I guess I know about how Beethoven felt when he wrote the piano rondo, (“Rondo alla ingharese quasi un capriccio in G major, Op. 129”, better known as “Rage over a Lost Penny”.) I have been making little doo-dahs for the new bicycle. I needed a dozen or so braze-on binder bosses and a dozen or so water bottle bosses. What I have been doing on the cold mornings is to get in my trailer with the electric heater. I set up the Smithy Lathe with a steel rod and start turning out bosses. Today I was finishing up some water bottle bosses. They are three eights of an inch in diameter necked down to nine thirty-seconds. They are about five sixteenths of an inch long and are drilled and tapped for a five millimeter bolt. I whack it off with the hack saw and dress it up a bit with a file. It takes me about fifteen minutes to create each one. Read More
Rage Over a Lost Penny
Path Has An Adventure
By now you all know that we give names to everything. Our Coach is “Arcturus,” the Honda Civic is “Little Blue,” and our recumbent tandem bicycle is ‘Path.” It is named after a fictional dragon in Ann McCaffry’s “Dragon Riders of Pern” series. In Ann McCaffry’s series “Path” is somewhat ‘proddy’ and causes her rider, Mirrim, to be ‘out of sorts.’
Riding the Scappoose Dike Land:
We have moved over to St. Helens for a few days this week. We are getting our annual dental checkups and visiting old friends. Today we jumped onto Path, our recumbent tandem bicycle and rode from St. Helens to Scappoose. Then we rode around the Scappoose dike lands. This is some farmlands that have been developed from the flood plain of the Willamette River many decades ago. The main highway of the region is US-30. It is four lanes and roaring along at 55 plus. Turning off onto the dike road puts us on narrow twisting roads with practically no traffic.
Triathlon
Sometimes we are just at the right spot and at the right time. We are currently camping at Millerton Lake State Recreation Area near Fresno, CA. This morning the nearby boat ramp was invaded by a couple hundred triathletes and we had front row seats for the Millerton Lake Triathlon. These folks swam 400 yards, bicycled twelve miles and ran three miles. Six of the fastest men did the whole route in under an hour.
Missouri
We have spent nearly the whole month of November in Missouri. We explored my ancestors in Seneca. We visited with our Alpine Coach Owners Association in Branson and took in two of the really big shows there. We traveled the length and breadth of the Missouri Ozarks staying at Corps of Engineers parks at Pomme de Terra lake and Lake of the Ozarks. We then toured the Missouri capital building in Jefferson City and rode a ten mile segment of the Katy trail. It follows the railbed of the MKT, the Missouri, Kentucky and Texas Railroad. For a swan song we traveled to the eastern edge of Missouri to St. Louis and we attended a performance of the Paul Taylor Dancers and watched Neil’s sister Julie perform. Paul Taylor and his Dance Company were performing the “world premier” of a new dance, “Beloved Renegade.” We had a wonderful day with Jerry and Janene, Julie and Niel’s parents. We visited the Transportation Museum and then attended the dance performance.
Ancestral Tree
We have made a four day stop in Neosho, Missouri, the county seat for Newton County, MO, the county where my mother was born in 1913. We went to the court house and immediately found the marriage license for her parents, William Madison Cook and Della Williams for July 12, 1910. What a rush to see the actual recording document that was hand entered in 1910.
Ride the Dragon:
Judy and I ride our homebuilt recumbent tandem bicycle just about where ever we go. On Monday we set out to ride from Gilroy to the outskirts of San Jose to have lunch with Glen and his family. We cut our time too short so with a few quick calls on the cell phone we arranged to meet everyone in Morgan Hill at the Morgan Hill Museum. The museum was closed but they had a nice garden with benches where we ate our lunch.
The ‘Bent Tour
‘Bent as in recumbent, meaning a laid back bicycle. We have been trying for a couple of years to get together with Bob Bryant and his platoon of recumbent cyclists in Port Townsend, Washington. Today we made the connection. The first thing we found out was that Port Townsend is built on a series of hills. Read More
Power to the Humans, II
This is Path again reporting from the Human Power Challenge for 2007.
This is certainly a fun place to visit because there are so many fantastic recumbent bicycles and the special “‘bent” people who ride them. Let me define “‘bent” people. These are folks who often commute by bicycle. It is not unusual for them to have three or four bicycles with each new bicycle being a little more extreme than the last one. Read More
Power to the Humans:
My Humans, Gary and Judy, took me to the Human Power Challenge, 2006 this week. Imagine my surprise when they opened the doors of my trailer and there were recumbent bicycles just everywhere. There were Tour Easys, Gold Rushes and Bacchettas. There were home built bicycles and streamliners. Everyone was just romping around, splashing in the rain puddles and having a glorious time. Other humans came by and snapped my picture and I held very still and made sure my paint gleamed its finest. Read More
