March 15, 2025 | Page 2 | Andy Arthur.org

Truth is that I have a very dim view of cyclists, most of them either the Spandex French brand ultra light, carefully tuned bicyclists, BMXers, or urban do gooders. But I’m none of that. Bike shops are expensive, they take a lot of time and fix things sort of but maybe not to the extent you might think for all the money they charge.

I am pretty sure it won’t be long before you can hire people to wipe your own ass at home. Truth is there is something nice about doing your own work, maintaining and fixing stuff yourself, even if you don’t do it perfectly and it takes a lot longer then shop takes. And involves a lot of swearing.

Got the replacement front derailleur shifter on and the new chain that I had from old stock. 15 years ago I bought that chain for the old bike. Took much longer then I expected to get the derailleur aligned, for some reason the cable that it came with was sticking and not lining up right. Maybe I was doing it wrong. Then I put the new chain on the wrong way, and had to pull it.

New chain is fine, though now the cassette is jumping a bit. Maybe I should have swapped the chain sooner. I haven’t decided if I’m going to put the old chain back on or replace the cassette. Annoying after having all that struggle getting the shifter working right then having to get the chain breaker out and reinstall it a second time. I guess I’m learning.

I did manage to accidentially pull one of the drawers with equipment and junk in the kitchen out too far and smashed a light bulb and did a lot of swearing for a bit. As did I swear about chewing up the cassette too much by delaying chain replacement but I put so many miles on the bike. I really need to just buy a chain wear gauge and measure it regularly. With the quick link chains and a chain breaker, they”re super easy to replace but I hate to be throwing away chains all the time, but it might be better then having to replace the chain and cassette all the time. Road salt season is over, so that should improve things too.

I did fix the issue with the clicking rear wheel that was annoying me. The spoke guard was loose and at times banging into the crankset which was annoying .

Which is Closer – New York or Texas?

Andy | March 15, 2025

I've been playing with st_nearest_feature in R/sf to calculate nearest features on a map.

ct <- counties(cb=T, resolution = '20m') %>% st_transform(5070)
st <- states(cb=T, resolution = '20m') %>% filter(NAME %in% c('Texas','New York')) %>% st_transform(5070)

nr <- st_nearest_feature(ct, st)

ct <- cbind(ct, st_drop_geometry(st)[nr,])