Great day for riding--the sun is coming up later, and the traffic (what I now see of it) seemed friendlier. Maybe that's because I saw three police cars patroling today. At one point, I came off a bike path near my home onto a sidewalk near the road. I need to ride the side walk to the nearest drive way to get onto the road. But before going onto the road, I noted a car near me on the road, so I elected to stay on the sidewalk. It was a black and white police car, but I didn't know it until it went past me and turned around on the road. Those helmet mirrors work pretty well, and in this case kept me from entering a road right in front of the (police) car--really didn't matter what kind of car, since any one of them can get you.

Down the road a bit, I was going downhill in a light-traffic area when a car approached from the left on a different road. Most cars turn onto my road, and go up the hill. I was watching really closely, and this car didn't turn. This necessitated an emergency stop on my part. There were no stop signs around, but I stopped easily.

At noon, I rode home for lunch, and passed some school children on the bike path who were testing water the the nearby creek. After lunch, I again went by, and the kids were still at it. I stopped, and talked with them and the teacher for about ten minutes. They were learning ecology the easy way, by actually practicing the science and collecting the data. Our little creek was not as high in phosphates as the teachers had thought, but was pretty turbid. I asked the children some questions, about turbidity, the types of samples, where phosphates come from, etc. This stuff is important, as most of these pollutants come from our lawns in the encircling neighborhood.

Going back to work, I got close, and my left pedal seemed weird. I stopped peddaling hard, and it kept getting a vibration in it. Soon I found the answer--the nut holding the crankarm onto the axle had worked loose, and the crankarm was about to fall off. As I dismounted, it actually did fall off! My fault too, as I had recently replaced both crankarms, to replace the chain rings (they had thousands of miles on them, and the big one was really chewed up). I apparently had not tightened the nut when I assembled it. There was no big problem, as after work I simply went to the facilities area, borrowed a socket set, tightened it down, and rode home.

It was a fun day, and a good one to commute. This has been the nicest September in Western Oregon in a long while.

John