As I was riding in this morning I witnessed the idiocy of 2 cab drivers crashing into each other in the middle of an intersection. I could not contain my glee as I stopped and watched the 2 drivers yell at each other. Was it wrong to be happy in the misfortune of others?

I was gonna say Silversteins but the Olympia guys are bad too. It is a sad state of affairs when you hear of something like this and get a flashback of your own experiences with similar road users. But hey...at least the restaurant/bistro got fresh warm bread...no stinkin tree hugging cyclist will stop me from my daily rounds...kind of like mailmen.

Nasty. I'm pretty sure I almost hit one of those olympia dudes in the summer as he was unloading/delivering. Now I sort of wish I had:)

UPS trucks give me nightmares. They kind of remind me of that clown icecream truck from twisted metal.

except that you usually see a lot of mailmen on bikes, toting their 50lbs of letter which always amazes me.

speaking of narrow misses, i saw a guy on the weekend try to pass a street car that was going so fast he went through an intersection then came within milimeteres of hitting some pedestrians crossing on the other side; they actually had to jump out of the way. i couldn't believe how fast this guy was going. it's times like these that i remember what my dad said when i was 16 and asked why i couldn't just drive any time i wanted: "becuase it's not a car that you're getting into, it's a 3000lb guided missile. it's like driving a loaded gun".

Two days ago I tightened up the slack on my chain.
Now whenever I skip I can feel the cog loosening.
Does wearing happen over time? eg. thread slack?
Or do I just need to re-tighten my lockring?
These are Miche hubs.

Get that tightened ASAP before you strip it out! ride really hard and fast towards the bike store and then jump off the bike or use a brake or something to slow down so you don't apply any backforce to the cog, then get keith to go at it with a lockring wrench like a gorilla.

It was a weird weekend. I didn't wear my helmet for a long ride, something I don't do more out of habit than anything else and I can barely count the number of times I was crowded over, almost doored, blatantly cutoff by five cars in a row and barely missed some stealth meat pylons.... Maybe someone is trying to tell me something.

Without explaining my situation at all, I have determined that Olympia bakery apparently does not have a manager and the owner does not have a phone number. If I do not recieve satisfaction I may just have to go after work and let the air out of their tires to keep them from jumping up and down off the sidewalk.

http://toronto.craigslist.org/bik/240423897.html Interesting CL Bike post. Wheres Dominique when you need her?

PS. we need to chip in and get this: http://cgi.ebay.com/Rhoades-Car_W0QQ...QQcmdZViewItem and then strip it down and rebuild it.

I am full on loving those new crosswalk countdown timers!!!!! Takes all the guesswork out of hitting the intersection at steam. I imagine it'l make life alot easier even more so for the leg brakin' crowd in our midst.

Is that that sort of dull beeping I am hearing all the time now? Or do you mean the chirping and bells thing at some of the majors?

Rofl.

yeah, those timers are sweet, I hope they start putting them up outside of the downtown core too.

underneath all the walking signal lights downtown there's now timers that count down until the light turns red.

They are sweet. Though on a sociological level I find it somewhat disturbing that the onus is on the ped to get across the street on time. I mean if the light is green when you step out..... how long could it possibly take someone to cross? Even factoring in the elderly, I still think it's the drivers' responsibility not to mow people down....even if their path is somewhat obstructed. What if masses of peds carried air Zounds and blasted a motorist when they sat in a crosswalk or were trying to turn right through an intersection without waiting for it to clear in the same fashion cagers blast horns at everyone in their path? I wonder if they even know how disconcerting it is, because I don't think they know how loud it actually is outside the car. While it's a cool feature for us cyclists, I think it'll just fuel the cagers' sense of rightful dominance on the roadways. For me though the ped will always be allowed to walk in front of my car.

well you get an AIR horn like they use on the boats and attach it to your bike , when a cager opens his door you give um a blast. during warmer months my buddy when he drove his bike would catch up to cager at red light that had blasted him with the car horn and he would blast they cager back, fu to watch.

I'd like to see 1000's of portable ones handed out to the peds.... let them have at it. :lol:

I think it's more for folks who may be visually impaired rather than an herding mechanism in addition to the flashing walk light. My experiences is that peds mosey along no matter what. Some woman wandered into traffic this morning on my ride in and was swearing a blue streak because no one let her cross. This half a block from a controlled cross-walk.

I guess it will lessen the chance of pedestrians getting caught in the middle of an intersection and plowed down by cars, but if the cars are paying attention it should not be an issue anyways. I know that I personally, will cross almost any time the orange hand is still flashing, so I'm usually at the opposite curb just when the light turns green and sometimes people try to turn right into me. I think these timers may reduce the chance of me running across the road, but again thats never been an issue really.

I'm already pretty good at timing lights. I think on a bike, especially when at the front of the line and track standing there is no way somebody changing CDs in their car is going to be paying enough attention to beat you off the line so if anything I think this may make cars better at jumping at greens and right turning in front of cyclists, because they can just look up every once-in-a-while and see how long it is until the green. I hope this doesn't turn intersections into little elimination-style drag races where people can see exactly how many seconds until they get stuck at a red.

hmmm^interesting thought^

When I started driving in Toronto, many years ago, the little red hand on the crossing signal didn't flash to indicate to the pedestrians that they'd better hurry up because the light was changing. It just went from the little man to the red hand and that was it, don't ****ing cross. When it changed to the flashing hand, as a driver, I knew that it was still okay to go through the green and that the light wouldn't be changing to yellow anytime soon as people were still crossing. If you were a little ways away from the intersection and you saw that the hand was starting to flash, you'd pick up speed so as to make the light, it is a natural reaction.

I think we will see more of this and people will be flying through those late yellow lights. I too wish the city would quit cow-towing to drivers; the core is packed enough, there should be developments made to make it less-than-appealing to people to drive downtown.[/rant]

Has anyone seen a Cinelli Alter stem for sale in Toronto? I'd like to get one but I don't think they've been made in quite some time.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j1.../STEM-1006.jpg

Never seen it in the city... seems like an ebay object to me.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-120mm-1-1-In...QQcmdZViewItem

ending in a couple hours:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Cinelli-Alter-St...QQcmdZViewItem

Yeah, I am watching both of those auctions but the end price gets a bit nutty. There was one last week that ended at 60$USD, too rich for my blood. We shall see what happens; I find the girly one to be kinda tacky, maybe that will make it cheaper ;)

the face plates are removable anyways

Lock ring done and done.

hey jet, that stem is still at 10 bucks with an hour to go

So I took a spill two weeks ago (not sure if I posted about it) and messed up my ribs a bit. I didn't go to the doctor, but they're still hurting quite a bit. In fact, today they feel worse than they have in days. Think I should take time off work to go to the doctor? There's not much they can do for ribs anyway, but this is getting annoying (and maybe it's also paranoia/hypochondria). I can't remember how long it took for them to heal to the point of not being a constant annoyance the last time.

Darkmother/cavernmech: I know you've both had your share of rib injuries.. any advice? (or anyone else, for that matter)

ps. goddamnit if I haven't been regularly sneezing since I hurt myself. I rarely sneeze and it *really* hurts with injured ribs.

;) I am watching, don't worry. I don't want to get sniped so will bid in the last few minutes but thanks for the heads up :)



Yeah, see someone about it, you may have fractured it, it might even be likely that you have something fractured if it is still tender after such a long time. Worst case scenario is internal bleeding/hemorhaging, but you would have likely noticed that by now; see someone about it though, you'd be surprised at some of the injuries people can obtain and not know it.

Damn sorry to hear your still hurtin man. Get em checked like I said when I saw you Friday night. You got a busted rib I bet. A little time for an x-ray and all will be clear. If it's busted then you can tape up like a boxer. Riding must be a little interesting, you getting pain when you huffing and puffing?