were lots and lots of potholes to dodge and wind everywhere. One thing that I’ve read on Icebike.com is that the cold temperatures make the air denser and thus it requires more energy to push through it. I really hope this is the case. Feeling like a wimp is not fun

It's about a 10 mile ride from Oak Park to where my office is, and I wanted to take as little sick time as possible, so I went ahead and rode the train in. It wasn’t 9 am yet, so I waited about 15 minutes and talked to the station attendant. It turns out that she knows my band director, Ross (who is also a CTA Station Attendant). Since I had my balloons I made her a balloon angel. By the time I finished the balloon, I could take my bike on the train.

 

Taking the train shaved about 30 minutes off of my commute and also saved me from having to bike through some rougher neighborhoods.  It’s certainly nice to have that option. Just remember, no bikes on trains until 9 am and then not from 4-6 pm.

Biked to brunch

In the snow. Awesome!

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