The New Old Bicycle

Last month, my father-in-law gave me an old English-style 3-speed bicycle. The beautiful kind with fenders and a step-though frame and upright handle bars. The kind that you need a bell and a basket for and the kind that you can ride while wearing a skirt, if the mood strikes. I'd been trolling craigslist for just such a bicycle for some time, but couldn't find one in my price range when--voila!--one was magically transported to my garage. Magically as in Moses went out to his dad's place one day and came back with a surprise for me.

Wait. What was that? You don't care that much about my new bicycle? You want to know what my son was for Halloween and why I am such a slacker mother that I never post the Halloween picture until sometime in November? Okay. Fine. Here:


He was a wizard. He was a wizard because although he originally intended to be Indiana Jones, the thrift store did not have the perfect Indiana Jones jacket and a jacket that looked "good enough" for mom was not good enough for the boy. And if Garion can't do the costume exactly right, he's not going to do it all. Which is completely frustrating and monumentally irritating when you are in the middle of a busy thrift store a week before Halloween and all of the sudden he says "I don't want to be Indiana Jones....I don't know what I want to be." But it worked out in the end. He's wearing my law school graduation robe, which will give you an idea of just how tall my baby is. Also, in my defense, it is only November 3rd, and I think this is most timely Halloween post ever, so there.

Now we can talk about my old new bicycle, which I am thoroughly smitten with:



I forgot to take a picture before we took it apart. And yes, that is my dog in background thinking that maybe if he stares hard enough at the bucket, one of the tennis balls inside will come flying out and play with him.
I should have started my bicycle search at The Land (my father-in-law's place) to begin with because I think that my father-in-law is storing at least one of every mechanical thing ever know to man out there. You know, just in case the world ends and humanity will need the last [insert mechanical item here] to figure out how to make more. Unfortunately, time at the land also means that the bicycle needed a little love. Well, actually quite a bit of love. Here's the hub, after I brushed off a bucket full of red dust:


And the rims, with a not insubstantial amount of rust:


The rust proved to be overwhelming and after reading about some safety implications of riding a bicycle with rusted-out rims, I decided to order new rims and a new hub. These are harder to track down then you would think. But yesterday--oh joy!--my new rims came and they are shiny and beautiful. Now I just need to finish cleaning up the bicycle, and possibly painting the frame. Then, as soon as I have some free time, I can put it all back together and have a lovely, beautiful new old bicycle to tool around on. Just in time for winter and snow. Someday I will have better timing. Until then I will dream of beautiful English-style three speeds with new rims and wizards who were Indiana Jones in their previous lives.

The Opposite of Attachment Parenting

We gave Garion a big boy bicycle, with training wheels, a couple of years ago for his birthday and of course had every intention of teaching him how to ride a two-wheeled bicycle. But we are busy people and it has seemed like we were either living in a place where there wasn't a lot of (safe) room to teach him to ride or the ground was buried under 3 feet of snow. Garion has recently made friends with a third-grade boy a few houses down who knows how to ride a bicycle, without training wheels, and the mastering of two-wheeled transportation has therefore become rather pressing. We did make one attempt a couple of months ago to take Garion to Buffalo Park to help him get the hang of two wheeled propulsion, but he was tired, somebody else was grouchy, and the whole thing was pretty much a bust. And the bicycle has sat in the garage, untouched, for two months (plus about 2 years).
Friday afternoon, after getting home from school, Garion said, "Mom, can I practice riding my bike?" Finally, we are living on both a non-busy street and one not currently buried in snow (yet). I said that he could practice but that I couldn't watch because I had some work things to finish up. He responded, "I know!", as is "duh, woman, that is the whole point." His friend from down the block was also out and riding his bike. Five minutes later, Garion came bursting in the door and said, "Mom, I did it! I can ride my bike!" I went out to watch and sure enough, he had it. Parental guidance, support, encouragement: completely, totally unnecessary. Toilet training and reading kind of worked the same way; pretty much nothing happened until Garion decided he was ready and then he just did it. So, I'm thinking that I now have official sanction to just coast, right? He's obviously brilliant, so I just feed him and water him for the next 12 years and he'll be good to go. Like a house plant, but more vocal.

Grow a Bike

This is so completely awesome, I could cry. A man named Craig Calfee has developed a method for growing bamboo to make bicycle frames. According to Calfee, "bamboo is an ideal material for bicycles: It's stronger and lighter than most metals, but absorbs road vibration much better."
He uses lugs made from a hemp epoxy composite to hold the bamboo frame tubes together.
Apparently, the bike is similar in weight to an aluminum bike, but offers better performance. Sweet. Maybe I'll give up on tomatoes and start growing bicycles. Check out the full article from Wired here.

Aware?

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

Click on the link and try this out. Makes me want to paint myself from head to toe in glow in the dark neon yellow and attach about 50 blinkies to various parts of my body whenever I'm on a bike.

Nice!

On my way home today, I ended up in a pack of about 10 or so bikes traveling along the Third St. bike route--it was just like the Tour de France. Except minus the fruity spandex clothing and plus some backpacks and a dude with a cell phone. I was in a peloton! It was so exciting.
The problem with my peloton was that it was kind of a slow peloton and I was trapped on the inside by two lollygaggers in front of me and a couple of riders on the outside. I listened a bit while Lollygagger A and Lollygagger B discussed the merits of the bike route, and how now that they rode their bikes there were more conscious of bikes when drive. I told myself the slow pace was fine, I didn't mind the easy ride home, it'd be very pleasant.
Except that after a while I felt a surge in my legs, a desire to feel the wind in my bike helmet: I felt the need for speed. The two riders on the outside turned off and I saw the chance to make my move. I looked left--no traffic. I centered my will, moved to out to the left of the two Lollygaggers, and turned the power on, baby.
As I was whipped past the Lollygaggers, with my trailer, going up hill (slightly), I heard Lollygagger A remark:

"NICE!"

Was it for me? I don't really know, but I'd like to think Lollygagger A knows awesome biking prowess when he sees it.

Back in the Saddle

We did it. Garion and I braved stupid hot weather to bike to work on Friday, not quite as stupid hot as earlier in the week (only 103), but stupid hot enough. The morning wasn't too bad but the ride home, was to be frank, a bitch. Anali's first law of biking proved true--it was raining and no matter which way I turned, I was riding directly into the wind. Thankfully, Moses picked Garion up from daycare, so I only had the empty trailer to tow home. However, that stupid trailer still might as well have been a Greyhound bus--it acted like a big sail in the wind, pulling the bike in the opposite direction from the one I really, really wanted to go. Some guy running, i.e. on his feet, with a stroller, almost passed me, as did every other trailer-less bike on the road. I actually considered turning around and riding the opposite direction, just for the pleasure of not riding into the wind, but then I remembered the first law of biking. And also I wanted to go home. I used almost my lowest gear to go up a very mild hill, and actually had to pedal to get myself down the hills. I made it though, and I have to admit that riding in the rain was very refreshing : )
Today's ride was much better. Very pleasant in the morning and, even though I had Garion and the CSA share in the trailer, a pretty easy ride home. Garion asked me at one point if the trolley tracks were nearby. Apparently I've convinced him that trolley tracks=death. I'm not crazy about the trailer, but it's an effective way to my kid and my stuff from point A to point B, with no gasoline (yay!), so I intend to keep it up, barring any further disasters. Unfortunately, Garion's a little tall for the trailer. Pretty soon I think we're going to have to fold him in half to stuff him in there.

Geeky Thoughts

Since January, I've been taking a lap swimming class twice a week through Tucson's Parks and Recreation. I love to swim and this class has been a great way for me to build some stamina and release some stress. As part of my new resolution to kick the car habit as much as possible, this morning I decided I'd ride my bike to my swimming class and then ride work. Which I did. Which means riding my bike at 5:oo in the morning because my swimming class is at the ungodly hour of 5:30. This also means riding my bike to work after an hour of swimming. Needless to say, by the time I got to work this morning, I was starving. If it had taken me any longer to open my containers of yogurt and granola, I probably would have resorted to eating the plants in my office. Also, I still had to ride to home--I think I'm going sleep really good tonight. And probably have sore legs tomorrow. I wish that my body could respond as instantly to my desire to bike everywhere as quickly as I've decided that this is something I should do; I can hardly wait until the day when I can bike, plus swim, plus ride home and not feel completely wiped.
On the other hand, now that I've done it once, I know it can be done and I'm feeling even more encouraged to bike whenever I can. Which leads to the shamefully geeky thought I had today as I was contemplating the wonderfulness of my bicycle: wouldn't it be great if you could choose as bicycle as your mount in World of Warcraft?! You could ride around smiting the forces of evil from your slick, two wheeled steed that didn't require the upkeep of horse but still moved you efficiently from point A to point B and didn't pollute the world with those mechanical chickens or whatever they are! AND!! you could have a bicycle helmet for your head, like a bike helmet +50 to armor, +100 to intellect (because you'd made the intelligent choice to ride a bike!), and +200 to stamina (because think of all that extra exercise you'd be getting!)!! It would be sooooooo kewl.