For some reason, it’s nearly impossible to find one that’s sold in the United States, let alone manufactured here. But Bear Paw Wilderness Designs has stepped in to fill the gap. I had such a hard time finding these that it’s worth posting about!
I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me 20 years to figure this out: If you get the tire almost all the way on and the last section is way too tight to get over the rim, you need to get more slack in the tire.
Start at the opposite side, and go around the part of the tire that’s already in place, compressing it and pushing the edges down into the rim so it gets as far in there as possible. You’ll end up with more slack in the section that’s not mounted, and then you can usually get it over the rim by pushing it with the edge of your tire lever.
It’s true: You don’t have to be He-Man to change a tire!
January 13, 2015 Filed under Tech
So far this is the most expensive piece of gear I’ve ever purchased. You can bet I agonized for quite a while knowing that by getting it I was extending my mortgage for six months. But how often do you get the chance – and the time – to tour New Zealand?
My Canon 50D was starting to show a lot more grain in photos than I remembered seeing when I bought it. I don’t understand why; maybe some kind of sensor degradation after thousands of photos. Or maybe I was just expecting more from the camera. When I got the 5D I swapped my old lens onto it and took a walk around town shooting photos at night, and the grain was completely gone. In fact, the difference was as big as the difference between my old camera and my cellphone. This thing absolutely devours light.
After thousands of photos in New Zealand and elsewhere, I have only one small regret: It’s still a chore to add GPS data to photos from this thing. It still requires an extra step, instead of happening automatically and with no secondary device. That aside, I would confidently take this thing around the world, knowing that with the right accessories I could get exactly the shot I wanted, any time, any place.
December 13, 2014 Filed under Tech
Kerry and I used these almost every day during our month in New Zealand, even in pouring rain, and they fundamentally changed our riding experience.
Wearing them, we just speak like we’re right next to each other all the time. We never have to raise our voices over road noise. The software inside the headsets automatically turns up the volume of the speaker, and turns up the threshold of the microphone, when ambient noise increases. When you draw up close to another rider, the units actually detect their own echo and shut off temporarily. This will keep you from going insane. The software driving them is obviously very smart.
Before, it was impossible to communicate if one of us was going faster than 15mph, or got more than 25 feet away. Now, it’s effortless, and the experience of biking together is much more intimate. They also enhance our safety a great deal, because we no longer have to crane our necks to hear each other when riding single file, or when it’s windy, or when there’s traffic noise. We can say things like “pothole ahead” or “turn left” or “watch out for the next curve” even at 20mph on a downhill. When we’re farther apart we can actually hear an approaching car in the other rider’s headset, so if we’re on a quiet road we have longer to prepare for the car, and the person in front can even tell how far behind the other rider is by listening to the delay.
In addition to using them as full-duplex intercoms, you can use them as bluetooth headsets for your phone, and they work just as well in that mode. They will also play music, via bluetooth or a line-in jack, and switch between audio sources automatically when prudent. The music part is a disappointment though. The speakers don’t have very good bass reproduction, and the switch between music and voice has a long delay. It would be much better if they just reduced the volume of the music around the voice – what audio engineers call “ducking” – but they don’t do that, even with the line-in.
Every now and then they will forget their pairing when they’re first started up, which delays things by about 15 seconds in the morning. But then they will last for an eight-hour ride, so there’s no need to shut them off until you’re done for the day. Recharging them will take hours, though, so you better have a free USB port for each unit, and you’ll want to charge them every day – because you will miss them sorely once you get used to them. The unit can unclip from the helmet, so you don’t have to stick your helmet next to your USB hub while you’re charging it.
If you’re traveling on a bike with a partner, or in a group, get a set of these as soon as possible. They are worth the price.
(In 2016 Cardo’s cycling products were acquired by Terrano, so look there now.)
Biking around Oakland all day like some punk-ass deadbeat hipster has been lots of fun.
Also, visiting my parents and sisters and nephews during my time off has been totally awesome.
Don’t worry, there was no permanent scarring. Heh heh heh.
Not to mention the vacations with Erika. She took a picture of me finding … (band hit) … A SHRUBBERY !!!
Our adventures also reached the dizzying heights of … (wait for iiiiit) … SHOPPING FOR PANTS !!!
Should Garrett buy these? Y/N?
In total, I can surely say it was an Excellent Adventure and a Bogus Journey.
But lesson learned: I need to work on big things I believe in, or I feel rudderless. That is why, after a few rounds of interviews, I began working at the Joint Bio-Energy Institute in Emeryville. Contrary to what the name implies, they do not spend all day rolling joints and flailing about spastically. It’s all about alternative fuel research and genetics, yo.
The JBEI is a 20 minute bike ride from my house. Flippin’ sweet. Yesterday I picked up my badge:
I also got a tour of the place. You know those tacky commercials where some actress puts on a white lab coat and stands in front of some complicated beeping machines and glassware to convince you that Bob’s Double-Nose Enhancement Pills are the one true path to enlightenment and skipping merrily through fields of pollen, and also they are definitely not rat poison? The grain of truth in the stereotype is that the white lab coat and the hardware convey REAL SCIENCE, right?
Well, I am now apparently surrounded by REAL SCIENCE.
There are huge rooms here at the JBEI where people in white lab coats stroll around in front of complicated beeping machines and glassware. Tons and tons of glassware; acres of it, with strange liquids writhing inside. There are other rooms filled with thunderous air-conditioning and rows of industrial freezers, with digital readouts saying things like “-80 C”, and signs tacked on the wall reading RADIATION HAZARD and MUST USE PROTECTIVE EYEWEAR.
While I was getting the unofficial walkabout tour from one of my co-managers, I heard a polite voice behind me calling, “Excuse me! Please; excuse me!” I turned around to see a short woman in a lab coat and glasses, with a huge embarrassed grin on her face, and an enormous glass bottle cradled in her arms with some mysterious clear liquid tumbling about inside. She said:
“Can you open this? Like, just loosen it, but not take the lid off? Please?”
Then she handed the bottle. It took a few seconds of careful macho twisting, but I got the cap to turn, and handed the bottle back to her. “You got it! Thank you!” she said, grinning some more, and then turned around and strode back into the lab.
A charming omen for a first day. Like my first day at Apple, when I encountered Steve Jobs in the cafeteria. This omen illustrates the general tone for this new chapter in my working life: I like helping scientists!
The rest of the day was spent setting up my build environment, then diving straight into a thorny mess of code. Afterwards I was dead tired, but Erika gave me a ride to the Soup Restaurant of Deliciousness, and I perked up over the meal. We had an excellent time.
That night I prepped the recumbent in the living room:
Inflated tires, oiled chain, tightened bolts, and reattached storage bags.
The bags contained items to customize my work area:
Some time after I packed it up and rolled sleepily into bed, Erika sent me an Emoji version of how my next day would go:
She got it spot on. The ride next morning went perfectly, and the recumbent sparked a conversation in the parking garage, and I made a new friend, then another in the elevator on the way up to the fourth floor.
The second day: Eight hours of A-game hacking. By the end of the session, I’d learned a ton of new things about Java, Tomcat, Ant, and Indigo, and I’d come up with a good strategy for untangling the design flaws in the my newly-assigned project.
Awwww yeah.
Then I rode home, fed the cat, grabbed some laundry, rode to Erika’s, and we dashed out to catch yoga. An hour-and-a-half of balancing, stretching, and serene, focused movement. An excellent Tuesday ritual. Between this and the bombastic expression of Karaoke I think I have a good thing going.
Let’s see where it takes me!