Pivot Rivets and Marvin Bolts

The repair tag said, "Bike fell over on drive side. Trouble shifting to big ring." The bike was stopped, so it wasn't a serious slamming, sliding crash. There were no major or even minor impact marks.

The front derailleur cable felt a little slack. I thought maybe the cable had simply gone out of adjustment and the bike's fall had been a coincidence. Snugging the cable did not fix the shifting, but it did change the problem enough for me to notice that the front derailleur was not swinging in a smooth arc.

This picture was taken after I noticed that the rivet on which the derailleur cage pivots had backed out about three millimeters. When I tapped it back in, the derailleur then functioned properly. I have no idea how a minor topple could have caused this problem, but there it is: something else to check when normal adjustments aren't bringing the desired results. The rivet could have been backing out already and the minor fall either helped it the rest of the way or had nothing to do with it.

Shown at the center of this shot, the pivot rivet. Derailleur is Shimano 105.

Some older front derailleurs were held together with bolts that can loosen. Check your derailleur and snug these bolts every so often. The term Marvin bolts comes from the particular repair on which I failed to remember them soon enough.

A real advocacy opportunity

The Lakes Region Planning Commission is updating the regional bicycle-pedestrian plan from the most recent version issued in 2006. They have scheduled four public-input meetings around the region. They also have an on-line survey so you can record your opinion within the usual cumbersome limits of such surveys. Take a few minutes to fill out the survey here.

The first meeting was in Wolfeboro last Thursday. The next one is in the Tamworth Public Library tomorrow night at 6 p.m. On Wednesday, November 9 they'll be at the Bridgewater Town Office at 6:30 p.m. The final meeting in the series will be Thursday, November 10 at the Belmont Corner Meeting House at 6:30 p.m.

I'm sorry the notice is short, in case anyone reading this blog is in the region and would like to attend. I've had trouble finding writing time of late, so I didn't post anything at the instant I found out. I'm not sure how much difference it would have made. Whether you get to a meeting or not, fill out the survey. Use the "other comments" blocks to try to make up for the misleading nature of the over-simplified questions. Surveys are a woefully blunt instrument. However, a large number of respondents will indicate that people are interested, so funds are worth expending.

Eric Senecal from the LRPC and Seth Creighton, who works in the planning department for the city of Laconia but was not attending in that capacity, have prepared a short program to introduce their project, but stressed early and often that they really want to hear from the public so the updated plan responds to citizen needs and wants. They're not coming in as experts to tall people how it ought to be.

The Wolfeboro Public Library had provided plenty of chairs. Most of them were empty. The people who showed up for the meeting, perhaps a total of a dozen, were the usual suspects. They were the people who have already been working for years in town to create such facilities as the Cotton Valley Trail and the upgraded sections in the Sewall Woods and Abenaki trail networks. Every one of us was over 50 years old. Other people, most of a similar age, will show up for volunteer work days on various outdoor projects.

The age emphasizes the graying of the self-propelled demographic. Cross-country skiing, for instance, tends to draw primarily from the middle aged population looking for beneficial exercise to stave off the effects of aging that can no longer be denied. Some might have started in their twenties or even in childhood, but many enter the sport after they have to give up sports that cause more impact, or after years without significant daily exercise. The same is true among the customers looking for a comfortable bike for path riding and a path without motor vehicles on which to ride it.

It occurred to me as I jotted a few notes before the meeting that bicycling has never -- in its entire history -- been necessary.

In the beginning, humans walked. Before they were even humans, they walked. To cross water, they grabbed floating logs and then began to shape those logs and use other materials to invent and refine boats. They domesticated animals to carry loads, and pull carts and whatnot. Eventually, along came steam engines and railroads.

The bicycle was the greatest idea never to catch on. It had its fashionable periods, even before it had pedals, but most of the public considered it an annoying nuisance. It seemed like a plaything for the idle classes to zip around on. Sure, the Wheelmen may have made a stink about improving road construction, but not because massive numbers of people were depending on the bicycle to move people and things in a unique and vital way. As conditions improved for bicycling, and industrial practices pioneered by the cycle industry improved to make bikes easier to build in quantity, the motor vehicle industry was already surging ahead with a more publicly-desirable product. Roads got better, but bikes were already being run into the ditch. We have no strong sentimental connection to a great period in which the bicycle was a huge force advancing our civilization. Conestoga wagons, clipper ships, railroads, cars and airplanes covered the major distances. Few made a big whiz-bang deal about how the bicycle helped people of fairly modest means cover more minor but more common distances.

The bicycle belonged to childhood in this country. I say belonged, because kids don't use it the same way anymore. The normal childhood of a kid born in the 1950s would probably be considered abuse, neglect and endangerment today. On a summer day I might disappear from the house right after breakfast and not return until dusk. The bike was the first set of wings. My friends and I rode everywhere. Yes, we nearly got into trouble in various ways. I don't remember losing any schoolmates to those dangers, though. The first one to die succumbed to bone cancer when I was in sixth grade. That had nothing to do with our common practices of playing on active railroad bridges, bushwhacking along jungly creek banks for miles, or sneaking up on guys target shooting with a .44 magnum in a vacant lot. He was at the top of a steep river bank, practically a cliff. I'm sure he never expected ten-year-old boys to scramble up it like little commandos because they homed in on the sound of gunfire with an uncontrollable instinct to go toward anything that sounds like it might be blowing up.

When it came to the bicycle, that which did not kill me I would get back on as soon as I healed sufficiently. Kids didn't even think twice about it. Get back on the bike or be that poor whiner going "guys, wait UUUUUP!"

Regardless of the bike's place in kid culture, we were also meant to outgrow it and get into cars and cigarettes by our late teens. As generation after generation got its driver's licenses and hit the road, those roads looked less and less like a place to send the kids to pedal. As a nation, we let that get away. It's easier to sell the idea of protecting a vast tract of wilderness hearkening back to our pedestrian and equestrian past than it is to get plans approved to upgrade the roads in any major city or suburb so that people can walk or ride their bikes without fear of getting mowed down by a motor vehicle or at least annoyingly and frighteningly harassed by bullying drivers who want only clear running room.

The bike may finally see its time as a world finally paying attention to its resources starts to try to use them more wisely, including human energy. It's too early to be sure.

For millions of years, humans never had to plan very far ahead. Every generation could duke it out for money, power and sex without thinking about the kind of world they would leave for their children. A few aggravating prognosticators might go on about how we were going to hell in a handbasket, but never for the real reasons that we WERE going there. A very few thinkers started to catch onto that mess in the late 1960s and early '70s, when the terms "ecology" and "environment" trickled into common use. It was still the first time in the entire history of the human species that anyone started to realize just how carefully we might have to think about the future if we really cared about the the little yard-weasels some of us were raising to inhabit it. Of course the offspring born in the 1960s and '70s have had their own offspring and probably become grandparents by now, all without doing a whole lot to improve the outlook for their own little squirts. Someone is always looking back the glory days of the late 19th Century or one of the economic peaks of the 20th, with or without glorious bloodshed, and trying to get us to go back to the good old days even though they weren't really a good idea at the time, and they certainly aren't now. Humans simply make things up as they go along and then look back and call it wisdom.

OK, so it snowed

I measured about eight inches of snow at my house. Someone told me Wolfeboro logged 16. I don't know about that. Warm weather immediately started taking the cover away. Because of other necessities, four days passed before I could even think about trying to ride my dark-time path commute.

Snow survives in many shaded places. However, really shaded places didn't receive as much snow because the trees intercepted the sticky snow on the way down. The sun then melted it the next day, so it fell as warm water onto the thinner accumulation under the trees. Where we find deep drifts is in clearings that filled up, but where the low sun of late fall can't penetrate easily to bring the most warmth.

 The parking lot didn't look too promising, but I needed a ride after several days without one.

 Zoom! After the first ugly bit, the path appeared completely clear.

 Luck ran out, but for how long? I was committed to the route by then.

 This section made me work. Someone had been training a sled dog team with their off-season wheeled rig.

Woof! This was just one snowy section. I was running late, so I didn't stop to document every obstacle. Some were deeper than this, but for a much shorter distance.

The work day was pleasant and unremarkable. In addition to various employment-related tasks I also installed a helmet mount for a Beamer light to see how it might improve my lighting options.  The Black Diamond Cosmo headlamp I've been using as my "zombie spotter" is light and affordable, but I thought I might like to add a light with more range. The Beamer helmet bracket was cheap enough. I figured I could use the Beamer as my zombie spotter and the Cosmo as my dashboard lighting, aiming it down toward the computer on my handlebars while the Beamer sends its light out along my line of sight.

The term "zombie spotter" came to me as I rode alone through the spooky woods on a late October night. You know, you hear a noise from the dark forest and whip your head around to see what made it. Usually I don't see anything. Whatever might be crunching and crackling is headed away from me and that's just fine.

Zombie spotter and dashboard light

The day never felt warm, with a high in the 40s and a gusty wind, but it was above freezing. The snow had not miraculously vanished between morning and evening commute, but it was better at the end of the day. I never got sent sideways on the evening run, but I nearly did on the morning rush to town.

The augmented helmet light array picked up glowing eyes from the brimming swamp beside the path several miles out from town. If I lived in the south I would guess it was a 'gator. Up here I'm thinking it was a beaver. Can't think what else might be looking up at me from a pond when it's 38 degrees and dark. I suppose any northern aquatic small mammal is as likely. In any case it was just a glint as I hurried past. That section of the path was clear to the dirt, so I was taking advantage. No point giving the zombies a good fix on me by going slowly. I've gotten this far in life by making myself a moving target.

The Cosmo and the Beamer put out very comparable illumination. Neither one had a longer range, but they joined forces if I angled the Cosmo to place its light patch adjacent to the Beamer's. If I really want range and power from my helmet light I will have to invest in one of the modern super-lights. I don't know if I care that much. The dynamo light does a great job by itself down the road or trail.

11-1-11

 I suppose I should have gone out on skis yesterday so it would still have been October. I was ignoring the snow, hoping it would go away. Heavy, wet glop over unfrozen ground on Sunday had mutated only slightly by Monday, so it didn't look inviting. By today, though, I'd taken note of the beginning of the winter flab roll that has taken the place of the redistribution of muscle that used to mark the transition from cycling to cross-country skiing and climbing every winter. In the fall I would start weight-training and other exercises designed to make muscle migrate to the arms, and get the legs used to supporting body weight instead of just providing power through the pedals. It's all great athletic fun, but you don't do much else when you also have a full-time job. So that side of life has suffered as I spend time trying to draw and write, and other pursuits of the mind that also can't happen during the work day.

 

 The woods look strange with the fall foliage above the snow. The trees are trying to cover the snow with leaves and needles. Winter does not officially start for seven more weeks. Locally we're usually ready for snow by Thanksgiving and at least not shocked by it in mid-November. We've also waited entire winters for it to fall, seen it arrive early and take off for a midwinter break or make its first appearance anywhere from late December to early April. This is certainly the earliest any of us have seen this much snow around here.

 The golden canopy gives no hint of what lies on the ground. The snow melted off the trees on Sunday. As with Hurricane Irene, the dramatic effects of the big snow storm hit elsewhere. Parts  of New Hampshire got more than 27 inches of snow. Some people are still without power.

Thursday night, before Saturday's big storm, we got a more seasonally appropriate test snow. It was solidly frozen onto things on Friday morning when I took this dash-cam shot. The ice and snow kept me from incorporating the bike into my commute at all. I can only imagine that the trail I use this time of year is inconveniently covered over much of its length. Warm days may clear it, but night meetings on Wednesday and Thursday will keep me from checking.

Shot from the Saddle

 This picture falls under the heading "why I live here." Rural life presents many inconveniences, but they are the reason the area remains relatively undeveloped.  This picture shows the Ossipee River from the bridge at Effingham Falls. I stopped to take it on Tuesday morning when I went out to try to get a shot for Rantwick's foliage contest.

 On Friday I stopped on my way out the rail trail to look out over Lake Wentworth. The Olympus camera I carry is such a great light collector that it makes the dusk look more like a cloudy afternoon. Some ducks were impersonating loons out on the lake, swimming and diving in the big bird's signature style, but then quacking to each other after they surfaced as if enjoying the joke. They were too far out to be sure. Maybe they were multilingual loons instead.

 The rail trail, showing the notorious rails.

This little twig off the other side of the path was putting out its best colors.

I resumed the ride out toward the far end of the path as dusk deepened. The dynamo light continues to do a great job. The hub dynamo is much better than the tire-driven model. The tire-driven model did a fantastic job when everything was fresh and new, but it was extremely sensitive to alignment. I have not found a new application for it yet.

I tried to shoot a video of the headlight in operation once the night got really dark. Unfortunately the low resolution of the camera made it grainy and unimpressive.

October brings a feeling of solitude. Summer's crowds are long gone. I rode several miles out the path without seeing anyone. When I reached my car where Cotton Valley Road turns to dirt and the pavement takes a hard left to go up Cotton Mountain the area was deserted. I thought it might be a good opportunity to strip right down and put on dry underwear and jeans. No one was around. Only the  mysterious creatures that make weird screeching noises showed any sign of life. I was alone. Who would be out in the chilly night when most people were home having supper?

Of course this triggered an instant rush hour. I had to laugh. Fortunately I was not caught putting on a headlight strip tease. Unbelievable how many people suddenly needed to pass through that one obscure rural crossroads at just that moment.

Soon I was alone again at least long enough to finish the change and drive away.

Foliage and stuff

Monday was nice. The cellist mentioned that we hadn't taken a spin through South Effingham in a while.  I forgot to shoot any pictures on our way out. Most of the ones I grabbed on the way back either came out fuzzy from camera motion or the color was muted because the sun was so strong. It's hard to capture the full sensory experience of a nice day's ride in a few quick photos. And if you're taking the time to produce really good photos, you're not having that great uninterrupted ride.

 New England pastoral scenery.

 The tornado swath from 2008 is growing in. The damaged area was logged to salvage the timber, evening up the edges of the scar in some places.

This is actually a climb. Here it is, October, and we're riding in shorts and a jersey.

We got another couple of nice days before the rain moved in. Rain, fog, darkness and rural highways all put together definitely kill my enthusiasm for bike commuting. They make nice visual effects with the fall colors, though. And they really make you appreciate a snug house and a new woodstove in the living room.

Driving While Intoxicated

Your point of view changes when you get in the car.  Your sense of speed changes. Your sense of responsibility changes.

The car is an intoxicant. It makes some people aggressive. It makes others stupid. Use becomes a habit, then a dependency. May cause drowsiness. Side effects include weight gain, shortness of breath, tunnel vision and in some cases injury or death.

Try to quit. See how hard it is.

As with many strong substances, it has its uses as well as its risks. Some people seem to manage its effects better than others. Its power is insidious. It must always be used with caution. Excessive use always leads to increased risk of dependency.