Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
The front fender on Mary’s bike snapped loose while we were on our way for groceries, but my repair kit now once again includes a few feet of duct tape and we continued the mission:
Tour Easy front fender – duct tape FTW
The final fracture seems to be just the little gray section amid the older fractures, so the Planet Bike clip was hanging on by a thread:
Tour Easy front fender – broken clip
Our bikes being equipped as alike as I can make them, another copy of the bracket I used on my bike sufficed:
Tour Easy front fender – new bracket
Stipulated: duct tape is déclassé, but it works better than anything else I’ve tried.
If it’s not them, then it’s somebody following their example.
Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should … but, of course, the ordinary rules apply only to little people, not public servants.
Someone in the bike advocacy apparat once told me I’m the most cynical, bitter person they’d ever met, at least on the subject of getting along with public servants. As I see it, I came by my attitude honestly.
The Michelin ProTek Max tube I installed two years ago developed a slow leak this year, which I eventually ascribed to the valve stem, because the sealant should plug any other leak.
Cutting it open reveals the perfectly good greenish-yellow sealant:
Michelin ProTek tube – sealant
The sealant also carries black rubbery grit / shavings / dust, perhaps intended to jam inside larger gashes while the sealant coagulates and binds it together.
There’s a lot of rubber floating around in there:
Michelin ProTek tube – rubber fragments
Dismantling the Presta valve stem show the rubbery crud on and around the valve seal and seat:
Michelin ProTek tube – fouled valve seal
Whenever I pumped up the tires, I finger-tightened the nut to ensure a good seal, as you do with all Presta valves. Obviously, finger-tight can’t handle that much crud between the sealing surfaces.
I’m sorry to say I was right about the leaky valve stem, because I think all the ProTek tubes will fail in exactly the same way.
The valve has small wrench flats making it easy to remove, so I can at least attempt to de-gunk them when they develop slow leaks.
The identical rear shifter on Mary’s bike also seems to be wearing out, as it glides between two of her favorite click stops a bit too easily. You can see the spring peeking out to the right, beyond the white tube, and the notches forming the clicks.
AFAICT, the raised section between the notches is wearing down; there’s no repair for that sort of thing. I took this one apart to see what’s inside: now we know!
We’ve agreed to not replace the shifter until the situation gets worse. An X.0 shifter should arrive shortly; it appears identical except for deeper scallops around the grip.
We’re riding home with groceries along Raymond Avenue, approaching the Vassar Main Gate roundabout, and, as is my custom, I’ve been pointing to the middle of the lane for maybe five seconds as I move leftward to take the lane:
Raymond Passing – Approach – 2018-10-04
The driver of HCX-1297 is having none of it:
Raymond Passing – Near Miss – 2018-10-04
The mirror passed maybe a foot away from my shoulder; I’d reeled my arm in as the front fender passed by.
All three traffic circles / roundabouts on Raymond neck the lane down and angle it rightward into the circle, which is supposed to “calm” traffic:
Raymond Passing – Roundabout – 2018-10-04
The design doesn’t allow much flinch room for cyclists and certainly isn’t calming for us.
The NYS engineer who designed the Raymond roundabouts said the whole thing was “standards compliant”, refused to go on a check ride with me to experience what it was like, and told me to detour through the Vassar campus if I felt endangered while sharing the road.
Obviously, NYS DOT personnel do not dogfood their “share the road” bicycle standards by riding bicycles.
When you come upon a scene like this, you know someone’s having a Bad Day:
Rt 376 Collision Scene – approach – 2018-09-21
I rode slowly past a line of stopped cars, became a pedestrian, walked through the lawns on the left, then turned back into a bicyclist.
It appeared to be a three-car collision, with two vehicles aligned almost perfectly nose-to-nose in the northbound lane:
Rt 376 Collision Scene – overview – 2018-09-21
The red 2015-ish Forester apparently snagged a rear wheel on the far side of another contestant:
Rt 376 Collision Scene – Forester – 2018-09-21
Talk about heart-stopping: Mary had driven off to a meeting some hours before. Even though the wrecked Forester differed in enough details to make me absolutelycertain it wasn’t ours , Mary got a firmer-than-usual hug when she got home.
A picture not shown: two expressionless officers supervising a guy having great difficulty walking the fog line.
I’ll never know the rest of the story, but the overall outline seems clear.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 