Don’t let your bicycle fall in disrepair like Grounder and Scratch. Check your bike over before every ride and keep it well maintained like our good friends Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles “Tails” Prower.
Update:
Here is a great resource for bicycle safety checks and other information at League of American Bicyclists. – Thanks Shane of Eugene Safe Routes to School for the link!
PSA from the 1993 TV series The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.
While perusing the City of Eugene today I was looking at the Traffic Safety Devices Page and found in the PDF for Bike Traffic Signal a photo I took of the signal on 18th and Alder. The city had asked to use it, but I just hadn’t looked at what they ending up using it for. It was nice to see that I had photo in there. 🙂
Original photo they used here.
I really like how the city has set up the Traffic Safety Devices, it also includes information about: bike boxes, buffer lanes, sharrows, back-in diagonal parking, stutter flashes in crosswalks, and green bike lanes.
A photo of Angel and I is featured across the Atlantic on the Kitesurf Bike Rambling Blog in their Monday Bike Style Section. Angel wearing her favorite green jacket and watermelon helmet atop her blue haired head. And I am wearing my wonderful reflective vest. (What great style I have.)
I was given the opportunity test out the Ride the City iPhone App and have a couple extra copies to share with my followers. (More about how to receive a free copy below the page break)** These are my first thoughts and initial write up for the app. I will write an in depth review on the app after I get to use it a little more. Some of you might be familiar with the Ride the City bicycle route map site. The iPhone app allows you to do the same thing, on the go from your phone. The RTC app has been out since April of 2010. They just recently came out with Version 1.5 which has a lot of great new features.
Weather:
• Check in app before your ride
• Fully featured weather forecast for the day
Layers:
• City bike routes, lanes, and paths
• Bike shops
• Bike share stations
Easy Drop Markers:
• Touch screen to drop start/end markers
• Great if you don’t know the exact address
The map and routing for the site and app is based on Open Street Map. Ride the City bike path and lane distinctions are a lot nicer than the ones Google’s Bike Routing feature does. Google uses light green for bike lanes, light green dashes for safer recommended routes, and dark green for off road bike paths and trails. So it tends to be a lot of green. The Ride the City maps use blue for bike lanes, blue dash for safe routes, and green for for off road bike paths and trails. Currently, the App only works for 38 cities, the same as the Ride the City site, which are all listed out after the page break.
The Ride the City iPhone App can be purchased for $1.99.
The Ride the City website itself is free to use.
Both are only currently available for 38 cities.
Chance to get the app for free below the page break.**
I love smoothies, they are probably one of my most favorite sweets to consume, and favorite ways to eat fruit. My smoothies are made out of whatever I have in my freezer.
Smoothie Rules:
No unnecessary fillers
No banana (I’m allergic)
No milk, yogurt, soy milk, or tofu
No ice, it just waters it down
Directions: I only like all fruit smoothies. I freeze almost all my fruit. By freezing the fruit I have no need for added ice or other thickeners. I don’t measure anything (waste of time), I just put it in the blender. The one draw back to this is that they tend to always taste the same, just a blend of everything, never a dominate flavor, but I don’t mind it. Sometimes I will add some extra of something to give it more of that flavor.
The fruit I commonly like to use:
Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, grapes, and any other berries
Apples, peaches, pears
Watermelon or other melons. It helps to use melons as a juice source for the smoothie, or macerate them and freeze them into cubes if you want them to be incorporated that way.
Some special fruit: Frozen açaĂ, or pomegranate jewels are always nice to add.
It’s also nice when Angel has extra fresh fruit in the fridge.
Added: Ground flax seed, wheat germ, and hemp protean powder, and a little cinnamon(little goes along way).
Liquids: I like to normally use plain apple or orange juice. Sometimes fancy juice blends.
I also freeze leftover smoothie or other fruit juice in ice cube trays to make little smoothie starters.
Serving: The consistency of the smoothies is normally nice and thick, so you have to use a spoon for it. I like to serve them in wide glass cups, or my trusty Klean Kanteen Stainless Steel Pints. Or, when I’m on the go, my Klean Kanteen Insulated Thermos.
Today was a great day for riding. Earlier in the day I went out for a ride with Kori from GreenCycle Services on a Christmas tree pick up in North Eugene. It was nice to get to know him more. Then I met up with Angel after she was done with all her classes for the day at school. We went for a ride around the river paths, then went home to eat, where I had a stupendous peanut butter sandwich on toasted Dave’s Killer Bread heels (I LOVE heel sandwiches). Then went out for a solo ride into the South Hills of Eugene. I went down Willamette to Fox Hollow to McBeth. This was the first time I went that way. Normally I take Fox Hollow back into town. Going toward McBeth this time was fun. I found Bill’s Bench (if you know anything more about it, I am interested), it’s a nice little bench right off Fox Hollow Rd set aside to watch sunset right on the road. On the plaque it reads:
“Bill’s Bench
Bill Sloat, a long-time Fox
Hollow Resident, loved this
spot and dreamed of a bench
here so cyclists and others
could enjoy it too.
Placed by family and friends
of William R. Sloat with
permission of the Dale Smith
Family, owners of this land.
1991”
After that I saw a flock turkeys, a sheep/goat with large straight up horns, and three American bison. Sadly the turkeys ran when I got closer, and the sheep/goat and bison were too far away to get a good photo. It was a great sunset ride, with some well deserved pasta when I got home.
This year I decided to try a 365 photo projects. In recent years lots of people have been doing projects like these in many different ways. Some do self portraits, scenery, or something like this bike being stripped down to nothing over a year: LIFECYCLE. I chose to do something a little different. I take a photo of my right foot, shot in square format with my iPhone from my knee. Those are the only rules I have for the photo. Whether or not anyone else finds it interesting, I don’t know. I didn’t really care about doing this, I just thought it would be funny as a joke and that I would not finish it, but after the first month of it, it kind of looks cool when you see the photos in a group together.
To view my Foot 365 set in full, and growing collection of photos on my Flickr.
I grew up in central Illinois. In August of 2007, I bought my first real “adult bike” after needing a bike to save money on gas. Since then I have had many bikes. In April of 2010, after moving out to Oregon, I got my beloved Surly Long Haul Trucker. I have put a lot of good miles on the bike. This blog is about my life in Eugene.
Contact me at:
BreadBike [at] gmail [dot] com
Bread Bike 