Oh it is good. Yes it is. New bearing day. A day of rapturous joy throughout the land.
No play is a damned good thing.
Should have taken pics of the process, but I was too excited. Here is the general run-down:
1: Remove cranks
2: Remove cups
3: Destroy crappy plastic spacer/covers
4: Heat cup to just enough to bring whatever remaining grease to a boil
5: Wrap cup in rag and using a small nail set and hammer, lightly tap the inside lip of the bearing from the backside of the cup
6: Watch in glee as the crap bearing rolls across the floor
7: Wipe down the inside of the cup
8: Place new bearing in place
9: Place cup on 2x4
10: Place 2x4 over top of new bearing
11: Whack it a few times to set bearing
12: Place old bearing over new and finish tapping into place
13: Reassemble bike and go for a ride
The process was actually quite simple. I suppose the special tool would have made it even easier, but by heating the cup, the bearings just kinda slid out and then back in.
Took the boy with me to the river where we rode a nice 6 mile loop and found seven golf balls and one fire extinguisher. Fun times all around.
http://www.adn.com/2013/10/16/3128504/planned-fare-increases-for-bus.html
Bus fares? What'r those? I have about the best situation in the world. I don't have to pay for my bus ride each day. One of my employers does. This holds true for both the Valley Mover system as well as the People Mover system.
However, I can see where a lot of riders would be adversely affected by a fare hike on the People Mover. While I don't disagree with raising some fares - an adult fare of 2 bucks isn't outlandish, it does seem that the fares for seniors should remain static. Those who live on fixed incomes have a hard enough time as it is. Effectively doubling their transportation costs would have an effect greater than anyone on the city council could imagine. Hell, I seriously doubt any of them have ridden a bus in years, if ever.
One thing that caught my eye in the article is that the proposed increase would bring in ~$600,000 a year and roughly half of that would go to boost service. When they say boost service, what do they mean? More buses? Better drivers? Better bike racks? Nicer bus stop shelters? There is mention of running more buses on a few key routes, which is good, but is it worth an overall fare hike?
I don't know all the issues and details with the People Mover. But being a bus rider now, I can see where any fare hike without clearly defined benefits to the riders is viewed as a city government getting greedy.
Certainly a lot of riders, hell, most riders, ride because they have limited choices. They can ride the bus, walk, or bike because they can't afford a car and gas or because they no longer have driving privileges, or any number of other reasons. And, let's be honest, riding a bike from the east side to the west side is not practical for most people on a daily basis. That ride is difficult under the best circumstances. Imagine trying to do it at three in the morning to get to some minimum wage job at a gas station for your 5 am shift start. In January. Not ideal. I'd do it, but I'm a moron. Or so I've been told. The bus is a practical solution to the transportation needs of so many folks, but raising the fares...
I just don't know. It seems that those who most need a break and a hand-up in this town are the ones who are constantly getting the shaft. Whatever. No words no more. I'm going to go ride my bike.
What kind of rider are you? Me? I generally fall into the creeper category because I prefer to sit in the creeper seats. Not because I watch people, but I want to watch my bike. Which is parked in the choke. I'm a bit over protective, I guess.
Been a while. I know. Haven't had much to say. I've decided that there is one thing I really hate about living in Alaska - the fact that I can call all over town and not find parts I need. Just a bummer.
See, my bottom bracket bearings are shot. Mush. So I've decided to get new bearings rather than a whole new bottom bracket. That's part of the reason that I went with the one I went with. After seven months of hard use, they need replacement. Particularly as RaceFace bearings, from what I read on the intertubes, are not of the the best quality to begin with.
So I've got bearings on order and I just hope that they arrive before the play in the current ones causes any damage to my cups or spindle.
As such, I didn't ride over the weekend. Yesterday I decided to work from home and after putting in my hours for the day decided I needed to go for a ride before I completely lost my mind. I wanted to ride some trail, as I've been lax about doing that this year. But with the bottom bracket issues, it seemed that it might be best to stick to flatter country overall. As such I decided to take a bit of a ride I've wanted to do for a long time and never gotten around to - the Matanuska River Bottoms. The Matanuska river is a glacial torrent that has been changing its course for years and has left large expanse of gravel and river rock and mud in its stead. Because of public right of way, the river bottoms is a favorite place for all kinds of folks to go and recreate. From the motorheads to the rockhounds, you can find evidence of them all here. And not less than a few different bike tracks.
I'd read of other folks riding this area, but hadn't had a chance myself. I'm hooked. It's slow rolling - picking lines and crawling over rocks. I only explored a tiny portion of the ridable area, but I have a strong suspicion that I could roam for miles both up and down stream.
The scenery isn't half bad, either. To the north, east, and south are mountains and glaciers. To the west are woods and then town. It's a quick way to get away right close to town. From my house it is 7.93 miles to the river. If I had more time, I could have spent hours exploring, but knowing I had another 8 miles to ride back home and that the temps and the light were going to drop fast, I only puttered around for maybe two miles or so. I found some interesting stuff, though. Like refrigerators. Like tires - mostly bald and often used for fire rings. Like barrels and other metal debris from upriver, maybe from mines or something?
There were some challenges in the terrain. But, being fat and happy, I was easily able to overcome these. You hear a lot of chatter round here about the 'real Alaska' and how everything is getting so citified anymore. The thing is, from what I have seen when I go exploring around the edges of the wilderness, is that the 'real Alaska' seems a bit like a garbage dump. I realize that there are thousands of miles that I haven't explored yet, but at the edges of civilization if you don't run across at least one pile of assorted trash, often including one or more burnt out cars, you're not in the 'real Alaska.'
It's sad, but that's the way it is, I guess. But, sometimes abandoned cars make for good riding.
I also found myself a handy new kickstand while out riding. It's a pain in the ass to carry on the rack - likes to poke me in the ass with every pedal stroke.
All in all, a good day of riding. I can't wait to get back down there and do even more exploring.
There's been much discussion lately on the MTBR commuter forms about how people got started with their bike commuting lifestyle. On that forum I gave a quick synopsis of my transition from car to bike and I thought it might be fun to expand that discussion here.
I'll start with the purchase of my first decent bike in 2006. I was in graduate school in Vermillion, South Dakota and we had just sold our house and I wanted a bike to ride between our rental house and the college campus. I made my way to a bike shop where I was looking to buy something in the 3 to 4 hundred dollar range. The shop owner had just gotten a 2004 Giant NRS2 in the shop on trade in. The bike was more than that 3 to 4 hundred I'd expected to spend, but was also a much, much nicer ride than I could have gotten from a cheaper bike. One brief test ride around the parking lot and I was sold.
I lived, at the time, about a half mile from the school, so I would ride often. But there were plenty of times when I would get a ride from the wife and a few times when I would actually drive and park on campus. In short, I commuted by bike, but not religiously. I viewed the bike as more of a recreation device. I spent many, many hours and miles riding that thing all over the country side. I didn't have much in the way of trails to ride, but I did have plenty of gravel roads and farm highways.
When I completed graduate school we moved a bit further west. To Pierre, South Dakota where, again, I was less than a mile from my work. I started out strong, riding almost every day to work and back. But too often I'd drive because I knew I'd be going home for lunch and didn't want to deal with the extra ride each day. So I'd drive. As winter came on, I rode bike less and less and drove more and more, eventually I quit riding altogether. As I learned of my job and impending move to Anchorage, I started biking to work again.
At the time I was working on a joint Federal/State project and was getting massively over-paid. We all knew it and we also all knew that we would be transitioned off the project soon. The way that the company I worked for worked is that they would offer some folks the chance to stay on and move to the next project, but more often contracts were terminated and, because the work was alway set up as temporary, there was no severance packages or anything.
So as I saw the project starting to wrap up, I decided to move on and moving on led to me here. It also led me to take a significant pay cut. There was simply no place that would pay me what I had been making unless I got onto another short term Federal/State project, and I was done with that. Couple a big pay cut with a huge jump in the cost of living and, to be completely honest, even if I wanted to drive, I couldn't have afforded it most of the time. We had a number of times where we were scrounging the couch for gas money as it was. As an example of the vast, vast differences in cost of living in South Dakota our decent sized two bedroom townhouse style apartment was around $435 a month. I don't recall if it included utilities or not, most likely not, but still. We tried to get into a two bedroom up here that was $1100 a month, no utilities, and much smaller than where we had been living. Given that in our lives food and housing were our two big expenses, this jump was a shock.
In essence I started bike commuting not so much out of a desire to bike commute, but out of necessity. If I wanted to live in Alaska, this is what I would have to do.
At first I wasn't sold on the idea of commuting by bike. It seemed to add a lot of overhead to the day - clothes to carry and worry about changing into, the "extra" time it took to ensure that I arrived at places on time, and the sudden need for routine maintenance on the bike all seemed to be more hassle than it was worth. Not to mention my first morning riding in sub-freezing temps.
I quickly realized, though, that the commute by bike, under most conditions, did not take much longer than it would take me to drive - the routes being almost exactly the same, mileage-wise. The drive was about a half mile shorter than the bike route. Indeed, there were days when the drive would take the same amount of time or a bit longer than riding.
That revelation certainly increased my desire to bike over drive. But I can't say there was any other giant A-Ha moment that made me decide to forego the car completely for my commuting purposes. I just remember waking up one morning in December or early January where it was well below zero and I got myself ready and out the door without asking myself the question I'd been asking since I had started riding bike: "Should I drive today?"
That was a big moment. I had been asking myself that question over and over each morning, but for the weeks prior it had become harder to find a worthy excuse for not riding until it got to where it wasn't even a question anymore.
And that's where I'm at now. It's not a question I ask. Just like drivers don't ask themselves whether or not they should drive to work or go by some other means. When it gets to that point, you know you're hooked. It just is what it is. Sure, there are days when I'd rather not have to work to get to work, but then I think about how bad I feel if I don't bike to work, how out of sorts and discombobulated.
Before we get too far into things, I just want to take a moment to point everyone to Slicing Up Eyeballs as a reminder of just how amazing the music scene was in 1987. Look at the number of hugely influential albums that came out that year! You simply can't go wrong listening to any of the albums in the top ten from that year.
Now... on to the matter at hand. As I posted last week some time, there have been car troubles in my life. And they just keep coming. Seems the truck I bought came along with some problems.
I think I've narrowed it down to an issue in the power steering system that is most likely not the rack and pinion, and the brakes - likely due to getting fluid on the pads.
My hope is that it doesn't turn out to cost a whole bunch to fix. I'm okay with doing some repairs and all, but I really hate the idea of putting too much time/effort/money into this vehicle. If things go well, we won't be keeping it long or we will keep it around as a fishing truck and nothing much more. It is simply too wasteful to drive daily.
I've got a buddy who's going to provide an assist and we'll get it back into safe driving condition fairly easily. But that's not until this weekend which means I have four days to "research" the symptoms on the interwebz and try to do some armchair diagnosis.
This has gotten me reflecting about our access to data on a day to day basis and how much different it is than it once was. Nearly any problem that we face in life we can google and find immeasurable amounts of information. The challenge is finding good quality information that actually answers the questions we have.
On the internet the idea of authority is a bit perverted. In example, the armchair pundits can claim their authority not by what they have done, but by the number of posts they have made. There are a few funny examples of this where people with credentials such as being in the hall of fame for whatever are yelled down on a discussion board by someone who has thousands of posts, but no clearly identified credentials IRL.
So we search and search the web and there are two things that happen almost simultaneously. One - we slowly come round to finding the information that simply confirms the answers we wanted to hear in the first place as we subtly change our search terms based on bits and pieces we've read on various pages. Humans are really gifted as this fine art. Two - we grow to believe that we can't act without having all of the information first - we need to have the cause and the solution defined before we ever actually engage in troubleshooting the problem IRL.
And maybe this leads to the creation of problems that aren't really there. Example: I have a bottom bracket on my bike that feels a bit crunchy. Crunchy bottom brackets aren't good. But, is this something I would have noticed if I had not read about it first? Maybe. It is an actual feeling I get when riding. But did I attune myself to feeling the first minor signs of crunchiness because I had read a number of reviews online that said that the bearings in the BB I purchased are crap and rarely last more than six months due to a bad seal design that lets water in to wash away the grease? Maybe.
Our minds can focus on the most minute things if they are made aware of them.
I've been scouring the net today looking for solutions to my car problems without having first actually done any troubleshooting in the real world to guide my searching - so I've gone down numerous rabbit holes. Now how many things that I've read about today will go wrong in the car tomorrow?
I just can't abide rudeness. Rather, I can't abide people who cannot respect another person's property.
On Friday afternoon, as I was commuting home I ended up falling asleep. It had been a stressful week and I was tired, so out I went. Not something I normally do on the bus. But a well needed respite, for sure.
When I awoke it was to the following scene:
Last I checked, that's not me with my foot up on the rack of my bike. Who does that? Who just presumes that it is okay to touch, molest, use as a footrest someone else's property? Not for nothing, but this is the same person who I posted about previously who takes up an entire three-spot bench by laying down and using it as her own personal bunk, regardless of how full or empty the bus is.
Seriously?
At least the ride to the bus stop was nice that day - took the long way round and got a picture of Knik Arm looking all pretty and such - Denali is in the background, but you can't really see it.
