New years already!?

Damn it’s been a long year.

I got lots of riding done, found myself an awesome job, and still even get some bike time on the weekends. Critical mass every month is always a blast but I still haven’t made a whole lot of friends. Probably not my type of crowd I guess?

Most notable ride of last year is really Critical Mass’ 20th anniversary. After that would be the more casual ones I had exploring along the western coast of the city.

I hope I can be more active for the following year, because nothing would beat what I did last year! hahaha…

 

New years!

I know I said I would post again soon, but the holiday stuff really piled on.

I mean it’s super busy and stuff, and I even missed The last critical mass of the year! Shooott.. And then I saw a group riding out on New Year’s Eve and I was totally jealous that I have no idea what was that. I mean I looked around, and I thought it might be the midnight ride, but it isn’t. Bike Party? I think it’s a little too early for Bike Party. I guess it was a little mini Critical Mass. If someone knows, let me in on that…

Moving on, I finally also got around to cleaning my bike. Took longer than I expected since I tried something new, but I learned and hopefully I can get my routine down to 30 minutes. Mighty hard though without a bike stand, but I guess that’s what I get for not being richy rich with the bike gear. I hate how everything is so freaking expensive.

What do I have coming this week?

Not a lot of biking sadly, free museum runs with friends, biking going into the shop for a checkup. I swear it has developed some strange squeak that can’t be good….

I’m Back!

Wow, it’s been like months since my computer went down, and I had to scourge up money to fix it. It wasn’t an easy fix for sure, and once I started adding things to the shopping cart, I kept on tacking on more additions, and stuff I might as well add since I was already getting a new motor and reservoir unit for water cooling. Everything is in tip-top shape now, and hopefully it’ll stay that way for the next year at least? I’m counting on you computer!

Onward to bike-related news, I’ve done a bunch of stuff, and started going on SF Bike coalition rides. It’s all pretty much fun and games from my experience, and I have started on a daily ‘commute’ routine. I’ve had several near misses, but that’s not new considering I am biking down Market Street on a daily basis. All in all, it’s been lots of fun times I suppose.

One thing I’d like to mention is that I went on the Holiday Lights right last night, and met up with a bunch of people who are just awesome. I found out they live by where I live too, so who would have thought! I’ll probably be running into them a lot now. Catch you all later! I’ll hopefully make another update within a day or two.. but it’s freaking cold riding outside.

Bike Cleaning Sadness

I haven’t done much cycling recently, not as much as I would like to anyways because of two main reasons. One being that I cleaned and washed my whole drivetrain today, and two the weather was kind of shitty.

Looking back to the whole cleaning thing, I could have probably put it off. After cleaning it because it was quite dirty, I instantly regretted it because of the whole factory lube thing. Oh well… nothing I can do now and it was looking quite dirty anyways. I suppose it had to be done sooner or later, and it happened to be sooner rather than later for me. I suppose I’ll keep that in mind when I have the chain replaced and I can have another go at ‘factory lube’. So on to the weather. Probably not a whole big deal but I live on the western end of San Francisco so that basically means I get fog day in and out for the last week or so. I know it’s all sunshines and carefree on the other, eastern side of the city but I don’t live there! Still I could bike over to that potion of the city, but I am getting tired of doing that in the name of ‘exploration’. One can only do so much exploring until boredom looms it’s ugly head. I could use a change of seasons to fall or even winter to liven things up.

I took a quick ride today after letting my bike rest up after cleaning. Isn’t that standard practice? I think it is after putting down a dry lube. I hear wet lubes are good to go, and I can’t wait to switch over to that. Currently I am just trying to use up all my dry lube before that though. Catch you all tomorrow! Weather report says it should be a great day.

Bicycle Safety

I manged to finish a two-part course today that went into bicycling safety and found it is quite informative for those that did you want to jump head into it. It went over good stuff like stressing the point of taking the lane when needed because we shouldn’t be squeezed between cars and get doored. Dooring is a big problem in the city, and I am glad they let us know that. The other half of the problem now is that many drivers probably aren’t going to like the suggestion, and want us to get out of their way. I don’t even know what they are thinking, because you sure as hell can’t get more than like 3 blocks before encountering a red light.. which is more than enough time for a bicycle to catch up and filter all the way to the front. I know because I have seen this so many times.

I got a nice certificate, though I don’t know what to do with it. I might just end up tossing it sadly, because I don’t I will be hanging it somewhere. Sorry to all the guys at the League of American Bicyclists, I’m sure it was money that could have been saved. It is a nice certificate though… Probably nothing much is going to happen today. It’s rather foggy, and I was thinking of just cleaning out my bike a bit like cleaning the chain because it is getting rather dirty!

Critical Mass August 2011

So, today was really a mixed bag of good and bad. First I’ll go over the bad because it really blew. Got two flats today both in my rear tire. One when I was leaving my home, and gotten about 4 blocks. The second when I was coming home at about 6 blocks away. Didn’t have my hand pump on me so I had to really dig in and just suck it up on the walk.

So, with the crappy stuff out-of-the-way, Critical Mass was pretty fun. I think I’ll try to attend more of the events, but I think that it does need a bit more structure, or at least people to follow the established rules. The police know the run-down on critical mass and are very ready to try to ‘guide’ us along. It does not help if the people on the front break away, and don’t bother looking back to the people behind them to make sure they are staying up. It happened this time about 30 minutes into the ride, and we all really needed a re-group; especially after going up riding up Dolores st, and down Market. We really needed a re-group point, but I guess it was ok the faster people to go flying off. All in all, a very fun ride, and I recommend anyone int he city to at least try it once. Just about anyone can do it. The pace was very slow and I always felt like it was moving too slow but was definitely not trying to push people to go faster. Gotta stick with the pack right!? My only minor gripe is that there’s a lot of people who attend Critical Mass so it can feel like we don’t have enough room to comfortably ride.

Success!

I was able to find the Bike Kitchen yesterday, after riding around back and forth. It turns out that I have passed by the building on the last two occasions that I have ridden by, it just so happens that they DO NOT have any kind of signage to let people know they exist. I suppose it is more of a word of mouth co-op type of deal. It did seem like a decent place though, I didn’t go in but I am sure the place is alright from the outside… Probably much more different atmosphere on the inside.

So what’s in store for today? Doing some pre-critical mass stuff. I called in to the bike shop, and asked if they could squeeze me in for a quick tune-up/check for things. I know my bike isn’t all that old, but I have put at least 200 miles on it and could probably use some cable tension checking. I also should head down to the bike shop and get my ‘warranty sticker’ too, as I’ve slacked on that. Which reminds me.. I really need to register my bike too! Ahh well.. should all be done by the end of the day. Still a lot of stuff ahead of me to do.

Bike Kitchen Arrgs!

So I guess I Am going to make this short and sweet because I should already be in bed tomorrow because of early morning wake ups.

I was riding along today, once again searching for the Bike Kitchen in San Francisco. I sadly have to say that I apparently missed it twice as I ride up and down the street it is on, and I am going to have to say it’s due to improper signage of the place. The place that it should be at on google maps looks like it’s a pretty concealed place and suppose to be some sort of well-kept secret. I don’t get it personally, but I saw some pictures of the old place it was at and you definitely knew you were at the Bike Kitchen. This new place? Not so much and I guess I will have to really study these google images before making a third attempt.

Come on Bike Kitchen I want to visit you, but stop hiding already! It is kind of fun I guess, cruising around a half residential, half commercial area. I mean it wasn’t run down or anything, the neighborhood seems pretty chill with cafes even on the corner. Ahh well, still psyched about critical mass and it’s coming soon; woop!

Sunny Times

Today was rather sunny in San Francisco, so I couldn’t resist going out and riding around the city.

First off, I thought it would have been a nice day to check out the Bike Kitchen, but I couldn’t exactly find it. I knew the general location, off Florida but I just couldn’t help find it. On the plus side, I visited a few other LBS’, and was able to get some rear eyelet screws for cheap, huzzah! I have some time tomorrow so if it is sunny like today, I am definitely going to head back out again and finally track down this Bike Kitchen to see what is going on there. They should like it would be a cool place to visit, though probably not for me since I have a nice new shiny bike, and they do old vintage fix-it’s. Still, the concept sounds great eh? I was also looking forward to cruising across the Golden Gate Bridge, but I changed my mind since it only has one shared bicycling and pedestrian lane. I can look forward to crossing it when they re-open the other side.. which should be some time in late September.

What’s next on the schedule? I am looking forward to doing a little bit of Critical Mass. I have heard about it, and seen it, but never done it before for one reason or another. Can’t wait to be in it though! I am sure it’s one of those things you have to experience at least once.

First Mishap

So I was planning a ride out today, and I guess it was all my fault. I was riding along the light rail tracks that isn’t too far from my home and while I thought my angle going across them was good enough, it sure as hell wasn’t.

Then the moment hit. My wheel slipped right into the track, and I lost control. thinking back to it, I guess I could have brought myself back under control but I didn’t so I went down. Not too bad I guess; Got a few scrapes with the worse on my knee. I think the thing that hurt the most was that my new shifter got scratched on the way down. Oh well, it gives the bicycle character right?

After that happened, I got myself home, cancelling my ride to someplace new I wanted to visit. There’s always tomorrow right? Or the weekend at least so I’m going to rest up and look forward to that. Probably not going to be the last time this is going to happen to me, but I try to keep stupid stuff to a minimum.