Monthly Archives: August 2020

And Then, The Etsy Store

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At one time, seems like it was around our unemployment year, I thought I (or we) might make a business with Etsy. I love handmade crafting. I love up-cycling (I don’t commit sacrilege, I only up-cycle things that can’t be restored). I love thrifting, when it’s in vogue, when it’s not. These were all things that had a robust market on Etsy and with Russ’ help, that had to be a good thing for a Second Hand Rose like me. If our shop became big enough, Russ could “quit his day job”. Yeah, everybody wants that, right? I’d still love to find a viable work from home situation. For a while there was an amazing market on Etsy for a nice range of things that Russ and I could do, but we weren’t in on the first years at Etsy and so we didn’t get the heyday halo.

One of the things that people are looking for when they shop Etsy is “One of a Kind (OOAK). The biggest problem with OOAK is time. Everything takes so much of it, and so many customers have had a steady diet of mass produced economies of scale. It is really hard to get a handle on how different things are, in production costs as well as costs to bring anything to market, when you move to OOAK, and then there’s the cost to get what you’ve got in front of a customer’s eyes. Each one of a kind item has one-off photography and listing requirements. And every business has its life cycle. Soon there was a lot of competition from people who didn’t keep track of their time or expenses. One person would undercut prices, and the next person would more than match the undercut. Artists often find it exhausting to become adept at marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). People trying to earn a living were competing with people who just wanted to defray the cost of supplies so they could keep on doing their thing. There’s a lot to learn and you need to learn it from the people who are finding success on all those disparate fronts while competing with people who are selling at a loss.

On top of that, customers can’t often tell the real handmade from the mass produced. Most of the things I truly appreciate and want to do take a great deal of time on a level few people understand, and far fewer are able or willing to pay for. Big course stitches is the only way some people can recognize hand stitching and, on Etsy, things can be called “handmade” because a person sat in front of a sewing machine. Big course stitches can be beautiful, but tiny stitches with fine threads are too. It is just hard for some shoppers to comprehend that a person would voluntarily take all of those stitches with a needle and thread in hand. People who are interested enough to know the difference in these things are usually interested enough to be doing it for themselves. The squeeze put us mostly in vintage, rather than producing our own OOAK. I love vintage, the quality and the feel, that, and the lure of discovering and saving some treasure that others don’t recognize has kept me in thrift stores literally since I was a child. But even in that there are unrecognized hours.

With both, vintage and OOAK, it’s hard to reach customers without all the side services, SEO and advertising, and then some use coaches and productivity specialists. When Etsy changed management and went public, suddenly there were shareholders to please. The maximizing profit roller coaster created frequent changes. Learning what to do about them ate time. Dedicated artists and sellers had whiplash. It was, and is really hard to keep up. And then that old issue of valuing time intensive original and handmade items, it still doesn’t jive with trying to match Amazon style margins and productivity. Even selling vintage things is time consuming for the one-off nature of listing what you find. Researching, photographing, writing up and packing up are a couple of hours, or more, per item and there’s a limit to how much efficiency can be squeezed into of the process. I love the research. One of my dream jobs would be to work for History Detectives. But, paying the bills isn’t optional.

The personal life caused a rub too. The first go ’round with the “store” we lost all our crafts, supplies and items in a house fire. That was at least 50K uninsured. And then, It took time to rebuild the “stuff” of our lives. We briefly considered spending a few years as homeless vagabonds boondocking in a travel trailer, but made a more family oriented choice instead (no regrets there). I do however regret that the house with enough space that we could afford was a fixer in a neighborhood with an HOA and Guidelines that actually mentioned “an open look like a golf course.” It’s a pretty neighborhood, but that’s not who we are, or ever aspire to be.

Part of the reason we’re still selling on Etsy is the same fire. We decided to replace our things by buying as much second hand as we could. We couldn’t replace our own grandmothers’ things, but we could substitute someone else’s grandmother’s things. We both love the weight and design of how things used to be made. And that’s when I became a borderline hoarder. I really dive into that thing I wander into. I was spending a really insane amount of time in every thrift store, estate sale and garage sale we passed. “This is nice and I may never find it again…Oh, that’s better and I can put the other one in the travel trailer, or sell it, or give….” The house part of things didn’t go according to plan So, instead of moving into the notorious neighbor fixer with repairs completed. We moved in while still working on it, not with a big shiny moving truck or much in the way of new furniture delivery trucks. We emptied out the stored stuff we had accumulated one truck or car load at a time. The HOA was knocking on the door before months before we ever spent a night in the house.

The store actually has been a success in a lot of ways. I’ve had some cool experiences, united some people with the work of deceased relatives, made some people happy. I’ve always treated my customers like I was in business, but we’ve had the Etsy store since 2009 and, on average, sold just less than 1 item per week. It’s not a “real” business by any standard. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been worthwhile. If I didn’t like knocking around in thrift stores and estate sales, I wouldn’t have a basement so full that I’m overwhelmed just trying to organize it. The difficulty in organization is spilling over. I’m not really sure where the shop is going next. I don’t know if we’ll expand and turn it into a legit business on Etsy or elsewhere. Maybe we’ll shift into something altogether different. But one thing is for sure. The basement and my mind need some clearing. So, take a look in the store and see if there’s anything you’ve been longing for, something you didn’t know you needed, or that perfect gift. https://www.etsy.com/shop/sixdegrees

Training Tuesday August 18-24

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Goal:    61 miles shifting toward 2 longer rides

Actual: 63 miles

Tuesday 18th 24 miles

Saturday 22nd  28 miles

Monday 24th 11 miles

This week I got in the two longest rides I’ve done since Shelter-In-Place (SIP) and I feel really good about that, both mentally and physically. I met my total mileage goal and put most of those miles in 2 rides. That helps me move toward two rides a week for better transportation economy while training. I had settled into three 16 mile rides at the Greenway before SIP. The Greenway is the closest multi-use trail to my house so it was my primary location pre-pandemic. I would think about riding it twice per trip to up the ride miles and keep up with former levels of fitness, but I was near often at the trail to take a child to their sport and I was fitting the ride into available time rather than making time for a longer ride. General fitness was the goal then and I feeling lucky just to get to ride at all.

I’ve increased my mileage more than the recommended 10% per week for a couple of months now. I’m not too worried about that at this point because my mileage had gotten so far below what it was a few years ago, but staying really close to the goal rather than exceeding it is the point. This week was also higher than a 10% increase over the one before it. I’ll have to be more careful as I get further beyond recent norms, the increases will take a toll soon enough.

The 28 mile trip this week was from Rockmart to Cedartown and back. Russ was with me for that ride. It was the first time I had ridden to Cedartown in years, and the first time Russ had ridden there ever. This section has some of the prettiest views and some of the biggest hills. We did walk up some hills. The toughest hill dubbed “Trash Mountain” got its name for being beside the landfill. It’s a place where many people turn back. On a hot afternoon when the landfill has it’s full bake goin’ on, it’s the last place anyone want to be walking slowly, or pumping heavily. I won’t be able to capture the full essence of every aspect of the ride on video. That’s not a bad thing.

The Cedartown Depot is a popular place for a Support and Gear (SAG) station. There was one waiting on a large group of riders when we got there. In Cedartown, we went to Pirkle’s Deli, the place where we picked up sandwiches for our own groups when we worked SAG for whole trail rides. It’s still yummy. There is more outdoor seating than there was pre-pandemic. I was wearing a new Headsweats cap, so there was something on my head that I don’t usually have. Not noticing its absence, I forgot to put my helmet back on. When I realized it, we were looking at a hill and far enough away that I wasn’t sure I could make the whole trip back to the car if I went back for it the helmet. We called. They found it and are saving it for us. I have another helmet we got when we supported a Lumos Kickstarter and so I have something to wear until I get back. I was taking the really carefully on the way home. There are some curves close to hills in some places.

How Much Could a Bike Ride Cost Anyway?

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I’ve spent over a thousand dollars on major bike repairs and gear recently. It sounds like a lot, but some of it was way overdue. I hope I’m good on that for 6 months or so. Time will tell, but I’m hoping I can keep gear and maintenance to a $200 per month level. That will be more of a challenge as weekly mileage increases.

Transportation is the rest of the cost. This project is on a trail for the beauty and comparative safety. On trails, you only find the drivers who would be killers at intersections with roads. The only downside is driving to get out to the trail.

Some people think of the cost of gas as the cost of going somewhere and then never really figure out how much gas it took, especially on local trips. The cost of the car itself seems to get put in some other mental category called “having a car”.

Paying something closer to accurate attention to the cost of driving somewhere is a natural for me though. My father used to calculate the actual per mile cost of every car or truck he owned. Because of that influence, I usually figure that going to a fast food place costs about twice the menu price (ones I like are 15 minutes or so from my home). I’m more attentive than most, but still not as committed to an exact figure as Dad was. For a project like this though, I need to know.

I briefly worked for a company called National Opinion Research Center, (NORC) headquartered at the University of Chicago. They’re famous for opinion surveys, but they collect and analyze all kinds of soft and hard data. They did mileage calculations for the IRS in a manner to make the allowance adjustable. Have you noticed that the deductible allowance changes more often than it used to? Most of that change is due to fluctuation in gas prices because other costs do not fluctuate as often nor as much. The other part of the figure is calculated on the average cost of a car and maintenance. The cost of my car is 20% above average. (I’ve always driven economy cars, but now I sometimes need to carry 5-7 people, two of them over six feet tall). So the IRS figure is what you use if you want to take their average on business mileage. Keeping records and supporting a higher price is what you do if your car is more expensive than average. For this, I’m looking for the best approximation I can get without digging in my files.

The training rides I currently make are quite a bit further than my original plan. Now a ride requires a 96 mile drive round trip (RT) or $56 at the current IRS rate of 57.5 cents per mile. If you add an extra 10% because my car is 20% more expensive than average, that comes to $63.25. I’m currently attempting 3 of those a week, which is $189.75 per week or $796.95 transportation per month, plus the $200 in maintenance and gear for $996.95 total per month. While it is easier on my body to spread it out right now, actually sitting down to do the math increases my resolve to fit my training miles into 2 rides per week instead of 3.

As often as I tend to estimate the cost of transportation as being higher than other people do, the numbers were a surprise to me. And those numbers care about me like the virus does. None. At. All. The numbers and the virus simply exist. What the numbers mean to me though underscores the conflicting feelings that I can’t do this project now, and that I must. It took shelter-in-place to make it necessary to drive 96 miles for a “socially distant ride”, and it took spending time sheltering isolated from my rides and my fitness center to get me over my initial rejection of the idea that I could drive so far to ride. But, it only took that first short ride after sheltering-in-place, to make it pretty clear to me that riding was more important to my immediate health and wellbeing than anything else I could be doing with that same time and money. There’s always a rub isn’t there? I hope I can provide some entertaining footage to people who can’t make the trip.

Training Tuesday

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As I train to be able to make a full century ride twice a week beginning on, or near, the first of the year, here is where I’ll update my progress every week on Training Tuesday.

I’m feeling healthy again, so that has me feeling positive, but I’ve been overestimating my mileage due to some incorrect mile markers, so I also feel behind before I’ve even started. Last week, according to Google maps, I rode 50 miles, a mark I thought I had made 2 weeks ago. 50 miles a week is a benchmark for me. I read that insurance companies give a discount on life/health insurance to people who ride that far. So, it’s a general lifetime goal for me to never fall below that. Not for the discount, but because actuaries think and know things. I felt pretty good when I learned about the discount because I thought I was riding that far, but first one thing and then a shifted commitment and if you’re not keeping up with actual mileage, it’s easy to lose track of actual miles. Google maps sent me a message about my cycling at the end of the year last year though. I was stunned. Google told me my real miles and, it was more than most people ride, but less than I thought.

Now I’m looking to leave 50 miles a week in the dust. Flat tires, or minor emergencies, weather and childcare obligations that won’t always line up properly and any number of other things can cause me missed goals. If I can get my target number of miles in two rides instead of three, it will be easier to stay on target, and it line things up closer to how rides need to be when I make the official recorded video start. So, as I try to balance needs and goals, I’m working toward fewer rides for longer times. Last week my longest ride was 20 miles. Today, I rode 24 miles. If I can get in a 26 mile ride later in the week, I’ll have moved last week’s mileage into two days instead of three. Then if I can get in a third ride whatever mileage I make will be an increase in weekly mileage and to some extent gravy.

I started my original calculations at 61 miles for the first week based on where I was before the pandemic. Maybe I’m too lazy to do the math again, maybe it’s psychological, but that’s the official starting point I want to keep. With that starting point, training up at 10% mileage increase per week because that is the recommended max, I should be ready to do the stretch goal distances in 16 weeks. That will be the first full week in December giving me almost 3 weeks for a buffer before the new year. With winter and holidays and family time, I’m nervous about only having a 3 week buffer. I remember how hard we pushed in the end last time we worked up to a century. There’s no real reason it needs to be a January 1st start, but it seems fitting for the year of Silver Comet Centuries to coincide with a calendar year

So,well see how it goes, and I’ll see you here next Tuesday, and I hope I’ll be telling you I did 61 miles in two long and one short ride.

How to be Karen Without Being A Karen?

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That is the question.

It’s a challenge for those of us who are called by a name than has become name calling.

What it means to be a Karen, a Bad Karen, has morphed from simply the “May I see your manager?” type with a bad Posh Spice/Victoria Beckham bob complete with brash highlights, to a broader caricature that is offensive to a larger number of people (with a racial/racist component that kind of blindsided me because I didn’t realize it was a part of it all until the whole birding in the park incident). See this Guardian Article (there are countless others) for more on “Karen” evolution.

Posh, BTW, does seem like a more fitting moniker for a Bad Karen than Karen. Just think about it, from its elitist origins, to its current choice for an ungendered name. What other word ‘come name has a Snopes page about its etymology AND can apply to men and women equally? Because you know deep down Karenhood really isn’t a “girls” only club.

The first “Karens” I personally noticed were not older women, they were teens of both sexes. I used to volunteer in a local high school, and there were some kids who would say whatever phrase (to the principal if they had to) that got them what they wanted. It was never a true statement. It was simply saying the words that made the exception that got around the rules, an unscrupulous manipulation of the system for the purpose of having one’s way. The very epitome of entitled Karenhood, and yes, they probably learned the skill from their Boomer parents whose decades of egocentrism was peaking, or, at least I thought it had to be peaking, right?

Not. The. First. Time. I. Was. Wrong.

“May I see your manager?” can be a fun question if you have something good to say. I once asked to speak to my postmaster, and afterward my letter carrier beamed smiles at me for a year. She smiled bigger than big when she saw me right up until she was given a new route. It can be an important question if you have the right motive. Or, it can be meme worthy if you want a refund, privilege, reward or result you don’t deserve.

 “If you see something, say something” is where the real challenge comes in. We’ve been “Together-Apart” in so many ways since long before the pandemic. Doing your part to be part of a community is a challenge. Sometimes talking to the manager does need to happen when things need fixing. The phrase “If you see something, say something” was promoted by Allen Kay of the New York MTA after 9-11, and it resulted in a real reduction of crime.

We’re about to switch off of “Karen”. I can tell because there are so many articles out there on Karenhood. One of them suggested to just not be a jerk. That is nobler. We need to be involved, talk to a manager, or a representative, or a businessperson when it’s time. We all know there’s a lot that’s broken, and together, as well as apart, we have to fix it.

Just try not to be a jerk.

Training Schedule

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Since we made the commitment to get back ot on the trail, riding the Greenway, or a small segment of the Silver Comet for the primary goal has become, once again, a piece of cake. So, no training is necessary for the primary goal.

Stretch Training Plan

We’re going to train for the stretch goal while we are waiting to find out if either plan makes. There is no down side to that, and it helps us to remain flexible. It also gives us the motivation to increase our mileage. The stretch plan includes all of the Silver Comet and Chief Ladiga Trails weekly, so, building up our mileage to be able to full century rides is necessary. In fact, the stretch goal would be to do the Silver Comet and Chief Ladiga in both directions with an overnight in the middle, so two centuries a week is the ultimate goal. If conditions allow, the two short rides (on the Greenway for variety) will still be be filmed. If the crowds and conditions remain risky, we’ll assess the value of filming mid week “recovery” rides. The full plan with all three trails is 250+ miles per week. There are plans to expand the Silver Comet Trail to meet the Beltline and we will ride as much of the trail as is complete, so over time the ride may increase.

I thought I had reached 50 miles a week before I actually did. There are some mile markers in one area of the trail that are ordered correctly. Current level of riding is now approaching 60 miles though. Physically I’m feeling good again.

To reach stretch level cycling distances, we’ll increase mileage at the recommended rate of 10% per week, filming to work out the kinks as we go.

So, rounding up to whole numbers, here is the plan we will meet begining next week.

Week 1. 61

Week 2, 67.

Week 3, 74.

Week 4, 82 miles

Week 5, 90 miles.

Week 6, 99 miles.

Week 7, 109.

Week 8, 120 miles.

Week 9,  132 miles.

Week 10, 145 miles.

Week 11, 160 miles.

Week 12, 176 miles.

Week 13, 193 miles.

Week 14, 213 miles.

Week 15, 234 miles.

Week 16, 257.

If we were able to start on Aug 15 and train for 16 weeks without weather, health or emergency setbacks, we would be doing full mileage by the time we are moving into the holidays. There will be setbacks though, There will be weather holds and I will take off for family time too. So, it seems like a good plan for the official start date for full filming would be to make coincide with the calendar year.

https://www.bicycling.com/news/a31469228/cycling-during-coronavirus/

Ooh, Ooh, That Smell: Safety Planning for the Long Haul

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What’s “safe”, or relatively safe, makes a pretty big difference to me and my partner, Russ, as we look at how best to be healthy while planning and completing the remaining 2ish years of this cycling and video project in Georgia and Alabama through the pandemic. Smells never used to pose the same questions they do now. I mean, when I ride by someone who’s freshly coiffed and perfumed, I do still wonder what was the point of getting dolled up for exercise, unless it was a date. Some smells are messing with my chi right now though, especially on Big Creek Greenway.

The original basic plan was to make the project goal on 8 paved miles of the Big Creek Greenway in Roswell and Alpharetta, Georgia. We would ride both directions 2 or 3 times per week for 32-48 miles with the near certainty that we’d get 30-60 minutes of good video for every week with rideable conditions and hopefully capture the occasional spectacular wildlife sighting. Big Creek is the shorter drive from home and the gently curving trail along the streambed is pretty with good habitat for wildlife viewing. It was perfect for the smaller basic plan, “was” being the operative word.

With the Shelter in Place order came change. The bike shops were deemed essential and they sold out. The people who bought all the bikes (and those who didn’t) showed up on trails everywhere straining park staff and facilities and crowding green spaces. The Greenway was filled with people not following social distancing nor mask guidelines, sometimes they even look at us a bit funny when we do. It seemed like we would have to postpone or cancel the project. After a couple of months of staying home, we realized that the project was more important than ever.

By definition, there’s no long standing science specific to any novel pandemic. There are guesses based on similar diseases, and a developing knowledge base that changes as we learn. Mistakes are made in haste and under pressure. Good information takes effort to find and it is hard for people without a science background to interpret or distinguish the good from the bad. People get burn-out, especially with the politicization of the subject. Some are too overloaded to even try to sniff out any answers.

What I’ve been able to find suggests 16-20 yards of separation is probably safe cycling. But, there are all kinds of variables. As Russ and I discuss what we will or won’t do, we’ve had some pretty detailed discussions, and even though we both have science backgrounds, we haven’t come up with the same safety parameters all the time.

One day, I was riding a remote section of the Silver Comet with, maybe, one trail user per mile. A guy passes me easily and when he’s around 30 or 40 yards beyond me I catch a whiff of “he’s been riding for a while”. Body odor or perfume is not something you pay much attention to until there are people dying and you’re trying to figure out how not to be one of them. Smelling smokers and other odors through my mask, especially when riding to, and through, Brushy Mountain Tunnel has caused me to wonder all kinds of things.

The tunnel is really damp. There is usually water trickling down the exterior sides at the entrance, and unless we’re in drought conditions, there are puddles on the tunnel floor. Air passing through the tunnel has been moving eastward since I started paying attention. So, as I come up to the tunnel from the east, I feel cool, damp air with a slight headwind well before I get there. Recently, I smelled a smoker on the far side of the tunnel while I was still at least 50 yards away. The tunnel is 800 ft long (about 267 yards). So I was able to sense particles, some of which came from inside someone else’s lungs, in the air over 300 yards away. I was really questioning that 20 yard figure.

It makes me all the more wary of sharing crowded trails with unmasked hikers and bikers who think business as usual is fine. Russ says “But smell particles are so much bigger than virions…” Well, you know I had to look that up. Turns out he was correct related to smoke particles, but incorrect about most smell particles. But, here’s the thing. Does size really matter? I really don’t know that much about the fluid dynamics and aerodynamics of nano or micro-particulates.

I do know virions like humidity, the kind the south is known for, the kind the tunnel is filled with. Should I be paying attention to smell and humidity? I often take several deep hyperventilating breaths as I approach a trail user, hold it as long as possible while passing and exhale slowly afterward. I have varying levels of success depending on my level of exertion and how soon I saw them. And when the trail is too crowded to have time for that my comfort level riding goes down.

Am I being ridiculous? I don’t know. There are enough variables to drive a girl crazy, even one who’s comfortable with science.

We don’t know that we can be safe, but we do know that strong and healthy is better than weak and stressed. So, as I’m looking at the project and making choices, I’m looking at three things. 1.) If I do get sick, my chances of a complete recovery will be better if I’m healthy and cycling regularly. My health and mental health were going downhill fast during “Shelter in Place”, so, I’m going to do everything I can to get out there and build my health back up, even take it to new levels. 2.) There are fewer people, and fewer unique people on the trail out in the rural areas of the Silver Comet and and Chief Ladiga Trails, so the basic plan needs move out there, even with the extra time and cost. 3.) Much of the stretch plan is already possible. There’s a good chance of a vaccine or better treatments as time goes on, so there is also a good likelihood that the whole plan will be possible.

Edit: The vaccinations make a world of difference to our riding safety confidence, but we’re still trying to be careful. Being better about our health habits will, I hope, be a lifelong new habit… well, it will, but I hope that’s a long mostly disease free life.