Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

I spent some time on Saturday experimenting with different headlight mounts on my bike racks.

This is the first attempt. It is just a M5 eyelet on one of the rack stays. Nitto uses something like this on the M12:

It’s a basic but functional solution. The small piece of flat stock gives one a lot of options for where to actually put the light. It looks pretty ugly though. The best part about the light mount on this rack are the three loops for managing the front cable. No zipties here! They are made from rollers pulled from a worn out bicycle chain.

On my convertable Porteur Rack I played with two different options. The first (no light mounted to it in these photos) is a pretty basic design that is easy to make. I just used some 5/16″ tubing with a perpendicular piece at the end for the light’s mounting bolt.

I also need a mount on this bike which is farther back so that it doesn’t interfere with the front wheel hook on a Sportworks bus-mounted bicycle rack. I thought of a nicer and more simplistic option here. I used the shaft from a nail (about 3mm in diameter) and put a 5mm eyelet on the end of it. Minimalistic and functional, I like it.

While I had the torch out I filled in all of the vent holes on my front rack with small nails and brass. That was a lot of work, but now there is no way for water to get in:

During the last few months I’ve been thinking a lot about my shopping habits. I tend to do most of my shopping with local retailers, but I also do a fair amount of mail order. Some of this mail order is for items which I can’t get locally (for instance the item is rare and made in a remote location), but the vast majority of these items are either stocked locally or can be special ordered by a local retailer.

When people talk about shopping locally they usually cite the benefits to the local economy and the personalized service that one gets from smaller retails who are focused on a specific region. These issues are big and have been the primary draw for my local shopping over the past few years. For instance my wife and I buy most of our music from a small music store called The Landing. It has a small number of employees and one of the two owners are often there. The owners live in our neighborhood and so much of the money gets spend here again. They know our musical tastes and make musical recommendations when we shop there and stock the types of music that we like. We can listen to any CD that we’d like on their customer listening stations (a couple of CD playerswith high quality headphones). All of these things make the shopping experience very enjoyable and are more important to me than price (although I think that their prices are competitive). I have similar relationships with my video store, bike shop, grocery stores (although my primary grocery store is a national chain), farmer’s market, and other places that I shop day to day. These are the obvious benefits of local shopping and ones that are commonly discussed.

Another option for me to buy CDs would be shopping with Amazon. Amazon also provides a reasonably nice shopping experience due to the reviews available on their website. I can’t listen to as much of the music as at my local record store, but I can listen to 30 second selections of most tracks. When I buy from Amazon some of the money is going back into my greater community (but this is only true because both Amazon and I are located in Seattle), but it isn’t going into my immediate community. I don’t get the personal attention from Amazon that I get from my local record store,although they do have software that tries to make it feel like I’m getting personal attention. The prices are about the same because Amazon’s prices are cheaper,but I have to pay shipping (or wait a long time).

One of the big differences in shopping with Amazon vs shopping at The Landing are how items are delivered. They both have the same selection (because The Landing can special order items from the same distributors that supply Amazon). However when I order a CD or two from Amazon they come direct to my house. When The Landing orders a CD for me it comes in a box with dozens of other CDs to the store.

Shipping 25 CDs to a single store and having 25 people pick them up from the store has a smaller environmental footprint than shipping 25 CDs to individual houses. The packaging per CD is much smaller when you pack 25 of them into one box than when you use 25 boxes, one per CD (especially with Amazon packaging which tends to use much larger boxes than necessary). A UPS truck delivering 25 CDs to a business requires a single stop where delivering to 25 residences typically requires 25 stops. If the shop is in a commercial area (as The Landing is) then it probably can make a single stop to deliver packages to multiple stores. It is less common that multiple neighboring houses will receive packages on the same day. A UPS truck may take a couple of hours (idling or running the whole time) to deliver packages to those 25 houses.

Some of this gets even more interesting when you look at purchasing more unique items from retailers that are far away. In an extreme example I could decide to purchase Ortlieb bicycle panniers from an east coast shop (because they are slightly cheaper). The distributor is located in Kent, WA (about 20 miles south of Seattle). The panniers are made in Germany. So if I purchased the panniers from an east coast shop they would travel from Germany to the distributor in Kent, then back to a shop on the east coast, and finally back to me in Seattle. Those panniers would have travelled well over 10,000 miles before ever being used and 6,000 of them would be inside my own country to save a small amount of money. In the greater scheme of things I think that it is more beneficial for myself and my community if I am less price conscious and more aware of the route that the item takes to get to me.

I’d love to have numbers on how much fuel is consumed in the shipment of a single package by ground across the country. I’d also like to know what percentage of package deliveries are going to businesses vs homes. It might be possible to estimate the extra fuel consumption for mail order packages using this data.

If anyone knows of any more detailed analysis in this area please let me know. I’ll follow-up here.

This was my second Critical Mass ride. The first was in July 2006, a month after illegal arrests on the June 2006 ride. July 2006 was a huge ride with hundreds of riders (maybe 500) and a supportive police escort. I knew that one wasn’t typical so I thought I’d go again.

For years I’ve been anti-CM without having gone on a ride. In July I learned that the rides are tons of fun. Friday’s ride was great fun too. It’s a massive celebration of bikes and bike culture. All types of cyclists come out. My favorites are the ones who do something extra to their bikes for the event:

Sebastian was pulled 15 miles or so in this trailer and provided refreshments to those in need.

Human powered music on a human powered ride. Another group brought out a sound system and hauled it on a trailer behind a tandem.

The celebration is great and bigger than the ride itself. We did ride (loop around downtown, Elliot/15th out to Ballard, ending at Gasworks), but the route isn’t what was important. I think that the public is startled, amused, and generally sees fun when they see a huge collection of folks riding down the road, playing music, talking, and having a good time on bikes.

I’m not as keen on the traffic blocking aspects.I don’t think it helps with the message that I want to send (bikes are fun and practical means of transportation) when CM blocks intersections and prevents other forms of traffic from getting through. I like the idea of a mass and don’t like seeing it break up, but I also like traffic controls and don’t want to send the message that cyclists should ignore them. Part of me would love to see a different type of CM where traffic laws are obeyed and the group naturallybreaks up and rejoins at different places around the city. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t. CM is well established and I like most of what it is about. I’m going to embrace those aspects.

I’ll be there next month for the party. I hope to see you there too.

Many more photos.

This will be the last rack posting for a little while, until it is actually complete.

(click for more photos)

I installed the other stay and a backstop last night, cleaned up the flux, and mounted the rack on my bike. I only used it for a short ride this morning but it seems to work very well. I was worried that my stays were too far forward and would cause problems with the front wheel hook on the bus rack, but it wasn’t an issue.

Remaining work:

• Install a light mount. I think I’m going to get a Lumotec Oval and mount it between the stay and the wheel. It looks like there is enough space.
• Wire routing for the light.
• Fender eyelets (so the fender mounts to the rack)

The bike handles nicely with the front bag. This isn’t a surprise since it is a lower trail bike (45mm trail). There is a small amount of shimmy when riding no hands, but this will probably go away if I drop the tire pressure a little. I normally ride these tires (28mm Avocet Duros) at 75psi but they are at 90psi right now.

My vacation put a little hold on my rack making, but this week I did get to spend a few hours in the workshop. The gallery is updated.

I’m pretty happy with the progress for a first rack. I wish I had spent more time when making the bends for the rack top, some of them aren’t perfect and it makes the whole thing slightly wonky. The top has a slight twist in it when viewed from the front, it doesn’t all lie in a nice plane. It’ll definately be functional but it might not be pretty.

I’m pretty happy with how the mount to the fork crown came out. It is tricky to get everything to fit when you use a sidepull brake (instead of cantilevers). I should have left my mock-up brake on for the photos.

The other challenging part has been coming up with fixtures for holding things in place while I braze them. I built the rack in this order:

• Make the top
• Make the fork crown mount
• Attach the fork crown mount to the top
• Make and attach the stays to the top
• Make and attach the backstop to the top

Attaching the fork crown mount to the rack top was tricky. I did it by mounting a wheel (no tire) into the fork and putting a long and skinny piece of wood onto the wheel (coming off at a tangent). The end of the wood had a groove which held the front of the rack at the centerline. I useda ziptie around a spoke and the fork blade to keep the whole thing in compression. The rear of the rack was held against the mitered fork crown mount using this compression.

How do others do it?

Christine and I spent last week along the Oregon coast. We had originally planned to go to Jamaica for diving but changed our plans when Christine injured her ears (due to diving with an unknownsinus infection). They’ll heal but the doctor asked her not to fly for a couple of months.

We spent 5 days in Manzanita, OR (about 20 miles south of Cannon Beach and 20 miles north of Tillamook). The weather was so-so but we mentioned to get out for some good hikes on Wednesday and Thursday. I also went for a bike ride almost every day.

On Friday we drove out to Bend, OR and spent two days hanging out with our friends Nate and Sam. Saturday Nate, Christine and I went up to Mt Bachelor for a day of skiing (Christine) and snowboarding (Nate and I).

Some of the good photos follow. There are dozens more that you can view.

OnSunday wehead out from home tostay in a yurtat Fort StevensState Park. I had a lot of fun exploring the old fort. I think that it is incredibleand wonderful that these are left open for people to exploreinstead of boarded up and closed off from thepublic view.My favorite area wasRussell Battery which is getting mossy and green and whichwas completely deserted.

On Tuesday we hiked the Cape Falcon Trail in Oswald West State Park. This was a great hike and since we were there in the off season we only saw a couple of other hikers. The hike goes along a bluff out to the end of the cape. You get great views of the Oswald West beach for the first half of the hike and then wonderful views of the rest of the coastline as you get out to the cape. The forest had early spring wildflowers (trillium mostly) and was very dense and lush from the rain:

Christine enjoying the view from the end of the cape:

and the view itself:

On Thursday we went to Hug Point just south of Cannon Beach and then to Ecola State Park just north of Cannon Beach. At Ecola State Park we hiked the somewhat new Clatsop Loop Trail. This is a 2 1/2 mile trail that climbs up through the forest, takes you to a nice view of a lighthouse, then drops back down closer to the coast, where you get the same view of the lighthouse. Christine and I were both disappointed in it, the Cape Falcon trail was much more scenic, less crowded, and much more enjoyable.

Hug Point was a really pretty beach and reminded me of Shi Shi Beach (although much less remote). It hada waterfall and a lot of interesting rock formations. Sadly we were there as the tide was coming in and couldn’t stay long (you can get trapped on certain parts of the beach). The tide pools also didn’t have very much wildlife at this time of year.

Here is the lighthouse that you see from the Clatsop loop trail:

Finally here are a couple of photos from our ski trip on Saturday. It was Christine’s first time back on skis in about 5 years and she did great. It was my only snowboarding trip this year and I did okay, but still lack confidence sometimes.

It was a great trip. We had never been to Bend and hadn’t been to the Oregon coast in 9 1/2 years. I don’t think we’ll wait that long to return to either area.

I finally made the plunge and bought the equipment necessary to braze racks out of steel. I spent a lot of time asking Alistair, framebuilding members, and random people at NAHBS what I should buy and finally ended up getting a Victor Superrange II. The torch is a little bigger than ideal, but the price for the whole kit was a lot cheaper than putting together my own kit with good regulators and a smaller airplane torch. The included regulator was also compatible with propane (I’m using Oxygen/Propane instead of the more common Oxygen/Acetylene). I also bought a Ridgid 3/8″ tubing bender, stocked up on files, and ordered a bunch of tubing from Aircraft Spruce.

The first project is a handlebar bag rack for my Trek road bike. It has caliper brakes and I’m not crazy about the common designs for racks that would fit.

Tonight I got home and built the platform:

It’s not perfect, but it’ll be perfectly functional. I messed up when measuring the platform and was off by about 1/4″ where it the two ends of the outer tubing join each other. I brazed in a little filler piece of tubing to make it work. The joint isn’t perfectly smooth, but I think it’ll be okay after I sand it out. The perimeter of the rack is made out of 3/8″ tubing because that is what works with my bender, but I’m using lighter 5/16″ tubing elsewhere. Click the picture to see more photos.

I’m excited about building some more and finishing up this. I think my second project will be a good lowrider rack for my Bike Friday, the stock one is terrible.

Lessons learned so far:

• Measure carefully when making the perimeter for a platform
• The flux that Henry James sells is much nicer than what I picked up from the local welding store. I can’t wait for my HJ order to arrive.
• Measure more carefully when trying to make things look balanced. My middle-stay is slightly off center.

Two weekends ago I went to the North American Hand Made Bicycle Show (everyone just called it NAHBS) in San Jose. It was overwhelming and wonderful. I met many great people (builders and visitors — we had a nice lunch on Saturday with a lot of people from the Internet-BOB list).

I have hundreds of photos here:

http://alexandchristine.smugmug.com/gallery/2545060#133876019

This past weekend it was time for the Seattle Bike Expo. I wasn’t super excited about this one, but I did want to stop by and visit Jeff Lyon and see if any other builders showed up. Jeff and I had a nice conversation and also I ran into Val Kleitz (ex-owner of Bikesmith, my favorite bike shop), Kathleen from Free Range Cycles, and some other folks. Sadly I didn’t get to spend too much time at the show and I had to head back before getting to see all of it. Photos from the Expo are here:

http://alexandchristine.smugmug.com/gallery/2576055#135655933

Finally, I just need to plug this really nice new randonneuring bike that Jeff Lyon built:

68mm of fork offset, 650B, custom racks, nice fenderlines, a beautiful paint job by Keith Anderson, and a nice build. It really came together nicely.

alex

I thought of a better way to show the brightness of this home made tail light:

This shows the output of a Vistalite Nebula with pretty fresh AA batteries:

This is the output with my homemade light:

Yes, my basement is a huge mess. Want to help me clean it up?

Christine and I have been taking scuba classes for the last two weeks and did our first (and second) open water dive today. The water wasn’t too bad through 12mm of neoprene (wetsuit plus wetsuit jacket) and we both had a great time despite the murky conditions. Our next set of dives is on Friday and we’re both excited.

We’re really excited for an upcoming trip to Jamaica where we’ll be scuba diving in 80F degree water (instead of 46F degree water) and where we’ll have much better clarity.