Fixable? hub dynamo cracks

A few weeks ago the hub seemed to be frozen (with ice) and when the nuts were a bit loose the whole hub rotated and the wires were cut. I tightened the nuts, reconnected the wires and all seemed to be OK.

This week I rode to grocers, shopped and when I tried to ride back the front wheel seemed stuck again. Well, guess what? The nuts were loose again! I disconnected the wire and tightened the nuts with fingers but for some reason the wheel didn't want to spin. So I loosened the nuts and walked the bike home to prevent further damage.

Took the bike to the shed and examined the hub more closely and noticed the hub has cracked! On the side where the electric wires come out there's a big nut which seems to be part of the aluminum side wall. The side wall has been bent in as if the nut were pushed in on one side. How that is possible, I have no idea. There is no damage to the electric connectors which are on the same side so I don't think the earlier incident caused the damage.

To add insult to injury, my camera refused to work. Blinked the "on" light for half a second, but didn't start. So I had to shoot close ups with my md80 clone.

The red dots are where the cracks are. The big nut seems to have bent in a few millimeters where the arrows are, exposing the black sleeve under it. Ball bearings are also visible trough the crack. the sidewall has cracked under the nut and about one centimeter from it, half way to the outer edge of the side wall. There are also some vertical cracks connecting them.

Now, is that side wall important, load bearing part of the hub or is it just a dust cover? Does it come off if I try to screw the big nut? Gotta google for some blow out pictures.

In the mean while, where's my spare front wheel? And is the rim on it wide enough for the studded tyre? I gotta make the bike rideable again, I need to do a beer run...

Going Nuts!

The other day I took my bike of the rack and noticed the front wheel seemed to have frozen during the night. Not really surprising, as it had rained and snowed and sleeted during the night. I pushed and pulled and the wheel started to rotate a bit but there was still some resistance. So I put more weight on the bike and pushed and pulled and the front wheel started rotating again. Nice!

Well, the wheel started rotating again, but, unfortunately something had gone wrong: the wire from the hub dynamo to the lights was cut when the wheel and the dynamo connector rotated but the wire stayed put. One nut had become so loose that when I tried to get the wheel spinning, the hub spinned with it. Not Nice.

And this happened a few days after the other light on the bike stopped working. Two lights, neither working. Double Not Nice.

So, although Movember just ended, I recommend you to check your Nuts!

Scary... Evil... Disgusting...

I was riding home in the dark. The sunset was 16:01 and it was cloudy and no snow on the ground so it was pretty dark after 6 pm. I did have lights with me so no problem with the dark.

But then I saw some lights ahead, but off the road. I smelled something... vile. The smell got stronger as rode closer. I knew instantly something evil had happened there. But there was no way around...

It was a small campfire, with several small figures skulking in the shadows... you know, vampires, zombies and things like that. When they noticed me, they called out: "Who goes there?"

In my most impressive, deep monster voice I could make I answered: "MONSTERRRR!"

Satisfied, the evil monsters returned to their task at hand: trying to put out the fire by peeing on it.

Hauskaa Ällöweeniä!

( Happy Disgustiween! :-)

Missed the Supermoon

There was a Supermoon in the shadow this morning. But when I looked outside this morning, I saw clouds so I missed the eclipse. (Looked outside, saw clouds and then I went back to bed. Too darn early!) I tried to take some shots of the moon with my pocket shooter but apparently a camera on a bicycle seat is not steady enough for taking good pictures of the moon. All I got some roundish or oval shapes with no lunar seas visible.

Fortunately, aiming at the ground a few meters ahead of me worked fine. Ah, puddles! At least this road isn't all mud. It rained a whole month's worth of rain in one day last week, and some showers later meant the puddles havent gone anywhere.

 And here's a tree which had nice colours on it a week or two ago. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me until this time. About half or two thirds of the leaves gone so the tree does not look very impressive. And practically no berries either. Did the birds already eat them (the winter food?) or was the summer so bad none grew?

How is the summer going?

One thing is for certain: years are not alike. Last year we had a cold early summer (it even snowed) and then later about a month of hot days (above +25C is considered hot here). This summer were still hoping we might break the +25C limit, though we've had some days above +20C! On the other hand, the winter is coming :-) and the weather starts cooling soon. Jaakko throws the Cold Stone into the lake in a few days and the swimming will be over for the summer soon!

 And it seems it rains every other day at least. In June it rained double the monthly average (the monthly average is something like 50mm) and so far July has been the same. I wonder what happens in the Autumn when it is supposed to be rainy?

Cycling related: I've transported my lumber jacking tools on my bike to/from the woods. So if you've seen someone riding with a helmet, take note: it is probably the only time you'll see me riding with one this year. Lumberjacking helmet is imho great for cycling: the visor protects the face from flying insects, it's well ventilated, the earmuffs protect my hearing from honking cars, and best of all it is bright orange!

Growing grass

1st of May: no green.

5th of May: some green on sunny spots

And a bunch of pictures May 18th to June 8th.

May 25th: not a lot of leaves on trees

June 8th: green!

Question: what is this?

What is this and why is it here? Was I testing out a new camera?  Someone shot at me? Bike ads on the newspaper?

Why is this here?

Any guesses? :-D

A clue:

Artsy photo!

Had to dig out my sunglasses

A few days ago there was some snow coming down in the morning. Once the clouds cleared the sun was shining with full blast:

I had to dig out my sunglasses! :D That snow didn't stay long, it was half gone on my ride back and all gone the next day. Today, though was another day and I didn't need protection against the sun. There are a few low pressure systems circling us so it'll most likely be varying weather for the next few days.

Now, if only i could figure out how to get rid of those specs on the pics.

Beach Barbecue

It was a sunny weekend so what to do? How about a beach barbecue?

On the way to the beach I saw some cyclists I hadn't seen before: a five year old with his dad and brother, and a four year old with kiddie wheels with her mom. Of course I'm guessing their ages but I'm pretty sure they were new cyclists. Warm weather (above freezing in the sun) and mostly ice free bikeways meant that there was a lot of people about. Some were skating on the ice of the sea:

although there were some rough spots on the ice. The bright areas in the picture above are smooth ice created by frozen water, and the darker areas

is uneven ice aka frozen slosh. There were some cracks in the ice where the water gets on the ice, so it is not all due to the melting process. And I guess the ships going by will splash some water on the ice, too.

And I also saw some people sitting by the docks, something that doesn't happen when it's cold or windy but it wasn't either. The sun was up, people! (11 hours 52 minutes today ;-)

A Sleeting moment

A nice little layer of sleet/snow covering the bikeways... is that clear asphalt or rutted ice under my wheels?

Exciting and blah!

I've got two different photos taken while riding. The first was taken a few weeks ago, early February. There had been some fresh snow, about 30 cm, which is quite a lot for one snowfall around here. The snow was powdery and dry, which meant the strong winds whipped it about and made nice snow "dunes". Although the snow drifts can be a hazard to the unwary. If half the lane is filled with snow, the thick drift can 'pull' the car deeper and you'll get stuck, or maybe you just lose control and spin the car. Well, with bikes that's less of a problem.

Anyhow, here's a nice lid of snow and the powder snow flying. The road is a small rural farm road. The snow banks are not man-high, I was kneeling a bit. :-P

Looks like a photo! :)

And here's a mundane, everyday bikeway. Nothing spectacular about that.

Blah!

School yard in Tyrnävä

Here's what a School yard in Finland might look like in the winter:

picture by Koivuneva/Kaleva

That picture above makes me wonder if there's enough gritting or too much? Bikes like sand, potkukelkkas (kick sleds) do not. Obviously the sleds are 'in' at the moment. I did sometimes go to school with kicksled when I was a kid, too, bot that was ages ago. Walk, bike, kicksled or ski. (Skiing is the easiest way to transport skis to the school for the gym class. :-)

And here's a link to related story in the local newspaper Newspaper Kaleva story with a video of kids arriving at school.

Think positive!

Since the beginning of the year 2015 it has been legal to ride a bicycle without any lights! Yes, really! It's true! Now it is enough to have a headlight or some other light strapped onto the rider, when before the light had to be attached TO THE BIKE. That means I've lost dozens of chances to feel smug and superior to those headlight wearing lawbreakers.

What's left? The lightless ninjas, of course. But the ninjas just are so lame, they don't give me enough satisfaction. Thank god there are still some people with red lights on front, so I can think to myself 'tut tut, are you riding backwards?'

Ice removal

It's not enough to remove the snow! Well, it would be if the first vehicle on the street would be the snow plow tractor or truck also equipped with magical snow sucker to get the last flake off the ground.

But they're not. The snow gets packed into ice under the wheels (and feet) and each time it snows the ice layers get thicker and thicker. And this packing happens only where the wheels run, leaving the other areas of the street unpacked. And those unpacked areas are easy to move by plow, wind and later in the spring, by melting. Which means there will be little hills of ice and everybody will be trying to stay on top of the hills and not fall.

Today I met a big ice scraper scraping the ice hills off the street. It was followed by a wheel loader clearing the driveways. Shoveling the ice chips is not fun! They're much heavier than powder snow. :-)

Here's where the clip started

The clip in the previous post started from top of an overpass. The road below is a bit dug in, but the bridge still gives a nice boost going downhill!

I started wondering how the drivers below will like piles of snow and chunks of ice raining down on them when the snow plows clean the overpass, as there almost certainly will be some going trough the railing... then I noticed the "chicken wire" behind the railing in the upper picture. Ok, one inch pieces of ice are not so dangerous.

There's still some room to plow more snow to the side before you need to get a wheel loader (or a tractor with a front loader) to remove it.

Funny! A Winter Mushroom!

This is a few days old picture, taken before the last bout of snow. A car, covered in snow. Snow melts, runs down the bonnet and sometimes you get this:

An ice scupture? An ice mushroom? It will scare the careless mobilist who parks his car here and crashes into it. Although more likely, the snow plow got it first.

Wet snow will turn into ice when cars drive over it, causing un-ruts (whatever is the opposite of  a rut :-) of ice which are hard to remove by a regular snow plow (you need a scraper for that). These unruts, covered by snow were the reason for several crashes while the snow was still coming (I guess there were some pileups too). At least that's what the drivers claimed. And I think I read about a car flipping over a few days later when the weather got colder and the salted main roads started to freeze. Salt does not prevent freezing, it just makes it happen in colder temperature. So one might get that partially frozen, black ice road surface at -20C that we had a few days ago.

Luckily, there is no salt on bikeways so we're spared from artificial slipperyness, although that 15 or 20 centimeters of snow did make riding a bit difficult. :-P