There be elks here!

Waiting for Mary to arrive on an ORD-bound flight,
I took two spins around Busse Lake in the
 Busse Woods Forest Preserve (PDF). Turns out -- who knew! --
there are actual elk in Elk Grove Village. Here's one of 'em. 

Dave and Steven get Critical in Chicago

Our first Chicago Critical Mass. I shouldn't have rushed from
work and picked an expensive parking garage

(the closest to Daley Plaza). There was a half-hour wait until the ride started.

But at 6:30 p.m. or so, somebody gave the signal and

"away we go!" with a thousand or so of our closest friends.

 Including unicycle guy. 

And bubble dude.

After a little more than an hour of touring Chicago's

west and near-north neighborhoods, we

got hungry and peeled  off the Mass at Armitage.

Our  dinner destination was  Harry Carey's.

Steven got to ride the Holey Cow. (He stayed on

for the required eight seconds.)

And we had dinner. OK, we had the feast

of a lifetime. I had the filet ("succulent" only

  begins to describe it) and Steven had

some sort of pasta that rendered him

speechless. And those of you who know Steven

understand what that means.

Dessert was Highland Scotch whisky.

Dang we had a good time.

Lil Miami Trial, my old friend

My son accompanied me on my attempt to ride on the Little Miami Scenic Trail, which runs from Cincinnati, Ohio, north almost to Dayton.

 I abandoned the nieces and nephews to my wife and hit the nicely paved trail for the third time in my life. Once again, the previous night's storms left the trail littered with leaves, sticks, and the occasional 100 feet of mucky gravel and fist-sized stones.

Once we'd cleared the obstructions, and Steven had bought some bottle water in in the nearby town of Loveland, four miles of the Train Stop Inn, the trail was relatively clear. There's one spot where the pavement drops off, but it's marked with "DANGER AHEAD" spray-painted on the roadway. Hard to miss.

 Most of the pavement is in great shape. There are a few bumps and branches hanging down here and there. Otherwise, a smooth, wonderful paved path with the Little Miami River on your right. On the morning after a series of thunderstorms, freshets will play down the hillside on your left.

 So, Steven said he was ready to turn around and head back. I puttered up the road a few hundred feet to get past a puddle on the pavement and turned the front wheel. The wheel slipped on the mud and I reactively wrapped myself around my left knee and down I went.

I wasn't hurt other than a scrape on the elbow.

Steven was nonplussed. He was texting his friends

at the time and hadn't noticed his father's fall from grace.

An eastern box turtle that we saw on the trail. 

Look for bluejays and cardinals in the woods that enfold the trail. The kid and I did just 20 miles -- from the Train Stop Inn north 10 miles and back. Next time, I go solo and try for 50.

But, you may only bring one-third of a bicycle. Seriously,

I have no idea what this sign means. But they're posted

at every road crossing. Interpretations welcome!

An illicit, badly filmed ride

Mr. Pither and his withered quadriceps took  a short ride on a nice Saturday morning. Don't tell my physical therapist or surgeon -- I'm not supposed to be doing this.

I'd intended to do the whole Whalon Lake loop, a 11-mile run, but the knee started barking at me around the four-mile mark, and I decided discretion was the better part of "being able to walk normally for the rest of your life."

Video was taken with the new Contour camera, mounted on my regular bike helmet. The fisheye lens is kinda weird, and it doesn't seem to handle white-to-black extremes very well.

An new skill, and a small epiphany

I trued the back wheel on my hybrid bike last night. The rim was bumping the brake in one spot, so I bought a spoke wrench at one of my local bike shops, Spokes, watched a YouTube video for some pointers and gave it a whirl. It was easier than I thought it would be. After about a half-hour of trial-and-error to figure out the technique, the wheel was tracking perfectly. Next time it will take 10 minutes or less.

Hint for all you young bicycle mechanics out there: a half-turn of a spoke wrench is lot for a three-millimeter bend in the rim. Easy does it. Just tighten the spoke coming from the opposite side of the bend, and loosen the spokes on the same side, which pulls the rim in that direction. Simple concept, and it just takes a little practice to figure out the dynamics.

While I was spinning and wrenching, I had a realization: bicycle wheels have spokes in order to allow the rims to be trued. If they were solid, or there were just a couple of struts, there'd be no way to fix even the slightest bend. So does everyone know this and I'm just late to the game, duh, or is this fact only obvious to the kind of people who own spoke wrenches?

Shhh. Don’t tell the therapist.

Against the expressed orders of my physical therapist, I took my bicycle out for a ride around the block last night. (Amy The Princess of Pain* doesn’t know about this blog. I hope.) There’s therapy and then there’s therapy; my knee needs range-of-motion exercises, and my mind needed a bicycle ride.

My surgically salvaged knee survived the surreptitious cycling swimmingly. I may even do it again this weekend: If you see me, you didn’t see me.


It wasn’t entirely a joyride. There were perfectly legitimate velo-mechanical reasons for my clandestine excursion: I’d installed a new, flat handlebar on my hybrid bicycle in hopes of eliminating the numbness that affects my hands after about 25 miles of riding. A few turns around the cul-de-sac wasn’t enough to indicate whether the mod worked, but it felt like an improvement. My wrists aren’t cocked at as big an angle, which I think was the problem with the old bar.


Ideally, I wanted to install a drop handlebar on the thing. A visit to Bicycles Etc. wasn’t much help: an off-the-shelf component set (shifters/brakes) would be $300. So I’ve been looking for a sacrificial bike from which to cannibalize the handlebar and components. Last weekend found my son and me at the Chicago Bike Swap, an annual event hosted by Active Trans, Bike Winter and the most excellent online bicycle community, The Chainlink.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to the bike corral, all the good bikes were pretty much picked over. There were dozens of tables full of used parts, but I don’t feel competent to assemble this kind of thing from scratch. Maybe it’s time to learn.
So I ended up buying a flat handlebar. It was only a few bucks, would easily accept the current componet set and I figure if it doesn’t work, I can go back to the road-bike cannibalism strategy.


Since the aforementioned knee is eight weeks post-op and healing well, I can get around quite nicely without crutches as long as I don’t have to walk too far. Some puttering around with tools in the garage on a warm (for March), windy evening was a delight. Installing the new handlebar took only one period of a Blackhawks game (they eventually lost, badly, to the St. Louis Blues). Some other maintenance, interspersed with dinner and other distractions, took the rest of the evening.


Twenty-four hours later, I was ready to go but realized I probably needed to mount the bicycle from the right side, to minimize torque on my damaged left knee. Hmm … more than 45 years of riding two-wheeled bikes, and I probably haven’t mounted one from the right side more than a handful of times. The kickstand is always on the left for some reason (why is that?).
Well, it was a bit awkward and wobbly, but I stepped onto the right pedal, swung my (braced) left leg over the seat and took off.


Pure bliss.


I kept it in low gears, not wanting to push my healing A-, P- and MCL ligaments very hard. Still, it felt like a triumph just to regain a little bit of normalcy. There are few things that make me happier than a good bike and warm weather. This was the happiest I’ve been since 9:14 a.m. Dec. 28, 2012, when I made an ill-advised hard cut to the right on an icy ski run.  I probably rode two miles just figure-eighting around our court and the next one over.


Temperatures are supposed to rise into the mid-50s over the weekend, warm enough to get back out into the garage for some more puttering. I noticed the back wheel is a bit out of true: that will have to be addressed. And of course, test-ridden (wink wink).


* Actually, Amy is a very pretty, personable young woman who really just wants to help people like me walk again. Some previous patient did a very nice needlepoint with "Amy Princess of Pain" which hangs on the wall in the therapy room. I'm sure it was a tongue-in-cheek gesture of gratitude.

Progress!

After what seems like a century since my little knee issue, I’m finally able to pedal my road bike -- although I’m not ready to take it outside yet.

I’ve got the Madone mounted on a trainer down in the basement. Wasn’t able to get the crank all the way around a week ago.

Today, the therapist really pushed me on the exercises and stretched out all those ligaments. After coming home and a half-hour of ice and rest, I figured I’d give the bicycle another try. Piece of cake!

Don’t want to overdo it, so just spent 10 minute or so at the lowest setting. But there’s a handlebar-mounted LED headlight at the end of the tunnel.

(The Quasimodo effect is due to the XXL hoodie sweatshirt left over from my heavier days.)