Morning Ride 05-30-09

This morning I went on my first ride since I sold the Trucker. Earlier in the week I was trying to figure out how I was going to take my Nikon SLR camera along on my ride. I was going to ride my son's old Trek which is equipped with a rear rack and a trunk bag only. The camera just doesn't fit in my trunk bag with my cable lock and emergency supplies. The trunk bag is a cheap item that I bought from Bike Nashbar several years ago. I have to keep a square plastic Tupperware container in the bag so that it will maintain it's shape. There's much less room in the bag than you would think by looking at it. Luckily I've sold a few shirts during the week which gave me a little spare money. I drove over to City Cyclist and bought a Wald front basket which will alow me to carry my camera and few other items.

The Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial (it's a pro golf tournament) was in full swing today. I'm not a golf fan but I figured It would be interesting to roll by and see what was going on. I heard a radio interview with an official at the Colonial golf club who said that the majority of the top 100 pro golfers in the world would be playing. Other than Tiger Woods or Chi Chi Rodriguez I wouldn't recognize any of them if I saw them.

This is Chi Chi.

Here's the new Wald basket. I had mounted it horizontal to the ground but as I rode the handlebar mounts shifted downward leaving the basket slanted up toward the front.

I stopped off to replace the batteries in my crappy little point and shoot camera. I carry it in the top tube bag. It burns through batteries like crazy.

I ended up following these riders for a while.

On the trail and still following.

When I pulled up to the Colonial there were lots of people watching the action from outside of the fence.

Bike parking courtesy of Bicycles Inc.  

I found an opening in the bushes where I could see what was happening.

Traffic was very heavy on Colonial Parkway. As I rode away from the golf course I noticed that most neighborhood residents were charging people $20-$50 to park on their lawns. This made riding tricky as you had to watch people for people pulling out of the yards in front of you.  

Water slide for the kids.

Headed for home.

The Big Basket

Well, since I'm injured and stuck riding smooth surfaces for a while, I had this crazy idea that I'm going to start doing something that I ordinarily despise, grocery shopping. I decided that I was going to buy a basket for my bike and start riding the relatively short distance from my house to the grocery store. I figured I'd save some money on gas and add a little more purpose to my riding.

I gathered up my eleven year old son and drove to Bicycles Inc. at I-20 and Grandbury road here in south Fort Worth. A few minutes later I walked out with the Wald Giant Delivery Basket. Like the name implies this thing is huge. I started putting the thing together and installed the handlebar clamps with no problems. The only hitch came during the step where you thread the quick release skewers through the holes in the support legs and try to remount the wheel. Neither the instructions that came with the basket nor the website mentioned anything about the support legs being incompatible with the safety tabs on the fork dropouts. I did a quick Google search and came across the Lockring Not Included blog where the author had the same problem. He simply took his Dremel Tool and filed those suckers off, so that's exactly what I did. A few minutes of grinding and the basket was ready to go.

The next day I filled a canvas military bag with about fifteen pounds of assorted bike tools, a camera, and other stuff, put it in the basket and took off. I was impressed with the way the bike handled. It didn't take long to learn that when climbing with any weight in the basket you either stay seated or limit your upper body movement to prevent the load from shifting and throwing you off balance. I really didn't have too much of a problem with wind resistance. I guess this is due to the thin wire used to make the basket. One minor irritation that I noticed is that any exposed metal on your cargo is going to make a constant ticking sound when it comes into contact with the basket. Just line the bottom with a t shirt or something before you take off.