I think it'd have to be the chewing gum, as the baling wire would require drilling holes in the disc and housing to use (or making some sort of snaprings or something out of it, perhaps).
I've been so sick the last few days, starting Saturday night, getting worse thru Sunday and Monday, peaking on Tuesday (I hope), that I ahven't been able to do much of anything besides lay in bed and stare at the screen, in between fits of coughing and other sickly activities.
(well, that and push dogs back off of me so I could breathe, since they all want to pile on to make me better but it doesn't work that way)
So today was my first ride in the windy cold we are having right now--where in the midday it looks so nice outside, warm and inviting (though obviously windy), even with the front door open, until I step outside and the wind tries to bowl me over and freeze me at the same time.
Seeing all of what's happening elsewhere, I guess I can't complain about our weather that much, but being super-sick it's not doing me any good right now.
Weather and Path Setup for today:
Last night it was below freezing (way below, I think, but don't know for sure), not counting the windchill from what musta been 30MPH winds with gusts up much higher than that (enough at some point to flip over an old big truck hood I have in the backyard that has four lead-acid truck batteries on it's corners), and to completely disappear some old (but still nice) towels and sheets I had on the clothesline to dry overnight.
Not to mention the huge mess of trash everywhere from alleyway bins knocked over and emptied by the wind. Stacks of shingles left on roofs overnight, under repair from last October's hailstorm, ended up in yards and streets, most places I could see on my way to work today at midday. Some of that stuff is hard to ride over safely, and impossible to avoid given the amount of it in some places, though in others there was no traffic (unusually) so I was able to just go wide around piles of it.
Speaking of that: Hardly anybody on the roads, either, which was really unusual. What traffic there was seemed in a great hurry to get wherever they were going, but not doing anything really stupid out of the ordinary.
The wind hasn't let up much since it started, either, and the dogs don't even want to go out in it, especially Bonnie and Loki, as they've both been "attacked" by flying debris a few times already. Loki won't even go out to pee unless I carry him out there and shut the door behind him.
Riding the bike in it is a nightmare; even though it's much lower to the ground than a regular bike (which I wouldn't be able to ride at all in this wind), it still gets buffeted about when hit from teh sides or some other angles, making it hard to stay balanced.
Since Metro Parkway curves from nearly due east at the south entrance to nearly due west at the north entrance, I get to feel most possible effects of any particular wind on it over the 1.25-ish miles I travel on it going to work (I ride a different road going home, usually).
At one point at the north end, on a parallel-curved road just off MP that I take to avoid the idiotic traffic control (and idiots that don't pay attention to it) at MP and 28th Ave, the wind was directly cross my path, and I could see cars in front of me get buffeted, rocking, as they came out of the windbreak some buildings make and into a place where there's a big flat nothing (torn down buildings, parking lots, streets etc.) for a ways, letting wind just blast thru.
Knowing it was coming I still nearly lost control of the bike, and had to steer partly into the wind to keep going straight. In the first couple of seconds I moved leftward nearly half the width of the street! Just glad there werent' any cars trying to pass me--I could have done nothing to stop any collisions, beyond letting the wind force me further left into the other side of the road and hope there was no opposing traffic either.
I wasn't able to go faster than about 15MPH or so the whole way there, except for very short parts of the path not being buffeted by wind from one direction or another. A few places where I had to stop for traffic controls I had trouble starting up again--using the motor alone began to move me, but it was hitting 30A+ and was barely getting me going, so I was afraid I'd damage something either in controller, motor, or battery if I didn't help it with the pedals. Just a few spins of the large front ring and middle ring in back were enough to get past that, but I was still hitting 15A+ just trying to stay at 15MPH against the direct frontal winds, and 8-10A against the just-buffeting winds from various sides.
If I remember tomorrow before I go to work I will post the CA data, but I forgot to write it down before charging the batteries, which is still in progress, and requires disconnecting the NiMH batteries from their series 48V configuration to charge them separately as two 24V packs.
Could really tell on the way home that the CFL light's new housing really doesn't work very well, even with the modification, so it'll need something to cone more light forward. I also have a different kind of CFL bulb, with four parallel tubes instead of a coily thing, that I will try, but I have to repair it's inverter first.
On the way there, I had to wear my snowboarding dayglo gloves with their liners, two pair of jogging sweatpants plus my work dress pants, four pairs of socks, three sweaters plus a dayglo orange tshirt over them. Somehow I forgot my helmet
--the first time I think I have ever done that, even when I have been sick and had to ride anyway.
Otherwise I would have had the full-face motorcycle helmet to keep my head and face warm, but instead I had nothing and so despite all the rest of my body warmth, I was still nearly freezing by the time i got to work. I couldn't go back for it because I was already likely to be late due to the winds blowing so hard that I could only go about 15MPH max, and starting from a stop was very hard as I had to balance wind, throttle, pedals, steering, bike, all at once--I can barely do one thing at a time usually and being very sick still, this was VERY hard..
On the way home just as it was finishing getting dark, I had to add another sweater and anohter pair of sweatpants, and it was still so cold (because of no helmet) that I had to stop before I even left the parking lot and come back to the store to put on a hoodie jacket that somebody had abandoned there a while back, kept in the breakroom in case they ever come back for it. At least the hoodie kept my ears from falling off. :lol: But my hands...I couldn't feel my fingers after a mile, and I couldn't feel my hands at all a couple minutes later, so I had to stop and exercise them for a while till they woke up again. Did that twice more before I got home.
I'm still slightly popsicley almost two hours later, bundled up under four blankets and five dogs, plus some electric heating pads to keep my back and legs warm, especially, right now.
At the moment I was about to hit Submit on the post, the alarm on my temperature monitor (from a PC, with wired remote thermal sensors) began beeping at me, telling me it is right at freezing outside, not coutning the windchill, and it's only 10:25pm. It's gonna get a lot colder tonite than last night. In the house, in my closed up room with me and the dogs in it, it's 52F and holding so far, but it was 60F when I came home. I can't tell what the temperature is after freezing outside, as I no longer have any other thermometers I can find (except an old bimetallic strip coil type that is so light it'd just blow away and I can't bolt it down), and this PC unit doesn't bother to display a reading below freezing (which is stupid), just beeps at you and puts "---" instead.
