This weekend I was able to go to a Bill Mallonee concert in Zionsville. This time it was Bill Mallonee with Muriah Rose on the keyboard. It was a good concert with some good new songs. Some were so new he needed lyric sheets. The coffee house crowd was quiet and the sound system was very good. This was my sixth Bill Mallonee concert.
Saturday was my first ride of the year with the Delaware County Cycling Club. The schedule said the ride started at 8:00. Only four of us showed up, so we took an easy ride in town until 9:00. The delay was ok because it gave me a chance to pickup the banana I had forgotten. The ride leader and a bunch of others showed up around nine. Even riding in a group, the wind made a challenging 65 km ride. During the last section of the ride I talked to Dave Poole of AeroCat bikes. He was riding his ACR500 frame. It is a nice looking carbon road frame. After the ride, he showed me some prototypes, including a carbon mountain bike frame he is working on. It looks really good. After the club ride, I rode a bit extra for a total of 110 km.
I have heard some crazy ideas, but this is still amazing. Muncie’s new mayor, Sharon McShurley, wants to privatize the Muncie fire department. This is a very bad idea, especially considering the high arson rate in Muncie.
Shimano just officially announced the new Dura-Ace group. Shimano is finally putting the shift cables under the handlebar tape. It looks like a huge improvement over the old Dura-Ace. I still think Dura-Ace is competing against SRAM Force and Campagnolo Chorus, not Red and Record, but it will be a lot closer now.
Yesterday the News-Sentinel ran a bike commuting story. Dean Koehlinger says that Fort Wayne needs bike lanes, not just trails. This is a very good idea. The Rivergreenway bike paths follow the three rivers. This is not an efficient way to get around. There need to be a few sections of trails and bike paths added in other places in town to make bike commuting safer. The upcoming Rivergreenway expansion near IPFW will really help. An east-west and north-south route through town would be useful.
Today the Journal-Gazette and Star Press published a stories about bike commuting.
May 12–16 is Bike to Work Week, part of the League of American Bicyclists’ Bike Month. I have been peddling to work frequently since starting grad school. I have only driven on a few workdays since September. Yesterday I rode my bike to work. After work I rode an extra 72 km. For about a third of the ride, I rode with three guys from a local bike shop. Man, are they fast. I’ll probably go on a ride tonight.
In college, before video games, we would amuse ourselves by posing programming exercises. One of the favorites was to write the shortest self-reproducing program. Since this is an exercise divorced from reality, the usual vehicle was FORTRAN. Actually, FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular. –Ken Thompson, “Reflections on Trusting Trust” 1984
Ah, yes, the joys of FORTRAN.
This is really cool. I thought of doing this myself, but it is too expensive for now. Randall Fishman built an electric ultralight. He is now selling them as the ElectraFlyer. Depending on the battery pack and propeller installed, it can fly for up to two hours. Instead of the short noisy propellers on most ultralights, the ElectraFlyer is available with a long carbon fiber propeller. I also found out that Sonex has been experimenting with electric versions of their airplanes. Between gas prices and global warming, one of these planes may be the only way I get to fly again.
One year of full time grad school down…
Yesterday there were no leaves on the trees. Today there are. It must be spring.
Last night I received a link to a story about a canoe built of recycled chopsticks. This is an interesting idea, but I wonder about the durability. Granted, that isn’t the point of a project like this, but I like paddling canoes, not just looking at them. It seems that all the extra joints are extra potential failure points. But, this project does raise the idea of building a canoe from larger bamboo sections. I looked up the density of bamboo, and it is comparable to cedar. From the Forest Products Labratory:
Although bamboo is a grass, its hardness, strength, and dimensional stability make it a useful building material. Large species of bamboo, which mature in 3 years, regenerate without being replanted, and require no fertilizer or pest control, have been used in construction projects for thousands of years. . . . At least eight companies now import the material, claiming hardness and dimensional stability properties that compare favorably with those of red oak and other common hardwoods.
It should be possible to build a classic cedar strip style canoe using bamboo. Cost difference shouldn’t really matter in a project like this, because the major investment is time.
A bamboo canoe would make a great addition to a bamboo bike.