Magic And The Bike Computer

I have two bikes.

The newer, lighter, faster, more challenging one is used only outside on some routes in Seattle or on the roads on Lopez Island. It has a computer. I have just over two thousand miles on the odometer portion of that computer. The only problem I ever have with that computer is changing the batteries. Actually changing the batteries is easy. The problem arises once the batteries have been changed. Once changed there are two things that need to be done with the computer. It needs to have itself put in communication with the sending unit – the piece of electronics that receives the cadence and speed sending units’ electronic signals; and it needs to have the time re-set. Neither of those activities is very challenging once the pre-requisite amount of time and profanity have passed. It is just that those two things do need to have passed prior to the proper setting of the signal from the sending unit and the setting of the time can be effected. A smart person would be able to read the directions, follow them and set the two electronic factors necessary for the proper functioning of the device. But I am not that smart. Even a stupid person, once having achieved success would be able to remember the process from battery change to battery change. But I have no memory.

So I substitute random button pushing spread over interminable time accented with colorful expletives.

The older, heavier bike – the first bike I had owned since the demise of my knee action Schwinn fifty five or so years ago – and the bike that got me back to being a rider, has been relegated to infrequent use on non rainy days on the streets of Seattle when the Roubaix is in the shop, or for trips to the Lopez Village Market on Lopez Island. That bike is a Rocky Mountain Whistler 50. Unlike the Roubaix, it has saddle bags and can carry a fair load of wine and groceries. Like the Roubaix, the Rocky Mountain has a computer. I have just over twenty six thousand miles on that computer. On rainy days, either in Seattle or on Lopez Island I ride that bike for a couple of hours inside on a trainer – a “spinner. Two hours every day can mount up to a lot of stationary miles it turns out.

I have the same problem with the computer on the Rocky Mountain at battery changing time as I do with the computer on the Roubaix. I use the same technique for communication with the sending unit and setting the time as I do with the other bike.
But the computer on the Rocky Mountain has another problem. It jumps all over the place on the speed reading. The same cadence can deliver speeds of zero, ten, eighteen and other variable miles per hour. Obviously there is something wrong. I have adjusted the gap between the sending unit and the speed transmitter; I have tilted the computer on the handle bars at an acute angle to bring the computer itself closer to the sending unit; I have even attached a wire to the bike frame and to the metal part of the wine rack I keep in the garage to see if some kind of static charge could be attenuated.

But the variability remained. But it seemed to only happen when I was on the trainer. On the streets or roads it always worked properly. Or maybe I had less time to spend watching it.

But then recently I was riding it on Lopez Island, having left the Roubaix in Seattle and it started being as creatively variable on the roads of Lopez Island as it chose to be on the trainer in the garage in Seattle. Worse yet an odometer cross check against Mysti’s computer showed that the odometer was reading short.

This probably could only have been of importance to someone who hasn’t got enough to do. But it was a major weight upon my overall sense of well being. Worse, there was a distant feeling of déjà vu. But I couldn’t get it focused.

And then focus began to emerge. In a distant previous life I seemed to spend most of my time hauling various boats hither and yon. Frequently at hither, and almost as frequently at yon, the trailer lights would for no apparent reason stop working. Somehow, early in my experience with that phenomenon I discovered how to fix it. For no apparent reason that I was ever able to remember, one time I just soaked all the connectors with WD40. The light immediately started working. And that remedy never failed. (WD40, it turns out, is a sort of wonder drug of the mechanical world. It can remove tar from your hair; it can free frozen bolts; it can enable electric circuits.)

The idea occurred to me as I was driving back from Lopez Island to Seattle. By the time I had gotten to Seattle, I had, of course completely forgotten about it, but when the computer began to variably misbehave on the trainer the next morning, I dismounted, got out one of the several cans of WD40 that lurk like talismans in various nooks and crannies of the place where I live and I pushed the little plastic tube into the Abplanap nozzle and sprayed the face of the little sending button which was mounted on the spoke.

The computer has worked properly ever since.

The Great Patent Debate

A court recently decided a case in a manner that, if I had known that the case had existed and had known that it was being heard, I would have thought to be the only obvious way to decide. The issue before the court was whether a company could patent a gene. In the case in question the gene happened to be human, but the heritage of the gene wasn’t at issue. The issue was whether patents could be taken out on genes.

I would have assumed the answer to be no. I would have assumed that to have been the answer unless the applicant for the patent had a provable theological origin. Perhaps the creator of it all, if he or she ever chose to show his or her face in a manifestly tangible manner, show up in court and say, “look, before I took a rest on the seventh day I invented all of this shit, and I want to patent some of it” might have that right, but I had trouble with the logic of a piece of what was trying to be patented trying to patent itself.

Apparently so did the court.

But the hue and cry that always follows anything not continuing to hand the world on a platter to American business appeared to be in the offing: the court decided that genes aren’t patentable.

The shrieking of amazed and hurt protestation from business is always the same. “We can’t compete; this is not a level playing field; we will have to fire everybody; we will cut our R&D budget; we will move to Jamaica” – and more.

And so it has been in the gene decision.

But I did hear a different approach from one of the lawyers representing the losing patent holder. His approach will apparently be central to the appeal. It goes something like this.

"We acknowledge that things of nature obviously can’t be patented. But the thing in question is not a thing of nature. It is a thing my client invented in the lab. Yes it came from a gene, a thing of nature, but it has been brewed and stewed and screwed such that it is different in manners that can’t really be described but nonetheless exist. It may look just like a gene but it’s different in nuanced manners that make it not a gene at all."

I am seriously planning on using that logic to take out a patent on whipped cream.