Author: Daniel

Daniel https://turnings.phrasewise.com/ In the 4th grade Daniel was asked to step in into the hall because he was coaching fellow students on a similarity assignment he provided the class. Since then, Daniel’s passion for helping people has propelled him to be a creative developer of software and systems, and a team coach who excels at successfully delivering business value. Daniel founded QuietlyHelping in 2009 in order to have a direct hand in helping families with the struggles of debilitating disease. QuietlyHelping is an organization of compassion and empathy that brings ease, comfort, smiles, laughter, healing, and love to people battling cancer and other diseases. Spare time activities include cycling, occasional work as a musician, woodworking, photography, and reading books he never got around to in school. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is able to cook minute rice in just under thirty seconds.
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Today’s ride…

Picture 1.png6:13am this morning I was already in Piermont, and starting my ride. Nasty for a weekend, but that’s the price I pay for having a full life. No real complaints… except it is seriously cold these days in the morning. And dark. Like, no going anywhere without lights dark. Fortunately traffic is light at that hour on Sunday. However, you can’t really relax, because the folks who are up at that hour seem generally annoyed that they have to be up at that hour on Sunday. Maybe surly would be a better description.

On a similar ride last week, I was feeling terrible. That is, I kept looking down at the speedo and seeing really low numbers. 9mph, 12mph and I felt I was working really hard. At first I chalked it up to the early hour. Then I got worried my ride partner would get annoyed at the pace and pick it up, and really I felt like I couldn’t really go a whole lot faster for very long. Strange I thought, that I have so little this day, but it happens sometimes (usually a mental thing) and since my ride partner was not complaining about the pace… who cares?

We get to the bottom of our loop and after a small climb we hit a gradual but long downhill section… one where we almost always enjoy gravity and push for whatever we’ve got. So off we go and I’m feeling like it should when we’re cruising at 24mph or so… except I look down at the speedo and 16.5, 17… Huh? not possible. There’s a permanent radar installation near a school we were just about to pass. I look up and sure enough 24 or so. Aha! Hey, Jenni! What does your speedo say? 23 or so Why? Tell ya later…

So here’s the payoff. After the last ride I commented to Jenni how slow the avg. speed had been on the ride. So she had tried hard to pay attention to the pace and keep things moving. (I, of course, thought I was going to collapse moving at what I thought was only 12mph.) Naturally, the speedo was set wrong for the previous ride also (the wheel size was set wrong). So she pushed because she wanted me to have a good ride, and I pushed the pace because I thought I was moving at a snails pace with the end result being one of the fastest rides of the year. Silly. And it leads me to this.

I often ride without any “data” like a speedo. I don’t have one on every bike. And there is something to be said for that. You trust your feelings entirely with no other gauge available. Now I enjoy seeing the numbers and having the data. Measurement is one of the few ways to ensure progress. But times like this make me want to ditch the thing entirely. All of us had a good chuckle about it though.

Busy, busy

Let’s see, where were we? I forget… it’s been too long. So here’s the brief: Noah started his new school, things have been really crazy at work, the holidays are coming, the morning weather has been freezing (from a bike riding perspective 45F is cold) but all in all, things are good. How’s by you? Technical stuff later…

Jenni’s first post-biopsy ride

5974AC82-E5C8-4419-9BD9-675DF36DDCA6.jpg
. Sure, there was griping, but that is to be, er um, expected. (And I do my fair share as conditions warrant.) However there’s parts to the tory that Jenni did not tell. I’ve been on countless rides where the path was hers we’ve I’ve heard over and over “That’s the last hill…” only to find yet another hill just around the corner. The other part is that she really did have an invasive procedure from which she isn’t healed, so we took it slow. Now that has two effects. It makes some hills harder, and roughness of the road bothered her more than the effort. So the weather was cool, she isn’t healed, we took it slow, and there was some grade.

I should add that I was almost dressed right at the beginning… arms warmers, knee warmers and a vest helped protect from the chill. My arms started out feeling colder than I would have hoped. Everything else was fine, and I even had to roll down the warmers before we were through.

Allez!

Fat Tires

Fat Tires: The horrible roads don’t seem as bad, the bumps not quite so severe. I didn’t lose much in the form of performance, in many ways I’ve gained. In many situations the fatties handle better. [snip -ed] I don’t plan on riding skinny ever again.

Here’s another blog entry with a similar theme. [I can’t make such an emphatic statement. I love both for what they are. There’s a time and a place. At the moments my tires run from 2.35 (Schwalbe Big Apple) fatties to 35c and 33 middle of the roads, to 21/23c skinnies. They all have their place, and they’re all lovely. I will add that as the weather turns colder I spend more time on fatter tires. Seems like part of the cycle of life.]
Source: MnBicycleCommuter

Environmental Constraint = Better Quality

Environmental constraints, because they impel us to reduce waste and narrow our choices in raw materials and trims, also help us improve the business’s bottom line. When we reduce complexity, we allow ourselves to focus our efforts on greater innovations. We’ve learned that in reality, unlimited choice ultimately drives up costs. The ‘Live Simply’ mantra turns out to be more than a nice bumper-sticker slogan; it’s sound business advice. Time and again we’ve learned that when we do the right thing we end up doing well.[The project I’m working on is just starting to learn this lesson… I hope.]
Source: The Cleanest Line

Weapon of choice (winter division)

IMG_0129.jpgLittle steps on the way to the fall/winter season…

I have a new wheel. It’s got a blingy Chris King singlespeed hub in red. But wait you say, it looks like there’s gears on there? And Hmmm. 6 of them? Strange. The idea is to build a very strong and stiff wheel, so Jeff Jones reworks an cassette to create a 34 -17 set, designed around using a singlespeed hub so that there’s no offset. The wheel is built with equally tensioned spokes. It also makes it super easy to convert to a single speed should I desire. Nice. All part of the WOC(WD) (see the title).

Allez!
IMG_0131.jpg

Billykirk

123B_FRONT_OPEN1.jpg There’s a certain amount of synchronicity in my life. New things pop up in several places at once. In this case a friend with whom I often pass design ideas, sites, and writing sent me a link to the design of a token he liked, and another blog pointed me to Freeman Transport who making a fixie bike with S&S couplers and a bag to match. The bag looks like the work of Billykirk, which a few days I never would have known. There’s a link on the sidebar… cool.

Anyway, the designs are interesting, and I heard from Chris Bray when I wrote about a future product, and we’ve been passing design ideas back and forth. Cool. I love the understated simplicity coupled with handworked quality that seems to be the hallmark of their designs. Personally, I like the No. 123 Shoulder Pouch and from the Preview page, the item I wrote to Chris about the No. 206 ‘Green’ Giant Shopper. (Bergundy? Oh yeah…)

And to my biking friends, Freeman Transport will be selling the bag by itself.