More new bike clothes, and Utilitaire 12.5!

Coincidently, I found out about the Utilitaire just two days after I made an appointment to get my haircut.  I don’t get my hair cut very often, every couple of months, so it’s just luck I happened to be able to complete this one.  (BTW,  I think that the Utilitaire rules are pretty flexible about substitutions,  so if you don’t need your hair cut, you could document going to the dentist, the doctor,  massage, pedicure, whatever).

I wore my favorite score from the Jason Wu for Target collection: a red and navy cotton dress with a lovely full skirt.   It’s even got pockets hidden in the pleats.  I put a long sleeved shirt under it, as it’s not really sleeveless dress weather yet, but it looks a bit schoolgirlish.  It had a tendency to ride up against my tights, but hopefully that will be less of a problem in the summer without tights.

I’ve also been meaning to report on my new long coat, but haven’t gotten around to getting photos of it.  It’s from Nau,  and it really fills a niche that I think is underserved- normal clothing with technical features.  I think that’s Nau’s thing in general- to have normal, or perhaps even a bit fashion forward styling, but true waterproof-ness,  with sealed seams and zippers.   Although it’s interesting- chatter about Nau on the internet  seems to be equally divided between bicyclists and hard core fashionistas.

that's a lot of hair

I ordered the “Shroud of Purrin Trench” in “Hellebore”,  which is a purplish grey that is a lovely color although a tad hard to match with my wardrobe that leans to reds and greens.  The fabric is something "waterproof-breathable" with a laminated barrier,  but unlike most shells, has a lovely wale,  not quite corduroy, maybe more like heavy twill?  You would never know it was a "technical" fabric if you didn't read the specs.

 I ordered the Hellebore because it seemed the lightest (compared to dark brown or black)  but it's fairly dark in person.  I’m scheming about how I could possibly add a tiny bit of  reflectivity.  The best thing would be a tiny bit of piping down the back seam,  but I don’t want to open up the seam, since it's specially sealed for water resistance.   I really like the length, which hits just above my knee when I’m on the bike, which keeps me noticeably warmer (or dryer).    The zipper can be raised from below if you want more air. The hem is asymmetric, with a longer tail than front, which I think is a nice line when you’re off the bike.

 Also asymmetric, the zipper comes into the side of your chin instead of the front. The collar has a buttonhole and button to allow you to fasten the collar up to warm your neck.  I didn’t think I’d use that feature, but it has come in handy a couple of times when I didn’t have a scarf for those first chilly minutes before I warm up.

The trench is very waterproof- I rode home one night in a pretty hard rain, and was completely dry- just shook it off and went to dinner on foot.   The only reservation I have is that it’s a bit too warm.  Although it doesn’t have much of an insulation layer beyond a light fuzzy liner, I find it keeps me much warmer than the weight would indicate.  Part of that may just be the windproof-ness, part of it might be the waterproofing.   If the temperature is higher than the low 30’s I’ve found I end up unzipping completely or  even having to remove the jacket.

 YMMV, as I may have a tendency to run a bit warm.    If we had a winter like last year with lots of cold and icky days, it would probably be perfect.

Later that night, post-chop

Back to the Utilitaire:  I rode home the 6 blocks from the salon without my helmet, although it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference to the "'do", but I hated to spoil a professional blow dry.   Minerva's lighting system has already been described, although I will add that I looked up the specs on the rear generator light- it's a Busch&Muller Topline Plus,  which I've been very impressed with.  I think it's much brighter than the fender mounted 4D fender mounted light I have on Gilbert. 

Utilitaire 12.4

Thanks to John Romeo Alpha at One speed Go,  I heard about Utilitaire,  which is like the LGRAB summer games, but with a more utilitarian bent.  The brainchild of Chasing Mailboxes blog, Utilitaire 12 asks you to do a number of utilitarian tasks in a time period, with a set of criteria. Complete rules can be found here.  Like a brevet, you need to check off events on a control card, and accumulate a certain number of events during the 7 weeks of the challenge.

I think this sounds like just the kind of fun that one needs this time of year- a beacon of hope in the long slog towards spring!  I only found out about this today, and it's been going on for a couple of weeks, so I'm behind,  but I'm going to retroactively count a couple of things from the last weeks to be posted later :).  A lot of the "categories" are things I do so often that I don't bother documenting them anymore,  but, in the spirit of the event, I'll play along.

Today I completed one category,  the "community meeting".  I left work early to volunteer for Livable Streets, buttonholing people on a street corner to tell them about the dire state of MBTA funding, and what they could do about it.

 There was a meeting at the Boston Public library, with a kind of rowdy rally before the meeting. LSA was giving out information and encouraging people to go to the meeting, or otherwise get involved.  I got into a good rhythm,  and was having a good rate of success with getting signatures.  I had a funny moment though, when I accosted the next guy standing on the streetcorner, only to find that I was talking to the MA Secretary of Transportation :)

Me " do you ride the T"
Richard Davey  "yes, every day"
me  "are you aware of the T's funding crisis"
Richard Davey (deadpan) "Intimately."

At this point I realized who I was talking to,  and got all flustered.   He was very nice, and thanked me for being an advocate for the T, and seeing my LSA sticker told me to say Hi, to J_  the director of LSA.

Minerva locked up next to the gracious and charming McKim Mead and White wing of the BPL

The meeting looked like it was going to be standing room only,  and as I've already submitted written comments, I decided not to stand in line for the meeting itself,  heading off to release the hound.

People queueing to get into the meeting, in the less charming  totalitarian vastness of the Phillip Johnson wing of the BPL.  The whole wing smells like cigarette smoke.  Gah!

I rode Minerva again today,  and she's just lovely.   I haven't ridden her to work since the first of the year, and I'd forgotten how effortless and wonderful the DL-1's ride is.  It makes me wonder if I should invest effort into making her a truly bombproof commuter along this lines of this fabulous commuter.
The Scientist is going to Europe a couple of times this summer to give talks, I wonder how he would feel about tracking down aluminum westwood rims :)

The route home from the Library took me along Comm ave, which is really lovely this time of year, with the alee' of trees all wrapped in white lights.

Every time I'm about to remove Minerva's lights, I get a random compliment on them, so I keep them a bit longer

I also got to enjoy the Mass Ave bike lanes, which are a delight.   The Mass Ave bridge lanes seem meagre in comparison especially where they crap out on the Cambridge side.    Rode home with stops at both Trader Joe's and Whole foods to get some treats for a midweek Valentine's dinner.  Grocery shopping is another one of the controls, for the Utilitaire, but I do that so often, that it's hardly blog worthy, unless I bring home a record amount of stuff..

Edited- I forgot I'm supposed to report milage, which is a bit approximate, because I' doing it via google map. This ride 4.2 formwork to meeting, to home
Since the second half of the ride was after dark, I should mention that Minerva has a generator hub and an IQcyco headlight and B&M rack mounted tail light

New bike clothes

It's always fun to have a new outfit for biking in!

I'm not enough of a follower of fashion to be interested in most of the "High-Low" collaborations that are all the rage-certainly not enough to get up early and deal with hysterical crowds.  I shop for clothes based more on what works for me than on a label or what is "in."   But when I saw the proposed Jason Wu for Target designs, I loved the narrow waists and flared skirts, and that's how I found myself at the Watertown Mall on Superbowl Sunday at 7AM.  I was third in line when the doors opened, and managed to get all of the things I was really interested in.  Unfortunately we've had a bout of seasonal (AKA cold) weather, which makes it hard to wear spring dresses,but with a pair of opaque tights and a cardigan, I think I can make this work.

It has a print of small spoked wheels-  they're not exactly bike wheels, but they're close enough:

I've also been wearing my first pair of B.Ella Woolisimo tights, that I ordered from Sock Dreams.  Like the Smartwool tights from last year, they're pretty sweater-like and not super dressy, but they're warm, not itchy and so far seem durable- I've only worn them a couple of times and washed them once.   Unlike the Smartwool tights they don't have a "shaped foot."  I might add a little red embroidery to mark the sole so that they're a bit easier to put on without getting twisted all around.    But so far so good, and I may order a pair in brown as well.

Spare Tire

Sorry for the radio silence- have been busting my butt at work, trying to get a framing package out the door before I leave on vacation next week.

Chafed of Chafe City,  recently posted something I thought was interesting. About the same time I was struggling with getting Gilbert's new tires on his rims, she was raging at how insanely hard it can be to change a stupid bike tire.   She mentioned that it's easy enough for cars to carry a whole extra wheel with tire already mounted on it around with them at all times, so they never think about it.  The mass and awkwardness of carrying a spare on a bike is obviously prohibitive.

If a bike carried around a spare wheel, it would be about as inconvenient as this car I saw this morning carrying an XXL tire around:

The chip in my brain tells me to ride

Saw this article in the NY Times with the headline "Activists fight green projects, seeing UN plot"

Evidently some members of the far right loony wing of the Tea Party have decided that bike lanes are a UN plot to overthrow the US government and  ultimately  "TAAAKE AWAAYYY OUR CAAAAAARS!

Yeah,  I don't know about you, but how often have you received communications from the UN saying that we should advocate for better and safer bikes lanes so that the UN can take over the world?  Personally I  think the UN can barely run a peacekeeping mission successfuly, let alone the world.

I do understand that since the 50's when public space was chopped up and handed to drivers on a plate they've gotten accustomed to have the run of the place, and that they see any minor inconvenience (like slowing down and waiting to pass)  as a violation of their "rights"  But I have a right to safe operation on the roads too, and I don't get that from the UN,  I get it from US law.    

I have to wonder if the recent bike-punitive transportation bill from the House springs from this far right meme that green initiatives or progressive transportation measures are signs of the "socialist apocalypse"
If so, I think that a bunch of legislators need to adjust their tinfoil beanies.

Double Double-Wide

I interrupted Minerva's "winter vacation" Saturday afternoon to do a grocery run.  I knew that with both Superbowl snacks and the rest of the week's groceries, I was going to have an extra large load, and I wanted to use the voluminous Fast Rider panniers that only fit on her longer chainstays.

It was a pleasure to ride her- it's amazing to me how two upright step through city bikes can be so dramatically different.  Although I guess it shouldn't because the geometry is completely different -riding minerva is like sitting in a chair- it's so incredibly upright,  and I've missed it. 

In any case I ended up with an enormous load- surpassing even the capacity of the big panniers.  So I devised a reusable bag version of "Velouria's panniers"  and by my third stop, had a load 4 grocery bags wide!   Too wide to get through the 3' gate.

I looped the handles of the bags through the lock and locked it closed, et voila!

Time to watch the game (and commercials) - Go Pats!

Edited- I'm counting this retroactively as Utilitaire 12.1-  My first entry in the Utilitaire challenge- more details here:

An armature for healthy choices

Edited for my typo-  "Oppose" the bill,  support the Petri amendment which would restore TE and SRS Thanks OKB for proofreading.  


I don't dwell on the health benefits of biking much,  partly because they're subtle in my case ( I don't have any fun story about how I dropped 50 lbs, alas) ,  but more importantly, I feel mostly that the other pleasures of biking are their own reward.

There was an article in the NY Times though that I found interesting, although perhaps obvious to even the casual observer of urban spaces.  It posits that the move to the "luxury" of the suburbs has fueled the obesity crisis because the design of the suburbs does not facilitate active transportation- the kind of activity we get as we live our everyday lives.  Well....... duh!  Yes, it seems obvious, but there were lots of studies and data to back up what seems like a simple conclusion.

This was striking because after months of inertia, the Transportation bill has lurched into life, being used as a political football by politicians who think that more highways= more jobs.   And while there's a certain truth to that,  and in general I support spending on infrastructure to help create jobs in this economy,  for some reason the people controlling the bill feel that even the 1.6% of the federal transportation budget that active transportation receives is WAAAY too much.

The current bill would cut out Transportation Enhancements,  which is a flawed system, but it's one of the few funding mechanisms for paths,  rail trails and sidewalk improvements.   It also cuts Safe Routes to schools, which has been a very successful program in encouraging kids to walk and bike to school.

If you live in MA, you have a unique opportunity to support  oppose this bill,  because Representative Capuano is a member of the Transpo committee.  Even if you aren't in MA,  sending an email takes little time, and I'll add my voice to the chorus of advocacy organizations that are urging you to weigh in with your legislator about the importance of preserving even this tiny amount of funding.  There are lots of good templates and talking points here, and Here.  There's an amendment called the Petrie Amendment which would restore  TE and SRS,  which is a good thing to support, as obviously some kind of bill is likely to pass.

Bike and walking facilities cost much less to install and maintain than roads,  and if well designed, they provide a network of infrastructure, on which people can incorporate active transport into their daily lives.  And cutting them isn't a significant enough amount of money to make a difference in the larger budget.  So why cut them unless you think of bikes and walking as recreation and a sideshow?  I know that a lot of people feel activism fatigue,  but in this tough budget times, it's going to be a constant fight to keep people who don't understand how bikes allow freedom for kids, and healthy lives for grown ups, reminded that there are people who do,  and who vote, and who want their interests represented just as well as the big road contractors do.