Books, Breads and Bikes: #30daysofbiking

Thursday, May 23, 2019

The inevitable mechanical issue

Awhile back I got into some trouble ... isn't that how all of these posts start?

"Awhile back I got into some trouble and yada yada yada, here is what I learned, I hope it is useful, take it or leave it, not to preach, etcetera etcetera, passive aggressive voice, should have learned my lesson but here I am" and so on and so forth.

So let's start with the Big Wheel. I didn't have a lot of toys as a kid. Star Wars figures in my neighborhood, and in my peer group, were the status symbol. I had a few, but also random oddities ... a Thundercats figure, a Tron figure, some Gobots; I was more Catholic in my tastes, you could say.

So the story goes I had a circuit I would ride on my Big Wheel, out my parents driveway, down the block, up a neighbors sloped driveway, skid turn, ramp down, back towards the parents driveway, over a grassy knoll, onto the concrete driveway of home, skid turn and start over. It was a dead end so how many times I could do it was more essential than watching out for passing cars.

Eventually, I got ambitious and tried a larger hill leading to my parents house. After a few tries I incorporated a skid turn, (remember the e-brake on the right hand side of the old all plastic Big Wheels?) and there begins a series of long and complicated crashes.

Skateboards, bikes, rollerblades, roller skis, skis, snowboards, cars ... just about anything that rolls down a hill I have crashed, with the exception of an oversized tractor tire. Don't ever try that. I strongly do not recommend that. Also wear a helmet.

Anyway, so what?, you crash and you get up and that's it. But not so with a decent working bicycle.

Sometimes the bicycle needs repair and then what? I have posted various DIY efforts on this blog before, and I am not sure anyone is really paying attention; sometimes I get it working sometimes not. I made a huge mistake in 2010, and therein lays the trouble I got into.

On a forty or fifty mile ride in Northern Washington County, past Big Marine Lake and William O'Brien State Park, I got a flat tire.

After breaking two tire levers, ripping two replacement tubes, cursing in frustration for forty-five minutes on the side of the road and eventually succumbing to a spiral of failure, I rode home on a flat tire. About nine miles on the aluminum rim of a new-ish wheel set.

Don't ever do that.

8 Years ... 8 very long years, with a lot of cycling miles later, I wore out a different wheelset. It took a little more than 10,000 miles over 5 years, but I needed to go back to that damaged pair of wheels, and I did. They were never right. The rear axle had been damaged and it occasionally oscillated so badly (usually going over 20 mph) that the rear hub would vibrate like a 1980s pager. So yeah, that was aggravating and embarrassing.

Couple that with trying to find out why it was not working without acknowledging I had ruined them made it worse, so here is an apology to those I harangued. The good news, and there has been a lot of it lately, is that life continues. Time passes. Sometimes the only person who rememberers how or why you came to be upset 9 years ago is you, and maybe explaining it isn't going to help anyone. What helped me a lot more was acquiescing and allowing someone to throw out that wheelset before I could try salvaging them one more time.

I enjoyed another 30 Days of Biking this spring, getting through another characteristically unpredictable Minnesota Spring with maybe a little less drama and fewer contradictions than how I came to be riding a bicycle year round to start with. The fishing has been a bit off due to high water (the Mississippi has set a record for being at flood stage for the longest period of time in recorded history, breaking the 1927 flood that shows up at the end of 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou?').

To be certain the potential for crashing is greater while cycling in the Twin Cities than on a dead end street in the suburbs; bike trails and multi-modal commuting are real world alternatives to making a poor decision or applying a little too much ego sauce on your plans and failing gloriously, "...in a cavalcade of anger and fear."

Did you know that while pitching the only perfect game in World Series history, Don Larsen threw a strike outside of the strike zone, and the umpire called it a strike?

I guess there is a lesson there about ethics and standards of operation, perhaps deviation from accepted norms and even the normalization of deviance, somehow, but I don't follow baseball.

March 7th, 2019. Photo by Michael McKinney.

April 5th, 2019. Photo by Michael McKinney.

April 9th, 2019. Minnehaha Falls, MPLS. Photo by Michael McKinney.

April 10th, 2019, Nicollet Mall, MPLS. Photo by Michael McKinney

May 4th, 2019 at the Fulton Fondo.

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Late May, 2018

One of the most common questions people ask me when I first meet them, is: "What do you do?"

It would be nice to say it is strictly a Minnesota thing, but I really have not seen that much of Minnesota. I have lived in Stillwater, Saint Paul and Minneapolis all of my life. Maybe people in Embarrass don't ask that question because they are all freezing cold year round...I mean I know a little geography but if you sent me to Windom I would spend all of my time trying to find the Wind Farms, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to do brief employment surveys of my peers.

So, what do I do?

Since injuring my foot in 2015 I have tried to maintain a fairly compulsory rehabilitation schedule. There was a full time job, after college, which never paid much...there were a couple of full time jobs, actually. I delivered newspapers for a year. I worked in retail and the service industry. I worked for a small outdoor industry retailer specializing in rock climbing, cross country skiing and sea kayaking...it sounds too good to be true; what I have learned since 2010 tells me some of it was. I worked in arboriculture and bakeries as well, to limited success.

I sold my car in 2009, have moved five or six times, depending on your opinion of temporary housing, and have struggled to find full time employment that matched anything as reliable and equitable as something that now seems fictional. There is irony in there somewhere but I never put it together well enough to explain it.

Since moving to Saint Paul in 2010, I have volunteered at a number of different agencies that pertain to either my educational or professional experiences. I read as much as time allows, ride a bicycle and bake bread when doing so does not seem like more trouble than it is worth. Sometimes, I have to re-prioritze things in a way that values self-preservation over dedication.

In February and March of 2014 there was still so much snow on the roads I decided to ride less, because fighting traffic became too difficult. What happens is the more snow is plowed to the side of the road, the further out cars parking on the side of the road have to be - rather than being parked next to a curb, cars are parked three to four feet off the curb (on both sides of the street) because a big snow pile is there instead - so cars are pinched into both lanes and bicycles are less welcome.

Anyway, that was my experience. Die hard cyclists would provide much counter point here and I did see people riding that spring, as I walked onto the bus, stepping over snow piles four feet from the curb.

So what do I "do" though?

Mostly I volunteer, and I try to remember that being employed again relies heavily on an equanimity sufficient enough to utilize whatever social and professional skills I have learned in a productive manner. Volunteering is often a great opportunity to test that sense of place without feeling like a failure will cost me my livelihood. And so it goes.

Anyway, I did participate in another #30DaysofBiking this April, and while I missed out on the handful of group rides occurring around the Twin Cities, I did manage to ride all thirty days, despite a massive blizzard, cold temperatures and a worn drivetrain that eventually will cost me some sad amount of money to replace. With a move to Minneapolis on March 30th of this year, I was hard pressed to get my rear in gear, but managed over 500 miles and a good day at the Fulton Fondo in May.

So for now that is what I have been doing.

My bicycle is at a shop, and I have been happily enjoying Minnesota NiceRide as a reliable adjunct to my commute. It would be nice to get back to feeling like the bicycle was something more essential in my day to day routine, but time will tell.

The fishing has been getting better, so that makes me happy.

Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.