Day 14 Tour de Troit

Oh no! KT and I got into the car this morning and drove. What?! Drove? Yes, if you had read the first post carefully, our car free commitment was only for trips of 20 miles or less. We went about 40 miles which is double 20. Two weeks without a car! It's too bad that our fridge door popped open a couple nights back and I found it open in the morning. Oh no! It detracts from the greenity of our last two weeks.

We went to lovely Detroit this morning to participate in the Tour de Troit. It was a fun and easy paced 30 miles. We originally weren't going to attend because transporting the tandem seemed to be a nightmare. It fit nicely without its wheels from front to rear window in KT's car. I sat in the back seat behind KT so it felt like a taxi ride with a tandem as the other passenger. That tandem, it intruded into my personal space bubble.

Pictures of the first half of the ride are posted. The fun part about being the stoker is that I can go hands free.

Michigan Central Station
The tour packet marks this building as the most photographed ruin of Detroit.

Beginning of the tour

This is Eric, KT's boss from Fisker. He's pretty funny and likes things like KT does.

This is Steve, another fellow Fisker.
He chopperized his bike himself a few years back. Also a funny guy.

So many buildings in the Midwest are made from brick. This one even had brick windows.

Hello Church. I wanted to your steeple.

Traffic came to a halt.

More bikers across the street.

Polk-dot house in the Heidelberg Project. These houses were the canvases for some fun street art.

Those shopping carts are pretty high up. Once stuffed animals are faded and worn by the elements, they all look very similar.


Even the trees were decorated.

Stuffed animal house

Taxi house. The tour was police exported.

KT on the water front. Belle Isle is in the background.

KT on Steve's crazy bike

Day 9

Update!
Miles so far: 133.47
Approximate money savings: $69.67

Day 9 hasn't been a super special car-free day as we pretty much just went to class and back, but we did decide to ride the Tour de Troit (haha, get it?) this Saturday. It's a 30-mile police-escorted ride around Detroit, and some of the guys that I worked with at Fisker Automotive will be there so it should be fun. This is also one of those special occasions on which we'll drive the car so this doesn't turn into a 140 mile ride on the worst roads ever. However, I have a small sports car and tandems are huge. This presented a problem. My roof rack trays aren't long enough, so I decided to try to fit the thing inside. It was surprisingly successful.

All the convenience of doors without the hassle of B-pillars!

Here's where Jackie fit into the equation

Day 8

Yesterday was an epic car free day. I'm thinking this blog would actually be more accurately be named something like Bike Only or Bike All or We're Biking Everywhere less than 20 miles away for 1 month. But, that would imply that we don't walk anywhere which wouldn't be correct. And, I guess that last title wouldn't even be 100% true because yesterday, KT and I biked around Ann Arbor and into a neighboring city I didn't recognize for a grand total of 21 miles. It doesn't sound too bad when compared with the miles on a recreational ride, but this was a ride where both of us were wearing jeans and non-wicking shirts. Thankfully, there were a few stops within those 21 miles.

Stop 1: I forget. KT reminded me we stopped by the mall to pick up contacts for me to share a cinnamon pretzel. I also wanted to buy new earrings and shop H&M but that didn't happen.

Stop 2: Rider's Hobby Shop
I found a rail road modeling magazine and was fascinated by the tiny but realistic buildings. The tools of the trade seem to be Exacto knifes, sanding blocks, glue... slightly different from larger buildings.

KT bought tiny clips and we watched a RC car race x2. The second one had tiny tiny cars.

Stop 3: Showcase Cinemas
We watched 9 which was a "machines have taken over the world and destroyed the humans" type of movie. Good animation.

Stop 4: Indian Restaurant
We ate too much and ordered too much and had delicious left overs that were enough for today (lunch+dinner) and tomorrow's lunch.

Stop 5: Home.

South of Central Campus, the bike lanes get shady and sometimes aren't there. Actually, it might just be all over Ann Arbor. But near the hobby shop and Showcase there were no bike lanes at all. Luckily we were on the tandem so I didn't have to do anything but pedal and brace myself for whatever bumps in the road (too many) KT calls out. KT does all the maneuvering and thinking. Only one car honked at us and one group of girl pedestrians blindly crossed the road into our path. One of the girls was like, "Holy shit!" and I "Holy shit!"ed right back at her. Verbally.

Day 5

It's been a few days of car free and so far, I've got to say it hasn't been too hard. Maybe a harder challenge for me, at least, would be to be bike only transportation. With 2 classes on Central Campus, I am very tempted to ride the bus over which would fit the car free diet, but would still make me feel guilty for being lazy. This urge to take the bus is even greater when I had to return to Central Campus last night for an evening class. I couldn't find a good working back light.

Day 4
Let's go back in time. KT rode his bike to a job interview yesterday. It probably added a bit of stress since he was running late and didn't want his interview clothes to be sweaty and wrinkled. I think it ended up okay with him putting a rack and panniers on his single bike to hold his interview shirt and shoes.

Day 3
On Tuesday, we went to Kroger to pick up more groceries and the all important toilet paper that we had run out of. We had forgotten to bring our reusable grocery bags so we brought our panniers in and used the self check out machine. The lady staffing the machines OK-ed the scales to let us put the panniers on without the machine prompting us to remove our last item. Unfortunately, in an effort to get home and meet the running group on time, we left our helmets in the shopping cart. This is the first time we've worn helmets for a non-ride ride and we were obviously not used to it. Luckily when we ran past Kroger after I gave up (probably less than 2 miles in) on the too fast paced run with the running group run, the helmets were waiting to be picked up right where we had left them.

Day 2
On Monday, Labor Day, our trunk bag from Craiglist turned out to be the perfect bag for a the part of a meal we were carrying. It fit a potato salad in a Gladware container and a box of Boca burger. We went over to StaceyRob's for Labor Day grilling.

Now time has all been blogged and caught up about.

Tandem History

The aforementioned tandem is a bit special to us, as it's actually the first frame that I've ever built! I've been building offroad race cars for five years now, so I figured I should be perfectly capable of making a bike frame. However, the only kind of bike that I really wanted was a road tandem, so that's what we chose to make. It was a bit ambitious, but we managed to pull it off!

Anyway, here are some pictures:

After a bunch of careful measuring and research on existing tandems, I put ours in CAD:

Then, since I wasn't terribly confident in my ability to guess tubing sizes, I did some structural analysis

Then we got to building!


We sprayed it with automotive touch-up paint; Duplicolor Intense Blue Pearl

Then we built it up with parts that I had been collecting from eBay for the past three months

And of course we had to magically make room in our apartment...

Oh, and we rode it too

It's by no means perfect, but it's my first frame, and it tracks straight and true (and hasn't fallen apart under us yet). We've named it "Doppio," which means "double" in italian. We still haven't stickered it up, but it will be soon.

Day 1

KT and I have decided to challenge ourselves by going car free for a month (for trips under 20 miles) starting from today. It sounds fairly easy. We've got our brand new tandem with a set of panniers so we're set to haul! I even have one pannier on my own bike (Bikey).

We went to Bush's grocery store today on the tandem. I'm much more willing to bike longer distances on the tandem since its so much easier. We shopped for a week's worth of groceries and were able to fit it all in two panniers plus a bag precariously tied to the top of the rack. Amazing! It works it works!

Locking up the tandem with two U-locks. Extra safe.

Our three bags of groceries. Will it fit?

It fits! I kicked the loaf of bread getting when getting on.