1975 Schwinn Continental

1975 Schwinn Continental
This is the bike before most of the restoration work - click to view full-size

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Morning Grocery Ride...

I got home from work around 7am, this morning. It's a beautiful day out there; sunny, with temps in the low 80's F, and a few puddles from last night's thunder boomer. Everything is bright, lush, and green.

The grocery store is less than ten minutes by bike. I needed some small groceries for lunch; Greek yogurt, muenster slices, hard salami slices, bananas, OJ. I have this cool backpack that I got at the 2011 Chicago Green Festival. It's made out of black recycled "plastic cloth," and nylon drawstrings about twice as thick as shoe laces. When you put it on, the strings close the top.

I got to the store about half an hour before they opened, so I spent the time "bike strolling" around the neighborhood and circling the parking lot.

Once the store opened, I got four ten-slice packs of Muenster cheese, four packages of sliced hard salami, six containers of yogurt, a quart of orange juice, and a bunch of bananas. Everything but the bananas fit in the backpack. This thing folds down as small as my wallet, and goes in my old tan leather fanny pack with my spare inner tube and spoke wrench.

I had to hand-carry the bananas home, and the straps dug into my shoulders a bit because they're strings instead of straps, but that's a pretty good haul for something that folds so small.

Life is good.

Ride on,

Dan

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Beautiful 10 Miles Along The Lake...

One of my co-workers and I took a ten-mile ride along Lake Michigan this evening after work.
We started near Soldier Field, and rode five miles North, then back.

Temps were upper 80's F, overcast, and breezy but not windy.

There was some kind of running marathon getting ready to start, and the runners were wearing campy knock-offs of super hero uniforms. There was at least one Batman, a Space Ghost, and five Wonder Women that I saw.

We turned around about two miles North of Navy Pier, and got back past just as the marathon was starting. There are two parallel sections of pathway there, so we weren't impeded by the runners.

The wire from the dynamo broke loose from my headlamp, so I'll have to fix that tomorrow after work. I also skinned a knuckle putting the bike back in the work truck. I've long since figured that's a due sacrifice to the Gods of Old Machines.

All in all, it was glorious.

Ride on,

Dan

Sunday, July 1, 2012

One thing I hate about living in the inner suburbs...

...is that it's almost the 4th of July, and I haven't seen a single firefly. They are one of the most magical things about Summer to me.

I wonder if it's all the chem-lawns?

Dan