Kevin

/ personal

We buried Kevin today.

A freight train hits you just as hard, whether you’re blindsided by it or you saw it coming from miles away. Kevin is the third old cat that Gwen and I have had to euthanize, after Oscar and Squeaker. In Kevin’s case, we had a better sense that he had little time left, but being mentally prepared doesn’t lessen the impact.

Kevin came into Gwen’s life as a young, scrawny tomcat in 1994, not long after she moved to Austin. Gwen already had Oscar and didn’t want another cat, but he kept hanging around in her garden until she took him in. After Oscar established that she was the boss, the two of them were buddies forever. Once a part of Gwen’s household, Kevin filled out to a majestic 17 lb.

Every cat has his or her own personality, and, apart from his fear of small children, Kevin’s was always unceasingly sweet and happy. He would start purring the moment anyone picked him up.

Four years ago, Kevin lost his best buddy Oscar, and it was clear that he was lonely. When we got a pair of kittens two and a half years ago, one of the two, Bubka, decided that Kevin was her new best friend, and so happily he had another excellent cuddlebuddy in his later years.

We’re not sure how old Kevin was—we estimate he lived to be 19. Old age was not easy on him. He developed an allergy that could only be treated with prednisone (though for a full year the previous vet insisted it was behavioral). He became completely deaf and his vision deteriorated. He suffered a herniated disk in his spine that left his hind legs wobbly. He was recently diagnosed with intestinal cancer. But his sweet disposition remained unchanged. It seemed that he never stopped enjoying life.

This morning he was too wobbly to even sit up, and was not purring. He was clearly having intestinal distress. His condition improved a little as the day went on, but we knew it was time. He spent the day lying on the back porch with Gwen, with friends dropping in to say goodbye.

(Gwen here.) One of Kevin’s nicknames was “Kev-Dog”—after his entirely endearing trait of simply following me around the house like a good dog so he could always be in on the action. His favorite thing was to enjoy a good book with me, stretched out on my legs on the couch. And sleeping all night as near to my head as I would allow. He was loved by many, and his sweet nature won over more than a few cat-dislikers. He had a bad spell once that involved a urinary catheter and a move from the vet to an emergency hospital—when we saw the vet after a miserable long wait, she looked at him and said “This must be Kevin,” and he started purring loudly. He was that kind of guy.

A word of grateful thanks to our excellent vets at Austin Vet Hospital (especially Dr. Besch) and their caring staff. They looked out for him in a way that I would wish for animal friend.

Kevin & Oscar

Kevin & Bubka

Twitter’s dickbar

/ net stuff

Starting about two weeks ago, Twitter seems to have embarked on a program of doing it wrong.

  1. They have told independent developers not to bother writing primary clients for interacting with the service.
  2. They have (finally) announced that they are shutting down DabbleDB, a wonderful service that got caught up when Twitter bought out the company behind it for unrelated technology (Trendly).
  3. And of course, the dickbar.

A lot of people have written about the dickbar, a misfeature of the official Twitter iPhone app. The first version had a misbegotten interface that covered over your timeline until you played around with the phone. The second version was an improvement in UI terms, but still a misfeature in that it emphasizes information that I don’t care about (nor anyone else who has complained about it): showing global trending keywords among Twitter users.

Obviously the big reason behind the addition of this misfeature is money: it puts “promoted trends” front and center. But even apart from the monetization angle, it feels like evidence that Twitter is guiding people away from using the service the way, well, we do use it.

Twitter was conceived as a lightweight way to pass around status updates among acquaintances, and that is its greatest value to me and (I think) most people. The emphasis on trends seems to be designed to turn people into spectators rather than participants—trends answers the unasked question “what are people I don’t know talking about.” It doesn’t invite me into the conversation and it doesn’t relate to me or my circle of friends. I can see how it’s useful to, say, marketers though.

This fits with another aspect of Twitter’s service that debuted a while ago, where it suggested people for you to follow—celebrities. I see that now, it suggests people who are actually friends of friends (and promoted feeds), so apparently they’ve fine-tuned that, but it’s evidence of the same shift away from participation toward spectation.

Twitter’s got a right to run their service however they see fit. And if they keep going down the path they seem to be following, I have a right to go somewhere else.

The new GOP playbook

/ current events

Republicans are philosophically opposed to the idea that government can play a useful role in the lives of citizens, or as Reagan put it, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'” During his administration, George II tried to prove time and again that government cannot be helpful, by appointing Michael “heckuva job” Brown to run FEMA or by appointing Young Republicans whose prior work experience amounted to working in ice-cream trucks as administrators overseeing large parts of Iraq’s economy.

Republicans do not currently have that appointive power at the national level, but in any case, they seem to have shifted strategies. Their current approach is fiscal. First, starve the government of funds by passing tax cuts (preferably one that disproportionately benefits their wealthy patrons). Then, discover a budgetary crisis that requires “hard choices” and cuts on the kinds of programs that benefit most people. Eventually, make the government small enough “to drown in a bathtub,” as Grover Norquist puts it, or “Texas is going to shrink government until it fits into a woman’s uterus,” as State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte put it.

We’ve been seeing it in action at the national level, and at the state level, here in Texas and more prominently in Wisconsin.

At the federal level, this graphic has been making the rounds lately, showing how tax breaks for the wealthy come very close to being balanced out by proposed cuts to job training, educational programs, etc.

Texas, which was previously praised for staying solvent in the face of the Great Recession, is now facing a $27 billion shortfall. The seeds of this shortfall were planted in 2006, with a change in tax rates that was known at the time to be problematic. But, as Forrest Wilder puts it, the budget shortfall is not the cause of pain. It’s the justification.

And then there’s Wisconsin, where Scott Walker claimed that he needed both budget austerity and union-busting (and then decided he could make do with just union-busting), despite the state’s Fiscal Bureau having concluded just a month before that that the state will end the year with a balance of $121.4 million.

I’m sure some variation on this theme is happening in Michigan and elsewhere.

Thoughts on an iPhone app for bike touring

/ cycling

I’ve played around with a number of iPhone apps for cyclists. None of the ones I’ve looked at are really optimized for bike touring—instead, they’re mostly oriented towards fitness cycling, which has somewhat different goals.

An iPhone app for bike touring would need to overcome the problem of battery life and fulfill three main tasks. Battery life isn’t as big a problem as it is generally made out to be, but even in a best-case scenario, it would be difficult to get a solid 24 hours of use out on a single charge when using the iPhone as a bike computer for a big part of the day.

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This modern world

/ tidbit

I had a strange experience when I went out and about visiting studios on the East Austin Studio Tour. When I looked at the map, I was gratified to see quite a few artists in my immediate neighborhood, and one studio only a block away, so I decided to make that my first stop.

As I’m slowly riding my bike down the driveway to the garage studio in back, one of the two residents says “Are you Adam Rice?”. Taken aback, I confirm that I am, and ask “…How do you know?” Despite their proximity, I’m sure I’ve never seen either of these people before, and it’s not like I’m famous.

She explains that she has seen me pop up as a “recommended friend” on Facebook because we apparently have a lot of friends in common.

Still, that doesn’t explain how she knows that Gwen has a letterpress, or that it came with our house.

Thoughts on the Catrike Speed for touring

/ Note, Southern Tier 2010

When I decided to move forward with my long-dormant plan to ride the Southern Tier, I knew I couldn’t do it on my racing bike. And in fact I was pretty sure that any diamond-frame bike would leave my shoulders, wrists, and neck too beat up if I maintained the daily mileage that I planned. I’ve always been interested in ‘bent trikes, and from everything I read, it seemed like one would be a good option. I test-rode a number of trikes, and wound up bonding with the Catrike Speed, despite knowing that in some respects, it’s not ideal for touring. Having spent a lot of quality time with it now, I’ve got some thoughts on how it works as a touring platform. I’ve touched on some of these points already in my Mid-tour Report, but I’ll reiterate a few here for the sake of completeness.

The Catrike Speed, all Catrikes, and all recumbent trikes in general have certain pros and cons for touring as compared to conventional touring bikes.

The Speed

The Speed in particular has some disadvantages that mostly relate to wheel size: it has two different wheels sizes, 349 and 451. Even good bike stores typically will not stock tires or tubes in either of these sizes. The 451 in particular has only a limited range of tires made at all, and none are suited to touring. Two different wheel sizes means you need to pack that many more tubes, and the fact that they’re nonstandard means you’ll have extremely limited resupply options en route. I knew about this when I chose the Speed, so I can’t blame anyone but myself.

By way of comparison, the Catrike Road (which I test-rode, but have never owned) uses all 406 wheels. Likewise for many other recumbent trikes. That’s the standard BMX wheel size—in a pinch, you could buy new tubes and tires at a Walmart, although I think Catrike uses rims drilled only for Presta valves, so you’d need to have them re-drilled.

The 349s also make steering very twitchy. You can get used to this, but it gets to be an issue on high-speed descents. See my comment about oversteer below.

I like the low, laid-back position and narrow track of the Speed. It feels like you’re sitting in it, not on it. But in actual touring, there can be days at a time when you can’t use the neckrest at all because of bumpy roads, and that extreme angle of recline makes it more work to hold one’s head up. A trike with a more upright seat, such as the Road, may have an advantage in that respect. Still, the Speed can take steep descents fast, which is a blast, and the narrow track means you can roll it through at least some doorways.

Almost everybody who saw my trike asked if I was worried about being invisible to drivers. I did not use a flag or anything to create a taller profile on the road, and I was admittedly very low slung. In practice, it didn’t seem to be a problem (except in busy and aggressive El Paso traffic—the one place where I really did worry about being invisible). I spoke to some westbound riders who warned me about East Texas logging trucks that blasted past them with very little clearance; when I got to that part of the tour, I found those same drivers were cutting me a wide berth. The issue of visibility is a complicated one, and I don’t pretend to have all the right answers. I’ve been in serious bike vs car collisions twice before when motorists came down with a bout of bike blindness, so I’m not convinced I could be any less visible on my trike. I suspect that its unaccustomed profile on the road may get more attention from drivers, in fact. I think some were actually startled. In any case, I’m not aware of any close calls.

As to flags, part of the reason I don’t use one is because I don’t want the aerodynamic hit or the flapping noise, but there’s another reason: I worry that if a driver sees the flag before they see me, it will take the driver that much longer to run through a mental process that would go something like this: “1. Oh look, there’s a flag; 2. I wonder if I should be concerned about what it’s connected to; 3. Oh, wow, look at that weird bike-thing.” How long will it take them to get to step 3? How much distance will they cover during that time at 60 mph or more? I’d rather have them jump straight to step 3.

All Catrikes

Compared to a regular touring bike (which can carry pairs of panniers front and rear, handlebar bags, rack trunks, and seat bags), most ‘bent trikes don’t give you a lot of good places to carry gear, and Catrikes are even more limited than most. You’ve got your rear rack to mount panniers and a trunk bag, and that’s it. There are those Radical ICE Pods that sling over the seat and could add capacity, but on a Speed, they’d scrape the ground when full. There are recumbent-specific panniers (I believe Ortlieb, Arkel, and Radical all make them) that I believe have a lot of volume, and are designed to move the load forward a little (which is good), but I suspect the flared seatstays on Catrikes might interfere with them. Trikes with freestanding seatbacks can accommodate bags designed to hook over the backs, but those won’t work on a Catrike.

I didn’t need the extra cargo capacity—one of my goals was to keep my load light without making crazy sacrifices. But anyone who needs to carry more may need to get creative with stuffsacks and straps.

All Catrikes are aluminum, which is not reputed to result in very comfortable frames. I would love to test-ride a Catrike side-by-side with a steel-framed trike using identical tires on a coarse chipseal road to see how they compare. But despite the aluminum’s rigid reputation, I found the Speed lacked the rigidity to resist twisting and flexing with my panniers loaded—and they were pretty light: 26 lb for the pair. I don’t think Catrike uses lighter gauge or smaller diameter tubes on the Speed than they do on other models (I’d be happy to be contradicted on this point), so all models would be susceptible to this. I’m not sure how much of an issue it was in practice, but it was a little disconcerting to be able to grab my rack and wiggle the whole trike like a dog shaking off water.

One biomechanical issue surfaced partway through: the seat mesh had stretched so that my spine was resting directly on the buckles that pull it taut in back; no amount of re-tightening would prevent that. When I got to Austin, I inserted some foam in between. That helped some, but I should have done it sooner, and with thicker foam. One of my vertebrae is visibly swollen.

I carried a 3-liter Camelbak Unbottle lashed to the back of my seat, which is really easy to rig up on a Catrike, and is an easy way to get a lot of range between water stops. Which is a good thing, since Catrike gives us only one set of bottle bosses to work with, so any additional cages would need to be rigged up in unlikely spots, like on the backs of the seatstays.

Trikes in general

Small wheels are more sensitive to road imperfections, and all recumbent trikes necessarily have small front wheels. I scoffed at the idea of a suspended trike before the tour, but now I see the logic. Those West Texas roads really beat me up.

All trikes (AFAICT) cantilever your panniers out past the rear axle, creating an oversteer effect. I knew the Speed had twitchy steering, but I didn’t count on the oversteer when loaded. I think Greenspeed used to make a world-traveller trike that had an extended rear triangle to make room for 4 panniers, but I don’t think they make that anymore. Flying down In-Ko-Pah pass on I-8 at 40+ mph, with a rumble strip on one side, a sheer dropoff on the other, and a minefield of shredded tire carcasses to dodge in front of me was exciting enough even without the oversteer.

Trikes are excellent climbers—with a small drive wheel, you’ve got a really low low gear, like 20″ (lower if you need), and there’s no bail-out speed of course. I could ascend mountains that might well have left me walking most of the way up. And even with the oversteer, they’re great descenders. The descent into Three Way AZ is legendary, and if there were a ski-lift to take riders to the top, they could sell tickets. I’m pretty sure I topped 50 mph on that.

Recumbents do take some getting used to, and that includes recumbent trikes. I had 600 miles of riding logged on mine before I started the tour, and that probably wasn’t quite enough to debug my various biomechanical issues. But I managed fine on the tour.

Wrap-up

If I were to do it again, I’d probably still choose the Speed, but I’d immediately re-shoe the front wheels with 1.5″ Scorchers (I did that at the tour midpoint) and change the rear wheel to a 406, shod with a fat slick—there’s a Scorcher available for 406s, but I might look for something fatter, like 2″, since the air volume is the only suspension you’re getting. Because the eastern half of the Southern Tier is so flat, I might have swapped the cassette for something with tighter gear spacing when I hit Austin, as I often found myself hunting for a gear that wasn’t there. While my Ortlieb panniers were convenient and sturdy, I might have been better off with Radical’s recumbent-specific panniers. Hard to tell without trying them.

I’ve thought about what an improved lightweight Southern-Tier touring trike might look like. It would keep the pack weight central and low—perhaps simply by lengthening the rear triangle and repositioning the rack, better yet by designing the storage to suit the frame, and perhaps hooking it directly to the seatback. It would have a very rigid frame. It would be designed to carry a lot of water—I can imagine a pair of pouches under the seat for carrying two 3-liter bladders. It would run on 406s all around. It might have suspension—perhaps some kind of passive suspension in the form of a crossmember made out of carbon-fiber leaf springs, like the Leitra. It would disassemble for easier packing and shipping.

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