The Blaſphemous Bicycler

Lots of good stuff comes from the UK. I’ve already gone on and on about Brooks saddles, but two more pieces of British awesomeness came to me in the past 24 hours:

1: Bike Bag

I got my Carradice Bike Bureau last night. The design is brilliant! It switches from pannier to laptop bag (and back) in about 10 seconds. I’ll get some pictures soon.

I didn’t manage to commute today (pedal issues), but I took the laptop in the Carradice anyhow. It would kick ass even if it didn’t clip onto a bicycle.

2: LugRadio Season 3

In other news, LugRadio Season 3 Episode 1 is out. You can listen in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis*.

If you like to hear a bunch of dorks talk about Linux and call each other wankers, Lugradio is the ticket.

*Bike nerds, Vorbis is to mp3 as Campagnolo is to Shimano. Vorbis is a more elegant design and you get all the street cred for using it.

I have been pretty lax in my commuting lately. It’s pretty much my general inability to get out of bed on time that keeps me in the car.

The time differential between driving to work and cycling isn’t all that much, it’s the overhead that’s a killer.

1. get up
2. put on my bike costume
3. pedal to work
4. shower
5. Put on corporate costume
6. work
7. change back into bicycle costume
8. pedal home
9. Pack corporate costume in saddlebag for the next day

That’s a lot of extra work.
I think that since it’s cooler out in the mornings now, I’m going to just put on my office outfit at home, ride in (perhaps a bit more gingerly than normal) and if I stink up the place - so be it.

To that end, I’ve put regular non-clipless pedals on the Trek. I love my SPDs, but it’s just too much of a pain in the ass keeping track of all my shoes. I need my SPDs for bicycling, brown corporate office shoes for work, and sneakers for at the gym. I look like a traveling shoe salesman half the time. If I could find a comfortable brown sneakerish thing that I can do everything in, I would be set.

Update 10-31-2005:

Those pedals suck. I made it about 20 feet and turned around. I’m going to switch out the BMX pedals on the diamondback tommorow.

It was nice outside again today, so I decided to go exploring.

I found some embryonic sprawl.

A few miles later, I found some more - larval, I’d say

By springtime, people will have moved into these houses, and started bitching about how the country farm roads are too small for their SUVs.

At long last, I was out of the sprawl!
Scenes like this are pretty much the whole point of these rides.

It looks like the Libertarians are out in force for the election this year. There were signs like this one all over the place. They will make excellent bicycle fenders.

In theory, I agree with most of what these guys stand for. In practice, however, they are completely bat-shit insane.

Overall, it was about 23 miles. This is the longest ride I’ve done in a while. I feel good. My face is windburned and my legs feel heavy. I’ll sleep like a log tonight.

It’s official. I am now a grown up. 31 years old. Holy crap.

My mom came down to visit last night, and we went to Passage to India, where I had the most wonderous lamb vindaloo in the history of the universe.

My present: A Carradice Bike Bureau from Wallingford! How awesome is that?

It’s still in transit from New Orleans (by way of Lafayette), but it’ll kick ass to be able to transport my laptop in style.

There is a WiFi lounge in the grocery store where Brandi works, so it’ll be nice to ride over, hop on the web and grab a coffee.

I’ll have the most stylin’ laptop bag in the whole grocery store.