a midway bikelog

For those foolish hardy souls signed up to ride the Ragnarok 105, Almanzo 100, Dirty Benjamin, or other long gravel road race/event, and those who just like to ride where the roads are primitive, there’s a new Google Group set up to discuss routes, strategy, technique, gear, and the like. The group is a result of an excellent meeting of compatriots yesterday at the Bulldog Uptown, where we sustained an above-average discourse-to-beer ratio.

We had a nice moment there, peering futilely into each other’s hugely dialated, uncorrected eyes, waiting to be called back into the optometrist’s chair.

We laughed at the sight of her shopping, nose inches away from the shelf comparing toilet paper prices, and of me walking blocks down the street navigating only by vague green and red blobs at the corners, neither of us with a clue what people at large thought of our respective adventures. We do know, however, what few people do; twenty minutes is a long time to navigate alone in public at -8 diopter.

Could it work between us? dates tantalizingly spent entirely within clear vision range of six inches? If we had kids, would they be so nearsighted that they could see behind themselves? Alas, we shared only a few minutes of commisseration, good humor, and the experience of living with horribly deformed corneas. Then we went our separate (blurry, dialated) ways.

Sweet (silent) video of a snow machine conversion kit from Armstead Snow Motors Company. It allowed you to convert your tractor or family car to an unstoppable winter transport, and back again for summer.

The father in me imagines the inevitable horrific manglings from all the exposed gears and spinning drums of death, but the teenager in me wants to race it through town after a blizzard.

(video link via my dad)

The Complete The Streets bill is working its way through the MN House with a unanimous voice vote in the House Transportation Finance Committee, and the StarTribune came out with a great editorial in favor of the issue.. There aren’t so many walkers and cyclists on the streets this time of year, so i’m happy that this is getting some good momentum.

The money bit for me is the setup and the piece on public libraries. Everyone gets cranky (me included) when they think about the money they earn but don’t get to take home, but it’s easy to forget the overwhelming good in society that comes from it.

I’m very interested and excited to learn more about the Bloom Box tomorrow, purported to be the first high efficiency wireless powerplant capable of replacing our current power grid.

So far it’s only been revealed on this past Sunday’s 60 Minutes show, but apparently Google, eBay, FedEx and a few others have been using versions of the box for several months already. The details are secret, but it sounds like a material refinement of a typical fuel cell, providing twice the efficiency and able to use a wide range of fuels, from natural gas to plant rot methane. Current fuel cells use hydrogen, which has a high cost to produce and obvious logistical problems what with the explosions and all.

The wireless aspect of this is just as fascinating to me, and i wonder how that works in a practical sense. If there was, say, a neighborhood Bloom Box or one in the alley, would every house have some sort of receiver that the home fuse box connected to? It’s a little unsettling, the idea of wireless power signals flying through the neighborhood, but maybe that’s how people felt when radio was just a new idea too.

The idea of the Bloom Box inevitably makes me think of the Stirling Engine. Like the Bloom Box, it was designed to run on any fuel (way moreso than the original Diesel), including solid fuels like wood. Stirlings don’t have the sort of acceleration and power curve of the internal combustion engine, but were meant more as a more efficient version of the steam engine, used in applications where the engine runs at a relatively constant rate and power is managed with a coupling clutch. There are modern Stirling-powered generators available right now, along with a few other commercial products, but adoption has been limited to a niche market.

Still, you have to love the idea of electrical and mechanical power that are compatible with a variety of widely available fuels. A Box in every basement, a Stirling under every hood, and the on- or off-grid question won’t even make sense. It’s easy to be skeptical, but at least with the 60-Minutes piece, the skeptic they included was all about handwaving and big corporate takeovers, nothing specific (though to be fair, there aren’t any published tech specifics to attack). Count me among the very optimistic with this one.

It’s been a tough winter for cycling here, what with the craggy street stalagtites, and the extreme cold here (despite being the 4th warmest January globally), and the laziness. But today it’s two days in a row, and that’s a good start, because, you know, the Almanzo 100 isn’t going to ride itself.

There’s something fascinating about this performance, the winner from a Ukraine’s Got Talent show. I guess there are other things like this around online, but i hadn’t seen this sort of sand painting/animation performance before, and Kseniya Simonova does an amazing job telling the story of the German occupation of Ukraine in WW2. I love that the scenes build on each other, and how forms seem to pop out of the simplest gestures with little apparent movement, and how fluidly it all comes together. Cool stuff.

Here’s some very cool footage my Dad forwarded the other day. It’s a 7:10 shot traveling through several blocks of Market Street in San Francisco just days before the great earthquake hit. What struck me most about it initially was how many people there are on the street, and how everything going on in the street relates to the human scale rather than the machine scale of current-day auto and truck traffic, despite the 1906 cable cars and autos.

The traffic here is a little chaotic, and there are some close calls (largely from those crazy automobile drivers and kids dodging the cable car), but people are actively negotiating their way around, and nobody gets squished. So often in city traffic today car drivers are just slogging along stoplight to stoplight, paying no attention to their surroundings other than point A to B. It’s cool to see footage of horse traffic in the middle of town too. Note that the automobiles here are all recreational; the real work of commerce is being done by the horses.

It looks like the film is playing a little slow, but it’s very interesting to see a city at a time with a completely different expectation for their travel speed and distance.
I love the great clothes and seeing the many cyclists (all coasting – take that, SF fixie hipsters!), but i doubt i’d ride down the center of the tracks in front of a streetcar, that just seems like certain death. It looks like the film is playing a little slow, but it’s very interesting to see a major city during a time with a completely different expectations for their travel speed and distance.

Here it is:

It’s a smaller, wedge-style bag largely based on the Minnehaha small saddlebag, but with a couple of changes that i haven’t gotten photos of yet. First, there’s a pocket at the top of the bag for a u-lock, a good spot where it won’t slide around or sway when the bag is otherwise empty. I’m planning more inner pockets on version 2 of this model; i like an out-of-the-way spot for the spare tube. Also, the rear of the bag cinches shut with a drawstring to keep things in more securely (i’m an inconsistent loader, and sometimes drop things).

I haven’t a good source of plastic i like for the stiffener, so it’s a cut-out piece of cat litter bin, which i think is a bit too stiff and brittle. I’m happy with the copper rivets though, they look great. The rat is an illustration from the late, great RAW comics magazine that i’ve occasionally used on helmets in the past.

It’s big enough for a u-lock, medium round tupperware container, spare tube and levers and gloves, with room to strap something on the outside. A good size for light commuting days, too small for a 6-er of bottles but you’d get most of a 4-pack of Surly cans in there just fine.