SpokEasy

October 2018

Monkey Around?

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Today\’s ride was no time to monkey around; that is, to take it easy and goof off. Certainly not on the way back home! I had already decided to make today\’s ride shorter than usual for a Sunday ride, because I\’m shifting around my schedule in advance of Tour de Cure. That is, this coming weekend I\’ll do  my long ride on Saturday and go for groceries on Sunday. Well, it\’s a good thing I did make my ride shorter. The wind was a killer. As you might have guessed, I had it against me on the way back home. It was blowing at 20-22 mph; and I\’m surprised that my overall average speed was 12 mph. If I had gone 25 miles before turning back towards home, I\’d be dead tired now. I had to make several unplanned stops to catch my breath. Possibly I really needed to eat more; but fighting a wind in a low gear and rapid cadence is quite the appetite killer. I may have needed to drink more, too; but during the last 10 miles I needed to \”go\” and wasn\’t anxious to make it worse by downing large quantities of fluid. Getting back to my average speed today, it\’s still good enough for TdC; but I hope we won\’t have a wind like today\’s come event day. It would take all the fun out of the ride. But for the moment, I\’ll just monkey around a bit. I think I\’ve earned it!

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Interference

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Interference doesn\’t affect only large electronics such as televisions. I once had a cyclocomputer on the hybrid that drove me absolutely crazy. Sometimes it would work; and sometimes it wouldn\’t. I probably drove my bike shop\’s personnel crazy, too, with my frequent visits about it. Then one day I went for a short ride in the evening, which I don\’t usually do. The cyclocomputer seemed fine. As it began to get dark, I switched on my headlight;  a handlebar-mounted type. Soon I looked to see how fast I was going — and that **** cyclocomputer wasn\’t doing a thing! That\’s when the proverbial lightbulb went on. To be sure of it, I turned off the headlight. The computer started working. I turned the headlight on again; and the computer quit. That incident, as much as anything else, prompted me to put my headlight on top of my helmet. It was a huge relief to figure out what the problem with that cyclocomputer was! My first heart-rate monitoring system was a Sigma. I used it for about two years, and then the HR transmitter quit on me. I discarded the chest strap/transmitter, but kept the readout unit to use as a watch/stopwatch. A few weeks ago I began wearing my wrist blinkie when riding to work, because there\’s less daylight now at that hour. I looked to see what time it was, and the watch\’s screen had gone blank! It didn\’t come on again until I had turned off the blinkie. Electronics can be very helpful, but they can also cause a lot of interference. What a bother that is!

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Don\’t Be Rigid

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Don\’t be rigid! Lack of flexibility  can cause a lot of problems. Activities such as ballet, gymnastics, and yoga aren\’t the only things requiring flexibility. It\’s needed for web site building, too. Big Time. What I have in mind doesn\’t always work, especially where slides are concerned. I always have to be ready to consider alternatives, whether I want to or not. It can be surprisingly hard to let go of my original plan, but sometimes I must. Cycling, and cyclist training, also require flexibility. We don\’t need to be able to perform Olympic-level back bends, or splits, but we do need to be flexible enough to do what\’s needed in order to be able to ride. For those into time-trialing, being able to tuck into an aero position, and hold it for a long time, is vital. I\’ve seen cyclists using those aero bars, which they say allows the most aerodynamic position. The downside is that, when you\’re riding on aero bars, your hands are far away from the brakes. Quite obviously this can be a problem should a sudden stop be necessary. Some events which draw large numbers of riders have banned aero bars for this reason. A training schedule needs to have some flexibility in it, too. Have a hard workout planned, but you wake up with a sore throat and feeling sluggish? Skip those hard intervals until your symptoms have improved. If you have chest congestion or other \”below the neck\” symptoms, don\’t ride until those symptoms have cleared up. In summary: we don\’t need to be able to twist ourselves into pretzel shapes; we do need to be limber enough to \”bend with the wind\”. In other words, don\’t be rigid.

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I\’m Getting Somewhere!

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Well, I\’m getting SOMEwhere, even if the path seems twisted and twining. I finally got the links on the first slide of My Story to work! Apparently the problem was that the image was too big; and the buttons were too small. Now I\’m having similar difficulties with the second slide. At rate it\’s going, the pic will be down to thumbnail size; and it will still be too big! Another problem is that the slide doesn\’t look the same way on the site as it does in the slide-editor screen. Things move themselves. Trying to get them nicely spaced seems to be an exercise in futility. They also re-size themselves. If only I had Goldilocks here, maybe I could get it just right. I seem to have made progress in my riding, too. Think of that: I\’m getting somewhere! I might have progressed more quickly if I had done my hardest kind of workout twice a week instead of once a week; and included a few more \”force intervals\” in each  hard workout. I didn\’t think it was necessary to train as though I had a racing season coming up in two months; and I still don\’t. There\’s no sense in training so hard that I no longer enjoy riding or, worse, injure myself. Worst of all would be going at it so hard that wound up hating bicycles and anything to do with them. That wouldn\’t be \”progress\” at all!

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Orthotics Update

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Here\’s an orthotics update. I got my new orthotics about two and a half weeks ago. I was told to wear them two hours the first day; and gradually add an hour or two each day. I\’m not sure I really need orthotics for walking. I got them because of my left foot\’s rolling inwards when I was pedaling. On top of that, those orthotics don\’t feel right when I\’m walking. They seem too rigid. I pedal more than I walk, anyway. Walking doesn\’t cause foot pain (or knee pain, or ankle pain); and as long as that\’s the case, I might as well do what\’s comfortable. This orthotics update doesn\’t amount to much; but it\’s what\’s going on.

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Buttons

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I\’m trying to get those buttons on my web site\’s slide shows to work. Somehow it makes me think of the expression, \”to be buttoned up tight\”. This work  generates a lot of tension in me. I fact, it\’s driving me crazy! I thought they weren\’t working at all; but it seems that making them \”click\” is very finicky. Getting the mouse to point at precisely the right spot is maddening. Or perhaps this is an image size problem. I might have to make the images much smaller than I really want them to be, just to get the buttons to work. Meanwhile my site\’s visitors can\’t access the material, which is why I\’ve been spending huge chunks of my evenings working at it. Maybe that simply comes with the territory when you turn web developer. At any rate, I think I\’ll go experiment with one of those slides and see what happens.

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Going Ape?

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Going Ape? I’m not thinking of going ape! Have you ever noticed bicycles that have high handlebars? Now and then I see someone, usually a youngster, on a bicycle with such bars. I only recently learned that these are called “ape hangers”. I wouldn’t be at all comfortable trying to use ape hangers. If my hands are continually above shoulder level for more than a short time, they go to sleep from reduced blood flow. I think we all know what that feels like; and it doesn’t do any good for one’s grip, let alone for controlling a bicycle. My core and upper body strength is, I suspect, inadequate for attempting to control my bicycle with my hands in such a position. I’m far from being the Champion of the Chinning Bar! I also suspect that I’d have to re-learn how to steer and turn. To me, looking  “cool” isn’t worth sacrificing comfort; much less sacrificing safety. So forget about going ape. I’ll hang on to what I’ve got.  

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It Never Ends

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It never ends! Once again, I\’ve been going at it hammer and tongs (okay, okay, so that\’s an adjustable crescent wrench). Creating the slides for my site\’s pages is taking quite a bit of doing, plus a lot of time! Tonight I worked on the slides for the For All Cyclists page, and  I\’ve been getting the buttons from one slide to another by using a copy/edit type of function. I copy the first slide that has the buttons on it, then edit the color, text and image. But I haven\’t yet set up the actual slideshow operation. One of the most maddening things about it is that my laptop\’s screen is much too small to show everything that I need to be able to see. Of course this means a lot of scrolling up and down, and with my laptop and on this particular screen that is a finicky operation. Not to mention the strain on my wrists. Another infuriating aspect was that one of the slides seemed to keep getting lost! I don\’t know whether I was forgetting to save it, or what. I finally threw it all overboard for a while, and cleaned up the kitchen while I let my mind clear. After that I at last seemed to get that disappearing slide to stay put. It also drives me crazy that the slides look different when I go into my actual site to view them. Things change size and/or position. There\’s still more white margin than I like. I need a two-week vacation right now to devote my energies to this; because, as any web site owner knows, it never ends.

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Deadweight

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I sometimes feel like I\’m dragging a deadweight. My road bike\’s under-saddle pack feels quite heavy when I hold it (loaded) in my hand. I finally weighed the contents of that pack; and came up with 1 lb 8.4 oz. Add in the weight of the pack itself, a bit over a quarter-pound; and we\’re talking about some 1.75 lbs. When I take the road bike into the shop for servicing, I remove the saddle pack to make the bike easier for shop staff to handle. I sure can feel the difference when that pack isn\’t there! I don\’t quite dare go riding without it, though; because if I did, that would be when I got a flat ten miles from home! Therefore deadweight isn\’t all bad.  ADDENDUM, SEPTEMBER 18, 2021: That under-saddle pack for the road bike is nothing compared to riding the hybrid and hauling the loaded trailer home from the salvage store. Even so, I love having the trailer because I can bring home big loads; and sometimes I hit a good deal. A while back, I found bathroom tissue; a huge package of a dozen 4-roll packs. The big package couldn\’t fit into the trailer; but I opened it and stuffed the 4-roll packs in. That way I could manage.  Other times, I find great deals on canned goods such as tuna fish; or a good sale on cheese. I love the salvage store!

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