This week's ride to work

The new wheel works great. My front fender detached five times on the way to work, so I crazy-glued it at work. We'll see how the return trip goes.

My poor performance is probably on account of having to stop five times to fix the fender.

AM Climate: 40F and Windy
Distance: 14.95 Miles
Ride (moving) Time: 49:56
Total Time: 1:02:00
Avg Speed: 17.96 MPH
Max Speed: 39.8 MPH


PM:
Avg Speed: 15.04 MPH
Max Speed: 34.9 MPH

Here's a picture I took when I got home. Notice the reflective band on the rear tire:

Let there be (halogen) light!

Sunday Stuff

I spent a good part of the day mounting the rear wheel from the tandem onto the Linear. This allows me to use the tandem's hub brake as the Linear's rear brake, so I was able to get rid of the side-pull cantilever brakes. Back in '96 I modified the Linear by cutting about 18" off the beam, to make the bike shorter. This brought the bottom of the seat very close to the rear brakes. Unfortunately, when I would sit on the seat, my weight pressed against the brake cable sheath, causing the rear brake to pivot and press against the rim. So now I won't have that problem anymore.

Another advantage of the new wheel is it comes with a Shimano Deore XTR 8 speed cassette - a major upgrade from the decades-old 6 speed freewheel on the other wheel.

I also put a new Primo 1 1/8" tire on the wheel - it has a nifty reflective strip!

The Aerospoke with hub brake

Close-up of the hub brake - the brake cable is pulled through the blue sheath,
causing the arm at the bottom to pull upwards, engaging the brake pads in the drum.
(The rectangular aluminum component mounted next to the quick release is my custom Burley trailer hitch.)

Close-up of the hub brake from the inside of the "rear triangle"

It did, however, add about 2 pounds to the bike.

Just in time for the holiday buying season!

On sale in Gaza today. More than a little creepy.

New fish for the tank!

Last Thursday, I bought a pair of Dwarf Puffers for the aquarium. These fish are specialists at eating snails. Right now they're less than 1/2 inch long (the snail in the picture below is the size of a pea), and they only seem to bother the really small snails. They will grow to be a maximum of about 1" long.

This week's ride to work

This past Sunday I installed a rear fender, and attached the two headlights to the front fender by clamping them to a piece of 3/4" PVC attached to the fender. We'll see if having the lights closer to the ground and no longer illuminating the fairing helps night riding. I also re-mounted the rear rack by drilling new mount holes, so the chain doesn't collide with the mount screws, so I can use my lowest gear again.

Last night I installed new rear brake pads, as well as a new section of brake cable sheath. Back in '96 I modified the Linear by cutting about 18" off the beam, to make the bike shorter. This brought the bottom of the seat very close to the rear brakes. Unfortunately, the new brake sheath is quite stiff, so when I sit on the seat, my weight presses on the sheath, causing the rear brake to pivot and press against the rim.

That's why my performance was so poor - having the brakes on the whole time tends to slow one down. Hopefully I can fix it for tonight's ride.

I must have left my USB flash drive on my bike seat when I left the house, as it fell onto the street when I went around a corner. I managed to recover it before it was squashed by a passing car.

AM Climate: 48F and foggy
Distance: 14.90 Miles
Ride (moving) Time: 52:54
Total Time:
Avg Speed: 17.05 MPH
Max Speed: 39.9 MPH

I think I still have rear brake rubbing issues. I also need to glue the front fenders to their clips (so they don't pop off when I hit a bump), adjust the cycle computer sensor (it's under-reporting distance travelled), adjust the shifter cable to allow shifting into the highest gear, and adjusting the fairing so it stops striking one of the front spokes.

PM Climate: 50ish and somewhat muggy
Distance: 14.95
Ride (moving) Time: 1:00:39
Total Time: 1:10:00ish
Avg Speed: 14.79 MPH
Max Speed: 34.7 MPH

The new front light mount

The new rear fender and xenon strobe

Thanks to both of you

Cox and Forkum

Tonight's Lunar Eclipse

Tonight I took some pictures of the lunar eclipse using the SteadyPix mount to attach my Casio QV-2000UX camera to my Meade ETX-60AT and Celestron 8" Star Hopper Telescopes.

The total eclipse lasted for about 30 minutes, as the moon barely passed fully within the Earth's shadow. Even at totality, the moon was still distinctly brighter on one side. The first three images are before the total eclipse, the last two after.

Taking pictures afocally is a major pain! Hopefully someday I'll have a digital camera with threads for attaching accessories, so I can use something like this to attach my camera to the telescope.

It was really neat watching the moon get darker - during the total eclipse, the moon was a dull red color.

Here's a picture I took back in 2000 - since the moon is first-quarter, the sun light lit up the crater edges nicely:

This week's ride to work

Hoo Rah! A new best AM average speed. If I were in the Marines, I would yell "Semper Fi!", but the closest I got to the Marines was the Boy Scouts, and hollering a lusty "Be Prepared!" doesn't have the same mystique.

I installed my new rear xenon strobe and a second headlight (see 10/28/03), so we'll see how it goes tonight.

I tried a slightly different route today, which while slightly shorter involved a killer hill. I suspect my speed would have been even higher had I stuck to the old route.

AM Climate: Cool (55ish) and nice
Distance: 14.86 Miles
Ride (moving) Time: 46:48
Total Time: 53:40
Avg Speed: 19.05 MPH
Max Speed: 38.1 MPH

Before I left work, I installed my front fender, which kept me much more dry on the way home. Having the two lights on the fairing was the best arrangement yet, but the light still illuminates the fairing, making it hard to see. I'll try mounting the lights on the fender and see how that goes.

PM Climate: Raining Lightly
Distance: 14.70
Ride (moving) Time: 58:06
Total Time: 1:10:00ish
Avg Speed: 15.18 MPH
Max Speed: 33.1 MPH

Blast from the (lunar) past

Surfing around on the web, I found the website for an experiment I participated in 16 years ago: building a simulated lunar base in an underground lava cave. In the picture below, from this article, we're assembling the "sanitation unit" (read: toilet). I'm the fellow in the center of the picture in the background. Fellow Spartan Al Shupp is the shorter fellow in the right foreground:

Hard to believe that was 16 years ago!

Sunday Tomfoolery

So much for progress: I spent a good part of the day trying to get my video capture card, an ATI TV Wonder VE, to work. I guess if you don't use it for a while the drivers go bad. Anyway, I finally had to move it to my PC to get it to do anything at all. You get what you pay for, I guess.

I also took apart one of our dehumidifiers to see if I could adjust the humidistat, but there were no potentiometers on the circuit boards.