That was an oops

I love my Bike Friday, the folding bike that was custom made for me in Oregon. A couple of years ago we talked about getting e-bikes. I found out that Bike Friday could convert a bike to an e-bike and I thought that would be fantastic. I already had the perfect bike and it would, I reasoned, be even better with an electric assist on it.

The original

So, I packed up the bike and shipped it back to Oregon to have the conversion done. There was some difficulty with shipping it back and while I was looking all over for it here it had inadvertently been shipped back to the factory that it had left the day before. Eventually we got that straightened out and the bike came back to me.

It didn’t really look elegant; there were a lot of wires running all over the frame. No problem. It was a conversion after all. The battery and the other pieces needed to run the motor were squished into soft bags on the seatpost and the bag that held the batteriy was difficult to zip up once the leads were attached. The battery pack was made up of three wheelchair batteries.

The motor was on the front wheel. I didn’t think I cared where the motor was. When I got to reading the instructions, it said not to use the two top levels of assist when going up hills. I guess this is a safety thing. With too much torque on the front wheel you might end up going for an unexpected trip over the handlebars. In practice the bike was super on the flats but I had to work harder than I wanted to on the uphills. I would love to have used those last two levels. Last summer I went on a few rides with Richard where we traded bikes half way through. He has a dedicated e-bike and we both found my bike harder to ride than his.

An e-bike is a trade-off. You get help from the motor but you also get a much heavier bike so if, for example, you run out of battery, it’s not a matter of peddling the rest of the way with the ease of a bike with no motor attached.

I found I wasn’t riding my bike much. I can’t speak to the dedicated e-bikes that Bike Friday makes or to how the conversions work for others. It just didn’t happen to be what I had hoped for and I was too quick to jump on something that looked like a perfect solution.

For my birthday last year Richard bought me a dedicated e-bike which is great. That left me with the issue of what to do with my BF. It fits and suits me better than any other bike I have ever had so I started toying with the idea of getting the motor taken off. We could take it with us in the van when camping because it folds up neatly and I would have my bike back to a rideable condition. After procrastinating like mad, I asked the guys at our bike shop if they could do that work. They don’t work on e-bikes they haven’t sold but they gave me the info for Wired Bike. When I looked the shop up online I got a ‘file not found’ error and when I called the phone number the guy gave me it was out of service. (The correct phone number is 587-664-2499 in case you need work done on an e-bike.)

Looking in Google maps showed the address, a photo of the storefront, and that the shop was open. I decided to toss the bike in the van and go for a drive. I’m glad I did. The shop was, indeed, open and Ali said he could take the motor off and put the bike back to the way it was. He warned me that he was going out of town and I probably wouldn’t get the bike back for a week or two. That was no problem because I wasn’t riding the bike anyway.

Ali phoned me the very next day to tell me that the bike was ready. Since I was in Didsbury working on ukuleles, Richard picked it up for me. I have been for one ride so far and I love it. I’m using my low gears a lot and I’d much rather take the e-bike on any kind of a lengthy ride. Nevertheless, for jaunts around the neighbourhood and for improving my overall fitness the Bike Friday is as enjoyable as I remembered it being.

There are only a couple of downsides to getting the bike back to normal. The first one is that I spent quite a bit of money on the conversion, not so much on putting it back; and when I was a block and a half from home on my first ride I made a mistake I haven’t made in years.

I intended to pull in front of a parked car and lift my bike onto the sidewalk so I could push the pedestrian crossing button. When I got close to the corner I noticed a curb cut and thought I’d use that to get onto the sidewalk beside the push button. I wheeled up onto the curb, unclipped one foot and fell over onto the opposite side. The e-bike doesn’t have clipless pedals on it so it’s been a while since I’ve used them. It took me a few minutes to untangle myself and get the other foot out of the clip so I could get onto my knees and get up. In the meantime two people offered to help; one was a young woman walking down the sidewalk when I did my graceful dismount and the other was a young man in a car who actually went around the block to come and check to see if I needed help. I assured them both that I was ok, at least mostly.

The left sleeve of my sweater felt inappropriately wet and I could tell I had some road rash under my jeans on my knee. When I got home and reviewed the damage there was blood down my arm and it had soaked into my sweater. The puncture itself was only about the diameter of a pencil so once I got cleaned up it didn’t look bad. The patch of road rash is larger but not very deep so I’m delighted with the outcome.

Of course, I would prefer to remain upright but I have no broken bones and no injuries that prevent me from going on with my day-to-day routine. My elbow is tender and I will have a new scar on top of the ones I’ve already accumulated from similar incidents over the years. I don’t know if there are guardian angels or not but if there are I owe a huge thank-you to whichever one was on duty that day. I hope to provide my guardian angel with endless coffee breaks and a thoroughly boring existence on all future bike rides; however I’m not ready to send her into retirement just yet.

Water

We are in an interesting position right now in Calgary. On Wednesday June 5 there was a break in a major water main. One of the illustrations I saw compared the size of the regular delivery pipes to a pizza and the main that broke to a huge dump truck. That did rather put things in perspective.

There are road closures, city pools are closed, and in the fitness centres that are open showers are not available. In one community water isn’t available in the normal delivery system and residents get their water from portable water wagons. As I write this on Saturday, the latest news says that the earliest lifting of restrictions will be in 5 to 7 days.

So what is being asked of ordinary Calgarians who aren’t in the immediate area of the break? Take fewer showers, don’t use the dishwasher, don’t do laundry, don’t water lawns or plants, don’t wash cars, sidewalks or houses, flush the toilet less often. All of that is pretty much common sense when there might not be enough drinking water to go around it we don’t conserve it.

There are a couple of things this has done for me: one is to make me incredibly grateful for the infrastructure we have and how well it works  most of the time. The other is how many useful things I have learned from camping, first with my parents when I was a small child, then later in a tent both in the front country and in the back country on canoe trips.

We experienced some issues with plumbing when we did our latest renovation. We had a large detergent container that we had washed out strapped to a step stool with a basin below it for washing our hands in the bathroom because the utility sink in the shop was our one source of water for most household needs. We didn’t have to think very long about how to solve the problem of getting water to the bathroom because we are used to using this system on the seat of a picnic table when we are camping.

Another thing camping taught me about water use is that I can wash my hair using water from a squeezy bike bottle. I don’t wash my hair every day and this morning I decided to allow myself two bottles of water to do the job. I used about 1 ⅓ bottles and I could have done the job with a single bottle if the warm water rinse hadn't felt so good. Was it as good as a nice warm shower? No, of course not, but it worked and that’s the important thing.

Yesterday when I washed the dishes by hand, I filled a large bowl that needed washing anyway with water, added dish soap and set it in the sink. I then took a spray bottle and filled it with water so I could rinse the soap off the dishes before drying them. I don’t keep the faucet running to rinse dishes but I do run water over batches of them at a time to remove soap.

Anyone who eats oatmeal knows that it leaves a sticky mess in the bowl. I often run my bowl under the tap before putting it in the dishwasher to avoid baking any of the oatmeal on. This morning I used the spray bottle and a paper towel to get the remaining oats out. A paper towel probably isn’t the best environmental choice but at least it can go in the compost and I don’t need more water to rinse out a dish cloth.

I was going to do laundry on Thursday and I’m eyeing the pile of dirty clothes as they pile up. If we run out of socks and underwear we can always hand wash a few pairs. We have plenty of other clothes to last us a week without doing laundry.

When we get our regular water service back I’ll be even more conscious of how I use water. We are thinking of changing from a turf lawn to some other type of ground cover. We have taken a small step in that direction by seeding white clover in the spots of the lawn that were killed during our latest home renovation. I rather like the clover patches and the bees seem to enjoy them as well.

While water restrictions are a minor inconvenience for us, I'm reminded of people who don’t have a safe and reliable supply of drinking water. I’m going to end the blog here and go and think about that for a while.

"WOO HOO what a ride"

Two Saturdays. Two memorials. I suppose that’s what happens as one ages.The first memorial was for a woman, the mother of a friend, who lived for over 100 years. At the gathering we heard of her early years, her move to Canada as a war bride, of her children, and her friendships, both long and short term. We were in a quiet backyard with fruit trees in blossom and each person who spoke was accompanied by bird song. The clouds lurked and eventually when the rain started we moved indoors. We walked with friends through the rain to their home where we had left our car and  then drove home to carry on with our normal weekend tasks.

Today was another memorial celebration, this one in Fish Creek Park. We were greeted on the porch steps of The Ranche Restaurant by a life-sized photograph of Isabelle. wearing an outlandish costume and a huge grin. Inside there were more photos of her, many from year-end vocal recitals in which she often sang songs that brought delight and laughter to her audience.The story goes that she began to take voice lessons so she could sing to her grandchildren. Members of her family spoke while a slideshow of photos, and quotations ran in the background. I learned that she kept a book in which she wrote quotations that were important to her. I  keep a book like that too.

She loved books and instead of a standard guest book we were invited to write in a children's picture book that belonged to her. Another of her books made an appearance when two of her children read this passage from Embers by Richard Wagamese:

“Me: I miss my mother sometimes. Really bad.

Old Woman: Maybe try missing her really well.

Me: How do I do that?

Old Woman: See that sunrise? See how beautiful the colours are? How clear and clean the air feels? How good it feels inside of you?

Me: Yes it’s wonderful.

Old Woman: She lives in that. So maybe just say “Thanks, Mom” when you see and feel things like that

***

I miss my mother really well now.”


After the stories, there was food and music, so much varied music, one instrument after another, an accordion, a harp, a singer, a cellist, all offering songs Isabelle liked. The last song ‘What a Wonderful World’ was one she always wanted to sing but could never make it past the first couple of lines without tears spilling from her eyes.

We left after the music died away and walked west along the pathway instead of returning to our car. We saw a sign for ice cream and decided there was no better way to honour her than to walk down the path eating ice cream until it was gone. As we walked, the words by Christie Beam, quoted in the slideshow ran through my mind. “Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive, well-preserved body, but rather a skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand and a martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally warn out, and screaming ‘WOO HOO what a ride.”

Our ice cream finished, we turned back to the car on our way home to resume our usual weekend routines. Later when the bird was fed and put to bed and the dishes were done we were about to go into our individual studies as we so often do in the evening. Still thinking about Isabelle, I suggested we pull out the Solo Stove and have a fire. We sat on the deck as the sun set, robins and crows called and the police helicopter made its rounds overhead. We waited until the sun was gone, the wood burned to a few embers, and the decorative lights draped around the deck came on before coming inside.

It is so easy for me to do what I have always done rather than making the effort to do something different. I’m glad we sat by the fire tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to start going through wood in the shop and putting it in a burn bin so the next time we think of a fire it will be easier to find wood. It will also provide me with an incentive to clear out some of the wood since I have more than I will ever use. It’s a small step but one that adds to the momentum so I can be one of the ones skidding in yelling ‘WOO HOO what a ride.’