Fact: Nebraska has Pelicans

One of the things I learned on the trip last week is that there are pelicans in Nebraska. I learned this by seeing them. Otherwise I would have thought that I was being BS'd. They were all over the wetlands along 80 in middle Nebraska. Apparently they are just passing through, but there were sure a lot of them. Thanks to google, I learned that they probably breed in South Dakota. I also saw herds of wild turkeys on the sides of the highway, groups of more than 10 in some places.

Needs Serif

I think they probably could have broken out a Serif font for this one, Colorado roadsign stylebook be damned. Photo taken, uh, one mile from Illiff.
If you geek out about stuff like this, the NYT had a nice article on road sign fontage a couple years back.

Link

on.


Out and about. Blogging shall resume shortly.

Good omen for the Garage Sale season

Garage sale season is a fair weather sport in these parts, but despite the high winds, subfreezing temperatures and flurries, the first few garage sales of the year happened today. The first two were useless, but the third was a treasure trove. On the first visit, we got this for 10 bucks:

click the picture to go over to an annotated photo on flickr. But yes, there are two etch-a-sketches, two viewmaster viewers and a whole bunch of books that I had as a kid. It was great. When Elena and I were going through the booty after we returned we realized there were more books that we probably wanted and the price was right and it was only two blocks away. So after a couple of breakfast burritos we walked back down there and bought 15 more books and this treasure:


this may have come with a plane as well, but it was well populated with little people and there even was one piece of luggage for the luggage cart. The rotors on the helicopter work and the radar still rotates mostly:


Now we bought all this for Aida, but she is a bit young for most of it, but she already took a liking to some of the delicious new books:


After talking with the sellers we learned they had kids born about 5 years after Elena and I, hence the similarity in what they were selling and what we had/wanted as a child. It turned out they had the very much coveted Fisher Price Barn, garage and some other sets that were not for sale waiting for grandchildren's visits. Can't win them all, but we did pretty darn well today...

Road find of the Day

Folding stabby knife!

Stabby stabby stabby!
Found just over the Ottowi bridge. I have been really hurting for road finds the last couple years. Los Alamos is not that big a place and only has a few roads really, so it is difficult to find stuff, not like Knoxville, which was a non-stop road find fiesta. Lots of roads, no one walks around so little competition for tools there in Knoxville. I seem to find lots of utility knives. This is at least number 5, but only the third usable one. By far the nicest too, what with the folding action and the case and the 5 new blades in the handle. I also find an inordinate number of english sockets. Mostly 3/8". What are your common road finds?

I don't count truck lugnuts, but I have a lot of those too, including lots and lots of "locking" lugnuts that obviously don't work. Mostly I only pick those up if they are right next to me at a light. I pick up lots of ejected pedal reflectors off the trails too, but neither are really satisfying road finds. Lugnuts are an impressive amount of machining and plating though for something that falls off so often.

Yearly Apricot Blossom Snow

This year it occurred on March 26-27, 6+ inches of snow accompanied by an overnight low of 15 degrees or so. Last year we got 4 apricots, two years ago we had a billion. Lets see what we have this year. It seems like the blooms are a bit early this year, but we will see, I think, for future reference the first blooms started on 3/22.



2008 snowy apricots on 4/10/2008


2007 snowy apricots on 4/13/2007, looks like blooming started on 3/20/2007

Juniper pollen plagues moscaline

Despite tiny armies of juniper pollen infesting my entire respitory system, I have still been busy. Here is a brief update of recent activities:

1. I have been doing a fair bit of ski racing. I am three race reports behind. If I don't get on it, I will be 4 race reports behind by saturday night.

2. In betwixt ski waxing I have been desperately trying to get more than one bike running simultaneously. I think I had 6 or 7 down with flats or mechanicals as of last saturday. I am a lazy mechanic of late, but it is hard to predict things like oddly broken chains and bizarrely defective tubes:

There is a leak in that tube somewhere, but only that one bulbous section will pressurize, so I can't find it.

3. I have put about 50 miles on the 24" Hunter BMX bike this week in commuting and messing around. This is mostly due to the fact that is was my only functioning bike without studded tires. I suck at jumping still, but it is fun to ride. Cats are nonplussed:


4. I have discovered new ways of working out using only body weight resistance. Aida loves it:


5. Team baby blue bicycle dropped in for a visit as I was waylaid by the persistent pollens. They seemed to want practice babyholding, chad photographs as oddly as usual:


6. Between this and all the damn unicycle kids in town, I have some hope for the future:


7. Patch kits are confounding. I don't think I have ever had one that was useful at the time I needed it on the road. This was a new and unique failure, usually the glue just deliquesces, leaving behind a useless tube carcass:



8. The bees, they are kaput. I will report back with details, but they did not come out when the neighbor bees did, and they did not seem to be cleaning their stoop as they usually do. Our bee keepers took the hive away today, hopefully I will get some answers tomorrow. Our neighbors bees are going gangbusters, maybe a interbee war, or maybe just bad luck...

and put your helmeton

Instead of buying a new helmet, I plan to reuse Aida's bumbo. Clever, eh? Now where did I put those protein pills

These are for you

It has been warmer than usual since mid january so these grew, and then it was 18 degrees and hailing and snowing a bit, so I picked these for you.

I also wanted to be more like the LFOAB, so I shaved, for very similar reasons he did.

Never done this before

Or at least never done this and kept on riding.
The good news is that I did not crash in traffic when it happened, and I made it about two miles home before I figured out what the dealy-o was. I did drop the chain a few times, I thought I just bent a link, but no, that ain't bent. I now have two bikes with bent or broken chains. Both relatively new chains. Crap.

If you look carefully you can see the juniper pollen on the chainring. We are beset with eye-itching-sneezing plagues of it.

Ubikequitous 6, Tolstoy

It was also during his sixties that Tolstoy learned how to ride a bicycle. He took his first lesson exactly one month after the death of his and Sonya’s beloved youngest son. Both the bicycle and an introductory lesson were a gift from the Moscow Society of Velocipede-Lovers. One can only guess how Sonya felt, in her mourning, to see her husband pedaling along the garden paths. “Tolstoy has learned to ride a bicycle,” Chertkov noted at that time. “Is this not inconsis-tent with Christian ideals?”
Elif Batuman, The murder of Leo Tolstoy:
A forensic investigation Harper's Feb. 2009.

Ridiculous and very enjoyable tale of attending an international Tolstoy conference in Russia.


Possibly similar posts:
Neils Bohr on a bicycle

previous ubikequiti

Oh yeah, Cats (and hauling recycling)

Here are some videos for you.
Hauling Cardboard


Radium, the smallest of our cats, well belled for the good of the birds

French Bicycle Light Extravaganza

I just added a whole passel of new links on the sidebar, but let me just point out one that I added a month or so ago. Aldo is a stalwart classic bike nut. We met ever so briefly at a Cirque du Ciclisme in 2002 or something like that. We almost met for longer during the ride associated with the Cirque when I nearly ran into the back of his Paris-Robaix derailered bike when he slowed slightly for a stop sign and I did not slow quite as much, thankfully he is mostly unaware of that fact. Anyhow, he has an excellent blog that pretty much has been a festival of obscure french bike lighting, it has the currently unwieldy name of
another delivery of old french lights to the island of misfit bicycles. Please check it out. Here are some small selections of goodies from his blog, click any photo for the source post. Huzzah the french.

French Lights arrive in Straw Bedding


Aldo assures me that he comes in peace


striped!


Set this pucky to Vaporize


Nubbily


Spectacular bicycle stuff, thanks Aldo!

Xtracycle Gallery

For those who can't get enough of longtails, there is a newish blog called Xtracycle Gallery chock full of xtracycles and big dummys. My green giant is there at number 282.



Check it out.

Happy Day!