A fall commute

Not as cold this morning as it was on Friday (6 degrees C rather than 2) which was a good thing, as I discovered that I’d only brought home one of my leg warmers. My tights have completely disappeared and I couldn’t find my Bicycle Fixation knickers this morning. Confusion reigns. I did find proper fleece gloves, which was nice. My hands were frozen by the time I got to work on Friday.

Saw a nice Surly LHT locked outside the RA Centre when we came out tonight. SON hub, shellaced bars, Brooks saddle, etc.

A series of observations:

The rising popularity of motor-assisted bicycles of various sorts means that people can now zip around in the dark without lights much faster than they could under leg-power alone.

Does putting on a motorcycle helmet and riding one of those little electric scooters make people more likely to follow traffic laws? Does it make them tend to think “I’m traffic” rather than “I’m on a bike so I can do what I want” even though the scooters are more like bicycles than cars (i.e. being ridden along the side of the road/lane rather slower than traffic even though faster than most bicycles.)

Walking along Thursday afternoon someone on one of those scooters made a left turn from Laurier the wrong way onto Kent (a one-way street.)

Bikespotting

I was working downtown for two days this week, which greatly enriched my bikespotting. I do see some bikes on the way to and from Bell’s Corners, but not a lot and not a variety. I usually see the same people in the mornings. For example, if I’m later than usual I pass a chap on a recumbent going the other way. On the way home things aren’t quite as predictable but I still don’t see a big variety of bikes. There just isn’t a lot of bicycle density. But downtown there are loads of bikes, both in motion and at rest. That’s the other big difference; you can see a big variety of locked up bikes. A couple of things from Tuesday: a nice old Peugeot folder, with fenders and front and back racks, a lugged Specialized Allez, set up with a single cog on the cassette, rear derailleur (it had vertical dropouts), low spoke count wheels, flat bars and no rear brake (eek!) There are a couple of nice older Marinoni’s parked in the basement of the building I’m working in, one of them a cyclocross bike set up as a fixed gear, the other from the era of neon paint jobs (at first glance I wasn’t sure if the splotches of neon green and pink had been added via spray can or were part of the original paint job.)

Thursday afternoon's spotting on a quick walk round a couple of blocks:

Two Jorg & Olif Dutch style bikes

A Raleigh Super Course with fluted metal fenders

A Bridgestone XO-5

A Redline 925

A Steelwool Tweed

Several nice old Miyatas

Today: darkness, flat tire, spokes

I left a bit earlier than usual this morning, about 5:45 am, and needed my lights for more than half the ride. I tend to switch the headlight over to flashing mode once it’s no longer actually dark. I must get a switch and connector so I can wire up the dynohub.

No luck finding replacement spokes for the folder yesterday. I went round to the the LBS but they didn’t have anything the right length. They suggested another shop that does a lot of bmx stuff so I headed there after work. En route I managed to ride over a roofing nail and had to stop to repair the resulting puncture. I just had the mini-pump and after two hundred strokes noticed the tire was losing air almost as fast as I was pumping it in. Out came the tube again and I discovered that I'd missed the second hole the nail had made. I'd noticed that there were two holes but I hadn't put the patch in right place. Perhaps I should add a magnifying glass to my patch kit to make up for my wretched eyesight. Tire repaired, it was off to Joe Mamma, where they didn't have the correct lenghth spokes but where able to cut some to size. While I waited, I had a look at some bmx rims. Lots of them 48 spoke and quite heavy, built to take all that crazy jumping I guess. They didn't have anything suitable in stock (cheap, 36 hole, etc.) so the fixed wheel will have to wait. At any rate I can get on with repairing the existing rear wheel.

Labour Day Weekend: Shopping and Fettling

We had a lovely Labour Day weekend with, unfortunately, not much cycling, although there was a bit of fettling. On Sunday afternoon, suddenly realizing that no stores would be open on Monday and that people needed school supplies, we went on a cycling expedition to Staples at South Keys. The actual shopping was a bit of a nightmare, what with the store being jammed with people and shopping carts. I gave up trying to manoeuver the cart around and let the kids forage for themselves. I suspect the rather high bill reflected me not asking a lot of pointed questions (like “how much does that cost”) about every item.

Most of Sunday was split between household chores (a bit of painting, a bit of tidying, a bit of cooking) and reading. Finally, with the end of the day in sight, I got around to switching the old and not big enough front fender on the Dambala for a new Planet Bike Cascadia 29er fender. This looks like a big improvement although the mounting bracket isn’t nearly long enough for a suspension-corrected fork. I managed to bodge something with an eyebolt and a length of tubing. It’s not ideal but should do for now.

Next was dealing with the rear wheel of the folder. When I pulled it out of the basement last week I discovered two broken spokes in the rear wheel. They’re broken about two-thirds of the way down, so I suspect it’s a result of the wheel being hit while the bike was in the bag. Unfortunately, my Shimano freewheel remover has a pin/rod sort of thing that fits into a hollow axle. The folder wheels has a solid axle so I couldn’t get the freewheel remover on. I’ll have to try to find another freewheel remover. Fiddling with the back wheel also raises the issue of converting the bike to fixed gear, which was my original intention. One possibility would be finding a bmx wheel, assuming I could find one that could be re spaced to 130 cm OLD (up from the bmx 110 cm) and still provide the right chainline. I do have a cheap (Sovos or Suzue, I can’t remember which) fixed hub kicking around so it might be cheaper, although more work, to just build up a wheel.