Images tagged "bootie"

Right now we out east just have to worry about ice building in the bike lane and shoulders.
Fortunately after this past snowfall, my city cleared the bike lane (or at least the one outside my place).
During the clear weather the bike lanes/shoulders are cleared of debris only a few times a year, once every two months perhaps.

On my last bike I took an old tube, cut it then lined it in the tire. The entire time I had it like this I had only one flat, and that wasn’t because I picked something up — but hit a curb hard.
Of course this probably works well with tires that are wider. Might be more difficult for road/racing bikes.

My new mission: Add obstreperousness to at least one post this year. It’s as if Thoreau had written, “I was determined to know commerce” instead of beans. But I agree: nice video, a welcome respite from a rich diet of cats “hanging in there, baby.”

I will probably opt for the Atera Strada (I am not sure if you can source these in Canada) it is lighter than Thule and has a better drop down mechanism. Despite being more costly it beat Thule in a recent UK test.

More, please!

This article has given me pause for thought. I think we were very lucky to have gone on our adventures in 1994 and experience the muddy gravel roads of the Alaska Highway and the Cassiar Highway before they were gone and became fully paved modern roads with massive amounts of traffic.
On my return trip to the Alaska Highway in 2004 I did about 50 miles and turned back. The amount of traffic was frightening and it was constant all day due to the road being fully paved by then. I got a hint of things to come when I did the Bighorn Highway in Alberta, in 1994 it was half paved and half gravel and very few cars. In 2004 it was fully paved, heavily trafficked and had flare stacks from gas and oil rigs. All in the name of “Progress”.

I was thinking about Earth Day earlier, and what ‘extra’ I could do, from what I already am doing.

Transportation wise for me is rather set and done. 98% of the time I’m on my bike.
The other 2% can vary from walking to transit.
Although I should say when I started riding a bike, the thought of it being ‘green’ not once crossed my mind. I had a bad experience with transit, plus for close to a year my Dad kept hounding me to ride a bike. Even now I view the environmental benefits as just an added bonus.

Garden/yard wise? I never put anything on my grass. Weeds are pulled by hand and that’s about it. I’d guesstimate 60% of the time I now use one of those old fashion “push mowers”.
Unfortunately I have this massive area of city property to cut, and last year was the final straw in using an electric, so for that area I did switch to gas.

I’m pretty fortunate that small trees seem to pop up every year around my yard. This year I transplanted 4 of them to a new area. Have to see if they pick up, mainly because of the weather here (from +25C one day, to +2C the next).

Water wise, I’d like to think I’m pretty good at conserving.
Last year I found a rain barrel in the garbage, so I brought it home and now use that.

Recycling, I’ve never even had a second thought. Since I’ve been alive my city has had a blue box program. Even before the “grey box” (for papers) was introduced, my family put paper in bags, and the recycling truck would take them (despite not many people doing it at the time).
Now we have the green bins for compost. I put the green bin out in the winter, but this time of year I use my own compost.

I saw a thing on TVO two months ago about Denmark. They talked about how “green” Denmark is, but also said that they choose the green options because it is the ‘right thing’ to do, and in many cases the most practical.

Have always prefers leather palms. the problem I had with my first 2 pair with crocheted backs the backs fell apart in a season. I had a pair of leather gloves from PI that died about 5 years back and have not found anything to their match since. I may need to try crocheted backs again.

The “best gloves ever” remind me of old motorcycle gloves cut down.

Doesn’t Grant Petersen over at Rivendell stock some ‘stani made gloves? I stopped wearing gloves in summer because I kept “losing” them at controles.

These were my favourite summer gloves for about 2 decades. I purchased mine at MEC (Canada’s equivalent of the REI). I think the only choice was tan/brown leather with white or off-white mesh backs. I recall my palms being stained tobacco coloured after long rides in the rain. Aside from that the only real downside to those gloves was when wiping sweat or other things off of your face with the back of your hand – it certainly hurt a bit more than the same action with those velour patches on the thumbs of the nylon backed pretenders I’m wearing now. I need to replace my current gloves and maybe I’ll see if I can find some of these old stand by’s again.