Thinking about making slippers, and the Feed

The headline needs explaining, which is the point of this opening paragraph. I have a sandal that was given to me years ago by a woman who died in 2007 (this was the woman who I used to ride my bicycle for 120 miles in a day so I could have lunch with her (and make all the other residents of the nursing home angry at their children)). So I have had this sandal for a very long time that I was using as a lifted slipper so I didn’t get back pains on the days I stayed at home. Well the sole of that sandal has crumbled and now the toe is hanging by a scrap of leather that used to be the insole. This makes the sandal painful to walk in and eventually it will fall completely apart.

So, I will need to replace this sandal with “something else”. The problem is “something else” has to be 17mm thicker on the bottom of the left one than the right one, and I have never seen a slipper that had that as an option. That leaves me with two choices, pay someone else to make me a pair of slippers with the left sole 17mm thicker than the right sole, or make my own pair of slippers. Now the thing is for a pair of shoes I don’t walk very much in the thickness difference doesn’t need to be exactly 17mm, anything from 12 to 20 would work just fine.

Something I have been wearing on the right foot has been a pair of slipper socks (well, half a pair) that was very comfortable at all the normal temperatures for my house. So the idea is to build some slipper socks with the left one having the extra thickness I need to get my pelvis level. The local craft store to the rescue! Slipper socks like the one I was using are nothing more than a thin rubber sole bonded to a knit sock so that the sole is held more or less in place under the foot. I have lots of socks, and also glue that will bond the socks to a rubber sole, but until I saw this one item in the local craft store I didn’t have a sole that I could use and also have significant differences in thickness between the two. The item in question is the decorate a shower shoe refill kit, which consisted of two pairs of white flip flops at a reasonable price and is sold year-round as a gift suggestion. The idea I had is to use both pairs of flip flops without the toe thong-thingy that makes flip flops flip flop when you walk in them, take one pair and glue them together with the wear face out and then glue that to the bottom of the left flip flop and then glue the whole mess to a pair of socks sitting in my sock drawer. Add some straps and velcro strips to the left foot (OK the right one too to make it symmetrical) so I don’t roll the sole over and end up turning an ankle and call it done.

Up first is a wreck that shows nobody is “safe” in the bike lane no matter what non-car mode of transport they are using. 1 injured as car hits wheelchair in Shoreline bike lane The problem is not the cyclists if anyone gets hit in the bike lane, it’s the crappy drivers who seem unable to keep their killing machines away from fragile skin and bones.

More on that El Tour de Tucson wreck. Driver in deadly El Tour crash says it’s all a blur OK as I read it the driver’s blood sugar crashed after the game, and then he did the same. Also Driver ID’d in El Tour de Tucson collision that killed a cyclist.

A CA driver talking on a cell phone could be facing charges in the death of a cyclist. PD: Woman may face charges after hitting, killing bicyclist As this wreck took place in September and this is late November I hope you’ll forgive me for not remembering exactly how this wreck happened…

Update on a more recent wreck in CA. Santa Barbara Woman Jailed in Cyclist Hit-and-Run This was a hit-from-behind wreck that could have been much worse. The weapon vehicle just grazed the cyclist at highway speed rather than the full impact that a few more inches would have brought. Kudos on the LEO for tracking and arresting the driver. Protocols to avoid or to mitigate damages, and get the infrastructure right to prevent.

Moving to the Emerald Isle of Ireland we find a totally clueless driver behind 3 cyclists. Three cyclists struck by car in Co Clare Not one, not two, but all 3 cyclists hit by the same car in the same wreck. Hit-from-behind protocols to avoid or to mitigate damages, and get the stupid blind driver off the roads to prevent… I mean infrastructure, get the infrastructure right to prevent (after they get rid of the stupid, blind, driver).

News from the cycling scientist that brought us the news that drivers pass closer to cyclists when they wear helmets comes another study with a bit more depth to it. University of Bath research shows that cyclists’ outfits do not stop dangerous overtaking Notice that two of the outfits are patterned off of local constabulary bike cops uniforms and that had no effect on the passing distances of drivers.

Infrastructure! news from the UK. RE-Tech launches cyclist detection system for vehicles Additional “eyes” for drivers who can’t see out of their trucks.

More infrastructure news. Britain failing to protect cyclist but should they share the blame for accidents? Well the UK statistics show that even with a police force that has demonstrated a strong anti-cyclist bias their own reporting system determined that motor vehicle operators are at least partly to blame in 93% of all bike wrecks. That says that the cyclists are not the problem, they are already mostly doing whatever it takes to not get hit. The real culprits are bad infrastructure and bad drivers.

A Ghost Bike for a MO cyclist. ‘Ghost bike’ memoralizes killed cyclist Now we know the driver of the weapon vehicle was being chased by her ex, and both are in jail on unrelated charges but not charged in the cyclist’s death because it’s OK to kill a cyclist…

And those were all the bicycle links that gave me fits today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

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Running late with a huge Feed

I’m a little 🙂 behind schedule today/tonight because I had another doctor appointment, getting my back fixed. It’s a little late, by about 12 years, but this was one of those things that I could only get fixed when I had my own money to spend on it. Back when I got hit the Victims of Violent Crime fund did not cover chiropractic and as that was my “insurance” for the wreck I got what they paid for.

Up first is a picture of the model bike I’m getting thanks to the Anonymous Donor. This isn’t my bike but the front of my bike will look like this bike.

My bike will have a step-through frame to make getting on a bit easier with the bad hip.

The Big Story today is a man hit from behind and killed on a closed stretch of road for one of the biggest annual bike races in the US. Car strikes, kills El Tour bicyclist from behind in bike lane, DPS says and El Tour de Tucson rider struck from behind in bike lane, killed also EL TOUR DE TUCSON CYCLIST KILLED IN CRASH and this Cyclist in El Tour de Tucson dies after being hit by car and last link El Tour cyclist killed in crash wanted to finish race despite cold, rain As of this posting this is what I know: the cyclist was riding in a closed off lane that was coned and marked as closed specifically for this event, and he was hit from behind by the driver of a Nissan Leaf, a fully electric vehicle. As of now it is not known how the driver got into the closed lane with the cyclist. I hate this story, the cyclist was doing everything right on a closed course, and STILL got run over by a clueless driver in a silent car. I don’t know what else could be done, the infrastructure was right, the cyclist was right, and we STILL have a [“colorful” language deleted] dead cyclist on our hands.

A CA cyclist is killed by blind driver. Salinas Elderly Man Struck, Killed By SUV While Riding Bike The cyclist was very nearly missed, the impact was to the back of the back wheel from the left front of the weapon vehicle. Intersection protocols to avoid or to mitigate the damage, and get the infrastructure right to prevent. Suggestions include pulling the licenses of people that drive blindly into spaces they can’t see if they are clear or not, when they’re not.

A low-information article from Enn Zed. Injured cyclist airlifted Nothing in the report that I can use to help it not happen to you, because the roads are full of stones, that’s how most of them are made.

Infrastructure! news from NYC. Guerilla Street Signs In Park Slope Lower Speed Limit To 20 Now if only the NYPD would enforce that speed limit then maybe we would see a few less pedestrian and cyclist fatalities…

Infrastructure news from the UK. Police To Target ‘Death’ Junctions For Cyclists In Bid To Improve Safety

A clueless commentator from the UK. Cyclists vs motorists: A phoney war between two tribes who should be on the same side Really?

Bikeyface gets it right, again. UTILITY VS. SPORT I used to drive race cars back in the day and I had friends who walked away from hitting a concrete wall at over 100 MPH without any airbags…

And those were all the links that gave me fits about bicycles today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus