In the Northern Hemisphere where I live, it is now wintertime and due to limited daylight, I am riding more and more at "night". While I don't really mind the cold, I really really do not like when drivers on the road cut me off or pull out in front of me.

Perhaps they don't see me very well. I had better remedy that situation.

For a few bucks at the local hardware store, I purchased a 2" x 24" strip of reflective tape. In order to make a little bit go a long way, the the tape was cut into 8 strips at ¼" x 24".

Various lengths of the cut strips were then applied to various parts of my bicycle.

This is the before shot of my bicycle after dark. The camera flash does a decent enough job of lighting up the bike for the human eye, but I want a bit more pizazz.

Why is this such a bad picture? Fog. Taking flash pictures in fog tends to light up the water droplets in the air.

Now that is what I'm talking about!

Randomly placed strips on the bicycle rims will hopefully add a lot of visual noise when the bike is in motion.

Be seen.

About a year and half ago, I replaced my heavy cruiser with a light-weight single speed bicycle. The idea at the time was to make it easier for me to implement the five mile rule: if it is within five miles, ride a bike or walk. (fortunately everything in Petaluma is within five miles of anything else in Petaluma)

There was one time that I drove my car to the car wash and maybe a car-pool or two with some friends, but for solo trips, it is walk or ride the bike, and all of the trips have been to a destination within 5 miles of my home ( that's 8 kilometers for my metric friends).

Many were the days towing groceries across town in the trailer, or pedaling to my favorite location of solitude along the river for some music practice.

At some point in the Spring of 2009, someone thought it would be a good idea to steal the speedometer off of my bicycle. Damn. Having grown accustomed to knowing how far I travelled when riding, I promptly purchased a new speedometer.

Today the new speedometer passed the thousand mile mark and I couldn't help but reminisce upon the various sights, sounds and people that made so many of my Summer bicycle trips so memorable. Thank you.

Now stop reading, and go ride to the store.

Seriously, remove your child's training wheels, they are hindering the process of learning to ride a bicycle. Riding a bicycle consists of a few basic principles:

• pedaling
• steering
• balancing
• stopping

The most important of these principles is balancing and the least important is pedaling and with training wheels on a bike, a child only learns how to pedal ( and a few really bad habits).

It's all about balance. Without balance, a cyclist will fall over and won't have time to pedal, or steer, or stop. Unfortunately, when using training wheels, balance is never learned until after the training wheels are removed. If one learns balance first, everything elses will be a lot easier to learn.

Steering isn't learned when using training wheels? That's right. turning a bicycle left and right, especially at higher speeds, requires a cyclist to lean into turns. Since training wheels prohibit leaning over, a child will not learn how to properly navigate a bicycle.

Stop! The bike was moving and now it is not. What is the first thing a new rider should do? Put their feet on the ground. Because training wheels prohibit a bike from leaning over, one doesn't learn the importance of putting their feet on the ground when a bike is stopped and instead learns the bad habit of keeping their feet on the pedals.

A dandy horse doesn't need training wheels; teach the dandy horse method.

By removing training wheels from a bike, a new rider will need to learn to use their own legs to keep from falling over and at the same time they will learn how to balance on a bike. For propulsion, the child can simply run while seated on a bike. I shouldn't have to say it, but I will for safety sake: avoid hills when teaching a child to ride in this manner.

Happy Riding.

Every year, on Bike To Work day, I stop at the Bike To Work station to get a cup of coffee, a bagel and a goody-bag. The goody-bag is a nice canvas bag containing band-aids, tube repair kits, a blinky light and informational fliers. The canvas bag, although quite nice, isn't exactly ideal for carrying stuff while riding. Fortunately, a little bit of cutting and stitching can repurpose a canvas bag into a bike-seat bag that holds:
an adjustable wrench
a spare tube
a patch kit
a spoke wrench
a tire pump
a pen
a lighter
a swiss army knife
a set of tire irons
a folder plastic bag

I should really get a small bike lock for the bag, as well as a some allen wrenches.

The start of it all
While riding my bicycle home from a friends house, I look down and saw that my right pant leg was not rolled up and I thought, "I should pull over and roll up my pant leg". Being three blocks from home, the pant leg rolling never took place, as I opted to just head home.

Can you guess where this is going?

Seconds later, I felt an extremely strong tug on my leg and heard a loud ripping sound in the vicinity of my right leg....... My pants, my favorite bike riding pants, my comfortable light pants, torn from ankle to knee were missing a large chunk of fabric that disappeared mysteriously. The damage was irreparable.

Looking on the bright side
A few months ago, a sewing machine that was destined for the thrift store, was diverted to my humble abode. Now, thanks to the sewing machine, my former favorite pants are my favorite shorts. But the fun doesn't stop there. After cutting of the pant legs to make shorts, I was left with some perfectly good black fabric. hmmmmm....
Thanks to a sewing pattern for a cycling cap, I now have a favorite cycling cap. Actually, it is a good all around cap, but the bill needs to be a bit wider. So without further ado, I present, "The Cap".


Ah.... the award winning sideburns.


Moving straight from Degoba and into our hearts.

Just in case you where wondering what the cap would look like on a small bunya pine fruit.

I know what you are thinking. "where the hell is bike trailer part 1?" Well... um.... I didn't take any pictures so I'll give you a quick run down of part one.

A friend gave me an old baby stroller that he no longer needed. With hacksaw in hand, I chopped up the aluminum frame into what I envisioned to be workable pieces. A few PVC pipe fittings and a few nuts and bolts later, I had a working frame. Sweet sweet duct tape made the platform of the trailer.
Done.

On to part 2:
As much as I love duct tape, a more firm trailer bed seemed to be in order so the duct tape was stripped off, leaving the frame in all of it's aluminium glory. ha, I said "aluminium". Previous to removing the duct tape, I had decided to use plywood slats for the bed of the trailer. Since I only needed about 2' by 2' piece of wood, I felt it would be best to ask the woodworkers that I know if they have any scrap wood that I could use. Being polite is the first step in asking a friend's father for some scrap plywood. In a show of pure awesomeness, my buddy's father not only gave me some scrap, but he cut and sanded the wood as well. A quick jaunt to my local Ace Hardware for some nuts,bolts, washers and brackets, and BOOYAH! One mighty fine trailer.

And here is the trailer attached to "The Green Squeaker" and ready for action.

crackety snap! The grip shifter housing in my bicycle cracked and I was less than impressed. Oh well, salvation from my dilemma is only an adhesives drawer away. To be honest, I keep most of my adhesives in the same drawer that I keep my tools. Except, of course, for the random roll of duct-tape and an errant tube of epoxy .... and some solder.

How oh how will I fix this damn thing?

It had dawned on me that since the housing was made of cheap plastic, it would be necessary to not just stick the pieces back together with some adhesive, but to also add some sort of structural support to keep the piece of crap from breaking again in the future. Standard epoxy would not be up to the task.

Thank you Caleb.
My late friend Caleb introduced me to JBweld in the mid-90s when I needed a way to fix a rather difficult problem: a cracked intake manifold on 68 Plymouth. Hot damn! JBweld is the stuff of legends. Caleb used to spin a yarn about repairing a cracked engine block with the gray goo of the gods. That sounds dirty.


A squeeze of tube 1, a squeeze of tube 2, a little mixing with a toothpick, and I was glopping the glorious gunk on the cracked plastic. Enter the duct-tape. Nothing says "hold that crap in place while the JBweld dries" like duct-tape. There is always a chance that I used too much JBweld and the shifter will end up being stuck in one gear forever, but at least it won't break again.

On a recent trip to the FNBG(friendly neighborhood bicycle graveyard), I came across a horribly weathered Brooks B15 saddle. By horribly weathered, I mean that the years of neglect in rain, and heat had turned the leather into a torn, dried out, shrunk, crumbling, decrepit piece of jerky on a rusted steel frame.

First I used duct-tape to hold the old leather in what I figured was it's original shape. I then traced the shape onto some leather that was graciously supplied by my buddies father, who happens to be quite a leather crafter. In case you were wondering, it is 13-15# vegetable tanned butt leather.

The leather was soaked in room temperature water for about an hour and then wrapped in a plastic grocery bag and the whole thing was placed in the fridge overnight. The next day, the leather was quite malleable and easily molded over the old leather. Duct-tape held the molded leather in place while it dried.

Here is the molded leather and the frame with the old leather removed. 220 grit garnet paper cleaned the frame up to some of it's former glory.