Nashbar Townie Basket

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike1 Comment

Last week I bought this product for my bicycle from nashbar.com for carrying my groceries.  I got the rack for my birthday from Chips cousin and her girlfriend so all I needed was the bag.

The bag I got is called a Townie Basket and it’s small enough to carry a bag of groceries so I don’t have to keep wrapping the bags around my handlebars.  The more specific grocery I wanted to use this for was for the 2 gallons of milk I always buy because it’s cheaper to buy 2 gallons than 1 at $3.69.

So I got the bag today and put it on immediately which only took maybe a minute to figure out how it goes on.  I went to Albertson’s right away and got my 2 gallons of milk along with some other things that I needed which I ended up having to carry in my grocery bag on the handlebars… I’m gonna need another one for the other side lol.

The only problem is that with 2 heavy gallons of milk it was sagging outward.  I was petrified that they would fall out as soon as I hit a bump in the road or a pot hole, not paying attention to the road and watching the milk instead might make me accidentally hit a pot hole or a CAR lol.

Well, here are the pictures of the bag.  The first one is of the bag folded up on the rack, the 2nd one is the bag open and the 3rd one is of it with its handy dandy rain coat or as I like to call it, it’s shower cap.

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Ok, now to fix the problem with this bag sagging outward I had to think about how I was going to do this.  I remembered the metal with the holes I used to make it so the rack was secure on the bike so I grabbed the roll of that stuff and held it up then bent the top of it over then I held it on the clamp in the tool shed and cut off a piece, then I cut a 2nd piece.  Then I went back over to the patio table and started drilling holes in the hard plastic in the bag so I could screw these things in place and then I put it on the bike rack.  Viola, it doesn’t sag anymore so I don’t have to worry about anything falling out lol.  Well, for now anyway.

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It’s a really dark picture but you can see that it’s not black, it’s the silver or gray thing on the right.  Not only does it stay on the rack but because I used the pliers to curl it over the rack bar I know nobody will be able to steal it lol.  It’s too much trouble to be able to steal now.  I mean because it’s only on with bungee at the bottom in the 2nd rack hole then with the 2 metal pieces (the black one on the left) so it’s very easy to steal but not anymore.

So if I have any other problems I’m going to have to put a hole on the outside of the bag into the plastic and put a hook there so I can hook a bungee on the outside then hook the other side of the bungee cord to the other side of the rack to make damn sure nothing falls out.

Edit: While I was watching Stargate SG-1 today I was thinking of how I could make this even more secure to the rack, not so that it doesn’t make my milk fall out but secure as in security.  How do I keep people from trying to steal it?  Bracket it to the rack.  See, there are these straps at the bottom that you are supposed to put the rack through, the metal sticks that get screwed to the wheel part of the frame, those are supposed to go through these straps and you would think that those would be velcro so that just in case your rack doesn’t allow you to put them through, then you could just undo them with the velcro.  So I came up with something a little more permanent.

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This picture is taken from the inside of the wheel, as you can see the spokes on the right and left side.  I bracketed the bag to the rack so it would never be easy to separate.  Well, I mean it would if I was trying to but a thief couldn’t easily do it and the guards at the grocery store know me and my bike so they would know if someone was trying to take something off my bike anyway.  But this would definitely slow them down lol.

And to top it all off, I put an eye hook in the outside of the bag, you can see in the first 2 pictures, there is a little silver rectangle, that is the logo of the company I bought it from.  Well, I screwed the eye hook just below that logo so that I could easily attach a bungee cord to it then the other end of the bungee could attach to the other side of the rack.  This way everything will stay inside the bag and not fall out.  The neon yellow shower cap will be able to protect it with the bungee cord in place so that isn’t an issue.

Pimp Your Bike

On By Michel McDonaldIn BikeLeave a comment

I just saw this article on the Dvice website.

Pimp your bike with MonkeyLectric LED wheels

This is so cool.  I used to have a little fan that did the same thing, I don’t know where that fan is but they sell them at the store for like $3.  But, who cares about such a small fan when you can have this on your bicycle on both the front and the back wheels.

It has 16 led lights on each side and it straps right to the spokes on the inside of the wheel so it’s not sticking out.  You can put 1 on your wheel or you can put 4 on your wheel or 1-4 on each wheel.  It’s really cool for teenagers at night so they can woo their friends and also be very visible to cars so they don’t get hit… from the side?  Cars can’t really see this from the back.

I wonder if this is street legal though.  I can see it being bicycle trail and skate park legal but what about the street?

This product from MonkeyLectric is only $60 per board and it takes 3AA batteries which are good for 30 hours.

Too Cold To Ride

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cycling, ExerciseLeave a comment

Well, it seems that Summer isn’t quite yet here.  I have been waking up nearly every morning at 4am to go out bike riding thinking that it would be in the 90’s or 100’s during the day so I’m basically trying to beat the heat.  Well, we had heat for maybe a week but then it was gone.

The last 3 days (including today) it has been too cold to ride.  Yeah I could’ve just gone out when the temperature was in the 70’s but I’ve gotten so used to riding when there are no cars when the sun isn’t up yet that I don’t want to go out during the day.

Friday I checked the weather channel application on my computer and it said that there were going to be thunderstorms so I didn’t go out.  Yesterday when I went outside to go bike riding it was raining, well more like sprinkling but you know how it goes.  It starts out with a sprinkle then next thing you know it’s raining hard.  So I just stayed in.  This morning it was so cold outside and I just decided to wait until when it was warmer and now it’s too warm even though it’s only 68 lol.  Well, the weather channel says 68 but it’s warmer than that outside.

Hopefully tomorrow it will be ok.  It’s supposed to be 85 during the day and it says that I should wear pants and a jacket at 7am for exercising because it will be 65 but that is a good temperature in the early morning to exercise for me.

I never thought I would say this but I wish the heat would come back lol.

The Next PSP

On By Michel McDonaldIn PSPLeave a comment

Sony ready to unveil it’s PSP Go at E3 tomorrow | Dvice

PSP Go Video Game, E3 09: Conference Footage 2

Ok so here we go, they have a new PSP out which is their 4th gen called PSP Go.  This PSP is smaller, same widescreen but it flips up so you can use the control buttons below the screen instead of on the sides of it.  It then closes so you can watch movies or TV shows or even use it as an mp3 player and not have any buttons pressed while it’s in your bag.

The PSP Go has a 16GB flash memory as well as a Memory Stick Micro slot which is a different name from the one that is currently in the PSP which is Memory Stick Duo so no you can’t use the one that you already use in your current PSP.  They took away the UMD slot so all those games that you bought you can’t use anymore.  You have to buy all your games via the PlayStation store online.

It also has Bluetooth Support.  I don’t know what that means for the PSP though.  When I think of Bluetooth I think of a cell phone earpiece.  What does Bluetooth mean for a PSP Go?

On the video (which is the 2nd link above) at the E3 the guy talks about how people like to buy the actual physical product.  There will be a new media manager for PC so I’m guessing that maybe you plug your PSP 2 or 3 into your computer via the USB and it probably converts the UMD into files that you then upload to your PSP Go.  But that is just what I think that means, I don’t know for sure.  Who knows, but he did mention something about being able to buy the UMD even though you can’t use it in this thing.

I don’t know about this one.  I like my PSP 2000.  I didn’t upgrade it to the PSP 3000 when that came out because the only upgrade it had was a mic on the front so you don’t need a headset to call people with Skype and it had a more matte finish on the screen so you don’t get glare from lights or the sun.  With a $250 price tag I’m still not convinced that I need to upgrade to the PSP Go.

I kinda prefer having a UMD and being able to put it in the UMD slot when I want to play a game which of course means searching for the game I want but that’s perfectly fine by me.  I don’t know if I want to fill my 16GB flash memory with games then have to use a memory stick to add more.  Call me old fashioned lol.

Testosterone Overdose

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, ExerciseLeave a comment

I don’t know what’s going on but all of a sudden it’s almost like I got an overdose of testosterone from all the bike riding I’ve been doing.  It’s like all this energy is inside me now.

That rear bike rack that I got for my birthday wasn’t the right size but I figured out how to make it the right size by rigging it to the seat and using old brakes to screw it into the frame at the bottom.  Today I went to the store and could hear it creaking where I attached it to the seat post so I drilled a hole into the seat post and put a screw in there to make it more stable.

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I also finally thought of a way to get the bar on my home gym back on.  When I got it (it’s a Weider Total Body Works 5000) that little plastic thing at the bottom (you see it in the picture from that link) which holds the bungee cords, the screws snapped off of it, when?  I have no idea.  It was loose in the box.  I didn’t send it back because I bought it from Wal*mart’s website and it was shipped to me.  So I didn’t want to pay for shipping just to get that replaced so I just left it.

So I was sitting here and I got a brain storm.  What if I use the Dremel tool to cut into the screws where they snapped off at the bar so that I can use a flat head screwdriver to unscrew them and take them out and finally get that plastic bungee cord holder back into place.  So I did and it worked.  OMG!!!  Finally!  I’ve had that thing for a couple of years now and it always put a bad taste in my mouth that I couldn’t use those bungee cords to add more resistance because I didn’t want to have to keep raising and lowering the darn thing, it’s too heavy to have to do that.  It would be easier to use the bungees which is why they put them in there in the first place.

So now I can.  Boy, I feel so butch these days lol.

Fine for Watering Lawn

On By Michel McDonaldIn NewsLeave a comment

I don’t know if it is just Kern County or if it is all of California or what but I saw on the news today that the city is banning watering of the lawn except for Mondays and Thursdays before 5am and after 4pm.  You cannot water your lawn except on those 2 days or you will get a $300 fine.

Well if that’s the way it’s going to be then our lawns are going to die because I’m never going to remember that.  I’m probably going to remember to water the lawn on a Wednesday at noon then start watering.  Then I will probably hear the doorbell ringing and have it be Bakersfield Police with a ticket for watering my lawn.  Bogus!

What about back yards?  They can’t monitor people’s back yards.  I just think the whole idea stinks.  I can understand the drought problem and I respect that they are trying to save water but $300 fine for forgetting that I can only water 2 days a week only before 5am and after 4pm?  That’s stupid to do that.  They don’t realize that in Bakersfield it gets so hot and so dry that the lawn dies if it’s not watered everyday.  Twice a week isn’t going to keep my lawn alive.

Well, maybe that’s a good thing then because then I won’t have to mow it as much.

Wheel Fixed

On By Michel McDonaldIn BikeLeave a comment

Well I had to bring my back wheel to Snider’s today to have them tighten the freewheel (the thing that holds the chain and has different gears) but it wasn’t that it needed to be tightened, the tech guy said that they all wobble like that.  So I told him about the cracking sounds and so he looked at it and said that the problem is that the metal in the screw that holds the ball bearings in place is worn down and so they had to replace the rod and ball bearings altogether.  That was only $18.

I’m so glad it wasn’t that much money.  I would rather just have them fix the issue than have to spend $25 or $30 on all the tools needed to screw the freewheel tighter just to have it still have the same old problem lol.

That’s why I shouldn’t try to diagnose my own problems because I don’t know jack about that dren.

Chips cousins girlfriend Venda drove me there and ended up buying me a rear rack and a pair of gloves for my birthday which I so didn’t want her to do because the gloves themselves were $40 and the rack was $25.  After I got my wheel on I tried to install the rack and they didn’t supply any screws darnit.  Plus there are no holes in the frame for the top bars to go into so I have to return the rack and get a different one.

–Edit: I got the rear rack on.  I had some old brakes that I kept for some strange reason.  I just couldn’t throw them away lol.  Can you say pack rat?  Anyway, those fit on the bottom so I don’t need those screws now.  But the top still didn’t fit so I went into the tool shed and there was a roll of this metal with holes in it so I cut a piece the size I needed, wrapped it around the seat post and took some bolts and washers and nuts and screwed them to the top of the rack.  Then I took another bolt with washer and nut and screwed the piece of metal together tight so it doesn’t go anywhere.  See?  I am handy once in awhile lol.  It is secure enough now that I don’t have to worry.  End Edit–

The gloves on the other hand are really good.  I didn’t realize that I needed these gloves instead of just any regular glove because these are specifically meant for people with Carpel Tunnel Syndrome which I have.  This is what it says on the cardboard that the gloves were attached to:

Patented Technology
With technology designed by Dr. A Robert Spitzer, a neurologist, Spenco® cycling gloves feature a unique, patented groove over the carpel tunnel nerve that channels away pressure and road shock to reduce hand numbness and fatigue.

So that’s what I needed all along.  Every time I ride my hands get numb with the gloves I wear now and even without the gloves and I have to shake both my hands (not at the same time of course lol) to shake the numbness out.  So thank you Vedra and Venda for the new gloves.

Bike Repair

On By Michel McDonaldIn BikeLeave a comment

My bicycle has been having real issues with making noises, cracking, clicking noises.  It really makes me nervous when I ride, even if it’s just to the store.  And I can especially hear it when I don’t have my ear buds in.  At least when I’m listening to music I can ignore it.

I’ve been reading this website @ Mountain Bike World, they have an article all about the 6 most common problems and my problem is right in there.  Yes there is a problem with the back tire not being true and it does make these clicking sounds but the cracking or creaking sound is coming from the crank, not the wheel.

I have edited 4 paragraphs to update this post.  I have figured out what my bike problem is.  I don’t believe it is the crank at all.  I think that the crank needed some lube really bad so I sprayed a lot of WD-40 in it and held a towel to the bottom of it because it was getting all this black stuff all over the cement floor in my back patio.  I did that on both sides and it seems to be ok.

While I was holding the rag to the bottom of it on the side that has the chain and I was turning the crank I was looking at the cassette on the back wheel and noticed that it was moving up and down so I guess that just needs to be tightened and that should probably fix it.  So all I need are the tools to tighten the cassette which shouldn’t be a problem.  So on Wednesday morning when I get my check I’ll take the bus to the bike store and ask them for the tools to tighten it.  It’s good to have all the tools I need to do any/all maintenance on the bike to keep it in good working order at all times.

At least I don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars to get it fixed now.