Category: You Ran Over What?

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Nitrogen for bike tires, good idea?

St. Louis Bro Mark, showing little respect for his older brother, wrote, “You seem to have plenty of time on your hands now that you are retired. Here is my question: Nitrogen in bike tires. Good, bad, indifferent?”

In the springtime, a young man’s thoughts turn to biking. Of course, this isn’t springtime in the Midwest and Mark has been freed for several years now of the danger of dying young. That’s why Bro Mark’s Trek Madone is serving as a piece of hanging art in his dining room.

Despite his obvious mockery, I did a little research.

One of the advantages of being older than dirt is that (A) we didn’t have much history to learn because not much had happened yet and (B) the Periodic Chart of Elements was really short because most of them hadn’t been discovered.

Nitrogen – the Cher of elements

Nitrogen, was Atomic Number 7, and was one of the Cher of elements, needing only one letter in its symbolic name – N – unlike nouveau elements like Ununoctium which is so new that it still has a temporary name and a three-letter symbol, Uuo.

To geek out even more, “Nitrogen is a common normally colourless, odourless, tasteless and mostly diatomic non-metal gas. It has five electrons in its outer shell, so it is trivalent in most compounds.

So, does it make sense?

Here are some reasons given for using Nitrogen:

  • Some dealers give you cool green valve stem caps to signify that the tire is filled with N. (I guess you could just swipe two caps and put them on your tires to make people THINK you are cool.)
  • It eliminates moisture. That could prevent rusty rims in car tires, but your air is sealed inside rubber inner tubes.
  • Nitrogen makes up about 78% of the atmosphere, Oxygen about 21% and other gasses, about 1%. That 1% varies depending on whether or not someone in the vicinity of the tire pump had Mexican for lunch or you’re standing in a field near Methane-producing cows. Nitrogen molecules are bigger than Oxygen molecules, so they sneak out through the pores of your rubber inner tube more slowly.
  • Because the gas is dryer than normal compressed air, the density of the gas remains more constant, especially at temperatures higher than 100 degrees. Now, that’s probably more of an issue if you’re a NASCAR driver, but I’ll concede that a blacktop road surface on a July day COULD reach more than 100 degrees.
  • Because Nitrogen is inert, it doesn’t attack the rubber in your tubes like Oxygen does. I generally wear out my tires and tubes from the outside in, so I’m not sure how much a benefit this is.
  • Nitrogen doesn’t support combustion. That’s why it’s used in commercial aircraft tires and the Space Shuttle. A Boeing 727 with an air-filled tired crashed after an overheated landing gear brake set the tire on fire, killing 167 passengers in 1986. Somehow or another, I don’t think you hit speeds high enough to make this a concern.
  • Since it doesn’t support combustion, it also doesn’t support life. That means that if your car runs off the road into a canal and you reach for your bike tire in the back seat to provide you with enough air to escape, you’re dead.
  • But, and I’m sure that this is the biggest reason that you would make a switch, Nitrogen is lighter than air. The difference is about an ounce in a car tire, so I suspect that you could spit at the start of a climb and deduct about as much weight as you’d save by converting your bike tires to Nitrogen.

The major drawback for you

I’ve observed that your bike is so light that you often have to chase it down to keep it from flying away, as documented in this picture taken at Cape Girardeau’s Capaha Park. If it got it any lighter, it could slip away from you and become a UFO. Homeland Security will NOT be amused.

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The One Palm Beach Penny Madoff Didn’t Steal

I was taking my Surly Long Haul Trucker out on its inaugural run today. Son Adam and buddy Keefer were along on the ride to the Palm Beach Inlet to check it out. I have to admit that it was a bit traumatic when I rolled it out to the street the first time and saw lawn dirt sticking on the tires.

About the penny

We were just about to turn onto the Lake Trail bike path when I locked down the brakes.

Right there, embedded in the concrete sidewalk, out in plain view was one of the few pennies Bernie Madoff didn’t make off with in Palm Beach, if you can believe the news stories.

Adam had a great idea

He said, “If any of us get involved in some kind of cloak-and-dagger escapade and we need to hook up, just place a call from a phone booth and say, ‘Meet me at The Penny.'”

I hope nobody from Homeland Security was eavesdropping.

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I Met a Reader in the Wild Today

I was in Wayne’s Bicycle Shop this afternoon talking with him about building a wheel for my new Surly Long Haul Trucker when a young woman came in with a beater bike that needed air in the tires and a seat adjustment.

We struck up a conversation and I gave her a Palm Beach Bike Tours business card. She looked at it for a moment and said, “I think I’ve been on that blog before. Do you write about your family in it sometimes?”

I confessed that I had been known to slip in some family references.

She mentioned enough other details to confirm that yes, she was actually the first stranger I had ever met who had made it to the site. She said some nice things, too, but she might have just been polite since I was blocking her exit from the shop.

It’s still exciting

I’m going to let you civilians in on a secret. Journalists, at least the ones I’ve worked with, are secretly excited to find out that folks look at their stuff.

I was still in high school filling in for the city government reporter when I started covering a particularly fractious political squabble. One day I was in a local coffee shop having lunch when I overheard a couple of local movers and shakers talking about MY story: “The paper says….”

And I thought, “‘Paper says?’ I wrote that. And I wonder what they’d think if I’d go over and let them see the snot-nosed kid whose words they were treating as gospel.”

I’ve been tear-gassed in riots

I’ve covered Civil Rights marches, been to so many anti-war rallies that I thought my head would explode if I heard one more repetition of Give Peace a Chance, got trapped in a library sit-in (on the night my newlywed wife had planned a dinner party) and been on drug raids where friends were the targets.

I’ve been hassled by guys with guns

Most of them were wearing badges. This encounter was on the Florida turnpike in 1977. The series of pictures that staffer C.J. Walker and I shot ended up defining the highway patrol’s media policy that has been adopted by fire and law enforcement departments nationwide.

I’ve climbed high objects

I’ve climbed bridges, water towers; talked my way onto rooftops and crawled into coal mines. Sometimes it was because it made a better vantage point. Other times, because it was just something neat to do.

I was half-way up a water tower in a small Florida town when a booming voice came over a PA speaker, “Climb down off that tower. NOW!!!”

I explained who I was and what I was doing, but he said he was afraid that I’d sue him and the county if I fell off. “How about I sign a release?” That might work, he said, but he didn’t have anything like that with him.

He settled for my handwritten statement: “I, Ken Steinhoff and my heirs will hold harmless the county of XXXX in the State of Florida and Deputy XXXX, in particular, in the case of my death or injury. In addition, I promise to scream all the way down to warn anyone who might be walking under the water tower.”

I’ve dangled, uncomfortably, from a helicopter

Despite the fact that the newspaper had been critical of the Palm Beach County Sheriff buying a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter, I managed to convince the right people that I should do a story on the good things that it did.

I spent almost six months flying with the crews, most of it on my own time.

Some of the crewmen didn’t know whether to trust me or not. While we were going through the chicken dance, getting to know you phase, I heard that they were going to do some practice picking up victims in the rescue sling. That sounded like fun, so I volunteered.

The last thing they pointed out before we lifted off was a red switch covered with a safety. “That’s the guillotine switch. If we ever feel that the load we’re lifting is endangering the aircraft, I just pull the safety back, push this red button and a blade cuts the cable: The cable you’re swinging from.”

He wasn’t smiling when he said that. I kind of got the point.

I spent a month covering the Cuban Boatlift

And discovered that some news footage of me shooting a boatload of refugees made it into the opening titles of the movie Scarface. (That’s me in the yellow Cat hat, in case you didn’t recognize me.)

The first thing you do

The first thing you do as soon as the paper comes off the press is to turn to your story or picture. You want to see if some editor screwed it up. Or if the composing room manged to switch your picture of the city’s new garbage cans with the mug shot of the mayor (it happened). You want to see if it reproduced correctly, and, most importantly, you want to see YOUR name in a byline.

Finally, you listen carefully to see if you hear anyone in a coffee shop say, “The paper said….”

I got that same rush today in Wayne’s. I can’t wait until it happens again.

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A Christmas Story for Cyclists

Phred Kent Peterson of Issaquah, WA, wrote A Cyclist’s Christmas story in 1999 dedicated to Jean Parker Shepherd.

If the phrase, “You’ll put your eye out,” means anything to you, then you’ll understand this story.

What’s a fixie?

For you non-bikers out there, a fixie or fixed gear road bike is a bicycle that doesn’t have gears and doesn’t allow you to coast. The chain is connected directly to the rear wheel, so the pedals are turning all of the time the rear wheel is turning.

Go down a hill really fast, and your legs are a blur trying to keep up with the pedals. Conventional bikes have what’s called a freewheel that will allow you to coast without pedaling. Most modern bikes have gears that will let you ride up hills easier. Fixed gear bikes have only one gear: one that’s too high to climb with and too low do descend with (from this rider’s perspective).

Have a Merry and a Happy from palmbeachbiketours.

kls

P.S. If “you’ll put your eye out” and leg lamp don’t ring a bell, see A Christmas Story for a refresher.

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I Wish I Could Put These Lights On My Bike

Bro Mark, shivering in St. Louis, sent me this picture and message this morning.

Truck I saw last night

The iPhone doesn’t do so well in low light. This truck was in the Galleria Shopping Mall parking lot last night.

I stopped and asked the driver if I could take a picture of his truck. He was from the south and was very nice.  Said he just wanted to be sure that Santa saw him this year.

The inside of the truck was lit up with just as many lights.  He was going to wait out the snow/ice storm that was heading our way and the snow up north that had the roads shut down.

The photos that I took from the side turned out too blurry to even send.

If I saw this rolling down the highway, I would HAVE to follow it, I would just have to.

There are some folks who swear that I have almost as many lights on my bike, but I’ll deny it.

I wish I did, but I have to confess that I’m a few bulbs short of a string.

December 19 update

In a comment below, Bro Mark walks down memory lane.

I had a great old blue Volvo station wagon a few years back and I would take an artificial tree and lay it down on the roof rack and then decorate the tree. I wired ornaments to the branches so they wouldn’t fly off as I drove down the road. It also had a full set of lights strung on it as well. I powered the lights off a converter that plugged into a lighter.

It was great fun to drive down the highway at dusk and as I would approach a van that had kids in it, I would throw the switch and light the tree. You’d never guess that kids noses could flatten out so wide against a car window. I always got the thumbs up from other drivers as I drove down the road.

Ken may have a photo of the tree since the car broke down one Christmas on the way home when he was visiting here. It would be unlike him to have NOT taken pictures.

[ED Note: Indeed, I did take pictures while you were abandoning the Volvo at a gas station along I-55 after the engine blew. “Oil? Don’t cars COME with oil when they’re new? You mean you have to change it after three or four years?”]

Later I learned that I was an idiot for using regular lights. Apparently there was some risk of electrocuting myself with the standard 110 volt lights. Electrocution, schmuckticution…I might have to do it again with the new car next year, because it was so much fun.

Electrocution, schmuckticution

[Ed Note: For the record, it really DID look cool at night. As far as learning that he was an idiot for using AC power to light up the tree, the Idiot Train pulled out of the station a long time ago.

If you don’t believe that, check out one of Bro Mark’s other escapades.

Seems like he has this thing about lifting his bike up in the air, probably to demonstrate how light it is.

After a ride, we decided to check out Tower Rock, which is normally surrounded by swift-moving Mississippi River waters. Because of a drought, it was possible to walk out to the rock for the first time in years.

Let the pictures speak for themselves. Click on the thumbnail to see the whole story.