Tootfinder

Probably not news to urban cyclists but parking lots are a game changer! Places I thought I could not bike to are accessible where parking lots are all connected, or right next to each other with a bit of grass between them.
#bikeTooter #biking

The first actual physical part for my #Tricycle project has arrived today. This is an axle — actually a Cannondale Lefty axle — and it's nominally the front axle, although it doesn't really matter which axle it ends up being because they will all be identical.
#BikeTooter

First day without rain.
Right after work we brought our car to some maintenance and drove back by bike. Well not the direct way, but a fun way 😊
It felt really good!
#cycling #BikeTooter #getoutside

I did a 21 mile bike ride today. Along the way I saw a turkey, found a good pair of scissors, discovered Hidden Lake, and stopped to see Mama Rosa at Firefly Grove Park in Wauwatosa.
#bikeTooter #biking #mke

I would like to proudly announce that I fixed the noise coming from my right crank or pedal.
I took the crank set apart, applied some grease, and applied a lot of Loctite.
Let's see how long this lasts.
#biketooter #FahrradBubble

I did a 21 mile bike ride today. Along the way I saw a turkey, found a good pair of scissors, discovered Hidden Lake, and stopped to see Mama Rosa at Firefly Grove Park in Wauwatosa.
#bikeTooter #biking #mke

If anyone's been following my progress on the #tricycle project, I'm currently drooling over the very adjustable recumbent ergonomic rig shown in this video. I'm wondering whether I can make myself something even nearly this adjustable!
#BikeTooter

Early start today and successfully avoided the rain! #cycling #bike #biketooter #Dorset

Gosh, can you tell when I switched to an ebike and started riding to work?
#biking #bikeTooter #ebike

Secure bike parking at work… the ride in today was the fastest yet, despite the terrible winds! I attribute the short time to good luck in crossing busy roads and not having to wait multiple minutes to cross.
#biking #bikeTooter

No bike today because I needed the car to get to a dentists appointment so I maximized for car travel and made a bunch of stops at shops that can be a challenge to bike to...
Might make another stop or two on the way home. Basically getting all my driving done in one day so I can bike the rest of the week.
(Sadly there may be no biking this weekend either due to an out of town wedding I am attending.)

my wife made up a bike joke.
Q: "why did [the professor] ride her bike with loose brakes?"
A: "it never stopped her before!"
(so i tightened up her brake cables) #BikeTooter

Day 0:
The trip is fully planned and booked. It includes a combination of city, seaside, and nature. I'll be using couch surfing, Airbnb, a capsule hotel, and hostels for accommodation.
I’ll be traveling by bike with only a 16L backpack.
But first, I’ll spend the weekend in Malmö.
#bike

Couple of pics from yesterday’s Purbeck ride. Really enjoyed the morning shower dodging. Must get the mountain bike out more often
#cycling #bike #biketooter

It would have been some great weather for a day in the mountains. But I decided that I wanted a very relaxed day with reading on the couch.
After lunch I thought that I should really utilise this wonderful weather, even though It took me quite some mental effort to get out.
But it was worth riding a little loop in the neighbourhood.
#BikeTooter

We broke a pin in a chain link on a bike ride today. Never had that happen before. The chain was getting kinda old so it'll probably be replaced (not patched/shortened).
#BikeTooter

Someone said there’s a huge difference between going 20mph and 28mph on a bike. I completely agree.
#biking #bikeTooter #ebike

Blah. Rain today so I did not bike to work. Not quite ready for that... I have to take the car tomorrow as well due to a doctor appointment. Hopefully I can bike on Friday!
#biking #bikeTooter

Crazy Rocketman: JET POWERED BIKE vs E-BIKE RACE !
#biketooter

Today has been mainly about stripping down my favourite mountain bike for repainting and renovation.
#BikeTooter

Damn, this ebike things is actually pretty cool. I did my normal ride in the cemetery without using the motor and my stats are pretty damn close to my acoustic rides.
I’m probably going to have a lot to say about it this week.
#biking #bikeTooter

✅ Quick loop with my wife between some rain showers.
Feels so good to get out!
#cycling #BikeTooter #getoutside

I had an air filter attached to the rear of my #Kombi, and then I realized that I couldn't shift. One of the cords that I had used to secure the hepa filter was on the derailleur. It was an easy thing to fix, but it reminded me just how much I hate derailleurs (and any kind of external gears in general).

Burlington publishes a PDF of both sides of the foldable cycling route map (same one given away at community centres and street events) - it was last updated in 2022.
* #BikeTooter #OnPoli

The three things that make bicycle route planning most difficult where I live is freeways, railroad tracks, and rivers.
#biking #bikeTooter

Having not written anything about my #tricycle project in months, I've now written two posts in two days. Here's the first:
#BikeTooter
Rethinking the tricycle drive train

Rethinking the tricycle drive train
I've been rereading my posts on design of a tricycle, and especially this one; and I've been looking again at this picture, of Seventy Seven's removable front subframe which carries its front wheel, steering, and transmission systems; and I've been thinking. This will be a short post documenting my thoughts.

After 15 minutes of messing around with maps I've gone from "It's impossible to get there by bike!" to "Hmm, if I avoid the super-busy roads, cut through these parking lots, take a two mile detour... I think I can get there!"
#biking #bikeTooter

That's why we can't have nice things
#biketooter

My bike trip in Denmark is approaching.
I’m very excited about it because it’s the first time I’ll be riding long distances!
My first ride will be along the coastline, so I hope to see some great views, capture some nice photos, and create lasting memories! Maybe I’ll even see some seals! #bike

I love finding weird stuff while out cycling… this pry bar isn’t as good as the bag of cash I found once but it’s a close second!
#bikeTooter

You want infrastructure to last? Don't paint it on. Build it in. #BikeTooter

I helped the local alpine club with some filming today in the mountains. Followed by some trail marking.
Came home and did a nice bike ride.
I'll try to cut the film stuff later.
#cycling #BikeTooter

Went to the bike shop last night (the family owned shop where I know the guy) and he showed me a flyer I made like 35 years ago and said it's been on the wall there for decades!
#bikeTooter

More #purbeck trail photos from yesterday. What an incredible evening to be #cycling
#bike #biketooter

Um, sir, I think there's something wrong with the way you've laced your wheel spokes?
#BikeTooter

So, #BikeTooter. My Cannondale Slate runs 650b wheels, with the rear on a 12mm through axle. I think the wheel is actually a Mavic, although it's Cannondale branded. It currently has a SRAM 1x11 groupset.
I'd like to put a Campagnolo Ekar groupset on it, but the problem with that is it needs an N3W freehub. I have an old Campag Eurus rear wheel, but it's 700c and has the Camp…

Structured training outside is stupid.
#biketooter

First (real) ride on the new bike. So chuffed! Also, found a dollar on the way home so yeah, biking really pays off!
#biking #bikeTooter #mke

Wuhu! Nice #afterwork #cycling. But I admit that I underestimated how quickly it is getting dark already.
But it felt sooo good to get on the bike.
#BikeTooter

Today’s ride for Scrappy Hour was 7 miles out and then 7 miles back! The hills killed me. 😢
#scrappyHour #biking #bikeTooter

Nasty headwind home 💨
#cycling #biketooter

Another win for the Ortlieb panniers. This 8"x8"x8" box is one of the things I thought might be difficult to bring to work via bike but one box just fits.
It's rare I need to transport two boxes this size but worse case I've still got the rack and could zip tie the crate onto it again.
(The other pannier holds my backpack.)
#bikeTooter

I haven't actually written a new blog post about the #Tricycle project, but I have greatly amended and extended the last one.
#BikeTooter

My current bike stats... on my way to 1,000 miles this year. (And hopefully many more!)
(code is here: #bikeTooter

Great bike ride today! We do a group ride the last Sunday of each month. Three different groups start from different places around the city and converge on a spot and we hang out for a bit then all ride back from whence we came...
#BikeTooter #ScrappyHour

This machine kills sprawl. #BikeTooter #CycleTO #OnPoli #TOPoli

#goodmorning! We just decided to do a morning loop as it will very likely be too hot after work.
Tomorrow is a bank holiday. So it's the end of the week already
#cycling #BikeTooter

Yesterday we received Auchencairn Climate Transition's new hand-cycle (ours is the yellow one), and I got shown around the key points of maintaining it and adapting it to fit riders. This extends our hire bike fleet so that we can now support riders with leg function impairments.
In practice we'll be sharing this with other 'try a bike' projects locally.
#BikeTooter

Over the weekend I came close to joining these two sections of where I've ridden my bike! The square on the bottom is where the bike shop is where I got my new bike a month ago. Might be a project for next weekend.
#biking #bikeTooter

Bikes with tiny wheels always look so weird to me. (I mean weird as a 6 foot tall adult. I rode 20" BMX bikes when I was a kid.)
Do these 20" bikes feel like riding a "normal" bike? Is it weird? Is it just me?
#biking #bikeTooter

The man outside Espinola, Ontario.
‘I was standing here 45 years ago!”
wow.
It really is incredible the legacy Terry Fox has in all Canadian's hearts. Congratulations to his brother Darrell for completing this 45 year commemorative bike across Canada!!
#TerryFox #BikeTooter #Bike #MarathonOfHope #CancerResearch #Canada
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6827455

"The ride is definitely better on charter-protected bike lanes." #BikeTooter #ToPoli #ONPoli #CycleTO

The view on the way to work along the Oak Leaf Trail is lovely at some spots...
(Though stopping for the photo I got attacked by bugs, which is not great.)
#biking #bikeTooter #mke

I just learned about rain ponchos for cycling and... what?
#biking #bikeTooter

Technically I got this bike last month (August 31st) but I just hit 300 miles during a lunch time ride at work.
I'll add another 6 miles getting home just to make it legit 300 miles this month.
The best thing about this ebike is that I can ride and ride and ride and my 55 year old bum knee doesn't make me pay for it later.
#bikeTooter

Whew! Mistakes were made, but I got the dashboard of the Beat Bike put together. I can now pedal to set the tempo while I live program the drum machine. (No video of programming yet because I had to hold the phone up high!)
#bikeTooter #diy

Also... why!?! Well, I like to make weird stuff.
I plan to take this to Maker Faire Milwaukee... and maybe ride it around the neighborhood!?
And I gotta say, pedaling while programming a drum machine is a trip. I used to do it just sitting at a desk but hey, exercise while making beats? It's a win-win!
#bikeTooter

Another month, another column! Can you tell when someone loaned me an ebike and when I got my own and started to ride to work?
I went into 2025 hoping to do 1,000 miles, realized half way through I could probably hit 1,200 miles and now with 3 months left I'm over 1,400 miles.
#ebike #bikeTooter

Whooo! I should hit 300 miles on the new bike within 30 days of owning it.
#ebike #biking #bikeTooter

I’ve been resting up all day, taking it easy… sore throat is gone (since Wednesday night) and no snot or congestion today, just tired really.
Hoping I can make it out to Riverwest 24 tomorrow for the biking fun that is the People’s Holiday.
#biking #bikeTooter

Pan Yay! Got the Ortleib panniers and wow are they nice. Bonus that my backpack fits nicely in one of them.
#biking #bikeTooter

Part of the bike lane "slalom course" on Hampton Avenue on my ride to work...
The freeway entrance ahead is closed but honestly I don't know what good putting these in the bike lane does besides get in my way.
#biking #bikeTooter

I found out one of my neighbors has an Aventon Pace (either 500.3 or 500.2) and said he loves it. Good to know. He got it at Erik's Bikes, which is where I hope to get one at some point.
#biking #bikeTooter #ebike

I hit 1,000 miles today, which was my goal for 2025. Some of it was on a bike/trainer in my basement during winter, and this month was mostly on a (borrowed) ebike, and the rest was all on my old Trek 7200.
At some point I need to return the ebike and I'm hoping I can get my own before 2026 so I can make commuting to work by bike a normal thing.
#bikeTooter

Today's ride to work... I had to stop and adjust my DIY pannier bag and it's not great. (I forgot to attach the bungee that also locks in the hooks.) I may look at getting some Ortleibs since everyone seems to love those.
#biking #bikeTooter

I cannot tell you how many squirrels have run out in front of me while biking this week, but the number is greater than 3 and it's only Wednesday.
Have you ever hit a squirrel or other animal on your bike?
#bikeTooter #biking

Ahh so good to do a quick #workout loop after a day in the office!
#cycling #BikeTooter #afterwork

The current "bike to work" carry is a milk crate zip tied to a rear rack. I gave it a nice paint job and did a little cutout right behind the seat. There's a piece of foam in the bottom to prevent rattling (I toss my lock back there) and the bungee holds my backpack in place securely.
#biking #bikeTooter

Ohh, bikerouter.de is super cool!
#biking #bikeTooter

bikerouter.de
▶ Der wahrscheinlich beste Fahrrad-Routenplaner der Welt! Kostenlos und datenschutzfreundlich. Gravel, Rennrad, MTB, City, Long Distance, Trekking uvm.

I made some progress on the Beat Bike!
The magnet mounted on the wheel passes a reed switch which is sensed by the control box (with a Raspberry Pi Pico) and then triggers the drum machine to step through the programmed sequence.
Still a lot of work to do, mostly mounting everything onto the bike, and some more code to write, but the proof of concept is all good.
#bikeTooter

I’m not saying I’m the first person to ride the entire length of the new protected bike lane on Lisbon but there’s a good chance I am… (I had to carry my bike across a dozen gaps because it’s not all connected yet!)
#biking #bikeTooter

I wrote up another post about trying to map all my bike rides... This time I explored gpx.studio
#bikeTooter

Today’s ride was 8.3 miles… nothing too exciting to report. (In other news I’ve been relearning SQL to pull data from the RunGap SQLite database.)
#biking #bikeTooter #mke

Me: Hey, we could ride those bikes!
Partner: They’re locked up.
Me: Are they, though?
(That was last night. There were two bikes there. Note that we are on an island, there’s only so far a thief would get. There are tons of unlocked bikes around. I’m sure the owner just went for a ride. Still a funny photo though!)
#bikeTooter

I got this bike 12 days ago and just hit 100 miles. If I can keep commuting to work that's about 13 miles each day of riding a bike instead of driving a car.
#biking #bikeTooter #ebike

I biked over to the giant hole in the road (caused by the flooding last month) during lunch yesterday. Still a hole.
#bikeTooter #hole

I did not make any good progress on my project to read GPX data with Python today. (Trying to read speed.) May need to just read it as XML.
There are a bunch of nerds who do Python and bikes though, so someone might have the code example I need.
#biking #bikeTooter

Favorite team name “Blood Bath and Beyond”
#biking #bikeTooter

I am using Strava now, but only because it's a way to get my data from Apple Health to flow to other places. Right now Wandrer and Squadrats pull data from Strava, and Strava gets the original data from Apple Health. The world is complex and silly sometimes.
#bikeTooter #biking

I just submitted my first request to the city to clean up a bike lane. I chose "Miscellaneous Street Maintenance" because I could not find anything that was a better fit.
#bikeTooter #mke #milwaukee

It's crude, but I separated all my bike ride GPX files from the huge pile of files and loaded them all into gpx.studio to show where I've rode my bike in the last 20-ish months.
#biking #bikeTooter #geo

This looks pretty cool...
"What Rides at Night: Queer, Feminist, Fantastical Bicycle Halloween Stories"
#bikeTooter

What Rides at Night: Queer, Feminist, Fantastical Bicycle Halloween Stories
When the veil thins, the bicycle revolution rises. Thirteen new, original, spooky stories for the thirteenth volume in the series!  Gather ‘round,...

One thing I wasn't ready for on the bike commute was the bugs. Riding next to the river in summer is wonderful, but now when I head home the bugs are out, and they are tiny little bastards that fly into my face and my arms and get stuck on me. I do not love it. Hoping this works.
#biking #bikeTooter

I guess I should have got a cargo bike. (Kidding!) I had to bring a few packages to work today so my DIY pannier got a test... seemed to work fine.
#biking #bikeTooter #ebike

Sooo, I rode the ebike this morning, did my longest ride, in minutes and miles. Burned tons of calories, so yeah… ebike means more exercise, not less.
#biking #bikeTooter #ebike

I watched a video where someone talked about a huge snowstorm and how people started calling the city to clear the bike path and the city was like "Um, we don't clear the bike path" and I guess a bunch of cyclists were doing in on their own because the city wasn't doing it.
And then after all the requests from people, the city started doing it. 😜
#bikeTooter

It’s been awhile since I did a “fast as I can” cemetery ride and I was amazed at my average speed. I kept it going on the streets a bit more to do 8 miles total.
#biking #bikeTooter #mke

Sigh, well I was feeling good about getting an ebike but I stopped by a local shop and the model I was looking at is pretty much sold out everywhere. They do have newer models ($more expensive$) and some other modes so I may need to do up that whole spreadsheet of features to compare things.
#bikeTooter #biking

I went for a short ride today, and every now and then I would hear this weird “cling clang” sound, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was. I even stopped twice to investigate. It wasn’t constant though, just intermittent. Urgh!
Got home, took a photo, and then figured it out. Sigh…
#biking #bikeTooter

If you lock up your bike indoors (garage or home) what do you lock it up to?
I think a friend of mine locks his up to four other bikes but let's pretend that's not an option for everyone. 😅
What large, heavy, or structural thing do you lock your bike to in your garage or home?
#BikeNitePQ

Riverwest 24 is next weekend. I thought about tossing my bike in the car and driving down to do some laps but then realized it's like 5 miles from my house so I'll just bike down there and do laps, hang out, etc.
https://www.riverwest24.com/

The other fun part of my ride today was when a guy had to wait an extra 10 seconds for me to go through an intersection before he could make a left turn.
He yelled "Get on the sidewalk!" and while I was tempted to yell "I'm in the bike lane!" I just sort of laughed it off.
#biking

I made some progress on mapping all the GPX files of my bikes rides for 2025... though it looks like I am still getting some walking data mixed in, so I'll need to fix that.
The cemetery paths are interesting! There are two paths I guess I never rode down in 2025. Weird.
#biking #bikeTooter