I love CitiBike – being able to grab a bike whenever for a short trip is just magic.
And then I saw a video about Bike Angels, and it grabbed me. It’s genius.
CitiBike has a clumping problem. Bikes flow like tides across the city, and they clump in popular destinations. Some docks end up with lots of bikes and some end up with very few.
They already have some overhead – the electric bikes need someone to come out and swap fresh batteries for dead ones. Repairs need to happen. They also have vans that pull up to overweight docks and transport them over to underweight docks. That’s not great though, using a motor vehicle to move bikes around. Better if people just did it cheaper on the bikes themselves.
That’s the bike angel program. It gives you points for moving bikes from crowded docks to emptier ones. More extreme docks give you more points. Doing it a lot is a streak and racks up your points. It’s all very silly and the very base rate of it all has a point worth around a dime. But it’s enough to make me OK with walking a little farther when I’ve got the time and riding a little farther to drop off at a dock that needs it.
And then I got a streak. And then I got to triple points. And then I found myself taking a ride between two docks to just not break my streak.
I really liked riding an e-bike – but I found it hard not to crank up the motor all the time and go super fast!
Trouble started for me when the spokes started giving out on the wheels. I got them repaired on the front wheel. Then I noticed some broken on the back wheel. I went to my local bike shop, Habitat Bicycles, and they said they couldn’t repair it because too many spokes were broken and they didn’t work with these kinds of e-bikes.
Hell! I had to get it repaired! I bought a replacement wheel for a few hundred dollars. Then I took it to a shady repair shop to move the motor over from one wheel to another. It was not a good job. The motor didn’t properly engaged. Then I went to London for a while and when I came back the battery stopped taking a charge.
So, for months I’ve been riding what is basically a very heavy non electric bike. That’s fine! I have strong legs. Then the rear shimano shifter dropped a spring while riding so now I have a 3 gear heavy regular bike.
I’m not very happy with this, though I’m generally really happy riding a bike. I don’t want to pour more money into fixing more things on this bike.
I just discovered that my work has a health reimbursement for bicycles!
So I’m finally going to buy a nice bike. I’ve never had a nice bike. I’ve always been proud of making do with old bikes and making them last forever. When I got hit by a car in South Carolina, I got the fork re-straightened and kept riding that same bike for years longer.
But I really think I’ll get something out of a nice bike.
I had to decide – do I get an e-bike again?
I’m not getting an e-bike. I like pedaling, I like getting stronger. E-bikes aren’t serviceable everywhere and are complicated. My experience of getting someone else to take care of an e-bike was not very pleasant. E-bikes are really expensive. I have to remember to charge the battery. Many days I’d have the battery upstairs and realize I’d forgotten to bring it down when I was heading out.
So what kind of bike? A commuter bike describes me perfectly. I’m a commuter. I read 8 miles or so to work and 8 miles back with a bridge in each ride.
The next big choice I made was to go with self-service simplicity or high tech offerings. If I get a bike with front and rear cassettes, a chain, and caliper breaks – that’s a machine I can service basically any part of. I’m also interested in what seem like good recent advances – continuous variable transmission internal hubs and belt drives, disc brakes and the like.
I decided to go against my usual self-service simplicity because I’ve noticed I don’t have the time. I just can’t be arsing around with my bike as much these days – so fixing it myself isn’t something I’m prioritizing.
It’s got a carbon belt drive – no more grease stains on my pant legs when I forget to roll up.
Continuously variable transmission internal hub. I’ve tried this on Citi Bikes and it seems pretty sweet. An internal hub is also one less thing to maintain. It is sealed from the elements and should be fine unless things go seriously wrong – but then I’ll HAVE to take to a bike shop.
Dynamo powered front and rear lights. I like not having to take my light off to recharge it.
Hydraulic disc brakes should work in all conditions – but I won’t have the tools to fix them.
I’m eager to get my hands on it and decide if it’s right for me!
I love riding my bike to work. I ride pretty fast (many are faster) and I ride assertively. Not being a jerk, but if you are walking in the bike lane with your back to me, I’m hollering “watch out, watch your back” so that you and I can be safe and I don’t have to slow down or stop.
I also ride with reflectors and blinky lights and sometimes a speaker blaring. I want you to not be surprised by me. I’m pre-emptively defending myself and excusing my existence because lots of people are angry at people who ride bikes for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Sometimes people shout at me, but mostly not. I’ll just go ahead with telling the story so I don’t lose anything – this is still rattling around in my mind.
Last night I was heading from work to a Positive Discipline parenting workshop because I want to be a better parent. My route goes down Broadway through Herald Square, which is a nightmare. Let me show you.
A map of herald square showing 3 places bikes and peds interact. Highlights are where there is nothing clear and peds have no idea they are in the lane. Red is where I was attacked.
There are many spots where people are walking in bike lanes, which are unclear and poorly maintained. People are headed to Penn station, which would make anyone angry.
I was almost through this meatgrinder of an intersection when I saw a man step out into the bike lane nearly in front of another biker, react as if he was threatened and throw an elbow at the biker. We had the green, but in NY lights are a negotiation between walkers and riders. Walkers gonna walk, and it’s ok. I thought this guy seemed nuts and angry and thought, I’ll go ride through behind him.
As I biked behind him, he reached out with his elbow to hit me. I stopped and asked him that perfect question, “What the fuck?” This was dumb as it was clearly intentional. He started shouting at me that I was crossing against a red light. I wasn’t. I shouted back which was useless and there was a lot of yelling where I’m saying you know that you intentionally hit me and then he yells “What are you going to do about it?”
I thought and said, I’m going to go ride home to my family and forget about you. We yelled at each other some more.
Then he punched me in the chest. Poorly, because he was a dumbass, but the thought counts.
Let me tell you who punched me. A standard older banker/business white guy. Late 40s/mid 50s. Flat top haircut. Wearing a long black wool overcoat.
I was straddling a bike, so I got off the bike. Didn’t want to be easy to knock over. He stepped back, fished in his coat pocket and pulled out a stun gun.
There was more yelling, and I realized this guy was intentionally trying to get someone to fight him. I didn’t want to. I also didn’t want him to get into Penn Station and try this on someone more vulnerable than me. I don’t think you should call the police for most problems, but this seemed like a pretty reasonable thing. I couldn’t see any cops, of course. The guy backed up and left. I don’t know why.
I keep thinking about this and replaying the incident in my mind and going over what I should have done. But really, this is just the random brutal real world. I didn’t save the day or get control of this danger, I didn’t make things better, but I did get to go home, go learn how to be a better parent and that’s something.
I’m writing this one bushed after 24 hours at the company hackathon. Most of our developers are in HYD, so our hackathon starts at 10:30pm Friday and ends 10:30pm Saturday.
Right now we are all done with our deck, the app is finished, we’ve polished everything we can and we don’t want to touch anything in case we break it. So it’s a strange calm.
Another 60 miles on the bike this week and feeling fine. In the gym, we’re working on handstands. Zelda is growing smarter every day, Max suddenly started saying his “R”s like an American instead of a Brit.
I gave Sam a day to travel to Coney Island with Jeremy Fox on friday while I watched Z. Only fair because I’m spending 24 hours away from them.
Speaking of Jeremy, we got to go out and drink and play nerd games and it was SO MUCH FUN. Got to introduce him to another friend who’s out in LA, Dewitt. Hope they actually meet up and hit it off.
We are having a hackathon! I’m excited. Its my first since Music Hack Day NYC. We’re going to try out Amazon Lex, Lambda, and some containers.
Some folks are already using my code for working with ELK, so that’s nice.
I’ve been focusing around automating my testing and such, and I really am centering around just learning to write better makefiles. Make is installed everywhere, like vim and other things I like. It just works. And makefiles do almost everything you want. The downside is that it is an ugly syntax. The upside is that if you learn one ugly syntax, you don’t need to learn everything about Rake, Yarn, etc.
Around the web
Best Practices for Staging Environments – this article by the excellent Alice Goldfuss came up at work as we wrestle with big calcs and datasets for our clients.
Why you hate Contemporary Architecture – This is grrrreat. One little note for the computer nerds. If you’ve heard of the Gang of 4 Design Patterns book, read the article and come back. The Design Patterns book was based in part on Christopher Alexander’s “A Pattern Language” which is a great guide to things that seem to work in architecture.
I discovered two things that similar to a POC I was working on (voracious-etl)
Datasette provides a readonly JSON api for any SQLite DB.
None of the big progressive candidates made it in the democratic primaries. Cuomo still won. Tish won, which is OK. However, I see that some progressive candidates made it through.
I hope they can do some real work and win in November. I’ll be calling and doing work to support them. I long for a day when I can start moaning about free speech vs hate speech and trying to reign in some liberal excesses. However, right now, the work has to get done.
I also note that children are still in cages and parents are getting deported without hearings, but it isn’t in the headlines anymore. I’m still pissed about it. I’m still pissed that the probable governor of NY seems to only work for progressive issues when pushed and won’t use his clemency powers.
Exercise
I biked around 37 miles this week! Had to take off Monday and Tuesday due to rain and being pretty sick. But otherwise, I rode in. Got to stop on Christie street and help a guy who’d been knocked down by a cab.
Worked to a slightly lower pistol squat and my butt hurts sooo bad. Also, my dragon flag work is getting better. I can kind of hold it.
I started doing partial handstand pushups against the wall and they feel pretty good. I can do 5 at a time part way down and up. Next I’ll try lower and lower, then try freestanding ones.
I’m really enjoying the new toys to work with there – there are so many smart folks and they’ve been doing the right thing for years. I’ll suggest a clever solution and they will point out they’ve got that in their plan or that they considered it and it doesn’t work for good reasons. The tools, the documentation, the culture, it’s all really impressive.
I’m working in tighter boundaries – instead of nobody caring about performance I find myself in meetings with high level people where we are talking about differences of 200ms. We’re hiring! Get in touch if you’re interested and I can refer you in.
There’s no dress code and that’s been really nice. It makes it much easier to bike in – so I’ve been doing that way more than usual. I skipped a few days due to rain and I’ve still done 36 miles this week. Since I joined Strava I’ve ridden 100 miles.
I’m sweating less for a 6 mile ride and I’m noticing differences in how fast I can go up bridges and such. I also don’t have as much energy just waiting around in my legs – they get more tired and I’m not giving them much rest at all.
I’m doing weight watchers with Sam and it’s definitely affecting my choices. Now that there’s points I’m eating way healthier. And the sous vide machine has been helping – it’s easy to pop something in when I get home and then finish the cooking after putting kids to sleep.
The boy got sick this week and we had to take him to the urgent care center because his heart rate seemed very high. He refused to take anything to bring down his fever, I think that’s what caused it. So we go to the urgent care and they say take this medicine to reduce your fever and he refuses to drink it. Ultimately they say, then we have to give a suppository.
That’s no fun. But when they came back in a few hours and said it’s time for more medicine he looks up and says “I’ll do it the easy way. Bring me the cup!”
I’ve had a chance to volunteer on the texting team for the Beto O’Rourke campaign and it was fun and easy. I HIGHLY encourage you to give it a shot because Ted Cruz can be beaten. If you can’t donate money, these days it is super easy to donate time.
Baby Z is taking her first walks and she points at her belly if you ask her where it is! She also is playing with Max. This morning they both had fruitsicles (to keep Max hydrated) and she kept leaning over to wack him with it! It’s so wonderful to see them loving each other.
