robotech_master

It's been a busy rest of the vacation from the time I last posted. On Saturday, I felt like going down to my brother Alex's place to visit, so I asked him if that would be okay. He said they were just about to head over to his wife's brother's place nearby, but that I was welcome to come along, and even stay overnight. So I quickly showered, packed my CPAP and tablet, and trundled on down there. Took about 45 minutes to ride the 16 miles. Alex made me a cup of coffee and showed me his new laser CNC gizmo, which could burn or cut things with a laser. Was pretty neat.

After that, we drove over to Target and Alex kindly bought me a six-pack of beer to take along. After checking the selection, I opted for the whimsically titled "Fear. Movie. Lions" double IPA, which was suitably tasty. And in reading the text on the side, I was introduced to a system of navigation called What3Words, which assigns a specific set of three words to every three-by-three-meter (or ten by ten foot) square the whole world over, so that you can tell someone exactly where you are just by making sure they're clear on what three words you just told them. You look it up in their app, and their app can then call whatever GPS navigation software you use on your phone to plot you a course to it. Or, you can look up the words via their website to see where they are.

I think it's a pretty nifty idea. Just make sure the person you're giving directions to also has the app installed, or else can look it up in the web browser, and then you can tell them exactly where to find you with just three words. Could be especially useful in situations where there's no precise street address available, such as rural areas, parks, and so on.

We didn't opt to stay into the evening for fireworks, but instead headed back to Alex's place. As it got dark, I sat out on the back porch and watched the rest of Alex's neighborhood shoot off fireworks for a while. He lives in a fairly well-to-do suburb, and several houses seemed to be firing off full-fledged semi-professional starbursts. They were seriously impressive, though I had to wonder what was going to happen if burning cinders fell on top of someone's house and lit it on fire.

Later that night, after the kids had been put to bed, I walked Alex through the first couple of ships on Hardspace: Shipbreaker, a fun Steam early-access deconstruction game centering on taking spaceships apart piece by piece. He seemed to get the hang of it pretty well. I wonder if he'll continue playing it.

After that, I went to bed. I was a little nonplussed to realize I'd forgotten to pack my toothbrush, my pills, and my weighted blanket, but I could get along without those. I had packed my CPAP and some distilled water for it, which were the important thing. As it turned out, even without the weighted blanket I slept like a rock, and awoke refreshed and well-rested. I had my brother spray sunscreen on my back and covered the rest of me in it myself, and hit the road for home.

On the way back to my place, I decided to play some Ingress—or as it's called now, Ingress Prime. I hadn't really been into this geolocation game for a couple of years, since I had lost the ability to get easily from place to place, but with the new bike, and the seventeen mile route back home, I felt like giving it another shot. There was only one in-game badge keeping me from hitting level 14, and the easiest one to get would involve creating a few big fields. And as it happened, there were a couple of portals en route that would make great anchors for a multi-layered series of fields I could set up through various portals in my home neighborhood.

So I stopped at one of the portals and hacked out a dozen keys, then headed on back north to the Ash & Elm cider brewpub, where I enjoyed a couple of glasses of apple cider while hacking out a dozen keys there. After that, I headed home to my neighborhood and started making my fields. If the preceding doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you, don't worry. It's game talk. Other Ingress players would understand it, though. Suffice it to say that before I was over, I had made level 14, so yay there. It'll probably take forever to get the quals for level 15, but there's only 16 levels in the game, so having made 14 is quite an accomplishment.

After that, I headed back home. After spending some time relaxing, I took my Trek bike over to the local bike shop to put it in for a tune-up. They're about three weeks backlogged, but having the new bike means I don't really need the Trek for a few weeks anyway. And it gets it out of the way in my house for a while.

When it came time for bed, I found that the application of sunscreen to my back had been a little spotty. A stripe had been missed right along my back, just above my shorts. It stings, even with the aloe/lidocaine aftersun gel I had bought during a previous encounter with sunburn. But oh well. 

This morning, got a call from the bike shop saying that my bike's drive train is completely worn out and needs replacement, to the tune of $230. Which I certainly agree probably needs doing, but it's not exactly in my budget right now. When I went out to mail a package this morning, I stopped in there to discuss it with them. I'll probably just end up having them do the regular tuneup for now, and bring the Trek back in for the replacement when and if I get another stimulus check. 

And that's pretty much all the news I have to report from the tail end of my vacation. Tomorrow, I go back to work from home on the phone for Anthem, spending all day taking calls from my attic. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that, though given I've had over a week off to rest and recuperate I think it will actually be a nice change of pace. And at least I'll have greater mobility during the times I'm not working. And I'll finally be getting some proper exercise.

Granted that my bike's electric motor is doing the vast majority of the work getting me from place to place, I'm still able to put in some effort pedaling along. It's just that I don't have to. So I'm thinking of the bike as being effectively like a stationary exercise bike that also happens to move. I can pedal along as much or as little as I want, but the more I do pedal, the more I'll eventually be able to pedal, and it will help build up my endurance and perhaps also start working off some of the quarantine/work-from-home weight. Back when I was bicycling to and from work on my Trek over the last couple of summers, I actually lost a few pounds without even trying to. Hopefully the same thing will apply now. I just have to keep pedaling until I get tired, and eventually I won't get tired as quickly.

Now that it's the evening and the sun is down so it won't further aggravate my sunburn, I'm thinking I'll get on the bike again and go a few more miles. Maybe I'll head downtown and back, eking out some nostalgia from following the old routes I used to use to commute in and home on the Trek. Since the bike has lights, it'll be a pretty safe run.

Anyway, I hope you all had a happy fourth, and that the coronavirus doesn't get ya. Later!

So, I had my adventure today. After two months of waiting, my Juiced Rider ODK II was finally ready. It was time to go pick it up and ride it home.

At 2:30, I caught the bus downtown, and took a transfer to a bus that went to Traders Point Mall, the farthest point northwest in the Indianapolis city bus system. Then I called for an Uber to take me on out to the eBoom Electric Bikes shop in Whitestown. When I got there, at about 4:45, I paid the costs of the tuneup and repairs (about $170 in all), and they finished bolting the battery in place. Turned out that they had to get new screws for it; the new battery was from the next year's model of bike, and had switched to a different screw size. Also, the relay from one of the handbrakes to cancel the cruise control was still broken off and dangling, but they were able to electrical tape it into place. Happily, the battery had finished completely charging during the day; apparently it had been shipped partly charged after all. So I strapped the old battery onto the cargo rack, told Google Play Music to cue up "Born to be Wild," and off I went at about 5:30 or so. My plan was to head east to Cost Plus World Market, a nifty foreign and specialty foods, drinks, and furniture shop, and get a little shopping in.

The bike's low center of gravity and huge handlebars took a little getting used to after two years of riding my Trek. (And my Trek also takes getting used to after I've done much riding of the Juiced.) But happily I soon got the knack again.

The ride was a fun trip through Indianapolis's rural outskirts and suburbs. I passed huge fields of corn and other crops, met the occasional cyclist, while nifty music blasted in my ears. I rode down a bike and jogging trail while listening to Deep Purple's "Highway Star," that was fun. I got to see parts of town I'd never seen before, and may very well never see again as I probably won't have any reason to bike that particular route again. At one point, in a suburb, I drove past what looked like an ancient cemetery with a sign up saying do not disturb, it's being restored. Now I kind of wish I'd stopped and taken a closer look at it. I doubt I'd be able to find it on Google Maps.

I got to World Market a little before seven, parched from my ride—but their chilled-drinks cooler was out of order, so they didn't have any cold drinks. So I headed over to a nearby McDonalds, paid $1 for a big Barq's root beer, inhaled it, used the restroom, and headed back to World Market…to discover that the place had closed at seven. Whoops. But no big deal; I can go there again earlier in the day sometime now that I've got my e-wheels.

So I headed on to my next stop, Triton Brewing Company, a nifty place that I'd been to a few times before when my bike had been working with its original battery. It has a convenient power outlet right by the bike rack, so I was able to give the bike a half hour of charging while I had a couple of beers. (I make the joke that the company that makes my bike renamed itself from Juiced Rider to Juiced Bikes…but since I was able to charge up my bike while I drank, I had a juiced bike and a juiced rider!)

After that, I headed down to visit my brother and sister-in-law, who live out by German Church Road. (I blanked out their address in the photo below.) Had a nice chat, then headed on home as it is getting dark. At Post Road, I headed down onto the newly completed segments of the Pennsy Trail to ride it the rest of the way home. It's not officially open to the public yet, but all the segments west of Post are paved, it's easy to navigate around the sawhorses blocking the ends, and it's a safer and nicer path for a bike than going along the busy road. Over the next few months, it should extend all the way out to German Church Road to link up with the segment of Pennsy Trail that starts there and continues east. I'm quite looking forward to being able to visit bro & sis-in-law as easily as just getting on the Pennsy a block east of my house, and getting off it a couple blocks north of theirs.

I got home around 10ish, having ridden 45.1 miles over the course of the day according to Google Maps. And although I had added a half hour of charge time at Triton, nonetheless the battery indicator hadn't even had a single light go out yet. This battery is everything I need it to be in terms of charge time.

Before I put my bike away, I went ahead and mounted the Schwinn detachable front basket I'd ordered in from Amazon. Had to move my headlight, but all in all it worked.  It's going to be handy to have that extra space to carry groceries and stuff. Down the road, I'll look into getting a trailer, but I've pretty much blown my budget for the next little while.

Now the bike is out in the garage, recharging, and I'm up at my computer…also recharging, but in a different way. As I had planned to do, in celebration I opened one of my $10 Dogfish Head 120 Minute beers that I save for very special occasions. It was good. 

I guess that's all I have to report about my adventure today. The whole thing was great fun, and I can't wait to take my bike out on some more longer trips over the next few days before I have to get back to work again.

So, I got all excited on Monday when I got the news that my Juiced Bike battery was finally ready to ship, after a month and a half of waiting. But the excitement may have been premature. 

When I checked up on the FedEx tracking number they gave me, the status never changed. It just said "Shipment information sent to FedEx" and was never updated. Finally, today at lunch I called Juiced again, and they checked and found that the battery was being sent back to them by FedEx, due to a lack of documentation. I checked in with them again shortly before closing time there, and the rep said she'd passed it on to her manager to see that it got corrected and shipped back out again. There hadn't been any further updates by the time they closed at 8 eastern, but hopefully I will hear something tomorrow. 

At this point, it seems highly dubious that the battery will arrive on Friday as originally projected. It's got to come all the way from Chula Vista, California to Indianapolis, Indiana, and it will have to come by ground because that kind of battery cannot be air-shipped. But on the other hand, I went ahead and took all of next week, plus the following Monday, off work, to have plenty of time to ride it, so hopefully I'll still get a good few days in before I go back to work.

Assuming something else doesn't go wrong. Like, my bike's motor refusing to work once the new battery's connected to it (it has sat idle for a couple of years, after all), or my charger not being compatible, or something else like that. With as many things as have gone wrong already, I can't help but think that maybe something more is right around the corner. Argh!

Meanwhile, I've been looking ahead to accessorizing. The cargo rack is nice, but not exactly convenient to strap stuff to sometimes. But there are bike trailers. This one on Amazon looks potentially useful, but the hitch looks like it's made for normal bikes, not ones like my ODK II that have a huge cargo deck behind the seat. Maybe something with side-hitches, like this one, would be a better bet. Well, I'll keep looking. It's not like I'll be investing in it any time soon. My new phone, smartwatch, and whatever the other repairs to my bike cost will have depleted my savings considerably for the next little while.

Hopefully I'll get some good news about shipping time tomorrow. Will just have to wait and see…and give Juiced another call at lunchtime.

Well, with the stimulus coming in, and BlueIndy going away, and word having it that a biking trail that would connect me almost directly to where my brother and sister-in-law Aaron and Karen live will soon be completed to stretch all the way across instead of petering out halfway, my thoughts have once again turned to the ol' ebike. I got a Juiced Rider ODK2 some years back, and rode it all over town, until the battery gave out two years ago. At the time, replacing the battery was beyond the scope of my finances, so I shoved it in the garage and made do without. The cheapest battery I could possibly get would run $650, and the best replacement battery would be $1200—and I only paid $1600 for the bike.

But suddenly I got that $1200 stimulus check, combined with my tax return and some entirely decent quarterly/yearly bonus payouts from work. And I'm suddenly thinking about how nice it would be to have that longer-range cargo bike back at my disposal, especially if I could upgrade the battery so I can take longer trips. One nice thing about the e-scooter craze of the last couple of years is that it's taught me some things about how small electric motors should be treated so I'm sure I can do a better job of not abusing the battery this time around.

The problem is, just who to get to work on it? The fellow I bought it from, who ran an ebike dealership out of his garage, passed away. I contacted the manufacturer, and they pointed me at a moonlighting mechanical engineer in Indianapolis who even did house calls…but he cancelled my order through the Velotool website without a word of explanation offered. Maybe he's just social-distancing for the moment. Fortunately, there's an ebike shop in the area, eBoom, who I contacted and they said they will work on it for me. So I've asked Aaron to drive me and the bike up to it on Saturday, and we'll see how it goes from there.

Getting out on the ebike will also help me get some exercise during the quarantine, if I keep the motor on low and pedal for part of the speed. Work on shedding these quarantine pounds I'm sure I'm picking up. And with the weather getting nicer, it'll be a good way to go. I'll be able to do Trader Joe's runs again, and get out to other businesses when they're open.

I had some great adventures on that bike while it was running the first time. Am really looking forward to seeing how it runs again.