random musings

About the time I started this blog, I gave some thought to why I'm creating one. What was the point? Who really wanted to read my writings? I eventually settled on it being something of an on-line diary, and at least in part a way to hold myself accountable for riding to work more often than not.

Imagine, then, my mild surprise when, on my way to work a day or two ago, I had to really think about the last time I had driven to work to remember the date. I had to look at a calendar to decide on November 10th, remembering that I had driven so that I'd have a way to haul stuff for the aborted Tool School class we were to begin that evening (by the way, we are scheduling at least two sessions for January and February--keep an eye on our site, or drop me a line and I'll add you to the notification list).

Since the boss was out of town visiting family over the holiday, I was the store staff on Black Friday. Not much happened, aside from my continuing work cleaning up the electronic inventory and preparing for annual inventory to happen the end of next month. Jenn called at some point, suggesting that she come by near closing time and that we go out to eat, then both go home in the truck, so while I rode the bike to work, I rode the truck home.

Saturday was another slow day in retail, as most of the folks doing shopping on Thanksgiving weekend do so at malls (or mauls, if you prefer, given the events at Toys R Us stores near Indianapolis...). Still, a customer came in to pick up her new bike we ordered for her earlier in the week, and that's always a high point!

After the store closed for the day, I rode my bike to my folks' house to help them with their holiday tree and a few other odds and ends. Jenn met me there, and I again put my bike in the back of the truck for the trip home.

Despite hauling my bike home twice this week, I rode to work every work day since the 10th. Not exactly car-free, but I'm still getting to ride.

My riding has been marked by discomfort in my quads of late, though, and this is making me wonder what is different. It's been more of a "we're tired and don't want to power you to the degree you want us to work" discomfort than a pain thing. I suppose that part of it is temperature-related--my legs are not wanting to work as well with the lower temps we've had of late. However, I don't remember having that problem last season--at least not to this degree. I will have to keep listening to my legs, and see if they quit their complaining soon. I'll give them a rest day on Wednesday, probably, so they may be fine soon. It may be the position in which I find myself for much of the work day--sitting at the computer at the sales counter, on a stool, is something of an awkward pose, and my legs may be responding to that.

We'll see.

riding weekend

I had Saturday off, and Jenn's friends wanted to meet for a bike ride TO the club bike ride, so we hopped on the tandem and rode over to meet the group.

We met at Nancy's Bagel Grounds, and rode to the ride start at the Waterfront Park Yellow Lot. The Saturday Yellow Lot ride is billed as "slow and easy," and it's an urban ride, to boot: fairly flat for the most part (although it does go up the hill in Iroquois Park), with lots of stop lights to give folks a chance to regroup and/or rearrange in various groups. After the club ride, several of us stopped at Nancy's for lunch, as they are a sponsor for the Old Kentucky Home Tour. As it happens, they are deserving of our support for several reasons, not the least being the sponsorship--they serve some great food!

After lunch, we rode home to get ready for a couple of birthday parties--one at each end of the county! We had put forty or forty-five miles on the bike by the time we got home, and felt great!

We got home late, so Jenn wasn't interested in going for a bike ride leaving the house at 7:15 in the morning. I was, however, so I saddled up the Strada and rode to meet some friends at Sawyer Park for a ride to Smithfield and breakfast there. On the way out, I stopped and phone Jenn to suggest that she come meet us there, and she agreed to drive out.

Our Best Restaurant serves a range of great foods for breakfast, and is a popular destination for folks wanting Sunday morning dining. After filling our bellies, those of us on bikes rode back to Sawyer Park, with a round-trip of fifty miles or so. Add in the ride to the ride and the ride home from the ride, and I had about sixty-five miles on the Strada. At breakfast, it was decided that Jenn and I would ride the tandem on the afternoon ride out of Heine Brothers' on Chenoweth Lane, as Larry and Margarent were going to be riding that on their BikeE tandem.

So, after getting to Sawyer Park, I hustled home to get the tandem ready to go. We had a good ride in the afternoon, enjoying the company of Larry, Margaret, Nita, and several other members of the group within the bicycle club that calls themselves the Pups (Not yet ready to be Mad Dogs).

As an aside, the Pups started out calling themselves the Pups In Training, as they wanted to build up to riding a century this year. Several of them met that goal in September, and continue to ride together building strength and social bonds.

The ride on the tandem was another twenty-five or so for a total of about ninety for the day, and one hundred thirty or -thirty five for the weekend.

faster on a bike

Kirk's post reminded me of one of my favorite vignettes from my time commuting to N'Awb'ny--the time I saw a moving van on I-65 waiting in traffic to get on the Kennedy bridge, and seeing the same truck go over Mellwood Avenue on the I-64 bridge as I neared Spring Street.

In Kirk's post, he mentions that for trips of under two miles, one is often able to get to the destination more quickly on a bike than in a car, and if time looking for a parking place is added, the bike becomes the far better option. In the three-to-five mile range, it's almost a wash, but the bike is certainly more fun most of the time--other folks are more willing to ride in rain than I am. Still, bicycles are far more efficient than cars in many ways, and the balance sheet still tips toward the bike most of the time.

My commute is a bit farther than that--almost fourteen miles. It takes me around an hour do ride it most times. It takes me about half an hour to drive it. I ride it rather than drive it for several reasons, among them that I enjoy riding more than I enjoy driving, that I am redirecting money some would spend on gas, insurance, upkeep and the like to food (far more enjoyable than gasoline), health and wellness benefits (again, more enjoyable than buying car insurance) and bike parts (need I?).

For some reason, I'd had a thought or two banging around in my head lately (there's lots of room), regarding how often we read online or hear in news reports about traffic jams caused by motorists running into stationary objects or each other, and how most of these cause great long delays on interstates, as if folks get locked onto driving the interstate system and figure that even with the delay it would be quicker to reach their destinations sitting in the jam than driving side or surface streets (I'm sure that part of it is lack of knowledge of those side streets, in some cases at least, or perhaps even fear of what may be lurking on or around those side streets...), and how few of the traffic reports I hear on the radio involve blockages of roads I ride all the time. I think I've mentioned before how I-71 in Oldham County seems like a linear demolition derby, as often as it gets blocked these days--it took me forty-five minutes to get from the store to the other side of Crestwood one evening, simply because traffic from the closed interstate was so heavy in town.

Tonight I got a different dose of reality, though.

I wasn't involved, let alone harmed. I almost chuckled, though, thinking about what some of the motorists might have been thinking about me as I walked past the traffic snarl.

But I get ahead of myself.

My homeward route works from Crestwood to Pewee Valley, then behind Pewee Valley to Rollington Road, which takes me to Westport Road. I follow Westport Road almost all the way home from Forest Springs North subdivision. As I left the intersection of Westport and Frey's Hill Roads, I saw that there was a LOT of traffic stopped in front of me. I pedaled along toward whatever was obstructing the flow, and eventually saw at least three sets of police roof lights in full flashing glory. Someone was having a party in the middle of the road, and probably not having a very good time of it. Traffic came to a near-standstill, so I did what many folks in my situation would do, and hauled my bike up on the sidewalk, figuring to make better time there.

Now, being as I'm one of these League Cycling Instructors and all, you know I didn't ride my bike on the sidewalk. I walked it. I'm on the sidewalk, after all, and I'm a pedestrian there, so I acted as one. A pedestrian pushing a bicycle, but still a pedestrian.

And I was passing traffic.

A tenth of a mile or two later, I reached the site of the problem. There were indeed three police cars, and a fire truck, there to do whatever they had to do to sort out the collision between a car and a van (there may have been a third motor vehicle involved--I didn't gawk enough to figure out for myself what had happened). The car's air bags had been popped, so there was some force to the impact. I saw a guy in a Hwang's Martial Arts gi, apparently a student of the school, leaning against a police car while an officer was working on his reports, and from the quick glance, it appeared that the martial arts student was wearing handcuffs, leading me to surmise that the party was certainly not a fun one.

I didn't dally--I wanted to get home and see Jenn, have a bit to eat, and work on getting to bed. I'm a bit tired.

Bulldroppings

As I was digging around in my links collection for my post on hard-headedness, I also found a blog post supporting a claim I've seen made elsewhere--that to make our roads safer, we have to address the root of the safety problem.

Our society understands the root problem fairly well, as it turns out, but we aren't willing to do anything (or the right things) about it. One blogger refers to this in terms of the bull in the china shop analogy. The bull (auto use), breaks the china (soft road users like pedestrians and cyclists) with regularity, yet rather than harness the bull, we bubble-wrap the china or even wonder why it's there on the shelves of the china shop!

It's a long read, but worth some time.

Hard-headedness

Yeah, this one rambles a bit. Maybe there will be some nuggets you can use, though...


During Friday's lunch meeting, there was some oohing and aahing over my helmet--the Lazer Urbanize commuter lid with the integrated lights and nifty sizing system pictured here. I admit to being fairly happy with the helmet--I especially like the adjustment system and how it would allow for different shapes of head not just different sizes, and it's a secure mounting site for my mirror.

I'm even one of those folks who is not bashful about saying, "I'm still alive because I was wearing a helmet at a key point in my life," even though that helmet was made for motorcycle use, and that key moment in my life was my one and only motorcycle crash, in September of 1986, and that in the two or three falls from a bicycle since then (some thirty or forty thousand miles of cycling), I've not done a "helmet test."

As a cycling instructor, I advocate wearing a helmet. I ride the ride, too. I have a helmet for each of my bikes, cognizant that I have a different posture on each, and the relevant mirror is adjusted differently, but that I also want a different look for each bike.

Besides, as I mentioned, my helmets provide great sites for mounting mirrors, the better to see what mischief the road user behind me is preparing to visit upon me.

The League of American Bicyclists, and the local affiliate club, the Louisville Bicycle Club, insist that folks participating in their rides wear helmets.

However, I know a lot of folks who disdain helmet use, for various reasons. Some see mandatory helmet use rules as infringement on their freedoms. Some simply enjoy the breeze flowing through their hair. Some point to European riders, who rarely wear helmets and who seem to do just fine. There have been studies that suggest that increased helmet wearing leads to MORE injuries, and others that have found cycling to decline in the face of compulsory helmet wearing.

A quick look at just about any online forum thread on helmet use will find lots of controversy, too, leading to flame wars over "nanny staters," "organ donors," and so on. I've been quoted, accurately, as referring to the old expression, "If you have a ten-dollar head, get a ten-dollar helmet," by commenting that a passing motorcyclist "knows what his head is worth." The two or three of you who read my musings are smart enough to figure out the implication I'm making.

However, I'm re-thinking the whole helmet issue. I'll continue to wear mine, certainly. In the context of club rides, my personal riding, event rides and such, I'll advocate for their use--partly because, as I mentioned, I'm still alive because, well, you know. You already read that. As a League Cycling Instructor, I'm supposed to discuss the importance of a properly-fitted helmet in the classes I teach, and am happy to continue doing so.

In my teaching, I've learned of several hierarchies and mnemonics that are part of one's safety awareness. A favorite is the Five Layers of Safety, as it emphasizes, in order of importance, that we must have a certain level of mastery over our machines, we must know and follow the rules of the road, we must choose our lane position well, we must deal with road hazards intelligently, and, lastly, it's a good idea to have passive protection in place before it's needed.

Helmets are part of that last layer. The takeaway for me is that they should very rarely be necessary, especially if we and all around us are paying attention to the first three layers. The reality is that sometimes, being human, we don't pay attention. Hopefully, our safety margins allow for this, but sometimes they don't. That's when passive protection is important. Not until then.

So, where am I going with this? If you are still with me, I'm thinking about how we as a community "market" bicycling. We portray it as a good thing to do, yet we emphasize the risks by saying, "Wear your helmet!" We cycle around, doing errands, getting to work, working on our fitness, riding together with friends as social activity, and remind each other to wear bright clothing to be visible and thus less likely to be hit by a car. We set up education systems, so that folks who realize they don't already know everything can come to us and learn how to ride more safely and intelligently, and in those classes we discuss the various dangers inherent in cycling.

What if, instead, we focus much more on the positive aspects? It's fun to ride a bike. It's almost as quick as driving, especially for short trips like the Clif Two-Mile Challenge stuff, and pretty easy to find a parking place (I'll agree that more businesses could be more inviting on that score...). Once we get folks ON bicycles more, enjoying that feeling of pedaling through the environment to enhance well-being (the definition of cycology), we say, "You know what? It's a good idea to do this in a way that doesn't infringe on others' enjoyment of the same sport. Let's follow established traffic rules, in part to not aggravate folks who don't "get it," but more importantly, to keep it fun for more of us more of the time."

There are some interesting statistics that suggest that cycling is pretty safe in the overall scheme of things. There is even a quiz online that lets you see how accurate your own perceptions are. In reality, and this is part of our lesson plan in the cycling safety classes, the most frequent causes of cyclist injury are things we can take out of the equation by sticking to the first couple layers of safety mentioned above. One example is cited by Ken Kifer: the largest percentage of cyclist deaths is cyclists entering the roadway from a driveway or parking lot without looking to see what other traffic was already there. Wearing a helmet doesn't affect whether one looks both ways before entering the roadway.

Having another look at Michael Bluejay's site (one of my faves, for sure), he never mentions "wear a helmet" as a way to keep from getting hit by a car. Just about every bit of advice he offers falls into one or another of the first three or four layers of safety. "Prevent needing that helmet" by riding intelligently is a more inviting message than, "wear your helmet, I'm afraid you'll get hit!"

Or are we too hard-headed to get it?

afternoon utility biking

I got to ride a bit today.

I met some bike-dedicated folks for lunch today, to learn about what the city has in store on the bike-friendly front. There are some things I'm not able to discuss here, but things I can mention include:

By spring, there will be printed, fold-out maps of the city showing all the various bike routes--multi-use paths, painted bike lanes, signed bike routes, sharrow lanes, and so on. The plan is in the works, but may also include icons where one can find city-provided bike racks, key bus stops (for those who want/need to go multi-modal), and the like. The intent is to update this map annually, and place stacks of them at coffee shops, the Louisville Visitors' Bureau, bike shops (of course), and near several tourist destinations.

There is another video in the works on the topic of bicycle safety. This one will run in the eight-to-ten-minute range, and will probably be online in chapters. The script is being tweaked, so I haven't seen it yet, but given that Joe Ward is involved in its writing, it should be pretty decent. Kirby Adams is going to be the on-camera presenter, and this is a good thing--far better her than some of the other choices I've seen mentioned.

Louisville has installed a bunch of bike racks in the last few months. The city has a "request a rack" program, so that a business can ask for a bike rack to be installed on the sidewalk near the front door to encourage folks to ride to that business.

One pilot program being considered might take a parking space-sized area on Frankfort Avenue and create a bike corral. This would not only allow for folks to ride to a key area of Frankfort Avenue, it would show folks how many bikes fit in the space of one car, and thus how bikes can help reduce urban congestion.


Anyway, as I had a couple errands to do while I was out, I took the Raleigh (with the trailer) to this lunch meeting. We met at the Bodega on Felice, on Market Street near Campbell Street. Neat little place, with a lot of stuff happening inside. They even have a bike rack in their parking lot! After the lunch, I rode with Scott Render, of the Mayor's office, and Kirk Kandle, to check out a couple of rail crossings that have been recently repaired. Scott and I also took a good look at the Louisville end of the Big Four Bridge, where the basic structure for the helical ramp is in place. Branden Klayko, writing in a blog about local pedestrian issues, has some nice shots of the work that were taken a couple weeks ago, and some more taken earlier this week. Scott took some pictures today, and I'm sure one or two of them will surface online in the next couple of days.

Scott and I parted ways after seeing what we could see, and I went on with my errands. I stopped by Feeder's Supply to get dog food and cat food (hence the trailer), then went by Value Market in Mid City Mall for a couple things Kroger just doesn't seem to stock. I then worked my way home, toting fifty or sixty pounds of pet food up the hill on Lexington Road under I-64.

Fried-day morning food thoughts

Prompted by Kirk's recent post, there is a little twist I keep thinking about as I ride to work.

My route to work passes a McDonald's location that has been in operation at least since 1973, a couple doors from the corner of Westport Road at Goose Creek Road. As I pass it, I often see a line of cars in the drive-through lane--as often as not, so many cars in that lane that another car would have to wait in the median on Westport Road to even get into the parking lot, which is also full of cars. I've even had to navigate around a car sitting in the eastbound travel lane as the driver waited for an opportunity to get into that parking lot.

Talk about unhealthy!

I won't sit here and say my food choices are all that great. I'm too fond of a plate of eggs, potatoes fried in a dollop of olive oil (or oyl, if you prefer) and a fist-full of chopped country ham (or a couple sausage patties, depending) as a semi-luxurious breakfast. I understand the appeal of some of the processed cereals Kirk mentions, although I've gotten away from them myself. Barbecued pork is one of my favorite lunch or dinner foods.

But sitting in a car, in a long line with other folks sitting in their cars with all engines idling so that all the occupants get to breathe exhaust fumes, instead of walking inside to a shorter line and faster service, regardless of how good or bad the food is, borders on insanity. It shows how auto-centric our society has become.

Of course, there is also the food quality (to put it loosely) aspect. Our American idea of nutrition is certainly skewed. "Country breakfast" can mean any of several healthy or unhealthy things, depending on whose definition you choose. I mentioned one of my favorite breakfast menus. I've been known to dine on a couple bowls of frozen berries or cherries, dusted with sugar (the amount of sugar has ramped down over the years, but it's still probably more than I should use).

I ride, in part, so that I can burn off some of the excess calories I enjoy consuming.

lovely weather, but little time on wheels

Despite the lovely weather this weekend, I haven't put a lot of miles on the bikes.

After riding to work most days this week (drove one day to fetch my repair stand so that I could fix the Strada's shift cable issue), I wasn't able to take advantage of the pretty weekend as a rider.

Not full advantage, anyway.

Jenn and I decided to have an assortment of family and hangers-on over for dinner Saturday, so we had to go grocery shopping as part of the preparations. We took her Peugeot and my Raleigh, as I keep the trailer connected to the brown bike most of the time. Sure enough, the trailer was loaded by the time we had made the three or four stops to complete our list of stuff, and sure enough, I needed to go out again for more stuff later. We might have put four miles on the bikes in the course of our trip, but I doubt it. The second trip out was good for between two and three miles, even with the stiff headwinds coming home.

The dinner went well, but seating ten folks for dinner (including Jenn and myself) meant using just about every plate in the house, along with almost all the flatware (well, there are the extra dozen teaspoons that we didn't use), and a sizable stack of mixing bowls, serving dishes, and whatever else got used in the process. It took two dishwasher-loads to get most of the stuff cleaned this morning.

We did, however, get our act together in time to go on the 2:00 PM club ride out of Heine Brothers' Coffee (well, the lot behind the office building across Staebler Avenue from Heine Brothers' shop). We took the tandem, as Bill and Kate haven't seemed in too big a hurry to get it back.

It was good to get out on the bike. After the club ride, we took our commuter rigs out to look at a house that is for sale (open house Sunday...), just to see how the place looked.

The house had some neat features, due to recent remodeling efforts, but it was still a late-sixties split-foyer, meaning that to get from the bedroom to the laundry room one has to navigate narrow stairs AND a mid-stairway landing at the front door (or the added-in rear stairway), and any entrance to the house involved stairs. Another feature of late-sixties/early seventies home-building I dislike is a frequent lack of overhang. No soffit, especially on a hip-roof house, and the roof won't ventilate well, shortening shingle life by orders of magnitude and making the house much hotter in summer. The overhang of a deeper soffit also helps the siding last longer.

No matter, as we were merely curious--we aren't looking to move any time soon (unless one of us were to actually buy a Powerball ticket and that ticket actually win, and "you can't lose if you don't play!").

Specialized Bicycle is a very cool outfit!

Today, I got to be a small part of an amazing story. It's the story of a man who won a bike.

My part of it started with a phone call from Specialized Bicycle Components a couple weeks ago. The shop where I work, Bluegrass Bicycle, LLC, is now a dealer for Specialized bikes. One of the fine folks at Specialized called the store, saying that Robert had been awarded a bike as part of the Globe Community program, and as we are the closest dealer to where Robert is staying, askied that we accept delivery on the bike and assemble it for him. Since I am "all about getting folks on bikes," as both of my readers know, and since it was a cool project, I agreed wholeheartedly. During that phone call, I was also advised that Robert is having some health struggles. Naturally, my interest in making good things happen was piqued just a bit more.

The bike arrived a couple days later, and what a cool bike! Globe is a subsidiary of Specialized, with a focus on comfortable utility bikes, urban rides with tons of attitude, and some neat features that aren't typically found on bikes from mainstream bike manufacturers, like integral racks, Esge double-leg kickstands as standard equipment, utility-oriented geometry and so on.

To backtrack a bit: Robert spends a fair bit of time online, and has at least one or two blogs going. Globe Bicycles had a contest, and winners got bikes, with the contractual agreement being that they'd post about how much fun they were having on their bikes. Oh, and if they DIDN'T blog about their experiences with the bikes--good bad and otherwise, Specialized would take back the bikes.

They chose Robert as one of their bike recipients.

Robert isn't from Louisville, but he's staying with family in the area while he undergoes treatments for testicular cancer (more on that in a minute). He, his wife, and their son came to pick up the bike today, and I got to meet him and congratulate him for getting this bike (and wish him well in his recovery). He tells us that the bike (and the surrounding excitement) will be a big part of his recovery.

We hadn't taken the time to really know how he came to get the bike, and invited him to share the process with us. He explained the contest, then went on to say that, after a recent note from Specialized, he doubts he'd ever buy a bike from any other manufacturer. Remember that "contractual agreement" I mentioned above? Specialized told him that whatever happened, the bike is his. If he's not able to blog due to his health struggles or whatever other reasons, they want him to keep the bike. The Globe Blogger site has a whole group of links to blogs people are writing on their bikes.

He won't be able to ride it for a while yet, probably a few weeks to a month or two. I'm looking forward to reading his comments, though.

Globe Blog community

Robert's blog and web site

Cool!

The Ceej web site has a blurb about a neat program put on by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, showing how dangerous it is to try to drive while texting (or trying to send text messages while one should be paying attention to one's driving).

Make sure any teen or young adult you know sees this. Too many of them think they are invincible--the old "it won't happen to me" bit. The ones that try it in this simulator really get their eyes opened.

Yep, he's guilty

While I doubt the case will have as much national effect as I would like, and while I'm sure there will be an assortment of appeals before it's all over, Dr. Thompson, of Mandeville Canyon Road in the Los Angeles area, has been found guilty on all counts he was facing.

In other words, at least in that area, it's not a good idea to pass cyclists then slam on your brakes to cause them to tail-end you. It's especially a bad idea to do so and then tell the responding safety officers (whether they be Deputies or Police Officers or whatever) that you wanted to teach said cyclists a lesson about riding on "your" road.

When I'm in traffic, I'm pretty sensitive to tailgaters. When I'm on a bike, I get REALLY antsy if a car crowds me from behind, giving me no room to slow down suddenly if road conditions require my doing so. I'll wave my stop signal glove at someone I feel is too close to me--sometimes the driver even gets the message.

When I'm in the car, I am often tempted to "brake check" people who follow me too closely. If I cannot see below the grille of the car behind me, I figure it's too dratted close to my rear bumper, and any impact damage is on the driver's nickel. I could use a new set of bumper mounts, anyway, since I never had them replaced when a teenager hit me from behind at a stop light a few years ago (yes, it was his fault, as I was not even moving and didn't have reason to "brake check" him--the light turned green, and the car in front of me had not yet started moving when I felt the slam from behind).

On the bike, though, I am a bit more vulnerable, and not as likely to slam on my own brakes.

I had a woman crowd me on Westport Road a week or two back, but when I started waving my hand (with the Glo Glove red side facing her), she seemed to get the idea and backed off a bit. I doubt she could see the look I gave her as she eventually passed me (more or less legally), though.

Back on the blue bike

In August, Jenn and I borrowed a tandem, in preparation for riding it on the Old Kentucky Home Tour. She and I have put a few hundred miles on that bike, including two century rides, as the one or two of you who pay attention to my ramblings here will remember.

Since that bike had been in the garage (it's still there, BTW--Bill and Kate haven't asked for it back yet, although I'm sure they will eventually), I had not been on my Strada. At all. Any club rides I did wound up being joint efforts with Jenn.

Until today.

I mentioned to her last night that there was a century ride today out of Finley Firehouse, next to Melissa Hall's house. Melissa puts on some lovely century rides, and while this was a new route, it sounded like a fun one. Jenn, having worked a lot of long hours of late, begged off, so I got the blue bike out for the first time in months.

Last night, I looked it over, but didn't clean anything. I inflated the tires, checked the brakes, made sure the shifting was working, got my drink mix and other items ready to go, then went to bed.

About sixty, maybe sixty five miles into the ride, I realized the rear shifting wasn't working right. I'd upshift, then have to yank on the cable to get it to go into the intended gear. At first, it seemed the cable was sticking inside the casing at the rear of the bike. On inspection at the lunch stop, this was found to not be the case, so I rode on. A bit later, I discovered the real problem--the cable was fraying apart near the head in the shifter. This is a rarity for me--I've not had one of my cables do that in many years. Of course, I've seen it happen to others, and I knew what could happen soon if I continued to shift with that cable--it would break, in the shifter, and cause me to do roadside repairs involving not being able to shift for a while.

Rather than have to make roadside repairs, I opted to quit using the shifter. I have a triple chainring on this bike, after all. I left the chain on the innermost cog (the easiest to pedal, in case I encountered more hills on the way back to the car), and used the three chainrings to gain some cadence control.

Of course, the rest of the course was pretty flat. Not knowing how flat, I was still reluctant to let the rear derailleur move the chain to, say, the seventeen-tooth cog (it was on the twenty-three-tooth cog). I wound up pedaling at 135 RPM a good part of the way home, just to keep up with the rest of the folks on the ride.

I'll tell you this: my heavy legs don't like spinning that fast for long. I can get peak RPM readings of 175-180 on this bike, but have no real power above 130 or so.

Otherwise, it felt good to get on that bike again. I miss how fast that bike is at times.

One unpleasant event during the ride: I had to teach a dog a painful lesson about chasing bikes. He (I presume it was a he) had chased the other riders some distance from his driveway, and was coming home when he saw me (I was catching up to the rest, having missed a turn a quarter-mile or so back). He started heading right for me--why, I have no idea. I headed for him for a bit, then changed direction late, hoping he'd continue on his path so I could go around him. No such luck--he zigged as I zagged, and I rolled right over top of him. I made an abrupt stop, but was unhurt--didn't even fall. He had fallen under my front wheel, and my back wheel went over him as well. He got up, limped to the shoulder of the road, and looked at me as if to say, "Why did you do THAT?" There was a kid in the driveway, who asked if I was okay. I suggested that he have his folks take the dog to the vet to check for injuries, but the kid said the dog was fine.

I like dogs, in general. I certainly don't wish them ill. However, when one is allowed to roam free so that it can chase traffic, I a) blame the owner for being so blase about the dog's health and safety, and b) have a hard time feeling sorry for a dog that chases bikes, cars, and anything else that moves along the roadway.

I'll fix the cable tomorrow. I'm too tired to mess with it tonight.