Mar. 31st, 2008

johnridley: (Calvin vs Bike)

I had my first ride on the Brooks today. The legendary hardness of the saddle wasn't that big a deal to me; I could feel it starting to give a bit in the sit bone region by the end of the 21 miles of my ride.

There were two problems; one, due to the spring suspension, it's probably about 2" taller than my old saddle and I didn't drop the post on the way in. Two, the darn thing is slippery, and I had it set at the same angle as before. Combined, the two meant that on the way in I was having to push myself back in the seat constantly. As a result both my arms and my legs got pretty tired by the end of the ride. Also since I was sliding forwards constantly on the way in due to these factors, I was feeling it in the perineum several times. No problems after adjustment.

I tipped it back one notch and dropped it an inch or so, and the ride back was much nicer.
It took me several weeks when I first started riding to figure out how to set the seat how I liked it. I've been riding for years with the post at minimum insertion (if I buy another post it'll be a longer one) so it's nice to be able to slide the post down a bit farther.

The funny thing is when I looked for advice on how to treat it, I found everything from "Don't do anything; the RIGHT way to break it in is to sweat into it for 2000 miles!" to, well, just about any leather conditioner that you're likely to find at a tack or motorcycle shop. And you can find someone who says that any of those treatments will ruin the saddle too. All except for the Proofide that Brooks sells. I also saw a couple of people who have been riding them for 25 years and never put a damn thing on them.

Personally I'm kind of inclined to try some Sno-Seal at some point, because I WILL be riding it in the rain, guaranteed, and waterproofing seems like a good idea. And I know people who have 20 year old boots they've treated with Sno-Seal and they're still in great shape. Granted, the stresses on a bike saddle are different than boots or horse saddles, but enough people seem to like Sno-Seal to think it's worth a try, at least once a year. I mean, it's mainly beeswax, and there's beeswax in Proofide, so it can't be that bad.

[EDIT] I just went out to the garage to pick up a few thingsin my quest to make it at least 0.0001% cleaner every day, and noticed that with the seat post down, the lower tail light (a Cateye TL-1000 10-LED light) is completely obscured by the tool bag. So I scrounged up a hunk of steel and made a bracket to mount it on the rear of the rack. Just as well, it was barely visible anyway. The upper light (a Planet Bike Superflash) is fully visible. I like to have them both running though.

Wastage

Mar. 31st, 2008 08:58 pm
johnridley: (Default)
I don't even want to get started on the colossal amount of waste I see at the office every day. I'll mention probably the most minor one though.

We have a "battery recycle" bin at work. It's pretty nice, they just put a box on a cabinet near the supply cabinet, and people throw in their used batteries. Occasionally someone will be going by the recycle center that takes them, and will take them with. I've done it a couple of times. A good idea really; it gets hundreds of batteries a year that probably would just get tossed out otherwise.

I've discovered something; apparently nobody has battery testers. When something needs batteries, they grab some out of a junk drawer. When it dies, they throw all the batteries away. Best I can tell, they often grab 2 or 3 new batteries and one stone dead one.

Every once in a while when I feel like clearing my eyes for a while, I wander over with a container and grab a dozen or two AA and AAA cells. I take them back to my desk and test them. Invariably, out of 10, at least 2 will be essentially brand new cells, another 4 or 5 will be still in actually pretty good shape, the rest will be either very weak or stone dead.

At this point, I've got so damn many good AA cells in the drawer of my desk that I've started to burn them in my bike's lights, even though I've completely converted our house over to rechargables. I think I can run alkalines in there indefinitely off the recycle bin.

I did the same years ago when I ran the Palm Pilot that used AAA cells. I never bought a AAA for it. I'm currently running my MP3 player from AAAs, but those are a lot more rare; I wish it took AA cells instead.

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