Thursday, May 22, 2008

I am an Instrument of Change

The bike rack in the garage in our office park is falling apart. It's one of those old school racks; looks almost like a parade barricade with an extra bar along the bottom to hold your front wheel. The vertical bars in between which you put the wheel are rusting at the welds and some of them have broken (or been broken) loose. To secure the bike, you actually have to loop your chain/cable around the horizontal bar at the top. Otherwise, someone could just remove the vertical bar and make off with your ride. If they were really ambitious, they could just take the whole rack; it's no longer secured to the ground. I leaned against it the other day and almost knocked it over, bikes and all.

We have a message board at work, so I posted a facilities request alerting them of the problem. They forwarded that request to the property management group and on Wednesday, they're going to be replacing the rack. Maybe I should petition them to name the new rack after me... like a new wing at a hospital or something.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Apparently, I'm a "circus freak"

So, I'm riding to work yesterday morning. On the down-side of a bridge, I'm cruising at about 30ish. Coming at me (the wrong way on my side of the road, but up on the sidewalk) is another guy on a bike; looks like one of the DUI Brigade. You know the guys; they've been popped for DUI too many times, have lost their license and now their only mode of transportation is some beat-up, too small for them, 20 year old K-Mart bike. As I pass him, I hear him shout something, but couldn't really catch it over the wind rushing by. I was about 20 or so feet past him when it filtered through. I'm still not 100% sure, but I think he said something about me being a circus freak. I'm way more confused than upset about it, because I wasn't even wearing anything outlandish. I had on a plain, black pair of cycling shorts, plain white Nashbar jersey, my backpack and black Specialized shoes. Oh well, WTF ever. If that's what makes you feel a little better about your sorry lot in life, you go pal.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Another F@%#ING Flat!

Three gd flats in three consecutive rides. It's enough to make you chew your own foot off. I'm so sick of this, that I'm seriously thinking about hanging up the whole bike commuting thing right now. Any savings I'm realizing in gas are being negated by the costs of tires and tubes. In the past two weeks, I've bought two tires and three tubes. I replaced the original cheap, crappy tires that came on the bike with a set of Continental Ultras; the rear tire didn't even last a day before I flatted. I was a little over half-way back to the car when I ran over two shards of glass so small, I couldn't even see them to avoid them. I didn't even really need to boot the tire, but I threw a couple of patches on the inside of the tire just to be sure. The front tire (so far) has held up like a champ, it's the rear that's been giving me fits the past week. Perhaps my ass is just too fat for any but the strongest tires they make. A set of Gatorskins would probably alleviate my problems, but I'm sure they're spendy. I saw in my email when I got home that Performance Bike is having a sale through the weekend. I'll have to check it out; maybe they'll have something I can afford.

Any advice from anyone who happens to be reading this will certainly be appreciated.