First BOOTY action of 2010

Baguette Obtainer Of The Year [ B.O.O.T.Y ]

I'll let the pictures tell the story but if there's one thing that draws more attention than riding a fatbike around the neighbourhood or towing a scooter behind your trailer it's a double-barreled-baguette-holster hanging off the back of your bike.

I've simplified the design from last year's model. Less duct-tape and a simple twin-bungee attachment to the rack. Still need to trim a foot or two off the tubes as they don't make baguettes like they used to and I have to do a wheelie to get them out.

Cars give you a wider berth when your bike is 10ft long

Milford Marina in the background. Scungy but always looks pretty in photos.

29 inches, 36 Spokes... That's how I roll!

unless...

I'm riding 26 inch/36 spokes

or the 16 inch/28 spoke - 14 inch/20 spoke combo

and not forgetting the 6 inch/spokeless monstrosity.

Spring Sprang

The Road-Train arrives at Castor Bay

We are having some fantastic weather lately in Auckland. After a particularly wet winter it's nice to go for a ride on a fine day and leave the raincoats at home. 

Dresses herself - I am not responsible!

Today (for no other reason than it would be a crime to not go for a bike ride) the Midget Assassin and I went to the beach for a picnic morning-tea. We live 500 metres from a perfectly good beach but it's hardly worth harnessing-up the trailer for that, so we headed over the hill to Castor Bay instead. 

Only 16ºC today, but warm in the sun and perfect conditions for cycling.

On of the great things about living in New Zealand is there's hardly anyone here. Even in a city of one million we had the whole park, playground and beach to ourselves. Sitting in the sun looking out at the harbour, eating and drinking with your daughter - life is just too hard sometimes. 

I took the long way home so I could get a bit of a work-out on the hills and we stopped in at a local butcher to pick up some dinner. On days like this you feel very lucky to be out and about riding a bike. It makes a potential chore like shopping a pleasant experience.

My new (to me) Dinky Panniers

A friend of mine mentioned that a local Hospice opportunity shop had a pair of saddlebags for sale. I've been looking for a secondhand pannier on Trademe (NZ eBay equivalent) since I started commuting, but nothing decent at the right price has turned up yet. It's a bit hot in the morning for a backpack so I've been wrapping mine in my jacket (to keep the straps out of the spokes) and bungying it to the rack. This is a bit of a hassle and it's not practical to stop and get something out of the bundle if it starts to rain for example. 

The saddlebags turned out to be quite small but I bought them anyway as the price was right, it was for a good cause, and I don't need to carry much to work anyway. As it turned out a larger pannier would not work on this bike as I had to mount them at the rear of the rack to stop heal-strike on this compact MTB frame. 

They had their first proper outing today and it was very convenient having a handy place to stash all my stuff. These ones are semi-rigid like little oval hat boxes and the lids fit snugly with velcro holding them shut. Just what you need for diving in and out of without having to deal with straps and buckles. 

Of course I look like even more of a dork now, but at my age I'll take comfort and convenience over vanity anytime.

Nasty & Evil Weather

Nasty Evil Bike sulks in the garage humiliated by my ghetto commuting set-up of an old day-pack inside a plastic bag bungied to his back.

Just got home from work after riding through a storm. 50kph winds, heavy rain warning, 90% humidity and although it's 11 o'clock at night it's still 20ºC. Weird!

The wind gusts were so strong (and the roads so wet) I had to ride 1.5m out from the kerb and keep my speed under 25kph because I was getting blown sideways up to a metre. 

On an uphill section that I sometimes ride in granny-gear the wind was so strong at my back that I was being blown up it without pedaling. 

Why don't more people commute by bike? This was the most fun I've had all week!

Feeling unco

Arriving home from "official" unicycle club after school. My D.I.Y. trailer extension is a bit overloaded here and tends to push up on the hitch when I have this much weight in it. Really needs the axles moved further back.

Not much has been happening on the cycling front this month apart from the usual trips to the park with Carla and commuting to work.

The unicycling obsession has continued though and despite horrific injuries to the backs of my legs, my groin and my pride, I have persevered and am finally making some progress. It's not like me to stick at something I'm not enjoying but I am determined to give it a good shot while we have the use of loaner "bikes". We are not in a position to buy any at the moment, but if the kids really get into it I might keep an eye out for second-hand ones at the right price.

I have managed to stay on for 80 - 100 metres on a few occasions and tonight rode for a very wobbly 60 seconds. I'll take that as progress even though I don't feel confident at all and zig and zag all over the place.

Laugh if you must! I'm going to need crutches sooner or later anyway. An hour of this got me traveling further without constant restarts and I'm riding unassisted now.

Riding through our local park on the way to school for a unicycle practice. The school is great as it has large areas of flat asphalt and lots of handrails to grab onto when you are first learning.

Hunter and Finn have not put as much time into practicing as I, but are coming along great. Finn has ridden 40 metres or so and Hunter about 10. It seems to be a mind-over-matter thing as some days you can't ride more than a few feet and start to get angry with yourself, and other times you can ride a considerable distance with relative ease. 

It has been hard on my body though! The backs of my legs are covered in scrapes and pedal-bites from the inevitable wipe-outs. I usually land on my feet but sometimes the uni gets stuck underneath you and you fall on top of it. The other problem is the "jumping off to save myself routine" really aggravates my bad ankle. Its been a year since the operation and I'm sitting here typing this with my foot in a bucket of ice-water to bring the swelling down. That's after only an hour of practice, but once I get the hang of it I think the ankle will cope. I don't get much pain cycling anymore until after a long ride.

Hunter makes the "gap".

Not a cyclist, but I do ride bikes

I haven't done any mountainbiking lately or long road rides, but I am on my bike most days, if only to pop down to the shops or commute to work.

The Nasty Evil Bike waits impatiently for my morning commute. 

We don't have many bike lanes in Auckland, there is no rail in my half of the city, the buses don't have bike racks and you can't ride across the harbour bridge, but you are permitted to ride in the transit lane and get flattened by a bus. Here I am taking the midget assassin to the doctor.

Addiction

The eternal problem of getting your baguettes home on a bike in one piece has been solved.

Experimental Baguette Transportation Device outside the Baguette Dispensing Facility.

Baguette Obtainer Of The Year [BOOTY] in action.

Fenders Rock!

I put some SKS fenders on the commuter bike 6 months ago and last night was the first time they've been used in anger. I've had a dream run in a typically rainy Auckland and apart from wet roads and a bit of drizzle I've managed to dodge the worst of it. That's until Wednesday night. Wednesday night it bucketed down.

What a difference they make. My back and bum were bone dry and my feet only got a little damp (despite wearing sandals!) because I was crashing through every big puddle I could find to test them out. A home-made mud-flap on the front should fix that, my next project. 

I remember riding my ten-speed in the rain to high-school in the 70s. The objective was to get as wet as possible and the ultimate was to soak people walking on the footpath as you rode through the torrent in the gutters. You didn't seem to mind sitting around wet all day when you were 13.

The Nasty-Evil-Bike sits outside the front door awaiting garage access

When I got the bike in the garage at home I noticed masses of grey sludge on the top of my rims. It looked like mud, but I soon worked out from the blackness of the braking surfaces my brake-pads had been dissolving on the mostly downhill run home. These are 15 year old MTB rims and they are rough as hell and almost worn-through. Little bits of aluminium occasionally come loose and embed themselves in the pads which makes a horrible scraping sound until I dig them out with the tip of a knife.  The wet weather braking is as good as the discs on my Pugsley but I'm a little nervous about a "catastrophic wheel failure" at an in-opportune time. Time to learn wheel building I feel.

Dissolved brake-pad and rim

The best $149 I've ever spent

This bike trailer has been so useful and was really cheap. I don't often say that about bike accessories in New Zealand.

A trip to the shops or to the local playground becomes an adventure not a chore. The handling is unaffected and you can barely tell you are towing it at all, just a little extra weight going uphill.

Carla and Dolly are captured here at high-speed, heading downhill on wet grass with road tyres and cantilever brakes.

You can't say I don't live life on the edge.

The Nasty Evil Bike

A cross between Darth Vader and a run-away chainsaw

Those of you who browse through my Flickr photos will be familiar with this beast. It was my first mountain-bike and was raced for 3 or 4 seasons in the early 90s. I did several painful (metric) centuries on it and it's now my commuter "beater" as the Americans say, complete with electrical-tape paint-job, fenders and a rack borrowed from the Pug. 

I call it The Nasty Evil Bike because it has tried to kill me on more than one occasion. The steering is lightning-quick and it is a real handful off-road. You don't get a chance to catch a front wheel drift or a locked-up front tyre, it just slams you into the ground! 

On the road it's more manageable as long as you don't take your hands off the bars or start relaxing. I have tamed the handling somewhat with the fitting of Schwalbe Marathon 2.0 tyres. They provide some relief from the too-stiff solid gauge aluminium frame and grip wet or dusty roads much better than the 1.5 slicks I used to have on there. 

Despite the physical and emotional scaring this bike has left me with I am quite attached to it. It has proven unbreakable and is doing a great job hauling me to work and lugging Carla around town in the trailer. 

With the suspension seat-post off the Pugsley it's pushing 35 pounds, which is laughable for a fully rigid aluminium MTB, but I just might keep it for another 15 years.

The School Run

A couple of days a week when I'm not working, Carla and I ride up to school with the boys in the morning and again in the afternoon to meet them for the return trip. They are still a bit young to ride unsupervised and the standard of driving in New Zealand is pretty bad. 

When the morning ride just doesn't happen for some reason or another, we make more of an effort to get up there in the afternoon for the return trip. I take the scooters along as it's just about all downhill on the way home.

Carla loaded up and ready to go.

We're having such a great summer here, I'm keen to get out of the house and ride whenever I can. I bought a second hand child's seat for Carla, but found it hard to get her in and out whilst holding the bike upright. I also didn't like the top heavy feeling you get with your centre of gravity so much higher. The trailer is much better. Lots of room to carry stuff and you don't even notice it on the back. The best $150 I ever spent.

Waiting for the 3pm bell to ring.

The trailer gets lots of attention. They are not common in New Zealand at all. Children just love it, and everyone says hello to Carla as we're riding around school.

Just passing the tennis courts.

We are very lucky to live so close to Centennial Park and most of the trip home is through here. There are still cars about, but they are few and far between and are traveling a lot slower than out on the road. 

This trip takes us 15 minutes to school and only 10 minutes downhill on the return trip. You would not believe how many mothers live in the same area and drive their big SUVs to school instead of a 15 minute stroll through the forest. They leave half an hour early to get a parking spot and sit there reading a book or listening to the radio. The really bizarre thing is I see some of these same mums out running when they get home! Where's the sense in that?

Race ya!

Hang on Teddy.

I just got these Keen sandals (shoes?) for my birthday and they are fantastic. They are kind of a cross between a sandal and an off-road running shoe. Perfect for bike riding in summer. I have munted my toes too many times in clumsy bike incidents and it's put me off cycling in sandals for life. These are going to be great for a clumsy person like me.