Whew! I am glad May is over.

      May is like one crazy busy month.  We have Mayday, Mother's Day and Memorial Day to deal with but there are sooo many other important events crammed into such a little space.  There's Lumpy Rug Day, National Candied Orange Peel Day, Teacher's Day, School Nurses Day, Lupus Awareness Month, Blood Pressure Month, Hamburger Month, Nurse's Week, EMS Week and don't forget Disability Income Awareness Month, to name just a few.  I don't know who comes up with it all, but it must cramp the writers at Hallmark to produce witty inanities for those cards.

        Of course the important one is Bike Week which we celebrate with a host of activities here in Kalamazoo. 

There are a number of public events and discussions but I celebrated the Ride to Work day alone.  It was on the weird side.  On a normal workday I see about 6 people geared up for commuting and riding the streets as I do.  This year, on this day, I saw nobody.  Not one other person riding to work on National Ride-to-Work Day.  It was more like a local moratorium. 

On the other hand, the Ride of Silence had a great turnout.  I think there were 3-400 people there this year.  We got local TV coverage and a police escort for the 10 mile ride around town.  

It was also the introduction of new signage backing up the efforts of the local bike club.

The honest truth is that I have noticed motorists being more accommodating as a result of the publicity and signage.  We are getting more room on the road these days.

       I can't help but mention a great new accessory I have been using.  We all know Blackburn products; it's not a real cutting edge, techno, impresario of a company, but they  produce well designed and built bike stuff that lasts until they develop better.  I used Topeak trunk bags and racks for a few years and liked the idea but those are limited by their clever, proprietary mounting system.  Blackburn is producing a huge trunk bag which attaches to any rack with a couple Velcro straps.  By coincidence they are spaced to fit the attachment loops of a Nitto R-14 top rack perfectly.   They zip on and off in a jiffy

and the fold down panniers/pockets get me through a stop for "family pasta night" at Earth Fare without cramping anything.  I slipped by and got four servings of stuff, coffee, "organic" twizzlers(?) and a baguette without even touching the main compartment.

The fabric is a water-resistant denim-look nylon and there is a supplemental rain cover hidden in it's own little pocket in back.  Nice if you remember in time.  They were thoughtful enough to add reflective stripes to it and there is a similar model in high-vis orange.
    It's not quite the engineering marvel of the Pletscher mousetrap rack, but it's right up there.

Onward to National Yo-Yo Day in June.