Seattle Bike Share Evaluation: Lime and Spin

Today is the last day of the Downtown Sailing Series. Up until now, I'd take the bus from work to the marina and then hitch or Lyft back.

Today I drove and leveraged the free daily parking at EBM and decided to try Seattle's bike sharing system.

After parking, the Lime app showed me to a bike in the marina. When I walked up to the bike there was an EBM employee that saw me and said "Is this your bike?" I responded that I was hoping it could be mine. It was all civil and all but apparently it's his job to remove these from EBM property. He said people leave them on the sidewalks (this one was in a bike rack). He mentioned that the orange bikes (spin) are really bad because it takes days for them to pick them up.

Anyway I rented the bike easily enough. The app couldn't scan the QR code so I just entered the number.

The Lime bikes are well made but tanks. I think it had a six-speed internal hub. Nice basket but no cup holder (water bottle holder) so my coffee kept spilling.  I tried riding with my backpack in the basket but the basket steers with the front wheel and the extra weight made the bike unstable. Also the handle bars were really narrow - like on a kids bike.

All in all I rode for 22 minutes and hated it. I just didn't like the bike. FWIW, my ride was free -- I don't know why but I'm grateful.

At 22-minutes, I saw an orange bike (Spin) and immediately switched. Wow, these are a lot nicer. Not as well built and only three speeds but I was able to comfortably ride at -- literally -- twice the speed.

The Spin bike has no cupholder but the basket is always aligned with the frame and it was easily able to carry my backpack. Much nicer handlebars and grips.

I also rode for 22 minutes on the spin bike and I hope it's still out front when it's time to go to the race tonight. The only real negative was that I hit a bump and my backpack went flying from the basket and I bent my MacBook.  Lesson learned -- strap it down. Mac is fine.

drk

Four Border Crossings in Four Hours

A new personal record -- four border crossings in just four hours.

First a little geography. It starts with The Louisiana Purchase, The Treaty of Paris, The Oregon Treaty and The Mexican American War.

The net is that a not quite straight line is drawn at not quite the 49th parallel from Boundary Bay Washington to Lake of the Woods Minnesota.  This leaves two interesting artifacts: Point Roberts WA and The Northwest Angle MN - both parts of the United States but disjoint and more properly Canadian.

OK, how do cross four times in an afternoon?

1) Bellingham to Point Roberts - 2 crossings.

2) Point Roberts to Bellingham - 2 crossings,

My next challenge is to visit the Northwest Angle.

drk

CREDIT: A Not-So-Straight Story, NYT. November 28, 2011 

The Miracle of Patch Magic

So, I'm a Boy Scout leader.  Actually I love it.  More later.  Maybe

As a scout you have to affix patches to your uniform.  They sell this miracle glue stuff called Patch Magic at scout stores.  God know whats in it, but it sure is sticky and badges really stay on well.

So this summer it was time for scout camp and I got every badge I could on my uniform and in the right place.  It really was sharp.

At scout camp you wear this shirt at least twice a day every day and maybe the whole day long.  It came back a bit ripe and with quite a lot of Idaho.

I figured that scout camp only happens once a year so I might as well send it with the next load to the dry cleaners.  After the dry cleaners I just "filed" the shirt in the closet until the first meeting in September.

Imagine my surprise when I'm 15-minutes from a scout meeting and there are no, NONE, badges on my uniform.  Yes, it was my shirt.  No badges not even a mark.

Realize that this Badge Magic stuff is serious.  If you tear off a badge there is a sticky patch left over that works better than fly paper.  Not a mark.

A couple of weeks later I was at the Scout Store and the lady there said she had heard of people having problems at dry cleaners but had no first-hand knowledge.

Still more weeks later I'm putting new badges on my old shirt.  I look at the back of the Patch Magic and it says in bold: DO NOT DRY CLEAN unless you want to remove all the badges at once.

I guess it was a classic RTFM.

/drk

The Man Who Ran the Moon

The Man Who Ran the Moon / 

James Webb, JFK and the Secret History of Project Apollo by Priers Bizony

Picked this up at Half Price Books recently.  It look me a while to get started but what an awesome story about a person who you don't hear much about.

James Webb was the first administrator of NASA.  This guy had the ear of presidents and the captains of industry.  NASA was created in his image.

Well worth the time if you are a space junkie.

Dan

In Run-Up To Kindle Lending Program, Libraries Beef Up E-Book Offerings

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-in-run-up-to-kindle-lending-program-libraries-beef-up-e-book-offerings/

Good read.

Steve Jobs to Cupertino... I pay taxes

Quoting from Apple Insider:

When one councilwoman asked if free Wi-Fi for the city was a possibility, Jobs replied, "I'm a simpleton, I've always had this view that we pay taxes and the city pays to do this kind of thing. Now if we can get out of taxes, I'd be happy to put up Wi-Fi."

Awesome.

The video is here on YouTube.

Dan

Chromebooks

Chromebooks are very cool.  What do I like best?  I think it's the pricing.  The lease idea is very innovative as it the bundling with Verizon data.

$429 wifi, $499 with 3g.  The 3g version comes with 100Mb/mo of verizon wireless data — FOREVER!  No contract, no extra charge.

The leased versions are $20 to $28/mo and the EDU pricing includes google apps for my school.

Seems like a very hot ticket to me…