Stir crazy!

[Bill C]

just been out and bought 20l paraffin & 3.5l meths, I still need some aspen4t or panel wipe ideally 10l 
I'm going to be servicing a few stoves and tilly lamps plus my Bialaddin bowl fire getting ready for any power outages should the power firms have too many people off ill
might be worth getting some candles in if you have no other emergency lighting

atb Bill

[mickeg]

I have a bunch of rechargeable AA and AAA batteries that are at a reasonable state of charge.  And have a couple headlamps, one takes AA and the others take AAA.

I can't say how things are working in other countries, I am in USA and I have a high level of trust in the utilities in my area.

And, this morning listed to this 3 min audio on the radio, again this is specific to USA.
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824358200/utilities-aim-to-keep-specially-trained-employees-healthy-and-working

The city that I grew up in (Minneapolis, MN) had a lot of overhead electric lines.  A bad ice storm or wind storm could take out enough lines that power is out for quite a few days.  But the city I live in now (Madison WI), the power lines in my area are buried, more immune to ice storms.  We had a bad storm and flood here about two and a half years ago, I was out of town so missed it, but I heard later that power was out several times for several hours at a time.  That was why my DVR did not record the tv shows I wanted to watch when I got home.  About a half km from my home, there was standing water maybe a meter in depth from the heavy rain, but I am a geological engineer and worked with water for most of my career, I think about that sort of thing when shopping for a home, my condo was high and dry from that storm.

[Andre Jute]

"I heard later that power was out several times for several hours at a time.  That was why my DVR did not record the tv shows I wanted to watch when I got home."

Nice to live in civilisation, where your chief worry in a natural disaster is that a power outage deprived you of a few TV shows ... and one's chief consideration is where you can cycle without inhaling a deadly virus. The Zombie Apocalypse fades into insignificance when the Thorn rider returns from distant parts!

[John Saxby]

There's stir crazy and there's stir crazy.  Reckon we have a ways to go before we approach Stan Rogers' account of being cooped up over winter near the Canol Road in Yukon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0htgidWbtc

[mickeg]

I am retired, I canceled my planned bike tour for this summer.  But other than that, it is not changing my daily life much.  I used to go to the gym about three times a week to try to stay in shape, but the gym is closed.  That is the biggest change to my daily routine.

The population of my county is about 560,000, and we have 209 known cases confirmed by testing in my county, but testing is so limited in USA and results not available often for almost a week or more, it is likely that the 209 number  grossly underestimates reality.  From the data I have seen, USA growth rate of cases exceeds all other major countries, so care is needed here.

I am basically staying as isolated as practical and trying not to let anything bother me.  There is risk in everything we do, just trying to minimize exposure and risk to the greatest extent practical. 

I could try to order groceries on-line but I am willing to take some risk and go to the store.  I went grocery shopping this morning.  Last time before today that I had been inside any building other than my condo was on March 19, that was also a grocery shopping trip.  Trying to avoid people as much as practical so I was in the store less than a minute after they opened, and was out about 25 minutes later before very many people had come into the store.  And have all the groceries I need to last for at least a couple weeks.  So, it is unlikely that I will be inside another building where anybody else is for at least two weeks.

I plan to do a long bike ride tomorrow.  I need some exercise and the weather forecast looks good, wind should be about 10 km/hour and temp should peak at about 10 degrees (C), partly cloudy.

***

Bought a new chain measuring gauge, the cheap little ones I do not trust, they always say a chain is shot long before it is.  But pulling the chain off to measure on a four foot long ruler is rather inconvenient, which means I rarely check them for elongation or stretch.  Bought a new one that is not much more expensive and not much bigger, but it is supposed to be much more accurate.  The net result of that is that I needed to replace chains on some bikes.  My inventory of chains is starting to run low.  But Amazon tells me I will have three more chains to put in inventory in about 10 days.

If you are curious, I bought the Pedros chain checker.
https://www.velonews.com/2020/01/gear/measuring-chain-wear-accurately_504301

SJS does not stock it but they have a similar Park on their website.
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/tools/park-tool-cc4-chain-checker/

It takes some practice to use that chain checker properly, you have to put tension on the chain between two of the tabs and maintain that tension while trying to stick the third tab into a chain.

If you do it wrong and do not maintain that tension it will give you a wrong answer, so if you get one spend some quality time to understand how to use it correctly.

More on how to do it right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOaFF_4CqJg

Stay safe everybody.

[Bill C]

I used to go to the gym about three times a week to try to stay in shape, but the gym is closed.  That is the biggest change to my daily routine.

i have a multigym and more free weights than i'll ever be able to lift again,used to be right into my weights but haven't used them as much as i ought of late
but it looks like i'll have time on my hands and not much else to do
always did like the way i used to sleep after a workout and a bike ride, this might well be the push i needed to get fit again, been off the bike most of the last year  really bad vertigo then a burst bakers cyst 
dunno where i stand with the kayaks, i did read we can swim if we can walk or cycle to the sea but dunno if the plod will allow it as they have told shop keepers they can't sell Easter eggs and they do seem to be over zealous at the mo on making up the law to suit their own agenda, even former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption say they are overreaching https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-52095857

[Mike Ayling]

just been out and bought 20l paraffin & 3.5l meths, I still need some aspen4t or panel wipe ideally 10l 
I'm going to be servicing a few stoves and tilly lamps plus my Bialaddin bowl fire getting ready for any power outages should the power firms have too many people off ill
might be worth getting some candles in if you have no other emergency lighting

atb Bill

My grandfather used to have all that sort of gear at his beach cottage on the South African Wild Coast when I was growing up in the nineteen fifties.
Brings back memories.

Mike

[Pavel]

It's a mixed bag here in North Carolina.  My wife walks about 13 miles on most days, and encounters a lot of other people walking around for fitness and sanity.  Mostly people are pretty observant of the distancing rules, but it seems young people, from teens to early thirties are not taking this seriously at all.  they walk down the street in groups of five to eight and all abreast so they take most of the road, and all within a foot or two of each other. 

At Walmart it is horrible.  There are distancing rules, but just an hour ago my wife came back from buying some food and dog food. She twice had a hispanic man of about 40 brush past her, and when she said, "you are supposed to be six feet away" he snarled at her "I know".  That kind of shook her up.

But mostly people are complying.  Now mind you, despite myself being the poster boy for who this disease kills ( past cancer, current cancer ,transplant, weak immune system, Kidneys at 30% and a mild heart condition from the chemo) I tend to think that this is grotesquely over done by Local and state officials who make illogical decision.  But we are all in this together, so if my Governor (who I would never vote for) makes any rules - I follow them.  It makes me furious to see groups of twenty to forty young people all partying it up, just a mile or so in our towns projects.  Have young people no respect for rules? My father used to admire Americans most for their reputation of coming together in times of crisis.  Seems a quaint notion all of a sudden.

[Matt2matt2002]

Pavel, I was shocked to hear about those groups of youths congregating.
Over here in UK, the police would have broken up the group and sent them home.
There certainly have been instances of party bar b ques. But less now and not so many groups of young folks meeting as you described.
Unless the county/ country comes together and observes the government guidelines, the recovery period will be extended needlessly whole more folks than necessary die.

Stay safe.

[Pavel]

I feel that young people just don't take things as seriously as older adults, and that's the way it's been always.  I guess the young have that admirable quality of feeling invincible.

On the rest of it, I don't know how I really feel, other than conflicted.  On the one hand, I'd like people to fall in line with what the authorities are telling them.  On the other, some people in charge make rules that show they have not really though things through.  I've long believed that part of being a good citizen involves challenging the over-reach of of the government over the individual, as long as it is done through fully peacefully means.

I fear the long term loss of individual liberties and any neutering of the weight of the American constitution.  That makes me kind of a major hypocrite if I support overly enthusiastic policing, doesn't it?

In Philadelphia, there was a video posted online where eight policeman were forcibly dragging a black man off of a subway train.  He was not wearing a mask.  The transit authority subsequently had to announce, and point out, that masks are recommended, but not required.  Do I want to see things like that? It's a bigger fear in me that the virus itself.   So I don't know what to think, except that we all come out of this soon, and it's made me see how much I've taken for granted.

[Mike Ayling]

It is a beautiful Autumn day here in Melbourne Oz, 21C sunny no wind so I did the annual oil change on my Mercury.
I don't try to reinstall a drain plug with the flushing oil, I just place a strip of electrician's tape over the hole as I hate fiddling with that tiny grub screw.
I only managed to drop the new grub screw once when installing it, an improvement over previous years!

Mike

[j-ms]

Good tip about tape and the flushing oil.  That grub screw is a ^$#@#.  There are few more things more stressful than dropping one while changing the oil while on tour. 

[Andre Jute]

I normally keep several grub screws on hand because I'm a serial cack-hand.

Makes you wonder why Rohloff hasn't long since designed and supplied a rim-top machine screw of just the right length not to be screwed into essential spinning gibbons, maybe even magnetic so it sticks to the Allen key in the right orientation.

[PH]

I have a hex key out of a cheap set that's a tight fit in the grub screw, push it on and it stays there, I keep it with the kit just for that.  Lock the wheel with the hole right at the top, full turn of the screw in the opposite direction and then it goes straight in, I then have to wiggle the hex key to remove it, could pretty much do it blindfolded.  If you don't have a well fitting hex key, maybe a blob of Blu Tak or similar would hold it on, or even just a bit of thick grease.

[Matt2matt2002]

Good tip about tape and the flushing oil.  That grub screw is a ^$#@#.  There are few more things more stressful than dropping one while changing the oil while on tour.

Or dropping one in your back yard right at your feet and not finding it after an hour of searching.
X3 were ordered the next day from SJS.