Recent Doings

I haven’t been posting pictures lately so I thought I’d remedy that.

I was on my last test ride of the Streetmachine when a passing bicyclist on the Mount Vernon Trail asked if I had a pump. I did and after much struggle he had fixed his tire and was on his way.

A local homeowner has humorous road signs outside their house. Here’s this month’s sign.

My backup eyeglasses are falling apart it’s time to replace them.

My in-laws live in northern Indiana where you can get an awesome Italian beef sandwich. My wife and I recently were bemoaning the fact that you can’t get one anywhere near home. A day later I stopped for lunch at a deli in Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood. The special of the day was Italian beef.

A short-lived but very violent thunderstorm passed through our area the other day. Winds whipped through the trees and rain fell at times like it was poured out of buckets.

Two people were killed near my home when trees fell on their cars in separate incidents. Our power and cell service went out. We were literally in the dark and had no idea how much damage had been done. We feared a repeat of our experience with the derecho of 2012, when we lost power for ten days during a heat wave. Luckily our power came back on after a day. Our property was undamaged. Others were not so lucky. (My friend Reba’s shed took a direct hit from a tree fall. )

With the Streetmachine experiments done, I put the Catalyst pedals on Big Nellie, my long wheel base recumbent. They weren’t an improvement over my usual mountain bike pedals and Power Grips so I tried them on The Tank, my Surly CrossCheck. As the Catalyst manufacturer recommends, I lowered the saddle a half inch or so. It was a big improvement. I did a bike-about into DC and went by my friend Dave’s ghost bike. It’s a memorial placed where he was killed by the driver of a stolen van whose speed topped out at 74 miles per hour.

Dave was a vocal proponent of protected bike lanes. A few years after his death, the city redesigned the section of Florida Avenue NE where he was killed. The protected bike lanes serve two purposes. First, they give bicyclists a safe place to ride. Second, they effectively narrow the street making it harder to reach absurdly dangerous speeds.