SpokEasy

SpokEasy

Author name: CAL

Nutcracker

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The ballet The Nutcracker is very popular this time of year. The story takes place at Christmas time, making the ballet a natural for the period between Thanksgiving and December 25. I\’ve seen this ballet a number of times; both live onstage and on TV. I love the music any time of the  year; and I love to watch the dancing when I get the chance. My favorite parts of the ballet, as far as the music goes, are the Waltz of the Snowflakes at the end of Act I; and the Tarantella in Act II. Which parts of the dancing I like most depends on the production. Sometimes I like the Chinese Dance best; other times it\’s the Spanish Dance (both in Act II). Or it might be the dances at the Christmas party in Act I. Or \”Snow\”. I have yet to hear of a \”Nutcracker\” that involved a bicycle, but maybe some time a choreographer will emerge who will think to put some cycling in. Maybe during the fast-paced Trepak in Act II?  

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Fiddling Around?

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Are we just fiddling around? Or is there something more going on? Riding a bicycle is a great way to get in good shape. As people used to say, \”Fit as a fiddle\”! Interestingly, the phrase originally had nothing to do with physical fitness, exercise, and so on. But who cares? In fact, looked at from that point of view, a bicycle is fit as a fiddle for helping us to get places; improve our health; and just plain have fun. Using a bicycle instead of a car can save money. No car means no expensive auto insurance; no oil changes or gasoline; and no worries about carjacking. A bicycle equipped with rack, panniers, and trunk lets you bring home sizeable loads from the grocery store. If you want to haul really big loads, try a trailer. For those of the environmentalist mindset, the bicycle is equally fit for helping to lessen pollution; including reducing the amount of noise created. It\’s also well suited for cutting down on traffic congestion and parking woes. More people riding bicycles on our roads might reduce road rage as well, thanks to the endorphin highs! Racing cyclists, however, aren\’t fiddling around when they\’re on the starting line! It\’s all business. They\’ve got a job to do, whether it\’s to lead a team or serve the team leader. I\’m sure the list could go on and on and on. The bicycle could even be fit as a fiddle for, well, letting a fiddler transport himself and his instrument to the next square dance!

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Gift

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Some of us have finished our gift shopping. Others haven\’t started yet; perhaps simply because they\’re stumped. If you\’re looking for gift ideas for that special cyclist in your life, perhaps something from this list would do? It\’s a good starting point, at any rate. What would I have like to get as a beginning rider? For starters, it would have been nice if somebody had bought my tricycle for me; but I had to pay for it myself (at the time about $395). In fact, it would have been nice if everything had been gifts rather than out-of-pocket costs! A pump with a built-in pressure gauge would have been great; and a skull cap is another item I would have liked to have at the start. It was mid-November when I began riding; and my head could get very cold. I didn\’t fret much over cleaning the tricycle. I had to keep it outdoors; and any time it rained, muck and grit got splashed up on it. The fumes from many cleaning products bother my sinuses too much for me to use them, indoors or out. When either of my bicycles needs cleaning, I use plain old water. The bicycle-shaped pasta is cute; but seems overly pricey to me. It would be fun to have for a post-long event supper, though! If the list above isn\’t extensive enough, there are plenty of items I could add to it. Thermal socks!; and cycling jackets and cycling shorts; arm warmers and leg warmers … as you can see, my imagination is about to run away with me!

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Like a Hot Potato?

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Do we want to be like a hot potato? With December here, everybody — cyclist or not — is hauling out the jackets. We want to be warm, after all. What\’s the best kind for cycling? Most of us have heard of \”layering\”; that is, wearing several lightweight layers of clothing instead of a single, heavy layer. That makes it much easier to adjust your clothing to the temperature as you and/or the day warm up. Which cycling jacket should you get? I guess that depends on how cold it gets where you live. The jacket I have is designed with magnets around the collar, armholes, and the bottom of the yoke. That lets me remove the sleeves if my arms are too hot. Or, if my chest gets too hot, but my arms still feel the cold, I can take off the vest portion of the jacket; and leave the sleeves on. If you live in more Northern regions, a cycling jacket with fleece lining might be a good idea. The sleeves of my first cycling jacket got torn up over time. Finally I discarded the sleeves, but kept the vest part. It makes a nice extra layer when I need it. I also notice that the older jacket has a better quality zipper than the new one, although it\’s the same brand. Do I feel as toasty warm like a hot potato in its jacket when I go out to ride on a cold day? No, I don\’t. Even when the top of me is warm from riding, my feet are still cold!

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Clear?

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About two days ago I checked an online forecast; and it indicated clear weather for today. I turned out to be overcast; and that always makes me worry that it will rain on my ride. Luckily it didn\’t rain; and the wind wasn\’t nearly as strong as it was last Sunday. I still did a much shorter ride than I\’d had in mind — 29 miles instead of 40. An area near my right knee feels strained, so I decided it would be wise not to push things. Most of the time I stayed on the small ring. I also found that I had only two Clif Bars; and I didn\’t want to run out of food during my ride. Who needs to bonk? Sure, I could have taken cut-up fruit-and-fiber type bars, but they\’re a bit too squishable for the purpose. Then, on the way home, I was a minute or two too late to beat a very long train to the railroad crossing near home. I was getting chilled before the crossing was finally clear. Is there anywhere that\’s immune to that nuisance?

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Ah-h-h!

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Ah-h-h, what relief! Wouldn\’t I love to have this waiting for me when I get home at the end of a 40-mile ride on a cold day! Hot chocolate tastes so-o-o good when I come in cold. I\’ll bet I could make a hot drink using powdered milk and chocolate whey protein powder. I don\’t think I\’ve tried that yet, and it\’s time I did. And to have cookies fresh out of the oven in addition to the hot chocolate would be heavenly. Maybe gingersnaps. Or add some spices to the hot chocolate, and have still-warm sugar cookies as a \”side\”. Unfortunately I don\’t have anybody around to spoil me like that. If the wave of the future in service is robots, however, maybe if I get rich (yeah, like that\’s going to happen), I could have a \’bot that I can program to have my hot drink and cookies ready at the time I expect to reach home. Until then, however, having hot chocolate made is entirely up to me.

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Figgy Pudding!

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Now bring out the figgy pudding! Or shold I say, the plum pudding? Plum pudding doesn\’t seem to be very popular in the USA. Or perhaps I never looked carefully enough.  I remember having it only once, as a teenager. A cookbook I had included a recipe for plum pudding that used mincemeat. I tried it; and it was pretty good. The recipe required baking the pudding in the oven, if I remember correctly. I used a round, glass casserole dish. Some recipes say to put the pudding mixture in a mold of some sort, and steam cook it for several hours. Long ago a plum pudding would be boiled. Read A Christmas Carol, and you\’ll find a description of the Cratchit family\’s Christmas dinner; including plum pudding. The custom then was to pour some brandy atop the pudding just before serving; and light it! Maybe people still do it; but to me it seems an unnecessary fire hazard, however festive it may look. With fired-up brandy or without, may you enjoy your figgy pudding!

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n + 1 Revisited

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It\’s time for n + 1 revisited. Are your bicycles at the critical point where they\’re about to crowd humans out of your abode? Here are some possible solutions. At present my indoor bicycle storage system works well enough. The hybrid has a kickstand. I simply use that; and put an old lid under the tip of the kickstand so it won\’t tear up the carpet. I got that idea after I read about taking along a frozen juice lid when you ride to the beach, so your bicycle\’s kickstand won\’t sink into the sand. For the road bike I got a stand that holds a wheel; can you see it here? I don\’t know whether it really makes any difference which wheel goes into the stand; but I got into the habit of putting the rear wheel there. If I got one of the things listed in the Bike Radar article, I think it would be a bike tree; aka a free-standing rack. Even then, I\’d have to be careful not to knock it over! My ceilings are much too high to make a ceiling-to-floor rack possible. That kind that you can lean against a wall might stick out too far from the wall; and then I\’d trip over it. If I can ever have my own home, maybe I can try those hooks that screw into a wall. I\’d just have to be careful to locate a 2×4 (\”stud\”) to fasten them into, because the hybrid weighs about 35 pounds. Sheetrock, to name one interior wall material, won\’t hold that! Or, if you\’re lucky enough to have sufficient acreage and a bottomless purse, you could build your bicycles their very own house. That makes n + 1 revisited much easier!    

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Bad Wrap?

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Let\’s not get a bad wrap! With gift-giving season upon us, we have to think about wrapping paper. Much gift wrap these days seems to come in long rolls. It\’s so very different from the tissue paper I knew when I was growing up. I suppose that items in large, bulky boxes are why gift-wrap rolls were designed. I can\’t always find tissue paper; and cutting out pieces from a big roll of paper can get both awkward and wasteful. (My mother always saved gift wrap to re-use!) But you can get creative, if conventional gift wraps aren\’t your style. I\’ve come across suggestions such as making a drawstring sack from a pretty fabric remnant, if your sewing skills are up to it; and putting the gift inside. Or use burlap sacking tied with twine, for a \”country style\” Christmas. Another idea was using the colored comics pages from the newspaper. I don\’t think I want to try that one. Newsprint tends to rub off; but all the same, it\’s appropriate for a joke-style present. Now let\’s get really crazy! How about using a cycling jersey? That would be especially good if the gift is cycling-related. Whatever you do, just don\’t make it a bad wrap.

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A Matter of Proportion

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There are many things to consider when purchasing a bicycle. Bike size, first of all. If the frame is too big for you, you\’ll never be comfortable on the bike; and a bicycle that\’s too big will be harder to handle, which has negative safety aspects. Then there\’s frame geometry. What\’s the \”reach\” from saddle to handlebars? The angle of the seat tube? Can you reach the brake levers comfortably? What kind of frame material? Aluminum? Steel? Titanium (\”ti\” for short)? Carbon fiber (sometimes called \”plastic bikes\”)? The catch with steel is that it\’s vulnerable to rust. Where I live the average annual rainfall is 60 inches, and I\’d probably be hard pressed to keep a steel bicycle properly dried. What effect a salt-hazy climate has on steel, I don\’t know, but I rather suspect it isn\’t very good. And, of course, there\’s the weight of the bicycle. That might not matter much for cruising around the neighborhood, or pedaling to the grocery store. If your  cycling interest is long-distance rides, or racing, it\’s a different story. The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling gives a rule of thumb for determining what weight of bicycle is best (pg. 61): 12% of body weight. According to that formula, my road bike, once I add in the weight of the under-saddle pack, is too heavy for me by about seven pounds. This advice goes on to say, buy the lightest bike your budget can afford, if you can\’t get one that meets the 12% criterion. This formula, however, was given for riders on long — really long — endurance tours. So far I\’m not doing such rides. I don\’t have to climb 12% grades. I\’m not racing or doing time trials. So I\’ll keep plodding along with what I have. It still works, and it can get me to where I want to go. That\’s what matters.

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