This 'n That and 21.3%

This... I guess it's about time I checked in with y'all. Yep, I'm still alive and kicking but those Hoffman folk have taken over my research... I now have a pretty good idea of the meaning behind that ancestry.com slogan "You don't even have to know what you're looking for... you just have to start looking." Of course, it does help to have a few "clues" to start with. But in the past three months I've added nearly 500 descendants of John and Catharine (Coy) Hoffman to my Legacy database! And yes, they are sourced... but not necessarily in the "ESM" style.



It had been quite a while since I had gone looking for "more recent" relatives and I do love how ancestry.com gives those hints along the right side of the screen after you've found someone in a census or other record. Sometimes there are lots of those hints and other times not so many. Of course, you still need to be able to determine if the hints are really for the person for whom you are looking. But, my goodness, it's so much easier now than it was, oh, 20 years ago!



'n That... Research is on hold for now. I left Indiana last week to come to Huntsville, Alabama to help out my friend/distant cousin (3rd cousin once removed in the Joslin line) while she is recovering from cancer surgery. Recovery from the surgery has been very good but she's had a terribly painful flare-up of rheumatoid arthritis in her hands and shoulders. Then her left knee started swelling up and has been quite painful - that's been diagnosed as osteoarthritis. After visits to several doctors yesterday and today, medication has been prescribed that will, hopefully, ease the pain. After she recovers from the surgery she will have 5-6 more rounds of chemo to blast away the remaining cancer. So, if you'd care to add Babs to your prayer list, I'm sure she would appreciate it.



and 21.3%... I'm a little behind on blog reading but I saw Judy Russell's post More Lost Than Found and Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge and, though a little late, thought I'd see how I measure up. Like Judy, I've got far more ancestors missing than I've found, but overall, not too bad. Things look good for the first four generations, but starts dropping off at the fifth.







I'd be quite pleased if I could locate the six missing 3rd Great Grandparents, but they are back in the "old country" of Switzerland or Germany and I haven't a clue really, as to which little town from whence they came.



The missing 3rd Great Grandparents:

• Parents of Charles Wiseman (1815-1895) born Switzerland, died Switzerland County, Indiana


• Parents of Michael Fisher (abt 1800-1845) born Germany, died Carroll County, Ohio


• Parents of Christena Houck, wife of Michael Fisher, (abt 1805-after 1850) born Germany, died unknown

And, if I could find the elusive parents of Ruth Dyer, Sally Church, and Abigail Price they would surely fill in some of the empty spots!

Travel plans and Mr. Wooly

I have not been feeling well lately. Yesterday Saturday, I stayed in bed whilst my willing servant, the Dutchman was at my beck and call – get me some water, where is my brunch, give me my laptop, I want this and that for dinner. Ah, how ideal. I guess this is one of the advantages of having a Dutch man as a partner, they are not machos ;-)

Dutchman will be away soon for more than 2 weeks traveling to Asia for work, so during his absence I will be taking the opportunity to take long weekend trips.

Today, I have booked my spring trip with a friend from work to the traditional, picturesque, UNESCO world heritage coastal villages of Cinque Terre (finally!) in Liguria, Italy. We might also swing over to nearby fantabulous jet-set spot, Portofino. The excitement is so hard to contain, and it looks like its going to be warm weather down there which will be just perfect.

I also still have to book another trip, but solo, to Xanten, an old Roman village in Germany near the Dutch border. They are celebrating the Siegfried Spectacle next week which is a major medieval spring festival. Didn’t I mention a hundred times in this blog that I am charmed by the Middle Ages?

I badly needed the time to relax and pamper myself, after all I have been working very long hours lately.

For summer, we are thinking of going to mythical Greece again. Dutchman and I love the beautiful and magical Greek Islands. We are eyeing Santorini, Mykonos, and Naxos but not sure yet which month we are going and which island we will be staying.

I also am craving to go to the US to shop, and there’s my Helsinki - St. Petersburg plan too. So many travel plans but so little time!

Anyway, enough of this.

Our little nichtje is celebrating her birthday today, so we went to visit her. We gave her a movie she liked called Timboektoe and a necklace that I bought in Rome last February.

Here she is in her klompen [wooden shoes] with Wooly, her pet konijntje [rabbit] ;-)


Rabbits are very popular pets in the Netherlands these days.

Coming up soon -- Queens Day on the 30th of April, we are not sure if we are staying in Utrecht or if the maddening crowd in Amsterdam is worth a visit. Weather reports say it MIGHT rain on the festivities. Hope not!

At any rate, stay tuned for the orange fotos later this week.

Front Racks and Elegant Light Placement: Mission Impossible?

In preparation for the eventual acquisition of a handlebar bag, Graham has now been fitted with a front rack (Nitto M-18 from Renaissance Bicycles). I have been planning to purchase a front rack for a while, yet had no idea that there were so many choices and that the whole thing is so complicated.



To determine which front rack your bicycle needs, several things must be taken into consideration:



First off, do you want the rack to mount onto the fork, onto the brakes, or onto the front axle? Okay, easy enough. The fork on my Sam Hillborne has braze-ons for a rack, so I wanted the type of rack that attaches to them.



But the decisions do not stop there: If your bicycle's fork has braze-ons, is their placement compatible with the length and angles of the rack's stays? Some front racks have fixed stays and the placement of the braze-ons on your fork has to match them exactly. Usually this only works when a rack was specifically designed for a particular bicycle, or if a bicycle was custom-built with a specific rack in mind. After browsing rack models until my eyes got blurry and speaking to several bike shops, I was still unable to determine for sure whether any of the racks with fixed stays would fit the Hillborne and did not want to risk ordering them. Thankfully, there are also racks with adjustable stays (like the Nitto M-18 I got) that expand to accommodate the placement of the braze-ons on your fork.



But wait, that is not all: You must also consider your brakes. Even if the rack you choose does not mount onto the brakes themselves, it can be incompatible with a given type of brakes (in particular, cantilevers) due to clearance issues. Don't forget to check up on this!



Exhausted yet? I feel spent just writing about this! And I haven't even raised the question of aesthetics yet. If you look at the front racks closely, you will notice that some are square (like the Nitto M-18 in my pictures), while others are round. If you have a rear rack installed on the bike, it may be important to you that the two match - in other words, that both are square or both are round. So that is yet another design element to watch for.



Last but not least, there is the question of light placement. Some racks are made with little braze-ons for mounting lights. The Nitto M-18 is not. So we bought a VO light mount - which is basically a small metal bracket with two holes. The size of the holes was not compatible with either the rack's or the headlight's bolts, so we had to drill them out.



With the light now successfully mounted, we are still not sure of this set-up.The bracket is made of relatively thick steel, but nonethelessvibrates slightly side to side (but not up and down) when the bicycle goes over bumps. The Co-Habitant does not think this is anything to worry about, but I am not sure that I agree.



I am also not sure how I feel about the garlands of wiring that now seem to cover the bicycle's front end like ivy. Once the handlebar bag is installed the wires on the rack will not be visible, but what about the section that curls around the shifter cable? All in all, I cannot say that this set-up can be called "elegant" and we are still considering alternatives. One thing I do like, is how far forward the light extends - this placement seems ideal for road illumination. Is it a matter of compromise, or is there a magical solution out there that I am overlooking?



...



Update: There, we fixed it!



We have successfully re-routed the wiring, so that it now runs straight underneath the rack instead of coiling around it.



We have also titled the bracket down, placing the headlight a little further back, which should reduce the vibrations. I will remove theNittosticker when I get around to it.

"Aerial" view.

The wires are considerably less noticeable this way, and I think the results are good. Thanks for everybody's comments and suggestions.

Beauty in the Morning

Each morning the beauty of the morning glories help me get started on another day. I have about 4 different areas where there is hundreds of blossoms each day. Sadly they are all gone by evening but I know another group of them will be there to greet me the next morning. I love this blue color but also have other shades of blue and some purple. Morning glories have always been one of my favorite flowers not only because of their beauty but because they are so easy to grow. They are an anual and do have to be replanted each spring but grow fast, with little fertilizer and not as much water as a lot of other flowers. One group decided to grow up into my Bradford Pear tree. A Bradford pear is an ornimental pear meaning it has beautiful white flowers in the spring but no fruit.

Roadster in the Rain

My Co-Habitant never tires of tantalising me with photos of his Pashley Roadster, while I suffer here alone and bicycle-less in distant lands. Here are some close-up shots in the rain...

Oh how the raindrops do glisten on that chrome ding-dong bell...

and on the Sturmey Archer 5-speed hub...

and on the Brooks Glenbrook bag...

Brooks saddles come with this convenient rain cover. Don't know whether I think they look cool or perverse! Either way, I am completely envious.

Racking Your Brain!

For the past month, I have been working on a rear rack prototype for the Bella Ciao "Superba" (which will look nothing like the Roadster rack above), so racks have been on my mind lately. I've been checking out the racks on practically every bike I see, and also paying attention to how I typically use mine.



Although on occasion I will carry a substantial amount of weight on the rear rack of my bike, more often than not all I carry is a single pannier or bag. Sometimes there are groceries and packages involved, and even those often fit into a single large pannier. Once in a while, I will strap an item or two to the top of the rack, but it is not an everyday occurrence. When I look around at other cyclists, at least in the Boston area, I see mostly the same: One or two panniers attached to the side of the rack, or a bag strapped to the top. If I see more than that being transported (on a regular bike, not an Extracycle or a "utility bike"), it's an anomaly.



What about you? Be honest - how much do you really carry on your bicycle's rear rack on a typical day, assuming that it is a standard city bike?







Looking at other cyclists in the Boston area, I've also noticed a gender difference in how much stuff cyclists carry - with women typically having fewer things strapped to the rear rack than men. But there could be many factors accounting for this, and I am not sure how typical this trend is overall.



In addition to how much stuff I carry on the rear racks of my bicycles, I have also been trying to note in what ways I find them convenient versus not. For example, I often lament the lack of bungee cord attachment points on my Gazelle's rear rack. Also, not all racks are compatible with all pannier attachment system - the spacing of the slats on some racks can interfere with the spacing of the hooks. What major complaints, if any, do you have about the rear rack on your main transportation bicycle? You can select multiple items on this one:







Having discovered how to embed these polls and surveys, I admit it's fun to set them up and then look at all the results - but hopefully also useful. I will soon be receiving a sample of the "Superba" rack prototype, and from there it should be just a matter of time until we're done. These racks will fit a standard 700C wheel bike, and regardless of whether you are interested in a "Superba" bicycle, the racks may be available for sale on their own. They won't be sold by me, but I will keep you posted - and your input will certainly be valuable.

Fluffy Clouds

Yesterday the fluffy clouds looked like they were so close that you could reach up and pull them out of the sky and use them for a pillow.