Funk Babblings

Today I felt the need for another long bike ride; my last ride was almost a month ago.

Ended up going about 15.5 miles in a little over an hour and a half. (Faster this time because I didn't stop so much.) I think I felt the hills more this time though. I really need to get out there more often; my endurance isn't as good as it was before.

This was all zigzagging through residential streets. I really miss the Olentangy-Scioto bike path (well, mainly the Olentangy part) in Columbus. One of these weekends I should try to make it over to the Ohio-Erie Canal Towpath Trail. It's at least twelve miles from my house, along busy streets, so I'll probably want to drive the bike over there.

Just returned from my longest bike ride since moving to Canton. Round trip 13.35 miles in an hour and a half. For Canton people, that's from our place near the middle of North Canton, meandering south along the back roads, down to Canton's 30th St, then fairly directly back. It felt really good, although I seem to have put too much pressure on my left wrist along the way.

Good thing I installed those lights a few weeks ago. The sun had set by the time I got back.

About a month or so ago I stopped at a bike shop and picked up a mirror, under-seat pouch, and front and rear LED lights for my bike. But since then things have been too hectic for me to actually put them on the bike. After riding the streets a lot in the past week, however, I decided I at least need the mirror, so tonight I managed to install all those parts.

Each piece seemed to have some trick or another for me to puzzle out, but other than those minor snags it was surprisingly easy. The hardest part was finding out room on the handlebar for the headlight, reflector, and the already-installed bike computer (speedometer and such).

Still gotta get a tire pump, and then I should be ready for anything.

Since it's often getting toward dusk when I'm riding my bike, it might be a good idea to have some sort of lights on it. I don't ride in the the dark, so headlights are unnecessary, but some sort of flashing taillight might be nice. But I don't want to deal with batteries or switches, so one that uses the movement of the wheels would be good.... such as, for example, the one I had on my old bike.

See, I have an electrical engineering degree (even though I managed to get out of the electromagnetics and power classes, probably the most useful ones outside of an actual EE job). So when I was in a bike shop and saw a taillight that used a spoke-mounted magnet to induce current to make a set of LEDs flash, I HAD to get it. And it worked great. (The model may have been called "Red Alert".)

Then the bike it was mounted on was stolen. And now that I finally have a new one, I've discovered that the light I used to have isn't made anymore. The bike shops have nothing similar, so I searched online.

The closest I found was this one. But it mounts way down on the wheel hub, necessarily interfering with the quick-release mechanism as well as just being visibly too low. And it does look like there's a risk of the thing getting caught in the spokes.

The next closest I found was this setup, which looks like something someone put together in their garage. But other than the ugly homemade look, the technology seems to be a step up from what I had before. (The comparison they have with related technologies is interesting.) If it didn't have such a homemade look and cables running everywhere, I'd jump at this one.

The ultimate technology for this might be a wheel hub generator. Maybe if I start riding across the country....

After having my previous one stolen from our Clintonville garage a few months before we moved to Canton, and after I've annoyed everybody for the past few years (and especially the past month or two) with "I've really gotta get a bike," I finally bought a new bike today! It was a little more expensive than I originally intended to pay, of course, but it's a lot lighter than the cheaper ones. Compared to what I started looking at, I ended up forgoing both front suspension and seat suspension, though the latter was mainly so I could get the seat low enough for me.

Somehow it really felt good driving home in my Saturn, sunny 67 degrees, windows open, my new bike tucked into the back, and my music blaring on the stereo. Of course by the time I got home it was getting too dark to go out for a ride.