Swapping Good Times

With ten bikes scattered in and around my property, perhaps it is time to let some of them go.  I can only ride them one at a time - so what is the point of having so many?  Sure, I can argue that I need specific bikes for specific purposes.  My winter bike is configured differently than the one I use for bikepacking.  The folding bike called "Foldy Hawn"  is so much fun to ride and I enjoy passersby yelling out "Nice Circus Bike!".

Nice circus bike

My wife is convinced that if I only fixed the gears and the brakes on the tandem that then she would be happy to ride along...and how many three speed bikes do I need?  The Triumph that the Raving Bike Fiend gave me is one of my faves, so why not sell the one under a tarp leaning against the woodshed?

The tandem

And then there is "Furry Lewis" named after a bluesman who time had forgotten that cost me $500.00 seven years ago but has been constantly upgraded so that now another $1,000.00 worth of parts have been lovingly installed...

Furry Lewis

My favourite bike is the MOAB which matches my cycling buddy from Calgary's bike.  It fits me perfectly and I still get a charge out of Roy and I riding the same bikes.

The matched pair decked out for bikepacking

The whole idea is to sell the bikes at the Alberta Bike Swap and use the money to buy a BOB (Beast of Burden) trailer which I can use in place of driving an automobile.  I'm confident that my daughter will have me pick up her heavy groceries from the organic food store across town and compared to the last time she asked, it will be a pleasure!

This Post Could Save Your Life

As a cameraman, thirty years ago I was assigned to cover a news story about a plane crash in the wilds of Alberta that took the life of the Leader of the Opposition but through strange luck, the Minister of Housing's life was saved by the survival skills of a convicted felon.

All through a bitterly cold Alberta winter night, the convict kept all the other survivors warm and awake until help arrived.  After covering that story, I put together a survival kit just in case I ever needed it.  This was all pre - 911 so air transportation security was pretty slack and taking a knife or matches on board the plane did not present any problems.

My son, Ragnar the Trader, has gotten me interested in preparing a survival kit once again and since I'm a cyclist, I thought that carrying one on my bike would be a prudent thing to do.

Simple soap container

For $1.25 I bought a simple backpacking soap container and placed a number of pieces inside (with room to spare for more)!  Most of the survival items are miniatures of their car-camping brothers and sisters but will do the job.  They are:

Water purification tablets
A magnesium fire starter
Bandaids and butterfly sutures
A whistle
One tea light
A flashlight with red beam
Storm-proof matches
A compass with fluorescent markings
Safety pins
A wire saw
Needles and thick thread
Wooden tongue depressor (the wood can help start a fire)
One zip tie
Brass wire (to make a snare)
Fishing hooks and line
Multi-tool

Voila!

The kit is just 200 grams which is what a cheap derailleur weighs and fits perfectly into my front handlebar bag.

While I may never be in the desperate situation that the plane crash victims mentioned above were in, I'll know that I have at least prepared for a small emergency that could arise at any time.



Studly Do Right

Our northern winter this year has been a mixture of freezing and thawing cycles (no pun intended) that have created an icy situation that necessitates me having to re-stud my winter bike tires.

A little excessive?

Since I had carelessly allowed my two cordless drill batteries to go dead, it was necessary to screw in each stud by hand.

Maybe I should have waited for the batteries to charge instead of wrenching my wrists trying to install hundreds of screws into each tire.

Porcupines would be jealous

My son who is into chainmail and studs would appreciate the end result of my efforts although I would have to warn him not to get too close to the tire since the studs are wickedly sharp.

Hehe

Another option to consider is to start riding the bike south in the fall before Halloween since we always seem to have deep snow before that hallowed eve.

Boo! Hoo

I'm not suggesting that a person ride too far south - eventually you'd hit snow in the southern hemisphere!





Keith

4Pm
BikeWorks North
F4, 60/sec
ISO 400


Sitting astride the bike that he skillfully made into a cargo bike, Keith really does look like his nickname "The Raving Bike Fiend".

His army surplus saddlebags cost him a measly two dollars (US each) at a store in Seattle.  They hold an incredible amount of gack hence his need for a cargo bike.

Valentine's Ride

Michael over at Earth's General Store is sponsoring a bike ride this Valentine's Day (Friday).  It looks like the plan is to ride along Whyte Avenue and stop at many businesses along the way.

The long range forecast looks promising as well - temperatures in the plus range which means more people will come and join  the ride.

My own Valentine is in Washington, D.C., not that she would join me on the ride.  Too bad since we do have a red tandem that would appropriate for Valentine's bike riding.

When the ride was originally planned, it looked like we were going to stop at Narayanni's Indian restaurant where we could enjoy an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet.  My hope was to wash down their tantalizing offerings with a Singha beer.

Of course, I'd only have one and then wait an hour before getting on my bike - wouldn't want to be pissed on Valentine's Day!

The Valentine's Day bike Ride is expected to end up at Mike's Bikes - a new bike shop on the other side of the Mill Creek Ravine but still on the southside of the river.

We start off at a pizza place and I hope they have the heart - shaped pizzas.  A chain of pizza restaurants across Canada offer heart - shaped pizzas on Valentine's Day and they will sell 20,000 of them tomorrow night!

That Was the Year That Was

Every year comes with its highs and lows.  And 2013 was no exception. One low was meeting Wolfgang in Beaverdell.  The backslapping, joking fool who ended up spraying us with gravel and dust when he passed us in his car while we were riding our bikes on the Kettle Valley Railway.

While nearly everything I do on a bike is enjoyable, being able to rent a bike in Portugal and visit the historic sites like the old fort pictured above, was most definitely a cycling high.

2013 brought the news that the landlord of our community bike shop wanted our space to themselves which meant moving BikeWorks South to a new location.  My reaction to this change was one of optimism - here was an opportunity to make an even better bike shop and use some of the lessons learned from building BikeWorks North a year or two ago.

It was with great luck that when my cycling friend Roy and I cycled up to the Biker's Rest Stop in Rhone, British Columbia while on our "Best Of" Tour, that we met with Paul Lautard, a legendary cyclist of the Kettle Valley Railway.  The year before, my daughter and I had stopped in at the Rest Stop but Paul was nowhere to be found and it made our visit rather lonely.

It would be an exaggeration to say that I struck it rich in 2013, but while panning for gold in the North Saskatchewan River after a pleasant bike ride, I did find some gold dust in the bottom of my pan.  Almost enough to pay for the cost of the gold pan itself but priceless in memories.

Grocery Shopping

Since one can never do enough cycling during the winter here in the frigid north, it was an easy decision to go to the organic grocery store and pick up a few things for my daughter.  When I say a few things, there were three items she needed.  Carrots, apples and lemons.

Perhaps riding over to the south side of our city on the one bike I had in front of me with its slick tires was not the best choice.  I see couriers riding around on skinny road tires and my slicks are at least twice as wide...so with my broad wheels, I should have no trouble negotiating the snow.

Recently, we've had as much snow in a day than we usually receive in a month and our wide streets have become narrow snow encrusted lanes.  I knew I was in trouble within a block of my departure point.  The bike was bucking and slipping on the road so I opted out for the sidewalk which meant my short ride to the store was going to be lengthened considerably.

You get the idea

 When she asked for carrots, I imagined one of those bunches you see in the vegetable aisle.

It wasn't until I got to the store that I re-listened to her phone message and realised that when she said she wanted carrots, she was talking about a twenty five pound bag of that orange vegetable.



The lemons filled a small bag and the apples I stuffed into two more bags and they would all fit in my two saddlebags.  But twelve and a half kilos of orange produce?  Was I going to end up like one of those pictures you see every now and then of an overloaded bike?

My father used to say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I've been meaning for over a year to make a cobra-knotted lanyard for my bike for just an emergency like this.

It would be with little effort to unthread the paracord and voila!, I'd have enough rope to safely tie that heavy package to my rear pannier rack.  As it turned out, she changed her mind and I was saved the experience of having to improvise a rope.  I was a little sorry that I didn't get to have the twenty five pounds of traction that that weight would have given me for my ride back to the north side of the river.