my favorite local outdoor store is suffering from the trend to try to do too much stuff with too few people. evidently store-delivery-to-avoid-shipping-charges is totally popular. their customer service area was overflowing with boxes, customer service had one guy working both the counter and phones, and it looked like a total nightmare.
it seemed extraordinarily busy for a wednesday night. maybe that was the problem. but i was glad i'd brought a book for my wait in line.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
panniers! and man, are they yellow! (review-like thing)
yep. and not a moment too soon. i got home tonight to find an e-mail in my inbox notifying me that my new panniers had arrived at my favorite local outdoor store. i'd gotten home from work too late to go out for a ride anyway, so i high-tailed it over there and fetched them.
they're 'police line: do not cross'-yellow. i think i might like the color. it helps that they are luminous on the inside. 'cause of that it will be very easy to locate stuff in them, should i ever need to do that. since they're yellow, i expect they will reflect heat in the summer, so i might even be able to get my ice cream home from the store before it melts, on all but the very hottest days. if i ride really really fast. ooh. that sounds like exercise. and the shape seems fine for library books, or a couple of bottles of wine or a 6-pack of beer.
these are 'dry bags', so they close by folding the top openings over a couple of times (think: lunch bag), and anchoring the side 'ears'. i am not shy about riding in the rain, so this is a good thing. for a closure the designers spec'd the bags with half a side-release buckle on each of the side ears -- a male end on one; a female end on the other (bless their hearts!). so one may either lock them together on top of the bag; or lock the half-buckles into a strap that slides into a hook on the front, and doubles as a shoulder strap. it looks as if the deciding factor between the two closure methods might well be the fullness of the bag. the rack hooks clamp onto the rails on top of the rack. this may be normal to the rest of the world, but not to me, so i'm happy about this. the hooks release automatically when one pulls up on the bag handle. there is also a hook-like thing to keep the bottom of the bag stable, and which i haven't quite figured out yet.
a product review i read noted that the instructions are kind of hard to follow. i didn't find them so much hard to follow, as hard to understand. it's a series of drawings that are very clear and well-drawn, so it's easy to see what's what and how it goes together. but because there are no words, it's hard to know initially what function a couple of the little thingies serve, or how they will work in real life.
my only concern with these, is with how they will ride when empty; because they really weren't designed for that -- they were designed for travel. but a review i read stated that the bags are decent for shopping, and the manufacturer says so too. so it seems one can make them work. the manufacturer also makes a similar bag in a so-called 'shopping' version, but a pair of those would be significantly more expensive -- about $15 per bag more -- for a slightly different closure and shoulder strap configuration. not sure why there's so great a price difference on those. but it looks as if the expectation is that consumers will purchase only one of the 'shopping' version. i just happen to need room for milk, flour, cans of tomatoes, and buns, which i would rather not flatten on the way home. for that one needs volume.
can you tell that i get a ridiculous amount of joy from good design? the designers of these things thought hard about their intended use, and did a lovely job with them. i am quite giddy!
expect a follow-up on how these things work 'in the field' ~
they're 'police line: do not cross'-yellow. i think i might like the color. it helps that they are luminous on the inside. 'cause of that it will be very easy to locate stuff in them, should i ever need to do that. since they're yellow, i expect they will reflect heat in the summer, so i might even be able to get my ice cream home from the store before it melts, on all but the very hottest days. if i ride really really fast. ooh. that sounds like exercise. and the shape seems fine for library books, or a couple of bottles of wine or a 6-pack of beer.
these are 'dry bags', so they close by folding the top openings over a couple of times (think: lunch bag), and anchoring the side 'ears'. i am not shy about riding in the rain, so this is a good thing. for a closure the designers spec'd the bags with half a side-release buckle on each of the side ears -- a male end on one; a female end on the other (bless their hearts!). so one may either lock them together on top of the bag; or lock the half-buckles into a strap that slides into a hook on the front, and doubles as a shoulder strap. it looks as if the deciding factor between the two closure methods might well be the fullness of the bag. the rack hooks clamp onto the rails on top of the rack. this may be normal to the rest of the world, but not to me, so i'm happy about this. the hooks release automatically when one pulls up on the bag handle. there is also a hook-like thing to keep the bottom of the bag stable, and which i haven't quite figured out yet.
a product review i read noted that the instructions are kind of hard to follow. i didn't find them so much hard to follow, as hard to understand. it's a series of drawings that are very clear and well-drawn, so it's easy to see what's what and how it goes together. but because there are no words, it's hard to know initially what function a couple of the little thingies serve, or how they will work in real life.
my only concern with these, is with how they will ride when empty; because they really weren't designed for that -- they were designed for travel. but a review i read stated that the bags are decent for shopping, and the manufacturer says so too. so it seems one can make them work. the manufacturer also makes a similar bag in a so-called 'shopping' version, but a pair of those would be significantly more expensive -- about $15 per bag more -- for a slightly different closure and shoulder strap configuration. not sure why there's so great a price difference on those. but it looks as if the expectation is that consumers will purchase only one of the 'shopping' version. i just happen to need room for milk, flour, cans of tomatoes, and buns, which i would rather not flatten on the way home. for that one needs volume.
can you tell that i get a ridiculous amount of joy from good design? the designers of these things thought hard about their intended use, and did a lovely job with them. i am quite giddy!
expect a follow-up on how these things work 'in the field' ~
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
about panniers in general, and the ones i've ordered in particular.
my personal feeling, is that if you're going to use only one set of panniers, rear ones are the way to go. it seems much more stable.
a counterintuitive point about panniers (based solely on my own experience): you can ride with a single, fairly-heavy pannier without feeling off balance. one could end up with some deleterious lopsided muscle development if one doesn't at least alternate between the left & the right (my old panniers had a left & a right), but i've ridden with some serious weight in a single pannier -- like, a stack of library books, for example -- and never felt at all lopsided. balancing the bike when it's standing still can be tricky when it's only loaded on one side, but i've never had a problem riding that way.
the panniers i'm waiting for are a set of ortlieb 'backrollers', in yellow. i hate yellow. but a little-spoken-of fact of bags, is that if they are a light color on the inside, it's way easier to find stuff. i learned from the vendor that the yellow ones are also yellow on the inside. the other choices were black (nope) and red (nope). i went with "don't kill me with your car"-yellow. the ortliebs were reviewed really well, and seem quite roomy. they've got to be bigger than my last panniers. we'll see.
a counterintuitive point about panniers (based solely on my own experience): you can ride with a single, fairly-heavy pannier without feeling off balance. one could end up with some deleterious lopsided muscle development if one doesn't at least alternate between the left & the right (my old panniers had a left & a right), but i've ridden with some serious weight in a single pannier -- like, a stack of library books, for example -- and never felt at all lopsided. balancing the bike when it's standing still can be tricky when it's only loaded on one side, but i've never had a problem riding that way.
the panniers i'm waiting for are a set of ortlieb 'backrollers', in yellow. i hate yellow. but a little-spoken-of fact of bags, is that if they are a light color on the inside, it's way easier to find stuff. i learned from the vendor that the yellow ones are also yellow on the inside. the other choices were black (nope) and red (nope). i went with "don't kill me with your car"-yellow. the ortliebs were reviewed really well, and seem quite roomy. they've got to be bigger than my last panniers. we'll see.
today's tiny grocery run.
this is a 'tale of woe'. and yet..
i almost fell asleep on the train on my way home from work tonight. and early. by cicero i was nodding. i soooo wish i could commute to my job by bicycle, but my job is 26 miles away, through some wicked traffic and blood-curdling neighborhoods. if there were a safe route, i'd shoot for doing it once every other week, but there's not. (i didn't have my current job when we bought our house. my commute eats into the biking, but i ride public transport into chicago, and hoof it a couple of miles to work from there.)
i'd promised my spouse that i'd make a grocery run. and i wasn't driving to do it. i had one pannier -- a piece of garbage that kind of wasn't, if one thinks about the fact that i'd had it (and its partner, which gave up the ghost last year-ish) since 1992. i hated those panniers, and have new ones on order, but they haven't arrived yet.
so i ate some brown rice salad, which was almost the last immediately grabbable food in the fridge, suited up my sleepy bones, grabbed keys & the pannier, and headed out. to kramer foods in hinsdale.
hinsdale is a wealthy suburb. which makes the condition of their streets an absolute mystery. i guess the town's residents never drive their beemers on their own streets. or something. hinsdale's streets are in some kinda rough shape.
kramer foods is not the only grocery store within reasonable biking distance, but they have bell & evans chickens (which i only buy very occasionally, 'cause a whole fryer's like $3/lb, and they're giant. i think the one i bought tonight may be the first 4-lb chicken i've ever even seen in a normal grocery store). kramer foods is also a liiiittle bit farther than the jewel i've just started riding to.
in my rush to get out the door, i forgot to grab a water bottle. duh. so i had no water for the trip there, but whatever. i figured i'd buy a gatorade for my water bottle cage while i was there.
i made my tour of the store, picked up milk, skipped the oj because it was too expensive, even considering the wear & tear i was sparing the car, got a few other things -- the entire time keeping in mind how much would fit in my pannier. i'm very good with the spatial relationship between groceries and that pannier. and i found the gatorade i needed, in a cooler near the front door by the deli section. it wasn't very cold.
i paid for my stuff, and said i didn't need a bag, then volunteered to pack my own groceries. i totally nailed it as far as what would fit. it was perfect.
then i popped the top zipper on the main compartment. i had burger buns floating on top -- and no bungee cord.
sigh.
but as it happened, the strap that secured the pannier to my bike rack fit exactly between the buns. so i cinched it up as tightly as i could (not especially tight under ideal circumstances), and biked carefully over hinsdale's crummy streets.
when i got home, i tossed the pannier into the trash. now i really want those new panniers to arrive.
i almost fell asleep on the train on my way home from work tonight. and early. by cicero i was nodding. i soooo wish i could commute to my job by bicycle, but my job is 26 miles away, through some wicked traffic and blood-curdling neighborhoods. if there were a safe route, i'd shoot for doing it once every other week, but there's not. (i didn't have my current job when we bought our house. my commute eats into the biking, but i ride public transport into chicago, and hoof it a couple of miles to work from there.)
i'd promised my spouse that i'd make a grocery run. and i wasn't driving to do it. i had one pannier -- a piece of garbage that kind of wasn't, if one thinks about the fact that i'd had it (and its partner, which gave up the ghost last year-ish) since 1992. i hated those panniers, and have new ones on order, but they haven't arrived yet.
so i ate some brown rice salad, which was almost the last immediately grabbable food in the fridge, suited up my sleepy bones, grabbed keys & the pannier, and headed out. to kramer foods in hinsdale.
hinsdale is a wealthy suburb. which makes the condition of their streets an absolute mystery. i guess the town's residents never drive their beemers on their own streets. or something. hinsdale's streets are in some kinda rough shape.
kramer foods is not the only grocery store within reasonable biking distance, but they have bell & evans chickens (which i only buy very occasionally, 'cause a whole fryer's like $3/lb, and they're giant. i think the one i bought tonight may be the first 4-lb chicken i've ever even seen in a normal grocery store). kramer foods is also a liiiittle bit farther than the jewel i've just started riding to.
in my rush to get out the door, i forgot to grab a water bottle. duh. so i had no water for the trip there, but whatever. i figured i'd buy a gatorade for my water bottle cage while i was there.
i made my tour of the store, picked up milk, skipped the oj because it was too expensive, even considering the wear & tear i was sparing the car, got a few other things -- the entire time keeping in mind how much would fit in my pannier. i'm very good with the spatial relationship between groceries and that pannier. and i found the gatorade i needed, in a cooler near the front door by the deli section. it wasn't very cold.
i paid for my stuff, and said i didn't need a bag, then volunteered to pack my own groceries. i totally nailed it as far as what would fit. it was perfect.
then i popped the top zipper on the main compartment. i had burger buns floating on top -- and no bungee cord.
sigh.
but as it happened, the strap that secured the pannier to my bike rack fit exactly between the buns. so i cinched it up as tightly as i could (not especially tight under ideal circumstances), and biked carefully over hinsdale's crummy streets.
when i got home, i tossed the pannier into the trash. now i really want those new panniers to arrive.
of course i ride recreationally.
i really do just hop on my bike and go out and ride around. but sometimes that just seems like too much effort. not the exercise itself -- deciding where to go, whether to turn here or there, deciding when to stop... it all seems like a lot of deciding. especially where i live. so a big part of my so-called 'physical conditioning program' relies on my having a destination and something to be accomplished.
besides. gas prices have gotten plain silly. and with all that gas, we're mainly moving the car. a bike takes a lot less energy to move overall, and the food we power our bikes with is mighty tasty. food prices are going up, too, but we humans on bikes burn way fewer calories than our cars, and there are some high-calorie foods that are pretty darn cheap. and have i remembered to soliloquize about the yumminess of food? [insert soliloquy: 'food is yummy' here] that's not my personal reason for riding. but eating is absolutely a fun and sanctioned activity ancillary to cycling.
i'm here to encourage everyone to start biking their errands for all kinds of reasons besides just wasting food. (but i'll probably mention what i eat from time to time, just for the heck of it.)
if you think you can't bike to the hardware store, or the grocery store, get out a map. you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish by bicycle. no, you won't be able to buy a table saw or a shop vac by bike; and i strongly advise against attempting to get a 36 x 48" sheet of foam-cor home by bike. but other stuff -- groceries and library books, for instance, are bikable objects. you can definitely bike to the bank. you can bike to the auto-parts store, if you're car's broken, and if you bike other places too, you won't have a heart attack on the way home with your new alternator.
so stay tuned. i'll be relating my adventures cycling in downers grove illinois, and environs.
besides. gas prices have gotten plain silly. and with all that gas, we're mainly moving the car. a bike takes a lot less energy to move overall, and the food we power our bikes with is mighty tasty. food prices are going up, too, but we humans on bikes burn way fewer calories than our cars, and there are some high-calorie foods that are pretty darn cheap. and have i remembered to soliloquize about the yumminess of food? [insert soliloquy: 'food is yummy' here] that's not my personal reason for riding. but eating is absolutely a fun and sanctioned activity ancillary to cycling.
i'm here to encourage everyone to start biking their errands for all kinds of reasons besides just wasting food. (but i'll probably mention what i eat from time to time, just for the heck of it.)
if you think you can't bike to the hardware store, or the grocery store, get out a map. you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish by bicycle. no, you won't be able to buy a table saw or a shop vac by bike; and i strongly advise against attempting to get a 36 x 48" sheet of foam-cor home by bike. but other stuff -- groceries and library books, for instance, are bikable objects. you can definitely bike to the bank. you can bike to the auto-parts store, if you're car's broken, and if you bike other places too, you won't have a heart attack on the way home with your new alternator.
so stay tuned. i'll be relating my adventures cycling in downers grove illinois, and environs.
why get around by bike?
1. bikes are cheaper than cars.
2. your entire bike is cheaper than almost anything you can have done to a car. ball joints? front wheel bearings? replacing the suspension? having a head gasket swapped out? depending what you drive, one of those things might cost more than your entire bike. a couple of them together, definitely. and the bike i'm talking about is not a big-box store p.o.s. a couple of major repairs on an older vehicle could add up to the price of a decent mountain bike. and that's just the repairs. and let's look into our hearts for a second. what are we paying for car insurance, these days?
3. biking will keep you at least minimally in shape and you'll hardly even notice that you're exercising. seriously. you'll be thinking so hard about where you're going and what you're going to do when you get there, that you won't even think about the fact that you're getting exercise.
4. parking your bike is easier than parking your car, even if you have to hunt around for something solid to lock it to. and you don't have to worry too much about accidentally running someone over or scraping their car.
5. if you decide to go for a recreational ride, you'll be able to crank out 60 miles without even feeling it. (as long as you've brought water and snacks!)
6. you can ignore a significant percentage of 'road closed' signs.
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