Just wanted to post a quick note about a good experience I had with a repair job by Metro Bikes on 96th near Broadway. I biked in on Saturday afternoon, with the feeling that something wasn’t right in the bottom bracket of my Giant Halfway folding bike.

Sure enough, in 15 seconds, the mechanic had zeroed in on wobble where there shouldn’t be any. 20 minutes later and about $71 poorer, I had a new bracket installed, and a close-up look at the damage to the old one when it came out. They are a Giant dealer, and I was thrilled they had the part in stock and could fix it on the spot. Probably helped it was a bit of a gray day…

I played the old board game with my kids this evening and was surprised by the many lessons it offered up — some of them surprisingly timely.

My son spent a ton of his money on stock, which proved to worth only a fraction of what he paid for it. My daughter reached a fork in the road where on one path she could land on a Recycle square and earn a LIFE tile — but the other fork led to $75,000 in tax refunds. She said “…it’s better for the environment but I’m driving a green car with two lesbians so…” and she took the refund over the recycling. And this is a really enlightened girl.

But the ultimate twist was that she was the only one who went to college, coming out with a career as an Artist and a low salary. So it was really a huge surprise at the end when she had far more money than anyone else…

I just want to say that these guys are great, and helped me out of a jam tonight on the way home from 125th street station. They’re located at the top of Marcus Garvey Park, here:

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I had a stripped crank and a pedal falling out. They fixed me up on the spot, for the right price, with a great vibe.

I found a photo of them online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-no/2736707223/, which helps convey that they are basically just a garage that opens to the street — bike parts, bikes for sale on the sidewalk, and two guys that can fix whatever needs it.

So if you’re in Harlem and need some help with your bike, find these guys.

This is the second in my series on Biking instead of driving, busing, training, etc. See Part 1 first.

Downsides

If you ride the city long enough, you will start to see some problems with biking. Ghost bikes are bikes that are chained up, spray-painted totally white, everything. They mark a place where a cyclist died, and it sobers you quickly. Cyclists do get killed and it is dangerous because cars and big, metal, and we’re not. So there’s some basic safety tips you need to follow, and gear to acquire and use. While I was tempted to do the full body armor, I settled for flashing Frog lights front and rear, a simple bell, a great helmet of course, and a best effort to ride defensively — especially where cars cut through the path. The hardest part was giving up the headphones, but I have to agree it’s probably safer without them.

Rain and cold can be tough, too. My ride along the Hudson was sometimes bitter (I wore inner and outer gloves in the winter) and sometimes drenching (fine as long as it was on the way home). And of course, I always had the option of taking the train instead. Boy did I miss the ride on those days.

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A new way of moving around

This post is about changing the way I travel, and how I’ve been doing that over the past year and a half. It’s been a fantastic experience, with so many benefits that I have to shake off the rust and start blogging about it in the hope that more people will discover it for themselves.

The simplest way to say it is that I am trying to bike instead of using motorized transport. Not everywhere, not fanatically, just looking for reasonable, safe and fun ways to do it. And it’s working out better than I had imagined.

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Arggh.

!

Here are the symptoms I had that were making me remember why I left Outlook in the past:

1. The Send/Receive status would get to 77% and freeze. The application would stop responding. Eventually, after a few minutes, I could click on menus, but still the receive was frozen.
2. Thunderbird works fine against the same IMAP account, same server, same time. So it’s Outlook.
3. I tried the IMAP Folders… option, but again, a total hang of the app. No success, no folders showing.

Here’s what I did to resolve the problem:

1. I tried disabling all extensions and Add-ins. The two I really use are Kaspersky Antivirus and SpamBayes. Sadly, this didn’t help at all.
2. I tried the Inbox Repair Tool from Microsoft, which did find errors in my PST and repaired them, but from the log this seemed unconvincing. And my problem was not fixed.
3. Finally, I deleted my IMAP account, and recreated it.

Problem solved at last.

Hope this saves someone else some pain in the future. Thanks to my buddy Jeff for suggesting the Repair Tool anyway.