Tag: grocery bag

Goodbye Bicycle

On By Michel McDonaldIn CyclingLeave a comment

Well so much for exercise.  I went to the grocery store and as soon as I got on the bike to come home something felt a little strange with the chain.  I rode in front of the store from where I locked my bike at and tried to fiddle with the pedals to find out why the chain was giving me trouble but I couldn’t figure it out.

So I was fine to ride to the street I turn right on but then it started acting a little strange, the wheel didn’t feel right, it was wobbling.  I got off the bike in the middle of the street and had to walk it over to the sidewalk.  At first I thought the townie basket was coming off and was pushing against the wheel so I took the heavy groceries out.  That wasn’t it.

I still didn’t see it because the sun was almost finished going down so it was too dark to see, but then I saw it.  The bolt that goes all the way through the wheel was sticking out too far on the left.  The 2 nuts on the ride side were gone, I don’t even know what happened to those.  So since there was no long bolt to hold on to the frame on the right side the wheel couldn’t keep me balanced since it was only holding on the left side.

I had to walk the rest of the way home carrying 1 heavy grocery bag on my left hand and 1 light but still annoying grocery bag on my right hand while both hands held onto the handlebars.  The entire time I was walking the back wheel was rubbing against the brakes and making this awful noise which I can’t explain how it sounded.  Well, it sounded like some deep voiced animal either dying or giving birth.

I have 2 missing bolts and no idea where they are and no money until next week to be able to do anything about it.  It’s not going to be expensive, well, I don’t think it will be.  I mean it’s just a matter of screwing the bolt centered again and buying 2 nuts right?  Maybe?  I’m sure the nuts aren’t too expensive at Home Depot or maybe the bike store has them cheap.  Or who knows, maybe I have to bring the back wheel to the bike store and have them fix it and charge me $20 for it.

I wonder how this happened.  Last weekend when I rode the bike on my 22 mile trip I tightened everything .  In fact I did a full maintenance job on the entire bicycle to get it ready to ride with no issues.  How in the heck could that bolt screw itself all the way to the left?  It doesn’t make any sense at all.

Whatever, it doesn’t matter.  I’ll get it fixed and everything with be fine… blah blah blah.

Update 2011-01-28: As of this date I still do not have a new back wheel.  I just can’t afford it.

Bike Video

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, ExerciseLeave a comment

I brought the video camera today on my ride and when I got to the bike trail I hooked it up and started recording.  My starting point was Truxton and Mohawk and my ending point was Manor St.  The whole video was 20 minutes and 25 seconds.

I turned the video camera off and put the camcorder back in the camera bag inside the grocery bag on the side of the rack.  I get home and watched it on the dvd player (which is actually a dvd recorder, I deleted a scene with me talking because my head was cut off) then I put the dvd back in the camcorder and hook it up to the computer to upload it.  Failed import. I don’t know why or what happened.  I put the dvd into the dvd drive and it also failed.

So what this means is I gotta do it again lol.  I was hoping to be able to take the mount off and put it in the camera bag for future use if I ever wanted to use it again somewhere else but I guess it will have to stay on the handlebar until I get it right.

I formated the mini dvd-ram (that’s what my camcorder takes, mini dvd’s, a dvd-ram is better though) so that tomorrow when I go back out there won’t be any reason for it to do that to me again.

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.

Plastic Bag Crochet

On By Michel McDonaldIn craftsLeave a comment

Plastic Bag Crochet – CRAFT Video Podcast

Last night I was looking around for recycling ideas and I found a way to recycle those plastic grocery bags you get from the store.  Instead of just throwing them away you can create things with them like you can make a more sturdy grocery bag by crocheting pieces that you cut.  I didn’t cut mine in such big pieces but I did more thinner pieces but I was able to crochet a granny square (see below) to see how easy or hard it would be.

I think this is a neat idea if you are obsessed with recycling.  As you can see in this image I didn’t finish the square but the amount you see is from exactly 1 plastic bag not including the handles.  But I did what the woman in the YouTube video (in the first paragraph) did by looping the pieces.  Since my pieces were much thinner they were also more fragile and I’m not sure how durable this square would be if I were to actually make something out of it.  I’m not sure if I turned it into a grocery bag that it wouldn’t break since the pieces are thinner.  If I wanted a grocery bag out of it then I’d cut the pieces in 1 inch pieces like she did just for the durability.

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Check this out.  These women in Kenya gather plastic bags that have been dumped and they clean the bags and dry them then they crochet them into different things.

Plastic Bag Crochet Project

Patterns

No More Plastic Grocery Bags

On By Michel McDonaldIn Pets, PoliticalLeave a comment

I’ve been hearing this thing on the news about how the government is going to make retailers charge customers .25 cents per plastic grocery bag.  That’s why I bought all those reusable cloth bags from Albertson’s when they first started selling them for $1 per bag.  Whenever you go to the store with those bags they give you a .05 cent refund per bag so if you bring 3 bags you get .15 cents off on your bill.  It’s an incentive to use those cloth bags and eventually the bags pay for themselves.  Sometimes they have a sale like if you buy 4 bottles of the 1 liter bottles of Lipton tea you get a cloth bag for free.

I tell you that so I can tell you this.  We bring our cloth bags to the store so we have totally run out of plastic grocery bags which is what I normally use to scoop cat litter into then I put those bags into the 5 lb. buckets that the litter come in (empty buckets of course).  But since I have no more bags I have to just scoop the litter directly into the bucket then to keep the smell down to a minimum I put the lid on it.

Well, you know what happens when there are wet items left inside a closed container don’t you?  Condensation happens.  The lid of the bucket has sweat all over it.  Cat urine and feces sweat.  What happens when you open the lid?  The juices fall due to gravity.  Normally when that happens the juices fall to the ground but if your foot is right next to it and you don’t have shoes on because you are about ready to go to bed and this is the last thing you do before you go to bed, it falls on your foot.

Well, that happened to me tonight.  Cat urine and feces juice all over my foot.  I couldn’t do anything about it because I figured I might as well just scoop the litter and get it done fast so I can run to the shower.  I didn’t want to shower then scoop cause then I’d have to wash my hands all over again so I just did my duty then ran to the bathroom.

Thank you Al Gore for bitching and complaining about global warming.  See what you did to me?

LOL