I needed to see someone about my shoulder/neck injury. On the recommendation of a coworker, I went to see Dr. Jon Dickinson. He seems to be very nice, knowledgeable, and happily explains what he’s observing, rather than just writing a prescription.
Dickinson, Jon A, MD
California Pacific Ortho and Sports Med
3838 California St Rm 715
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 668-8010
The Bert P. Krages website has a handy, downloadable PDF version of the “The Photographer’s Right”.
If you object to the recent harassment of photographers in public places, I suggest that you download this, print it out, and carry it in your camera bag.
I bought a super-handy digital hanging scale from DealExtreme ($10.84, by far the lowest price on the ‘net). The most useful weights to post that I can think of are those of my bicycles:
Powdered milk is a great thing to have along when backpacking. It’s a lightweight source of protein and flavor. Unfortunately, all of the backpacking-oriented stores seem obsessed with fat-free products. This yields tasteless, low-calorie breakfasts which don’t seem to keep one sustained through the morning hike.
Luckily, NESTLÉ make Nido, which is powdered whole milk. While it’s been popular for years throughout Europe and Africa, it’s only recently been imported into the USA, and even then it’s squirreled away in the Latino cooking section.
It’s available at Amazon, two 12.6oz cans for $10.99, or from Wal-Mart, for around $3.50 per 12.6oz can.
There are three types of Nido marketed in the US:
It appears that some cans of Nido may lack English instructions. The recommended combination is 1/3 cup of Nido to 8 oz water, yielding a single serving.
Full nutritional information is available full details here. Basic information:
Calories 150 Calories from Fat 81 Total Fat 9g Saturated fat 5g Total Carbohydrates 12g
Google Maps provides a route from the San Francisco Bay Area to Yosemite National Park which runs along 580 to Highway 120. I find this route to be intolerably populated, unattractive, and often ground to a stop due to accidents or sheer traffic volume.
On a recent drive back, when I found traffic along 580 into Tracy at nearly a standstill, I cut north through the Delta and up to Concord. The contrast between the packed 580 versus the desolate back-roads was amazing.
Earlier, when Highway 120 led into Oakdale, I found that by cutting a single street North yielded a road which was almost entirely unused, had only the occasional stop sign, and featured beautiful views of fields and smelled of grass and cows instead of exhaust fumes.
According to Google Maps estimates, the standard 580/120 route only saves around 40 minutes versus a much more leisurely, scenic, and enjoyable route along Highway 4:
Based upon my online research, the trailer versus pannier debate will rage on forever. Panniers have the advantage of not requiring you to worry about a trailer. Trailers have the advantage of reducing your frontal area (and therefore wind drag), and in theory don’t require wheels nor frame as beefy as those needed to haul gear in panniers.
Both panniers and trailers can negatively affect handling. The degree to which they do, and the respective solutions, seem to vary tremendously by usage patterns. Overloading a trailer, particularly while putting most of the weight forward, is sure to cause handling trouble. Similarly, a heavy, low-slung rear pannier can badly disrupt handling.
Ultimately, there is no clear winner on any objective, universal, technical basis. It seems to be a personal decision, based upon one’s intended usage. Therefore, since I really don’t see any reason to own yet another bicycle solely for mid-weight touring, I will be buying a BOB trailer and attaching it to my carbon-framed, triple-chainring roadbike.
Now the question becomes, which trailer to purchase?
BOB makes two trailers, the Ibex and the Yak.
The Ibex offers 3″ of adjustable, damped suspension travel, weighs 3.5 pounds more, is silver instead of black, and costs an extra $70.
The only difference between the base and the “PLUS” models is the inclusion of the yellow, roll-top BOB bag (“DRY SAK” dry bag). The “28″ versions are for 28″ wheels, 29″ mountain bikes, and 700cc road bikes with full-wrap fenders.
This section lists the specifications for each, as reported on the BOB website. All differences are listed in bold.
Ibex:
Yak:
This page provides far better photos of the Ibex than does their website. Also — again, unlike the website — it explains exactly how the shock absorber is “adjustable”. You can move the lower mounting point for different leverage, and you can increase the spring preload. Additionally, their Yak page shows exactly how the trailers mount to the bicycle.
This guy used a BOB Ibex behind a hard-tail mountain bike on the Great Divide Route and has generally very positive things to say about it.
This thread compares the Yak to the Ibex. Several references are made to high-speed weaving and instability with the unsuspended Yak, which is said to be absent from the suspended Ibex, but some also say that this is simply due to improper loading.
It sounds like the Ibex may reduce the chance of handling problems, particularly at high speeds. Since the downside is 3.5 pounds, and since I don’t believe that 3.5 pounds of rolling weight will be noticeable, I intend to purchase a BOB Ibex.
I will probably replace the 2.125″ Ibex tire with a 1.75″ slick, since I think rolling resistance is more likely to be felt than the absolute weight difference.
I bought the BOB Ibex and, sadly, decided that it sucks. I will be returning it next weekend. More details later.
On July 7th, 2007, I was riding back to Oakland from Tacoma, along the Oregon coast. It was late, around 11:00pm, and the weather had turned rather chilly. Several miles south of Florence, Oregon, as I rode up a pitch black, desolate hill, an oncoming car flashed its brights at me a couple of times. “Jerk!” I thought, and flashed him back. After reconsidering, I thought he might be warning me of a speed trap, so I dropped down to a more legal speed.Coming over the rise, alert for the presence of any cars at the side of the road, I noticed a furry blur rocket past on the shoulder. It appeared to be a dog, walking at a brisk pace alongside Highway 101. Thinking that it was a bit odd to be out without its human, I stopped and circled back. The dog looked a bit shocked by this, and switched over to the opposite side of the road. I did another u-turn and came up beside him, getting a nervous, sidelong glance in return. He wouldn’t come over to the bike while it was running, but he seemed interested in some human companionship, so I turned off the engine and hopped off.
He was still dubious, and kept wandering along the opposite side of the road. I was calling to him, but he wasn’t committing. Unfortunately, that was about when headlights came over the next hill. A car was approaching, probably doing the usual 60mph, and this dog was still in the middle of that lane. I flipped on the ignition and started flashing my brights as fast as I could, but the oncoming vehicle showed absolutely no sign of slowing, whatsoever.
I was beginning to panic, flashing back to a particularly gruesome experience from a childhood Halloween, and was alternating between looking away in horror, and looking back in hopes that he had moved. At the last moment, the dog changed his course a bit to move out of the way, but I could swear the truck must have missed him by only a foot.
Since the dog was still skittish, I hopped back on the bike and road fifty yards or so up the road, to where the shoulder was wider at the end of a guardrail. I got off the bike, and took off my helmet and gloves just in time for the dog to come skulking nervously past me again. Getting down on my knees, with a lot of soothing calling, he finally walked over to me. Not in the, “I’m happy and curious to know you,” way, but more in the, “I have no idea where I am, and I’m just going to stand in front of you because you’re a human who might not kill me,” way.
With enough petting and cooing, he let me hold his collar and get a look at his dog tag. The owner’s name, address, and phone number were listed, along with the dog’s name, Bungie. He seemed a lot happier being around me once I called him by his name. Sure enough, the address was in Florence, which was several miles back in the opposite direction from where he was headed.
I pulled out my cell phone and, of course, had absolutely no signal. A car would pass every minute or so, but absolutely nobody stopped. In fact, I don’t think anyone even slowed down for safety’s sake! I started going over my mental inventory of what I had with me that I could use to tie poor Bungie to the guard-rail while I rode back into Florence to find a street I’d never heard of.
Luckily, at just about that moment, a highway patrolman finally arrived, lights ablaze. I can’t think of the last time I was happy to see police emergency lights when I was on a road trip. In fact, I don’t think I ever have! I walked back toward the police truck, which was stupid because Bungie was spooked by the newcomer and wandered away from the safety of the side of the road again. “You’re gonna get run over like that!” he said. “Yeah, but I have a dog here that’s out here alone, and his tag says he’s from Florence!”
By this time, Bungie was across the street, eyeballing the cop with the same dubious stare he’d given me only minutes earlier. I couldn’t blame him, since cops give me the willies, too. “Will he come to you?” the officer asked. Hmm, I bent down a bit, slapped my thighs, and gave the perkiest, “Bungie! C’mere, boy!” that I could muster. Bungie bounded over, tail wagging, delighted to come to someone who was, by comparison, an old and trusted friend.
The cop, despite his initial gruffness, was clearly a dog lover. He praised and petted Bungie as I walked him past by his collar. He wrote down the information as I read it off Bungie’s dog tag, and said he thought he knew the owners. Once we got the rear door of the quad-cab police truck open, I walked Bungie over to it, shuffling along backwards between the truck bed and the hillside, since Bungie refused to go first. In typical doggie manner, he had already forgotten the stresses of the evening, and was simply excited to be going for a ride, though the extremely high seat caused some trouble. I had to grab around his ribcage and give a good lift upward to get him up into the seat. So there I left him, sitting awkwardly with his butt on the seat, his forelegs all the way down to the floor, uncomfortable, but infinitely better off than he had been on his own.
The cop seemed pretty delighted with the experience. No doubt having expected to find some moron biker doing something stupid, he instead found out that he got to haul home what will probably be the friendliest and most pleasant ‘perp’ in his career. He thanked me enthusiastically, including a handshake (how often do you get one of those in a traffic stop?), and wished me a good night.
Foolishly, and uncharacteristically, I never took a picture of Bungie. So, I’ll have to rely upon this artist’s rendition of the scene:
