The Warcycling Gauntlet Has Been Thrown.

I've been war-driving since 2000, and war-biking almost since I first started riding. I do this only occasionally. There are very few variations I can make to my current work commute that don't involve riding on roads that are unwise to use in rush-hour. It makes little sense to scan that route on a daily basis.

I don't scan for wireless networks in order to find ones that are easy to break into. They're all easy, in some way or another. And I don't have any need nor desire to break into other peoples' networks. I can tether with my phone from anywhere I can get a signal, and many places offer free wireless Internet to patrons. I'm not in the habit of poking around on networks I'm not supposed to be poking around on. I like my freedom, thank you very much.

When my friend Lorin started riding his bike to his new job, it was a massive increase in bicycle riding distance, and he started scanning for wireless networks on the way to and from work. Some time in the last 24 hours or so, Lorin threw down the gauntlet.

One thing I didn't mention last night is that I went ahead and brought my warbiking rig along for the ride. I think CommuterDude was the only one that knew what I was up to. It made lots of sense, because the route went through many small residential byways that many normal war-drivers would completely miss. The two 19dBi omnidirectional antennae were mounted very surreptitiously to my panniers. In case anyone's wondering, I saw 423 wireless networks along the route, with more than 300 of those being brand new to the WiGLE database that Lorin and I are using to track this stuff. Of course, I have a 7-year-long head start on Lorin. We'll see if he can catch up. And I suppose this means I'll be canvassing wireless everywhere I go a lot more often.

November 2010 Dark Side Ride

That's right. We know no season. With our ride kicking off at 9:00 PM, a light headwind out of the East and temperatures in the mid-40s, five riders departed. Usually, the DSR crew heads off to rural territory, where only light traffic is seen, but this route was designed by DB, who decided to mix things up with some urban flair. We started in northern Overland Park and passed through almost all of the little suburbs in Northeastern Johnson County. Then, it was across State Line, where attractions included The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Plaza, Loose Park, Brookside (where we saw a spectacular chimney fire being put out and rode our bikes past a huge trailer full of aromatic Christmas trees waiting to be set up for sale), Waldo, and back to the starting point. The route had dozens and dozens of turns as we avoided most of the major thoroughfares in preference of smaller residential streets, but we had a few fun, high-speed runs on big-name roads like Cleaver II Blvd and JCN Parkway.

It was a blast, as always, but I forgot my camera. All I got were these crappy phone camera shots.

Beautiful fall morning!

Lenexa, originally uploaded by KC-Bike.

34°F. Calm. Overcast with a 100% chance of colorful leaves falling from the sky.

Long day.

7:50 AM:


8:40 PM:

Cast into darkness

Spring Forward, Fall Back. Seriously, this relic of tradition seems like one of the most futile things to hold onto. The fact that congress moved to bump DST for 2007 and forward didn't help matters any. Regardless, my evening commute (and likely the commute of many others) just got cast into darkness. Swiftly, instead of gradually. Not that it matters anyway. Soon enough, my morning commute will also be dark.

At any rate, this is your friendly reminder to make sure you bring adequate lighting and reflective gear with you for your evening ride home, and to be mindful of the sun's new position in the sky while you're on the road. Ride defensively and safely. This is especially for those of you who have to ride into the sun while it's low on the horizon.

Speaking of lighting, my review of the L&M Vis 360º is up at BikeCommuters.com.

Check the batteries in your lights!

Now that it's going to get darker earlier in the evenings, you need to make sure that your bike lights are working fine.

Yes, I did say lights, plural. The law requires that we have a bright front white light and a rear red reflector, but a better practice is to have a red rear light and a red rear reflector. I mean... what if they guy behind you forgets to turn his headlights on? No light to reflect. And, if your light malfunctions, at least you've got a reflector as a back up.

Personally, here is what I use in the darker months; a bright front light, a low mounted red rear reflector & non-blinking light combo device, and a seat mounted blinking red light (PlanetBike SuperFlash). Also, I wear an ANSI-approved highway worker's vest from AlertShirt.com, and reflective ankle bands. One of my bikes has two red SuperFlashes and an amber reflector in addition to the red reflector. Amber reflectors are 2.5 brighter than red reflectors of the same size, according to John Forester, but are not recognized by the law, unfortunately. So mine is there to provide additional support, it's not the "legal" reflector.

Does this sound excessive? It all a lot less expensive than an MRI, emergency surgery, Life Flight ($25,000?) or a funeral.

At the end of the day, I look at my lights before I turn them off. If they look dim, I check the batteries. I also check every 60 days on a schedule.

By "checking" I mean I pull the batteries out and put them on a simple DC voltmeter. If the alkaline batteries are running below 1.4 volts, I replace them. The batteries are still good for non-critical uses, but I just don't like batteries lower than that on my bike. If they are 1.0 volt or below, they are too weak for anything, and get tossed out (new alkalines start out at 1.6 volts or so).

Often, when a light is going dim, one batt is fine, but the other is dog meat. No need to toss both out, just replace the bad one.

For my bright white front light, I run rechargeable batteries, which I top off every week or two. My reason for not running rechargeables all the way around is that I don't want to spend my life charging batteries, yet I want to do something to cut down on battery disposal, so this is a compromise. Charging 4 cells at a time is OK with me. My charger, a Maha conditioning charger, holds 4. I do have some extra rechargeables so I could run the whole bike on them if I had to.

Now you see why the "no batteries needed systems" like on the Breezer Bikes hold so much appeal. For the habitual night rider, they can be convenient. However... they are costly systems, if (when?) the dynamo hubs go bad, then you're out quite a lot of money. Also, you can't move the lights to another bike. Lights are getting better, and it's hard to upgrade a fixed system. Battery lights you can move from bike-to-bike, which I do all the time. I have matching mounts on different bikes, and I just unclip and reclip the lights.

Even with all the lights, though, I don't burn through many batteries. Maybe 8 a year? That's not a big load on the environment, not compared to impact of driving my car.

LED lights are the way to go for entry-level AA or AAA battery lights. Real "bulbs" are old, inefficient technology that will waste your battery money. Now, higher-end "HID" lights with dedicated batteries are not LED, but they are in another price category. They are very bright.

The brightest rear taillight in the world is the DiNotte 140. I don't think I need that one yet. Definitely if gas goes to $15 per gallon someday and I have to bike commute all the way down SH6 with 50 MPH traffic. This one will keep them off my a**.

October Recap

Man, what a month! Pretty much the usual commute thing, not much other riding. A little bit of driving to take care of some bizarre errands here and there that just couldn't be accomplished any other way.

Today, we turned the keys in for our old apartment. It seems like I've spent the last 3 weeks doing nothing but busting my ass at work, only to come home and bust my ass packing things into boxes, cleaning the old place up, moving boxes between apartments, unpacking those same boxes, organizing things and deciding what's going to remain boxed up for now. I'm a bit of a packrat. I gave away or discarded literally half a ton of random kipple that's been crowding my closets during the process of moving this time.

A lot of what's left had no rhyme or reason to how it was stored, with half a dozen large plastic bins all full of random computer, photography and bike stuff. Most of last week was spent finding a place for every thing, or a thing for every place, but I'm finally satisfied with how stuff is organized. Audio/Visual cables and hardware is finally stored in one thing. Networking stuff in another. Wall Warts and Power Bricks together. Bike parts together. I even have a 5 gallon pail completely full of ethernet patch cables. At least now I have a bunch of small messes of related items rather than one big mess sprawled across many different containers. I can't help but think I need to jettison some more of it, but you never know when you'll need an AUI to UTP transceiver balun or a NuBus Ethernet Card. Oh, wait. I needed one of each last week. Yes, really.

My plan for completing the 100 Pushups program fell completely apart as I encountered nights where I averaged 4 hours of sleep after an eight hour day working and an equal amount of time spent on moving tasks. The balance of my day was taken up by everyday boring stuff and a bike commute to keep me sane.

I'd imagine I have another week or so of getting settled in.

Putting additional stress on things, I barely listened to any music in October. Music gets me through things, and there just wasn't time to put the headphones on and get into the zone at work. And at home... you already know.

At any rate, I'm stoked for what November will bring. Stresses at work and at home are settling down. The temperature's falling, and we're going into one of my favorite times of the year to ride.