In Which I Take a Nice Camera for a Ride

Bike parked in rack at Regina Hall. It took me a long time to try to get this shot, but here I am in the cracked mirror of Francis. About to start on my way, wearing the Nikon.

I had to meet a student on campus today so that he could use a newspaper camera to shoot a basketball game.

I brought my good Nikon camera, too, just to practice a little, and I wrote about that in another blog.

So when I got ready to head home, I decided to document my 4-mile commute in a bit more detail than usual, using the good camera. In short, the things I saw fit into four categories:

1) Creatures of the road. Before I left campus, I noticed a hawk sitting on the cupola of Warde Hall. I shot it from the campus side, but it seemed to be facing away. As I headed down the drive beside Warde Hall, I was almost accosted by another form of wildlife: There were some angry tree rodents. I’m not sure why they took issue with me. Maybe having a hawk up high makes them nervous, although how scampering around and making angry tree rodent noises at me helped solve that problem is a mystery—if anything, I would think they were making themselves more visible to the bird of prey. Anyway, after shooting the squirrels (with a camera), I also photographed the hawk from the street side of Warde Hall.

First squirrel, above, is in mulch-covered garden surrounding crab apple trees at Warde Hall. He or she merely eyed me balefully. The two below (they are two different squirrels) sprang up a tree beside the drive, and proceeded to heckle me as I photographed them. Hey, squirrels, I have a right to be here too. And I"m bigger, and I'll live decades longer than you, so neener-neener-neener to you.

Two views of the cupola hawk.

 

2) Signs of the season. There was a man putting up decorations on his garage on Eastern Avenue, but I was too shy to photograph him. But here are some other decorations I saw.

Santa on Elmhurst Drive across the street from MMU. Tree in lawn (below) near Kenwood School.

3) The stark, bare trees of late fall. It’s starting to look a lot like winter. The ground is not yet frozen, but leaves are history. I prefer trees with their foliage, but the bare branches have their own stark charm, too. Some of the trees along the ride.

I like green leaves, but the shape of bare trees, like roots reaching into the sky, is pretty cool, too. And you can see nests like the one below. The tree that held this nest had five large ones in it, made we wonder who the tenants in that bird apartment building had been, and if they had any amusing sitcoms made about themselves.

A few oak leaves cling to tree at Kenwood School.

A couple of tree reflections in pond at Rockwell-Collins.

4) Some transit signs. I took the shortcut through a weedy lot at the end of F Avenue just south of 42^nd Street, and wondered at a bike leaning against the golf course fence. And I photograph new traffic control measures at the corner of Collins Road and F Avenue. I e-mailed the city about that corner, which has become more difficult to cross, and their e-mail indicated they are putting in these video controls. That might be good news for bikers—I know the ones at the corner of Prairie Drive and 29^th Street seem to “read” bikes OK, so I’m hoping that this corner will again be easy to cross.

Why the bike, against a golf course fence? I don't know. But crossing the path beside said bike did bring some tyre leaves to my bike (below).

New traffic control on F Avenue at Collins. Set to see bikes, I hope. City informed me in an email that it probably will be set to see bicycles in a certain lane "zone" that may be marked later on.

Most snow is gone, melted in rain Thanksgiving Day--but a few mounds of dirty snow are left at the edge of parking lots, and I think they are morphing into interesting shapes as they slowly melt.

In Which I Find Where Cheap Beast Bikes Go To Die

Bike lock at apartment complex locking nothing to the rack.

I've noticed before that bike racks near dorms at Iowa State University are a bit, well, chaotic, with many abandoned bikes accumulating.

They seem to run to inexpensive mountain bikes, like The Beast. I suppose if you had a nice road bike, you’d be unlikely to be taking it to ISU or parking it outside, for that matter.

Friday, we moved Ben back to college. He’s in graduate school now at ISU and lives in an apartment complex near the campus. And it seems the such complexes have racks much like a dorm building.

So this is where beast bikes go to die.

A cluster of dying bikes at a rack near ISU in Ames. Crazy wheels.

Ben is near a shopping complex with both a HyVee and a Goodwill. One end of the complex featured a totally empty bike rack, but then again it is summer in Ames, maybe it will see more use later. And it was near a health clinic—perhaps the sick don’t pedal to their appointments. To be fair, there were some in-use bikes chained up at HyVee.

Empty shopping mall bike rack. Near an SUV. Sigh.

Goodwill featured many pink girls’ bicycles—seems to be a glut on the market for those.

Bikes for sale at Goodwill. All the small girl pink bikes you can possibly want.

The empty bike rack was a bit discouraging, sort of like an empty park on a beautiful day. Oh, wait. Ben’s apartment is next to a nice city park. With an empty playground on a nice summer day. Parents, turn off the electricity in your house and chase the kids outdoors. Even if the kids are in their 20s. Bike racks and playgrounds are only good if they are used.

Empty city park on a nice summer day. And only person we saw recreating outside was a comply lass in a tiny bikini working on her skin cancer. It's a crazy world.

In Which I Wonder About Oklahoma Bike-Eating Trees

See this chilling video from an Oklahoma TV station:

NewsOn6.com - Tulsa, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports - KOTV.com |

Yes, it appears trees in Oklahoma snack on Schwinns.

Although we’ve passed the longest night of the year, much of winter is before us. And it seems that this winter, to paraphrase a popular saying involving another S word, snow just got real. We were supposed to have a flurry on Christmas, and it turned into an inch or more. The snowpack is a foot or so deep, and counting. The streets are nowhere near bike worthy.

So far, this Christmas break has been a total bust, from a biking point of view. Based on the weather forecast for the next week, which includes an arctic air mass and several bouts of snow, I’m not sure how much bike commuting J-Term will have this year, at least to start.

Well, at least the sleeping trees in Iowa aren’t devouring many Schwinns. I guess you’d have to leave your bike leaned up against an arboreal risk zone for quite some time before the trunk began to seriously envelop the machine.

Me, I’m glad Santa brought me some chain lube. I also have two lights to add to Francis before he’s ready for his next commuting trip. And I promise, Francis, if Mother Nature leaves you stranded for a time, I won’t lean you against a hungry Oklahoma tree. Whatever other fate awaits you in 2014, you won’t be Cheetos to some Ent.

In Which Some Wet Rides End With A Sudden “Chunk”

Noelridge Park on the way home. Puddle on the walk, misty air and cloudy sky, although it never did rain on the ride home.

I probably got a bit of a late start this morning. I knew I had to go into the office today, but was worried as the pavement was wet from overnight rain, and I didn’t want to get rained on again. So I kept checking the radar and delaying my departure, and it was around 10 by the time I finally left for work.

You guessed it. If I had left at 8:30 or 9, I would have arrived reasonably dry. But about 10:10, even before I was across the parking lots of Rockwell-Collins, rain began. It was light, but it wasn’t just a mist, either, it was rain, and I got fairly damp on the way in.

Oh well. It was only a light rain and I was only damp, not soaked.

After an afternoon registration session, I headed towards home via the trail around 3:30. I planned to do a bit of a bike ride, and headed south. But the sky clouded up and I was worried about a more vigorous repeat of the morning experience, so by Cedar Lake I turned around. As I rode north, I contemplated heading past Hiawatha, but although it did not rain, the sky kept looking ominous, and I turned towards home.

I decided I would cycle up Bowman Woods Hill, and then maybe ride around for a while close to home.

Two thirds of the way up the hill, however, there was a “chunk,” and my pedals started spinning as my bike slowed and started to back up. I had busted a link of my chain.

So I guess I was lucky that it clouded up and I didn’t head too far south, since that meant that I was within easy walking distance of home.

The bike shop guys say they’ll have Francis up and running by tomorrow, so it’s all OK. Apparently, I had banged the rear derailleur on something and damaged it a bit, which put stress on the chain. Anyway, I’ll get a new chain, and the derailleur can be repaired.

The broken chain.

Well, it was just one of two unexpected bike adventures in the previous two days. The one before had been more pleasant. I had a grandchild who is of cycling age, as in large enough to fit in the bike seat, who had never ridden. But, after seeing my granddaughter Amelia arrive on my bike at a park, this other grandchild decided to take a ride—and loved it. I’ve won another child over to biking.

Just hope the chain is fixed before that grandchild visits again. I think there are more rides coming.

Saw some blooming trees on the ride. Anybody know what they are? The top ones are full-size trees common on the Cedar River Trail. The bottom ones are among three planted in one yard in my neighborhood. Yes, it's true, I'm shopping for a new tree to plant ... given the wet, this seems like the  year for it.

Random Biker Thoughts When Not Biking

An image from http://fortheloveofbikes.blogspot.com/2012/01/downton-abbeys-bicycles-in-1917.html. My wife and I have only just started watching Dowton Abby, and have ordered Seasons one and two--this is Lady Edith from season two.  On a bike.  Nice riding outfit, Lady E!

As expected, the week looks to be a total bust from a biking point of view. While it’s definitely warm enough, snow last week has left that peculiar Cedar Rapids white frosting on may residential streets, rendering biking just too dangerous.

To be far, it seems to me, in a totally unscientific way, that street clearing in snowy CR seems marginally better than in times past, but that might be an artifact of warmer weather following this winter’s snows.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the second half of February. February and early March are still winter (are at least they were in living memory, these days, who knows?), but the increasing sunshine tends to make a snowpack less persistent—and the snow does not have to be “gone” before I can back, just basically retreated from most pavement.

So what are my random biking thoughts?

• My spouse wants to toss the junk bike as a useless money hole. She has a valid point, I admit, but I’m secretly hoping to get a new rear axle before spring break in March. My daughter from England will be visiting, and her husband bikes, and it might be cool if we could get some trail time in while he is in Iowa—it would only be fair, since I borrowed one of his bikes when I was in Norridge last year.

• I’m really, really happy with my back rack. It has made transporting books so much easier. I’m not as in love with my new front basket, which seems pretty flimsy. But, as Red Green once said, it’s only temporary—unless it works.

• The older grandchildren have bikes now, I think. I know Nikayla does, and I thought that they bought a bike for Tristan, too, although I’m not sure. Anyway, I want warm spring weather to arrive so I can be on the Boyson Trail with a grandchild or two who are riding their own bikes. It will be a new family biking thrill.

• I haven’t seen many bikes in Dowton Abby, yet. It does not seem like the British upper crust in the 1920s spends enough time outside, and the servants certainly don’t have the spare time. Still, this is a generation after the “safety bike” craze, and surely bikes are a common commodity in Britain post Great War? What’s the point of beating the Hun and retaining the Empire if one can’t pedal about a bit? (Yes, I've seen some images  from earlier seasons. I have not viewed those seasons, yet.) And I would love to see the Dowager Countess use a three-speed to arrive for some formal luncheon …

That’s it, for now. I’m sure when the weather turns, as inevitably it will, I’ll be back on two wheel.