Where's the honey?

Our friendly, not-so-little colonies of yellow jackets met a sudden and unexpected demise the other night. Much to our surprise, something ate all of them. Something went to each hole, dug it open, and violently ripped out a whole season of community effort. Days and days of carefully constructed honeycombs, each filled with a new life, a new servant of the colony or even a yet-to-be crowned queen, were ripped out and torn open. And for what purpose? A snack? A tasty treat? The little eggs and larvae were munched away like jelly beans on Easter morning. It was as if mother nature didn't even care. Now, we can proudly say we practice natural pest control.

Here's hole number one, the first and largest. The cavern inside had a volume I would estimate to be around two gallons. Fragments of the paper hive lay all around. There were a few distraught workers still buzzing around. Perhaps the Queen is still safe in her secret underground shelter.



Hole number two, with Quinn's hand for a perspective on size (if you have any idea how big Quinn's hand is).



And number three. Inside the hole were some larger pieces of the exterior of the hive.



The invader dug this hole and others, too, and even left a DNA sample. A raccoon, perhaps? I wonder how many times its nose was stung.

Our bees are wasps

When I first saw them coming out of hole number one, I thought they were wasps because they appeared, from a distance, to have smooth bodies and narrowish waists. But I poked around on the Internet to try to figure out more accurately what they might be, and based on a document I found from what I thought would be a reliable academic resource, I found no confirmation that there were similarly sized social, ground-nesting wasps in Michigan. In fact, the information led me to believe, to my surprise, that these were most likely bumblebees; that the queen was large and the fliers we saw were workers, much smaller than the queen.

Jim's comment on my previous text made me rethink this, and I now think I have determined that they are indeed a wasp. It has also made me think that, as a someone who is supposed to have a background in biology, I ought to be able to identify the little buggers. I am, in fact, somewhat embarrassed to have been so quickly convinced that they were bees. Of course, at that time I hadn't been able to get a close look at them. I have looked now more closely at the photos I took, and I have ruled out any possibility that they are any sort of bee. I have also ruled out the German yellow jacket based on the markings on their bodies. The German yellow jacket probably could have been ruled out based on the fact that I haven't been stung by any of them! That leaves two possibilities: they are most likely the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris), but they might be the Eastern yellow jacket (Vespula maculifrons). In fact, some of what I've found leads me to believe that this is a classification difference, and that some entomologists consider the eastern and western yellow jackets a single species, the common wasp, while others like to keep them separate. I'll see what else I can learn.

I'm also going to send Quinn and Abbey out there catch some so that I can examine them more closely.

My belly's still full from the food I just ate...

I forgot to include this in the tales of the MUP. During the many miles, many hours, we spent preparing for the bicycle tour, pedaling around the MSU farmlands and among the cornfields between Okemos and Mason and beyond, we did a lot of singing. We even wrote a song. Abbey started it one day, not on her bicycle, but in our kitchen, after a big lunch, just before a ride. She walked out, dancing, hips swaying, rubbing her belly, and singing, with a rhythm that clearly had its roots in reggae,

My belly's still full from the food I just ate,
my belly's still full from the food I just ate.

Later, while out on the tandems we added more,

I went to the store and I got some bread and jelly,
I ate it all up, it was sittin' in my belly,
I went for a run and it wasn't any fun,
'cause my belly's still full from the food I just ate,
yeah, my belly's still full from the food I just ate,
oh, my belly's still full from the food I just ate.

We try to have fun.

We have bees!

On the dry grassy slope of our front yard, ground-nesting bees have made homes. The first bunch appeared in early July. More recently two other holes have appeared at the top of the slope, and the kids tell me there are more in the back yard. Each morning when the sun shines on the slope, there becomes a constant stream of bees flying out and up, and down and in. I can't tell where they're going. Some fly off to the north, some fly off to the south. Others go straight up and over the house across the street. They must be traveling quite some distance. At first we were simply surprised to see so many bees coming in and out of the little hole. Then we worried that they might be easily agitated and attack, perhaps carry away, one of the kids. How would we ever mow the grass? Now, I've decided the danger to us is probably minimal, as they've really shown little interest in chasing, dive-bombing, stinging, or carrying us away. I even mowed the grass, passing right across their holes, without a single sting. The kids are still a little distraught, complaining that the amount of yard available for playing has been rather reduced by these potentially hazardous little pollinators, but I think we've all come to accept them as fellow inhabitants of our space, and we're happy that they've chosen our yard to make their home.

I tried to take some pictures of our friends with Abbey's camera. This is hole number three.


When the sun has just cleared the tops of the trees across the street, and the bees are buzzing busily about, their sunlit wings standing out against the background of shadow, the air above our yard is wild with the motion of ascent and descent. I tried to photograph the chaos, but with little success. The shutter speed was too slow to keep up with the bees, but the result was an estimate of wing beats per second. The shutter speed for the picture below was 1/60 of a second. Each bee captured in the image beat its wings 3 times in that short window.

Soma Double Cross Update

Earlier this year I gave the old Soma a major overhaul. I did not, at that time, replace the fenders and tires, although I gave it some thought. I was so happy with it after the overhaul that I decided to ride it in the ODRAM this year. For that, I thought I'd go ahead and replace the fenders and tires.

The first step in replacing the fenders was actually to find it a new front derailer. Ready for this? The front derailer was a Shimano LX that worked just fine (almost), but since it was a "mountain" derailer, the arm was located sort of behind the seat tube. That meant that on the Double Cross there was limited clearance between a fat tire and the derailer cable anchor bolt. In fact, when the bicycle was new, and I first installed the Conti Top Touring tires, I had to replace the original anchor bolt with one that had a very flat head on it so that it wouldn't contact the tire. Further, to install the fenders, I actually had to cut a groove into the rear fender to make room for the cable and cable anchor bolt. It worked quite well for several years. Anyway, road derailers, in comparison to mountain derailers, are generally shaped such that the anchor bolt is out to the side of the seat post, since road bikes often have much less clearance between the tire and the seat post. I don't know what other implications this has for the function of the derailers. Since I'm using bar-end shifters on this bike, a mountain or road derailer is compatible. I won't go into how much I like having a non-indexed front derailer on this bicycle. OK, so I bought an IRD Alpina derailer, which is designed to work best with mid-size chain rings (larger than most mountain bikes but smaller than most road bikes) like I have on this Soma. The IRD derailer has a cable anchor bolt positioned to better avoid contact with the tire. This will be a big improvement if I put the fat studded tires on for winter again. I installed the derailer and had a little trouble with shifting up onto the big ring. I'd had the same problem with the Shimano LX. In both cases, the travel of the derailer limits out just a tiny bit before it should in order to move the chain to the big ring. I suppose my Sugino cranks must place the chain rings a little further from derailer mount than other brands of crankset? Consequently, with both derailers, I have to back the limit screw all the way out, and angle the rear of the derailer outward a little bit instead of keeping it parallel to the rings as is generally recommended. With a little angle, it works just fine.

I ordered tires and fenders from Peter White Cycles. I installed the tires first. My old Continental Top Touring tires had seen roughly 4,500 miles. The Soma now has 5,475 miles, but about 500 of those are on studded winter tires, and another few hundred were on a set of narrow Hutchinsons that I used briefly when it was new. The Top Touring tires still have a reasonable amount of tread left, but the rubber is cracking - perhaps due to age and too much sunlight - and I'm not sure I trust them for a long ride at this point. They've been great tires - I've only had 2 flats with them. The Top Touring tires were listed as 700x37 but measured about 32 mm on my Mavic MA3 rims. My replacement criteria were based on the continued use of this bicycle as my primary ride to work and around town during three seasons. Specifically, I wanted tires that (1) were 28 to 30 mm wide, (2) had some level of flat protection, (3) were reasonably fast and light weight (think ODRAM), and (4) had a tire-generator (dynamo) strip. The Schwalbe Marathon Racers were the only tires that really seemed to meet these requirements. They also have a reflective sidewall - not a requirement, but something I really like. I ordered them in a 700x30, which I hoped would mean they'd be about 28 to 30mm wide. They weigh about 360 grams each, which is roughly double the weight of a typical road racing tire, but is pretty light as touring tires go. The label on the tires says 28-622/700x30. Inflated to 70 psi, they measured about about 29 mm on my Mavic MA3s. I rode them today at 70 psi, and it felt about right for my 150 pound body - I might try 80 psi if I knew I would be riding on really smooth roads.

With derailer and tires installed, I could put on the new set of fenders. I got some Gilles Berthoud composite fenders from Peter White because I like the Berthoud mounting brackets, but I wanted plastic fenders on the Soma. Berthoud composites were the answer. I ordered the 42 mm width so they would easily clear my new tires and probably clear my winter studs (we'll see about the latter). I wish the fenders came in black, but silver was the only option. They're apparently an aluminum core with a clear plastic material on the outside. They look very cool off the bike, but I think the Soma would look better if they were black. Or maybe polished aluminum. I could have tried Honjos, but those are pretty pricey. These fenders were pretty easy to install, but I've installed several sets of fenders previously, so I kind of knew what challenges to expect. I never have enough of the right size of stainless metric bolts! My only complaint about the fender installation would be that the radius of the bend of the fenders is a little too big for these tires, so the front doesn't follow the contour of the wheel very closely. I may get another strut for the front to help pull it down a little and to reduce the bump-induced fender wiggle out there in the front.

Below are some photos of the Soma with it's new stuff. As shown, with rack and fender and lights, it weighs in at a very respectable 28 pounds. Any less and I'd worry about it blowing away in the wind. Besides, those super light-weight plastic and aluminum bikes are dangerous because they don't afford enough protection to the rider in the event of a crash! In the last picture, the close-up of the derailer, look carefully and you can see the bumpy generator strip on the tire. It's just a series of grooves that help keep the generator wheel from slipping. My top touring tires had a generator strip, and I've used my tire generator in frequently rain and in. It's never slipped at all, even when tire and generator were packing up with snow. Perhaps I'm just lucky.






Cindy said, "Do you think anyone reads this whole thing?"

I said, "Of course not."

The complete MUP is Up!

I have finally finished writing up our 2008 MUP bicycle tour!! You can read about our tour by clicking on the MUP links in the archive list under 2008 and July to the lower right. Each day of the MUP is written up separately.

If you were on the MUP, and think of things I left out, feel free to add a comment to the page. If you weren't there (sorry), but still wish to comment, please do so.

On the cool morning ride from Paradise to Whitefish Point, Abbey took some video. Click on the start button below to watch her video.

More of the same

Same intersection. Same red light. Different Cyclist. This morning on my way to work the bicyclist that ran the red light was older and wearing a helmet. Riding a noisy old black mountain bike and wearing a backpack. I think I've seen this guy before, and he may even be the guy I spoke to once. He rolls up to the intersection in the right turn line. Stops at the red light to wait for a break in the traffic, then rides across five lanes. The light still red. I use the non-turning lane, wait in line with traffic for the green light, then cross and move the to the right side side as I finish crossing.

Does anybody care but me? Probably not. Why do I care? I want drivers of cars to respect me as user of the roadway with equal rights and equal responsibilities. Can they tell the difference between me and the guy that ran the light? Probably not. Certainly not once we're both out of the intersection and riding along in the bicycle lane.

Is there something I can do that will make a difference?

August already?

I'm still working my way through the write-ups on the MUP tour. I'll keep adding them with dates in July. You can find them by clicking on the links along the right. My goal is to finish up one a day, but I'm a little behind.

I had to throw in a current post, though. This sort of follows with some of the bicycle-car interaction posts and comments passed. Tonight on my ride home I had close call - only not with a car, but with another bicyclist. Preparing to cross my favorite busy intersection at Okemos and Kinawa Roads, I was eastbound, and stopped in the right lane waiting on a red light. A short line of cars was building behind me. Across the road and to my right, there was a youngish woman on bicycle. Picture a not-so-athletic looking high school age girl on an old beat-up mountain bike with no helmet and no smile. She was northbound on the sidewalk across the road, and approaching the intersection. As my light turned green and I started across the road, it appeared that she was slowing as she approached the intersection. I didn't think too much about it, but assumed she would stop since she had a red light and there were quite a few cars around. However, just when I thought she would stop, she didn't. Instead, she pedaled. I don't think she ever looked my way - she just rolled into the road. I hit my brakes pretty hard and swerved to my right, passing just behind her rear wheel. I don't think she ever saw me. The cars behind me just slowed and waited for for her to cross the road in front them. I don't know if she saw them either. Maybe she just didn't care.

I'm concerned that there are so many people out there on bikes who pay no attention to traffic laws. And, actually, it's not necessarily just disregard for traffic laws - it's a lack of common sense. I suspect it's never occurred to them that they are supposed follow some sort of guidelines for the use of their bicycle on public roads and sidewalks. Lots of people go to driver education training. Perhaps we need to have some sort of formal training - or semi-formal training - in the use of bicycles. Maybe it could occur in elementary schools. I'm not advocating licenses for the operation of bicycles, but maybe some sort of short-course for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Parents could come, too. Or maybe it's just hopeless.

If you're at an intersection and the light is red, and the "Don't Walk" sign is lit, and there are cars coming from your right and your left, don't cross the road...