A carnival of technology

I bought a new bike on Thursday, so hopefully this means the last bike post for a little while. Now I can get back to complaining about how the Internet sucks so much. The last I heard about my camera was yesterday: it had supposedly been packed into a box ready to go for today. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll either be able to take pictures of the bike sometime next week, be shopping for a new camera, or be arrested as I find out that they included the beer I brought that it turned out no one drank.

As for the bike, I did end up buying it at Performance Bike on Ashford Dunwoody. I’m really not interested in taking curbs anymore, so the salespeople there led me towards a different compromise: a road bike with flat handlebars. The one I ended up buying is a Schwinn. In addition to the dozen or so simple machines strapped onto a metal frame, it has a carbon fiber fork for a smooth and mellow ride and, since the pedals are on so tight that I haven’t been able to replace them with the other pair yet, those clipless clip things should I decide to buy some shoes with cleats. So far I’ve been enjoying it. It’s about 10 pounds lighter than my old bike, so riding it feels a lot easier. Going uphill is still exhausting, though, which makes me suspect that I’m doing something wrong. The skinny tires inflate to 100 freaking psi (130 (freaking) max), giving me a bit of an upper body workout, too. I’m sticking with the paddle shifters for now, but they’re going to take a bit to get used to.

In local news, the Dunwoody invasion must be stopped. Dunwoody was originally the DeKalb counterpart to Sandy Springs, an unincorporated area with enough people that naming it makes it easy to talk about, and, legally, it’s a means of controlling development in the north metro area, but years of propaganda from the Dunwoody Homeowners Association has caused the boundaries to sneak across the county line, claiming the land in Fulton between the border and 400. This abuse of definition has sown only confusion, causing some business on Roswell Road to claim to be in some kind of Dunwoody. Maybe all you need for Dunwoody is to have a little in your heart. Anyhow, Sandy Springs citied up all of that part of Fulton, so Dunwoody is still nothing and now Fulton Dunwoody is even less. However, some people still have a little Dunwoody burning on, and I guess they’d like some recognition. The AJC has an article describing a recent fight with the city over the Homeowners Association vandalizing street signs with misleading bonus signs. I find the whole thing both stupid and hilarious.

In other city news, I’m trying to take part in the government process by asking my elected representative to consider adding a right on red restriction to that Glenridge intersection. It’s this one. Every spoke is different (the map doesn’t say it, but the north-south part of that triangle is actually Johnson Ferry, which continues as a sort of asphalt parasite to the north until it parts from the host road north of Hammond), so I’m not going to try to explain it with names. The southbound traffic is coming over a hill; traffic turning right on red from eastbound to southbound does so blindly. I think this is probably the sort of thing that a city can fix.

I returned last night from my adventures gallivanting along the east coast, skirting dangerously close to the edges of Dixon. Though I managed to leave my camera, cell phone charger and a rubber mallet in another state and acquired half of a sunburn on my trip home, I had a wonderful time; I thank my gracious hosts and hope I wasn’t too much of a burden.

I included today in my vacation so that I could get some rest before returning to work. After buying a new cell phone charger (the T-Mobile store didn’t try to sell me a new phone this time), I wandered over to Vinings to look at bikes. I didn’t buy one, but I have a few more things now to think about. My focus was turned towards hybrids, but I may consider some of the lower-end road bikes. I don’t plan to join any races, but neither do I plan to take the thing off-road, so maybe a road bike would be a choice for commuting. I also don’t know what to think about shifters. It seems like shifters have changed drastically every time I look at them: the grip shifters that seemed to take hold after my broken bike was purchased seem to have disappeared in favor of something involving paddles. I might be biased by experience (or just crotchety towards change), but I really prefer the type I have, a lever mounted on a circle, where there’s some tactile feedback as just what the hell gear you’re really in. The guy at the bike shop helped me to understand the differences among various hybrid models, but all the models sold there were Trek, with whom I disagree over just what the elastic limit on their goofy alloy should be, and I always feel a little uneasy around someone trying to sell me something that costs about the same as my rent. And though their free service offer seems pretty nice, I disagree with the shop (or possibly Trek again) over some of the warranty specifics: if I blow out a tire as soon I leave the store, it’s not my damn fault. I plan to try that shop near Perimeter Mall later tomorrow, since, though I recall them having a sign out front reading “Lance and I ride Trek,” I think they have other sorts of bikes, too. As for the shifters, it’s not like the ones on my current bike are broken, and I don’t think they’ve yet changed the ultimate function of them to do more than just pull a wire, so I’m sure I’ll get my outmoded technology back one way or another.

I’m also hoping that by tomorrow I’ll have some confirmation that I got paid. In lieu of the pay stub I would normally have received Saturday, I got a letter in the mail today from Adesa (I don’t care if they want the name in all-caps; it’s a stupid acronym, it looks bad capitalized and the New York Times style guide backs me up on this), Autovin’s parent company, explaining how they just switched payroll systems and how the new pay stubs, when they do arrive, will be totally rad. I see numbers in my bank account, but I’d still feel better if I had them on paper, too.

My Sandy Springs city council representative decided to hold a town hall meeting on Tuesday, so I went to figure out what’s going on in my metaphorical backyard. Ms. McEnery posted a PDF of the presentation she used to the city web site, so you, too, can see all the stuff I learned. It was mostly about how we have police now and what the budget looks like. I thought it was a bit odd that the city has no money budgeted this year for sidewalks and road improvements, loud among the complaints that led to incorporation, but they chose to pay off all of the debt they borrowed for the first partial fiscal year from December 1st of last year to June 30th. I guess not having any debt is nice, and the city manager seemed to know what he was talking about. Anyhow, the city has a police department now, they’ll have a fire department in a few months, and they don’t have any money leftover.

Also at the meeting was Robb Pitts, Fulton County District 2 Commissioner and recently famous for his role in that mess with the parks. As you may have heard, Fulton County recently crafted a plan for the disposal of several park properties within the city limits of Sandy Springs, as state law does not permit the county to continue providing park service to a municipality of over 5,000 people, and the proposal they ended up voting on could have been construed as allowing the park land to be sold to anyone who wanders off the street and wants to build a new office tower. Pitts, once the backlash hit, reversed his vote, overturning the proposal, and he’s been in damage control mode ever since. There was a definite change of tone when he took the floor. While the mayor and city council seem like what you’d expect from members of a new local government—average, everyday people who go to Rotary club meetings and little league games and happen to have a lot of free time—Commissioner Pitts sounded like he was up to some old-fashioned politicking. The gist of his long-winded speech was that the county manager’s proposal, orally presented, as is Fulton’s wont, was vague in some areas, he was confused as to the intent, and he’s very sorry. Though I hold his excuses suspect, especially his repeated statement that he doesn’t know what the other commissioners are thinking, I can believe he was confused: the vote appeared to have been along party lines, so he probably just didn’t think too hard about the implications.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about the parks. I disagree with Mayor Galambos’ philosophy that the parks have already been payed for by the people of Sandy Springs, since there’s a lot more taxpayers in the county than those who added to Fulton’s problem of having too damn many cities, but Commissioner Pitts did raise an interesting issue in that not all the parks were payed for by taxpayers at all. Allen Rd Park, for example, was, I think, a gift from GDOT from land they ended up not using for I-285. Hopefully they can work something out without pissing everyone off.

I did not present David Cantrell’s proposal for putting a rotary in where Johnson Ferry, Mount Vernon and Roswell Rd meet, mainly because someone else in attendance had a serious proposal for opening up parts of those roads to two-way traffic in order to make a “circle of traffic” through that abortion of an intersection. His plan sounded like something that could maybe work.

And now, on coffee. So far I’ve tried two of the coffees that my parents sent me: a batch from the Toledo-Labateca region of Colombia and another from Hacienda La Minita along the Tarrazu river in Costa Rica. I wasn’t terribly fond of the Colombian one, but the La Minita was pretty nice. I decided today to take a shot at the coffee equivalent of wine-tasting, cupping, with three of the Community Coffees and some La Minita from Martinez & Co. that I had handy. I’ve posted some photos of the process on the photo browser. It’s a bit different from just making a cup of coffee: the idea is that you put the grounds, about twice as much as normal, right in the cup, add boiling water, let it sit for a minute or two and go from there. Of course, I don’t have any of the tools that one expects from this process, so oversized mugs and a measuring cup took the place of six ounce cups, and teaspoons took the place of a flat cupping spoon, which I guess is meant to more evenly break through the stuff floating on top as you take your first sip. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I didn’t much care.

My opinion of the Colombian coffee didn’t change much. I don’t really know how best to the describe the taste, but it feels very heavy. While some coffees might delicately waft through your senses as you slowly sip them, this one skips all that froufrou crap and just punches you right in the teeth. It also had a sour aftertaste, I suppose initially hidden by the mucky, woody foretaste. Surprise! Acidity! It’s ok overall, but really not my favorite thing ever.

The two Minitas were similar, of course, the main difference being that Community Coffee roasted theirs a little darker. I think the Martinez one won that round, since its lighter roast better brought out the bright overtones on the chocolaty taste. They were both good, though, and either one is a pleasure to wake up to.

The Kona blend had the most interesting taste of the four. As you can see in the pictures, it was the only one to develop that creamy stuff on top, which I’m sure means something. The first sip has a creamy taste and feel, along with some sweetness and something that reminded me of flowers. Later sips, as it cooled down a little, weren’t nearly as exciting, the tastes giving away instead to charred wood. Maybe it’ll be better when I don’t have a big pile of grounds sitting in the bottom of the cup.

Well, I managed to bend the front fork on my bike again. The fact that the brakes weren’t doing so hot, forcing me to use a curb to stop, was my own fault, but the finger for the fact that this event rendered the bike unridable I point again at Trek.

I took my bicycle to work on Thursday, driving to Medical Center and riding MARTA to Mansell according to my original plan, but my return home was modified in the afternoon when blind Joe put up the bar signal. I’m not one to say no to beer and pizza, so I rode my bike to the ‘burb and, instead of Joe getting a ride from someone, he drove his 4Runner. I don’t really understand how it works, but the state of Georgia allows him to drive, mentioning his telescope thing as no more than the same corrective lens restriction I have on my license, but he doesn’t drive at night. As the other people joining us were either similarly semi-blind or driving a Mustang, it created a bit of an interesting problem for how I was going to get home. I ended up putting my bike in Joe’s SUV, driving him home, driving the SUV further to Dunwoody station (where I can park overnight), picking up my car from Medical Center’s 24 hour limit lot, and driving that home. I had planned to try riding from my apartment back to Medical Center to drive all the vehicles to one place, but I managed to mess up my bike going down the hill out of my apartment.

I got this bike 10 or so years ago as some sort of present (thanks Mom & Dad), and though I could have ridden it more frequently, I feel like I got some good use out of it in that time, and I’d like to have something that will survive if I do something stupid and have to run into a solid object in order to stop. This is the second time that the Trek has proven itself incapable, so my current plan is to wait about a week for my credit card statement to come in, pay for all the books and CDs in this month’s debt, and then start some fresh debt with a new bike. I thought about trying to pound the fork back out with a rubber mallet, but my heart’s just not in it anymore.

Today I did a dry run of my MARTA plan to make sure that no portion of it is too crazy and to avoid holding up people during rush hour fumbling with an unfamiliar bike rack. In all, it went pretty well. I work maybe a mile from the Mansell Park & Ride, so I didn’t even work up much of a sweat on the bicycle portion. I had originally planned to change clothes at the gym across the street, but since it’s still a good ways from the office, I suspect that I’d probably just sweat back whatever I might undo. I forget exactly how long it took, but most of the time was spent waiting on the Sunday schedule bus, so I don’t think that my commute will become a whole lot longer.

After ensuring that I could make the commute without dying, I took advantage of a couple 25¢ cokes and then headed south into the heart of Roswell. I stopped at the ‘burb on Alpharetta highway after riding around for a bit, had dinner and a few drinks, and then took route 87 back to North Springs from there. In all I probably rode around 5 miles today. It was about 95° and I went up and down a lot of hills, so, though I didn’t feel that same level of exhaustion I get when I try to ride from my apartment towards Target, I still feel like I did something.

My plan was to start taking MARTA tomorrow, but that was brought to a halt as I was leaving the Medical Center parking deck. That oddball tire I have from replacing the same flat twice went flat again. I bought road hazard insurance this time, so I’m hoping that it was a road hazard that took it out, and I plan to take it to the place I bought it in Alpharetta tomorrow, carefully driving a temporary spare up Roswell Road since I don’t think I’d make it very long on 400 at whatever the temporary’s max speed is. I figure I’ll still take the bike with me and ride to work from the tire place instead of the bus stop.

In other tire news, it turns out that the wider bicycle tire I ended up with a couple of weeks ago is a little too wide for the frame. I didn’t notice at first since it’s only really a problem in certain gears where I guess the position of the chain pushes it just far enough to rub against that part near the pedal. I’m not going to let those assholes at Cycleworks win this easily, so I plan tonight to swap my front and rear tires, since my front fork is a good bit wider. This ought to be fun.

I’m not an economist, an historian or particularly old in relation to supermarkets, so I don’t really know the history of America’s shift from stores where the shopper is guided most of the way to today’s stores where the only interaction with employees is when checking out. The stores that retain a more personal model are interesting both in the reasons they expend the extra overhead on sales and the shift in expectations from the shopper. The advantages are fairly clear: a trained sales staff can increase sales not only through upsales and cross-sales, but also by offering expertise in both their field and the layout of the store, resulting in happier customers that are less likely to return a mistakenly purchased product. However, there’s a careful line to walk between being too cold and too eager. A good salesperson will be able to read the customer and look for signs when he does or doesn’t want to be bothered.

Some industries necessitate a sales staff, and some stores provide one not of necessity but from a desire to create happier, more profitable customers. Services most obviously require a human salesman. It wouldn’t make sense to go to your car mechanic, pick up an alignment off the shelf and drag it over to the checkout counter. Car dealerships, though it’s theoretically possible to buy a car without needing to talk to anyone, have a sales staff because cars are very expensive, some amount of interaction is needed to set up a test drive, and car salespeople would like to swindle you. Your favorite neighborhood hardware store, while it doesn’t need to greet you and ask what you need, does so because there are probably only three or four people who know where everything is, and they’re probably able to offer advice on just what you need for whatever you’re doing. Bike shops are, in a way, a mixture of these three types of store: bikes shops generally offer repair service, which needs someone to sell it; bikes are expensive and have many accessories that can be added to a sale, and bike shop employees, besides hiding things like pedals and tires in the back, probably know more than the average customer about bikes.

I’m a little wary of bike shops to begin with. Bike shop prices for simple items—like a tire pump—tend to be grossly inflated, bike shops are more likely than most stores to employ smelly hippies, and seeing parts for my ten year old bike grow scarce is upsetting for what it says about the bike industry. Bicycles, since they’re practically one of the four simple machines, aren’t going to see a whole lot of technological advancement outside of materials, so most changes are motivated only by fashion. 38mm tires are hardly a new idea, so the only reason for a Trek shop not to stock my Trek bike’s 35mm tires is that Trek decided sometime between 1996 and now that people would prefer wider, higher-pressure tires, and the shop has no interest in pandering to the whims of yesteryear. Bicycles have been around for over a hundred years, so I would think that we’d have the details pretty well figured out by now. These design changes strike me as absurd, and the expected life-cycle exposed by the shop’s habits is disturbing.

Getting to the point, you’re probably aware that I broke a freaking pedal last week. I had planned today to buy a new pair at the shop nearest to me, Cycleworks on Belle Isle Rd, but I ended up walking out after waiting five minutes for someone to acknowledge my presence. Even if I plan to spend my time in a lonely perusal of the shelves, I at least expect to be greeted when entering such a store, and, since pedals aren’t on the shelves, I required assistance on this visit. There were two salespeople there, one helping a couple buy a new bike and one selling shoes or something. I can understand them not wanting to leave their customers, but the pivotal event for me was when the guy selling a bike to the yuppie couple left them to put a bike in the back. He stepped away from that conversation, stepped past me in my position at the counter, and still didn’t say a word or so much as glance my way. That really upset me. That, combined with the half-stoned dipshit half-heartedly selling me a tire the week before last, has really put me off from Cycleworks. I ended up going to Atlanta Cycling in Vinings, which is where I took my bike back when I lived in Smyrna. There was a guy waiting at the door when I went in, and, when he came back with the only pedal option in my size, he immediately did three things lacking from Sir Tires back in Sandy Springs: he apologized for the lack of options, he told he me how much the pedals he had would cost, and he explained how they’re a better choice than what I had anyways. The entire process took about five minutes, and I spent $26 on a new pair of metal pedals with plastic toe clips that I can detach if I decide I don’t like them. I’m sure that Mr. and Mrs. Yuppie McYupperston spent more than $26 on a new bicycle, but, based on my past bicycle spending habits, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have spent the same amount at Cycleworks in the next year or two, and, if this bike does end up falling the rest of the way apart on me, I might have ended up buying a new bike there myself. If I do end up buying a new bike while still in Atlanta (or the surrounding metropolitan area), I think I’ll get it at Atlanta Cycling.