Biking Day 6: Panniers!

[chargirlgenius]

It was a chilly morning, but last night I set my minimum biking temp at 50, and it was above that by the time I left this morning. I'm hoping by fall that I'll be used to this enough that I can drop that minimum temp. I was dressed just about right in a long sleeved t-shirt and fleece. I also wore Jeff's mesh safety orange motorcycle vest over my black fleece, for additional visibility. But damn, the hot shower was welcome once I got here!

The ride itself went fine. I played catch up and pass with a (polite) school bus for a while. I shouted at some kid waiting for a bus as I rode by, "TOO MUCH COLOGNE!" Because there was. Seriously, if I can smell your axe body spray as I ride by at 15 mph on a bike, 15 feet from you? UR DOIN IT WRONG. He should consider my advice a favor.


Balancing warmth with the need for air to cool down my sweaty self is going to require some experimentation. I have a wind breaker, but once I get heated up I need that breeze. When it gets really cold, I might reconsider. I'll also need gloves, and a good shoe solution.

We went to the bike shop on Friday, and picked up a rack and panniers to carry my gear. It felt MUCH better to not be wearing the backpack this morning. What a difference. I also got a tool kit, pump, tire irons, and a tube, so I'm *hauling* a lot more too. Better safe than sorry!

I've been researching new bikes, and I'm still not sure what I want. Well, I know I *want* a road bike, but I'm debating whether I should consider a hybrid. Hybrids are geared more like a road bike, but don't have the drop handlebars, have more rugged wheels (though you can get slicks for a more road-bike-like tire), and are generally heavier. For the roads out here, I definitely want a road bike. But if I ever get a job up town, I'll be tooling around town (if I can do a park-n-ride bike commute). My co-worker says that he's never had any trouble with a road bike in Old Town, so maybe it's not an issue. Jeff, though, thinks that with the kids getting bigger I should get a hybrid. I guess it's more sturdy if I get one of those tandem attachments for the back? But I already have an older mountain bike (from before hybrids really got popular) that might do the trick for that kind of riding? I won't exactly want to go fast with a boy on the back anyway.

But then there's the price differential. I could probably get a hybrid $200 cheaper than a road bike. If it weren't for that, the road bike would win hands-down.

I definitely want a woman's bike. We tend to have different body proportions than men, and the bikes have a shorter top tube, among other things. I still have my old Terry, which are bikes made only for women. Some Terrys even have a smaller front wheel to accomodate a super short top tube. I'd get that all tuned up and tricked out, but it's still equipped with the old friction gear shifters. The levers are also way down by the wheel, which isn't so bad when you're not shifting a lot, but I AM.


These aren't getting too annoying, are they? I cut because I care, but it still makes a f-list scroll. I still have thoughts that I want to remember later, but in the future, I probably won't write every day that I ride.

Comments

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

I'm learning stuff!

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Hooray!

[paquerette.livejournal.com]

I read the headline and thought "but panniers are not appropriate for bicycle costume!"

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Hahahahaha! That IS funny. Come to think of it, I always get a weird mental image when I say the word.

[thornbury.livejournal.com]

Pena.. panne.. uhh.. oh - saddlebags!

:^D

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Women don't like to think about saddlebags. ;-D

[ladyaneira.livejournal.com]

No, keep 'em coming!

Here is my annoying little rant of the day, which I considered posting on my own blog but decided it wasn't worth its own entry. (So I'm putting it on your blog instead! :-D )

Every school day, regardless of whether Luke and I walk or ride the bike, we pass a silver car idling at a street corner. Just today, I realized why: it's one of Luke's classmates and her mom. Yes. This is what they do: get it the car, drive a HALF BLOCK, idle by the street corner (school bus stop) until the bus comes, at which point the bus drives the remaining FOUR BLOCKS to school. AIEEEEEE. WTF, people?

[isenglass.livejournal.com]

We live 3 blocks from my son's school, but the school building opens after the busses arrive. If I took him to school he would be outside unsupervised or I would have to pay for before-school care.

[ladyaneira.livejournal.com]

But you don't drive a half block and idle the car while waiting for the school bus, do you? Wouldn't it be just as easy, just as quick, for this nice lady to walk with her daughter the half block, wait with her, and then walk the half block back to her house before driving to work or whatever she does?

[isenglass.livejournal.com]

Depends on the timing. By the time our bus comes, I'm already late for work.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

They bus kids FOUR AND A HALF BLOCKS to school now? Sheesh! In first grade I walked 3/4 mile each way.

[isenglass.livejournal.com]

We are not allowed to leave the children unsupervised at any time. Allowing him to walk the distance to school would be considered unsupervised even though he is perfectly capable of it. It really hurts my head.

[thatpotteryguy.livejournal.com]

Off school grounds, what jurisdiction do they have? I started walking 1.5 miles to school in Kindergarten, for chrissakes. We lived .5 miles inside the minimum bussing distance.

And people wonder how school boards are able to squander so much money.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Oh, for heavens sake. That kind of blows one of my "walkable neighborhoods" arguments out of the water. Is that a school policy, or one of those laws intended to keep parents from leaving their children in the house alone when they're four years old? How old will they be before "they" allow them to walk to school?

[ladyaneira.livejournal.com]

The "no-bus" zone for elementary (K-5) in our city is less than one block. So if you live further than one block, you get a bus stop on your block. Middle school bumps it up some (maybe half mile?) and high school it's more but still less than one mile. It's nauseating.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just, wow. One of my arguments for walkable neighborhoods was the cost of bussing, and the fact that society subsidises cul-de-sac-type neighborhoods, but if they bus in ALL neighborhoods, what's the point?

[ladyaneira.livejournal.com]

Well, there are lots of other advantages of walkable neighborhoods. I imagine (just guessing) that the school district rationale is that it is cheaper to pay for busing than it is to defend litigation that may result from accidents and so forth, regardless of the merits of litigation. Or perhaps it is a requirement of the insurer for the district.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

I should clarify - what's the point of that particular argument.
:-D

I heard an interesting interview on Diane Rehm a couple of months ago, about a new book out on the science of fear. Essentially, the catastrophic has more of a grip on our imaginations than things that can slowly hurt us. So while we're busy avoiding the catastrophic, but rare, situation, we're often putting ourselves in more danger. One of his examples was that after 9/11, a lot of people stopped flying, but there was a huge spike in the number of deaths from auto accidents. We fear something awful happening to our kids while they walk to school, yet what kind of harm are we doing by wrapping them in bubble wrap?

(Not that letting a four year old walk a half mile to school on his own is appropriate. But a fourth grader? Yeah. I suppose as long as the bus is picking up the four year old it might as well get the fourth grader, but as you say, those parents aren't letting them wait for the bus on their own anyway.)

[isenglass.livejournal.com]

So how do you go about learning how to use bicycle gears? I have a 10-speed but I pretty much just leave it on 3 all of the time because I don't know what to do.

[ladyaneira.livejournal.com]

Shift to lower gears when going up hills and shift to higher gears when the pedaling is easier. The idea is to make the resistance to your pedaling relatively consistent.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

My uncle explained it to me mathematically, which I got, but I wouldn't dare try to explain myself.

You have two gears up front, and five gears in the back. When your chain is on the smaller gear in the front, pedaling is easier. When your chain is on the larger gear, pedaling is harder, but you go further for each thrust.

In the back, it’s reverse. The smaller the gear in the back, the harder it is to pedal. The larger the gear, the easier.

You generally never want to have your front gear and back gear both on the smallest, or both on the largest gears. But if you’re on the largest (easiest) gear in the back, you’ll probably want the small (easiest) gear in the front, because you’re probably going up a hill.

If you’re on the smallest (hardest) gear in the back, you’ll probably want the big (hardest) gear in the front, because you’re probably going down a hill.

Somewhere in the middle, there is overlap. If you’re on the 2nd biggest gear in back, and the big gear in the front, it might be equivalent to a smaller gear in the back, and the small one in the front. At this point, you’d have to do the math to figure out which one gives you the better mechanical advantage.

If you’re doing a lot of flat riding, you’ll probably leave it about the same anyway. Get out on a flat road, and practice, feeling what is what, and noting where the gears are.

http://bicycleuniverse.info/eqp/gears.html

[isenglass.livejournal.com]

Huh. I could swear that I only have one shifter which doesn't make sense with that many gears. I need to look at my bike again. This helps though. Thanks!

[jljonsn.livejournal.com]

I was talking to Bruce & Kerry at lunch time (ran into them at the coffee shop).

I mentioned your wanting to upgrade from the Terry, and they thought the Terry was an excellent bike, but some of the mechanicals are dated. Which seems to correspond with your feelings. Bruce suggested they could be upgraded easily, which would give you the continued use of your beloved frame, with all the spiffy features of new bikes.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

I was wondering that - how hard it would be to move the gear shifters and upgrade them to index shifting.

That frame might not still fit me perfectly, though. I bought it when I was 13. I didn't grow much, but it's worth analysing.

[technomage.livejournal.com]

I like the updates and they make inspired to try for a ride to Oxon Hell from Silver Springs.... only I'd be taking my life into my own hands in SO many ways.

If you love your old Terry you should take it into a good bike shop and see if they can replace the gear shifters and change their location to one you like. The chances are good that for less than $100 they can do just what you want. I'd recommend a shop, but both the ones I use are in College Park, which is a touch out of your neighborhood.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

A little research suggests that $100 won't cut it. :-) I'll make a post about that soon.

[soucyn.livejournal.com]

When I got my panniers, I brought them up to the register at REI together, and they rang up one thinking they were a set. I didn't even realize that they basically gave me a 50% discount on them. That said, I've done grocery shopping with them - like enough food for two people to go a good 4 or more days.

We've been walking to work for months now, instead of riding, but it's probably time to get the bikes out and start making some of our after work trips on them...

Lastly, here's a site that's got some decent bike commuting tips: http://www.runmuki.com/commute/index.html

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Nice deal! I'm not sure that mine would hold that much, the bike store only had a few options, and I wanted them right away. I probably should have shopped around more, but I think they'll do.

[karolines.livejournal.com]

re: a super short top tube

ok- so i read "a super short tube top" and wondered if that was more a benefit for the spactators? new bike fashions?

am considering a new bike for me. oh what a difference it made when the guy at the bike shop put me on one the right size. but just adjusting my seat to the right hight helped a lot...