Goose herding by bicycle

These Canada geese decided to take a nap in the middle of North Shore Drive today. Geese aren't particularly bright. Traffic starts to back up behind the geese. Drivers opted to just sit there and beep at them. Could a motorist have gotten out and shooed them away? Yes, but some motorists aren't particularly bright.

I happened upon this impasse of stupidity and decided to save them from having to put their cars in park, open the door, get out and shoo the resting geese away. I may have also saved the geese from being crushed under the wheels of the impatient backup of traffic.

I put a "Hold on, people, I got this covered" finger up to let them know was taking care of their goose issue. I don't think they saw my index finger signaling this while I was wearing gigantic mittens, but they got the idea. While geese ignore cars, they respect the bike and move quickly when one is coming towards them as you'll see in the video below.

I got a hearty "Thank you!" from one of them at least.

My thoughts on the Fitbit Flex

I haven't been able to ride due to the weather, so I've been working on a Fitbit critique. I cannot wait for the trail ice-pack to melt.

Things I love about it:

• It makes me move more.
• It has a 'silent alarm' to wake me and remind me of certain things throughout the day.
• I can track what I've eaten (I'm super lazy about this though).
• The food tracker reminds me of how calorie dense some foods are.
• I can compete with my friends.
• I like the word 'dongle'.
• It only needs charged once a week.
• I can track my cycling by putting the bracelet through my shoelaces.
• I love the graphs. LOVE the graphs.
• Badges! I can earn badges!

Things that I'm not crazy about:

• Tracking my sleep patterns requires a $50 upgrade to a premium membership. Boooo!
• The bracelet color choices didn't do anything for me. Too bright! I went with black. 
• I'm not comfortable wearing a watch AND the Fitbit. I wish I had gone with the Force model that has a built-in watch. I'm constantly looking at the Fitbit to see what time it is and getting disappointed many times a day. I really should have gone with the Force. I miss my watch.
• They claim you can shower with it. I'm not sure Fitbit had in mind the sort of abuse I'd be inflicting on my tracker. I take the bracelet off for my scalding hot showers as a precautionary measure.

Logging my food is depressing, it's not even 3PM and I'm nearly out of calories?

I much prefer this way of looking at my calories consumed vs calories burned:

Not in the 'goal zone' but close...

I'm eating well too! (never mind the English muffin with butter.)

Bottom line:

I have to exercise like a fiend to match my calorie intake.

The joy of a custom bar extender

I retrieved Ruby from Thick Bikes on Thursday and beheld the awesomeness of this custom-made bar extender that Chris made for me. Dude, way to make a customer for life.

It's not straight. *twitch*

OMG, it's so... big!

Can you imagine all the stuff I can fit on there? I also picked up this tire lever and instructed the most mischievous of our three dogs about it's use.

This is not a chewtoy, Macallan.

I also FINALLY remembered to use my 10% discount for BikePGH! members. I might have saved myself a few bucks had I remembered the last two purchases there.

I was told that the reason for my shifting issues was because I'd run a ziptie for the cadence computer line around the shifting cables. Doh. That's embarrassing.


I also noticed that the hospital bracelet was still attached to the underside of the saddle. I'll have to return that the first chance I get.

The Fitbit dashboard: I like looking a the bar graph they give you mapping what times you were the most active.

I cycled between 8 and 8:30 and noon and 1PM.

I am Pavlov's Dog.

Monday, I wasn't 100 percent.. or even 66%. I had a bad case of fatigue and angry hip. So bad in fact that I relented to the pain and took an ibuprofen, which I take very rarely. I used to take 800 mg at the mere thought of discomfort, but over the years reading so many reports of how bad NSAIDS are for us long term, I've hardened up when it comes to pain. I have to be dragging a limb, unable to stand upright or I need to see bone sticking out before I'll pop a motrin.
This was a bad day. I didn't ride. I wanted to curl up in bed with a heating pad and take a nap.
Later in the day, I was able to limp around to the side of the desk where I'd parked the bike, I noticed the rear tire had deflated.
I'd only logged 7,000 steps on the fitbit. This disappointed me, but sometimes, we just don't feel well enough. I'd logged 24K steps on Saturday and Sunday, so it evened out, I suppose.

Tuesday, there'd be no riding. I wanted to take the bike back to Thick again to get my drivetrain issues ironed out, the cadence magnet stable and let them fix my flat. I dropped it off after work. It was also my last day with my personal trainer and massage therapist, Laura. She was moving out of state in a few days. I will miss her. My piriformis will miss her more. Discovering that I needed 1300 more steps to hit my 10K target, I made an effort to move around the house more at the end of the day. It seems wearing the fitbit is changing my behavior. I check the lights and feel a sense of reward when most of them are lit up and smile broadly when I get the 10K lightshow and buzzing. Awesome.

Wednesday, Mutha Nature blanketed Pittsburgh in a slushy, crusty coating of ice, even if I had a bike, it would have been suicidal to try and ride in this cold, soupy slop. I have a new habit of using the bathrooms at work that are located furthest away from our offices with the intention of logging the extra steps. Sometimes, I use ones located upstairs. If I become permanently conditioned to doing that, this will be one small step forward. Pun intended.

Thick called to say my bike was ready. They mentioned that Chris had 'made something special' for my bar extender. What? MADE SOMETHING SPECIAL? OOooooh, this, I gotta see.

I gather that Chris dislikes when something isn't quite straight or level on a bike, he noted that my rear rack could have some pieces put on to make the rack level. I could tell it's a peeve with him. He probably couldn't stand that my bar extender was off-kilter and made some adaptation to straighten it out. I have to admit, it was bothering me too,  so I can't wait to see this thing!

I brought home the tire levers so I could practice changing a tire on the Monster. I had it done in about 10 minutes, much better than my first try. I went back downstairs to the garage to put the wheel back on and Hubby called down to me to let me know that The Macallan was eating one of my tire levers. I need to buy a pair of new tire levers when I go to Thick tomorrow. Grrrrr.

My dog ate my tire levers.

Bill Murray jinxed my bike.

I wanted to head out to Lawrenceville today to make two stops. The first was Crystal Bead Bazaar and the other was La Gormandine for a lunch of croissant. It rained intermittently, so the rain cape was taken off and put back on several times. It was about 34 degrees.
I stopped a few times to adjust the mirror and then when I made a tight turn, my knee hit it and it came off the post. Jeez.
I was making a tight turn because I had noticed a Blek le Rat style Bill Murray stenciled bit of guerrilla art. I needed to stop and get a shot of it. I love Bill Murray, this was Groundhog Day.  Groundhog Day was shot in Pittsburgh. I was just watching a clip of Bill Murray destroying a bike in 'Rushmore' just a few hours ago. This was an omen.

"This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather"

As soon as I left Bill, the rear tire was flat. 
Seriously.  
I blame Bill Murray for my flat tire.

But I was glad. It wasn't terribly cold, I had plenty of time and I wasn't going to be holding up anyone with my tediously slow never-changed-a-flat noobery.
I also had great place to change the flat:

Several passers by asked if I needed help or if I had 'everything I needed'. I was good, I told them. I got the tube out, found no sharp objects where the puncture was, replaced the tube and filled it. Something was very wrong though. I'd been sold the wrong size tube. I'd made sure that the person that I bought them from looked at my tires to make sure I was buying the correct size. Not happy.
Just then, a gentleman dressed head to toe in camouflage, on a tricked out camouflaged tricycle rolled up and didn't even ask if I needed help... he just started helping. At this point, I welcomed it. His name was Ricky. He is an interesting fellow.  He suggested patching the tube with the hole since I didn't have the correct tubes. He was surprised I had my own patch kit and he lamented that most folks don't ride with them. I  realized that for as many times I'd watched YouTube videos of flat changes, it never occurred to me to watch an instructional video of a tire patch. I watched closely and he had it patched in under 5 minutes, inflated too. He made interesting "do-dee-do-dee-dooo" sing-songy noises while he worked.

Here's Ricky's cool ride:

He named his tricycle 'Wolfbane' I believe. Even the cooler on the back is camo-painted.

Before he left, I shook his hand and thanked him profusely. He told me he was on his way to help repair someone's power wheelchair. Ricky's got a lot of karma coming his way.

I debated heading back to the office and abandoning the plans for Lawrenceville, but I forged ahead on a patched tube. I live dangerously.



I happily shopped at the Bead Bazzar for more earring beads and fittings, I'd lost many of my earrings recently when I'd remove a scarf, so I needed supplies to make more earrings.

LaGormandine was closed. Grrrr. Denied ...again.

"Too cold to bake"? You're kidding me, right?

The luxury of time

Pittsburghers suffering with cabin fever were rewarded for their patience with a delightful 52 degree day. Snow and ice melted and everyone was out and about. They were jogging, cycling, walking, shopping and eating out in restaurants.

Hubby and I shared a gigantic omelet breakfast at Pancake House before he dropped me off at work and I got the bike and on the road early-ish. I made sure to put my new Fitbit through my laces so it would register my pedal strokes as steps.

I decided to get over to Thick and see if they could help my cadence computer issue and take a look at my front derailleur. The chain was still skipping and it was having a heck of a time shifting into the small ring despite having a tune up last week. It was raining when I started, but not long after I was on the road, I removed the Cleverhood and stashed it.

 The ice was melting on the Mon.

When I walked into Thick, Adam and Chris remarked at how bright my hi-viz pink was. I think I like the hi-viz pink much better than the yellow or orange. I chatted with the owner of Thick (Chris), we talked about the MS150 and I oggled the wares at Thick while I waited for the Wrenches to work on Ruby. I decided to get a different Bar extender and the Oberlauda mirror with the intention of attaching the mirror to the bar extender. As it turns out the mirror fits just fine on my handlebars, I was told it wouldn't work when I tried to buy it a few weeks ago. Yaaa! Rear-view mirror is back! I like this one much better than the Mirrycle mirror I had before my grip-change. I have buttloads of handlebar real estate now. I also picked up a much needed ParkTool chain cleaner contraption.

I stopped at BigDog in another attempt to have some oatmeal for lunch, but I was denied... again. I opted for a coconut macaroon and a latte. I had to be careful with the macaroon and restrain myself from eating the whole thing at once so I didn't have a hypoglycemia issue later. I love macaroons and it was difficult to not scarf down the whole thing. Even if the oatmeal was available, I would have had to go easy on the sugary dried fruit.

The cadence computer still registers no more than 50. *sad face* The chain fell off while downshifting before the Hot Metal Bridge switchback. *very sad face*

On the EFT, a rider coming in the opposite direction held up his arm to shield his eyes and jokingly said "I can see you!". Smartass.

I ran into Marko going the opposite direction on the return to base, and we had a brief chat on the Duke bridge before we went our separate ways. I thought it was very nice of him to turn around and make conversation. The weather was so nice that no one is trying to get to a sheltered destination in a hurry, so chit chat is no longer a dangerous luxury.

I stowed the bike in my office and walked to the T station (the TROLLEY for you non-Pittsburghers). I saw this poor frame at the racks at the station and I had a moment of silence for it. My Fitbit vibrated and lit up on the walk there, so I had met my 10,000 steps minimum! However, it told me I'd only gone 4.7 miles. Wrong.
Only one jerk flipped me the finger while left-crossing me on East Carson.

I took the T home and was happy to ride through Beechview, my old stomping grounds. I hadn't been through there in a long time and it was interesting to see how things have changed on Broadway. I was able to glimpse the Beechview Mural as we zipped by.


I lovely unhurried ride, 17 miles.

I may be tiring of winter

For a second day in a row, the office was closed. Every school district in the area had classes except Pittsburgh Public. I slept in until Cal decided it was time to play his favorite game: 'step on mom and stick my cold, drippy nose in her eye until she wakes up because we're hungry'. Ask me if I like playing that game.

I was loathing the thought of dragging myself into the office and undertaking the task of layering.  Getting ready for a ride takes as long as the ride itself when the temperatures are very low. Boots, socks, glove liners, mittens, toe warmers, goggles, ear warmers, 3 layers of pants, 4 layers of shirts. Damn, I am finding this rigamarole tiresome.

OK, I had to get on the bike somehow today. I really needed to try out the new toys on this last cold day for some time. A long range forcast for February looks good as far as temperatures.
I mustered up and I brought the bike back to work and got caught by the president in the office when we're not supposed to be there. Ooops. I used the excuse that I was dropping work off that I had finished at home and was collecting more work to take home that night. Never you mind that bike I'm rolling in.


Cadence computer: I must have it installed incorrectly, I can only get a reading of 45-56.
Pogies: Ugh. I'm glad I only spent $20 on them. I feel like my arms are lashed to the handlebars. This might be OK for long trips where one doesn't need to brake and shift constantly. These may be good for trails, not stop and go on the streets. They come up very far on my arms and it's difficult to pull my arms out of them. I don't like feeling tied to the bike, (bedposts, sure, but not a moving bike!) I'll never use clips. I could not use them today.
Bar extender: I don't like where I've positioned it.

Ohferthree on the new toys.

With a pair of Gore-Tex Cabela's mitts, two layers of liners and a set of toe and hand warmers I was great starting out in 10 degrees. I decided I might try and get over to Thick to see if they could adjust the cadence computer and re-situate the bar extender, but I had forgotten my wallet... again. I'd remembered everything except my wallet. This was a bad habit I needed to get out of.

So, I went as far as the Cork Factory in the Strip to get more shots of the icy Allegheny.

The view of the Allegheny from the Cork Factory

A warped panorama from atop the Clemente Bridge.

I saw this cyclist on the Clemente Bridge, one of three I saw along my travels today.

On the way back, gusts nearly knocked me over, twice. My hands were perfectly toasty. No one beeped at me and only one close pass by a distracted driver. I was able to use the still-warm toe and hand warmers around our chilly house in my slippers: BONUS! On this cold, sun-drenched day, a 1 hour ride that ultimately, I didn't regret.


2014 YTD Miles: 151
BMI: 25.9