Boring Normal Upright Bicycle Tracker-Path
I haven't missed more than 1 day out of the last 300+ workdays riding the bike, but Thanksgiving involved a 4-day weekend and thus I got no bike miles whatsoever during that period. We did, however, finish Jacque's new quilting / long-arm sewing machine room... almost. It still lacks a few finishing touches. We ran out of moulding and the doorway from the main sewing room (aka small ex-bedroom) into the new room needs to be framed, dressed, and painted (it used to be a front window and was cut out to make a walkway). The exterior door baseplate needs finishing to keep the cold drafts at bay. But the room is essentially el finito, filled with all that stuff, and the long arm machine no longer fills our dining room. So we can resume our life of entertaining friends. Hah.
Since the loss of daylight savings time I have been getting up at 4:15 AM instead of 5:15 AM with the goal of getting to work early enough to be able to LEAVE work early enough in the evening to have at least a partial daylight ride back to the car. Hasn't worked out well at all. Even if I get to work an hour earlier than usual it's still difficult to depart early enough to catch any evening daylight. Monday I was riding back to the car and, while crossing a street with poorly marked bike-path entries on each side, mistook the RIGHT-hand pylon for the CENTER pylon and passed it on the right, resulting in my crashing nastily into the 5" high curb, sending me and bike and stuff up into the air and landing sideways after jumping the curb with both front and rear wheels. If I had been riding a "normal" bike I would have gone over the handlebars, which is almost physically impossible (Thankfully) on the low-riding recumbent. I thought surely the front wheel would be toast. After looking at it and spinning it by hand, it appeared to have no damage at all, so I remounted and rode on. Trouble is, now every time I turned the bike the slightest to the right or left, my foot (AND the cranks) hit the front wheel, resulting in nasty noise and angst. I carefully looked it all over again when I limped back to the car, under the streetlights, but still couldn't see any bent frame, fork, etc. But when I arrived home and compared it with an older fork I removed from this bike a year or more ago, it was obvious the fork had been bent backwards to the rear at least 4 full inches. So now the recumbent is parked awaiting repairs. The old fork, while still straight, was removed because of a large stress crack on one side. Also, the recumbent seat fabric is falling apart and needs to be re-fabricked. I have the fabric but have been putting off installing it, but hopefully this weekend.... AFTER I weld and repair the necessary front fork. These last 2 days I've been riding my backup bikes, upright DF (Diamond-Frame) both... and I'm shocked at how much more effort is required to rack up the miles on them. I am most motivated to get with the program and get the recumbent repaired and returned to service.
There has been no snow nor rain recently, so no ice has seemed to exist, UNTIL I noticed last night, right at a very sharp corner-turn, a small patch of ice evidently formed from a water sprinkler leak in the adjacent commercial parking lot grass border. So I have to continue to remind myself to watch for curbs and corners that harbor ice even when there's not supposed to be any. BAH
Pre-Ride BG: 87 -- BG when arrived at Work: 73
Beginning Battery Voltage: Unk, current APRS does not report this Ending Voltage: Unk (Gel Cell battery pack, charged last night)
Beginning Temperature: Unk Ending Temperature: Unk
Morning Stats from the GPS: Total Miles: 7.40
Overall average speed Moving Avg Max Speed
7.8 Mph 10.0 mph 20.2 mph
Total Trip time Moving Time Stopped Time
57 mins 0 secs 44 mins 20 secs 12 mins 40 secs
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