Durn, it's hot!

With public school returning to session soon, Louisville Metro is renewing their "Street Sense" ad campaign. One site where one can view the press release is of course the Ceej. Predictably, there is a fair bit of nonsense being spewed on the comments section attached to the article. A couple of intelligent folks are posting, too, trying to educate the twits, but the twits generally refuse to learn factual information.

I'm nearing three thousand miles for the year. I don't know that I'll best that number before the end of July, with a hundred fifty miles or so to go, but it won't take much longer to get there. I am likely to exceed eight hundred miles for July, given that I only need another fifty or so--two days of riding to work will get me within a grocery trip of that goal.

I'm signed up to ride with the non-partisan bike ride for attendees of the legislators' conference later this week. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details of the conference, but my part is to be bike-friendly without getting into the politics of the thing--a challenge for me, but one worth doing. That will give me a few miles on the bike, as will going to the final session of the Wednesday evening cycling class out at Iroquois Park later in the day.

As sometimes happens when I travel by bike, a motorist rolled down her window a week or so back, as we were sitting at a traffic light, and remarked that she was having trouble seeing me. I was a bit shocked, given that I was on the Ryan at the time. Mine is the one with the red reflectors:



I wanted to suggest to her that if she couldn't see me, she may want to have her vision checked, as she likely had problems that needed to be addressed, and was perhaps impaired enough that she should surrender her license if she had one.

I think about whether I'm seen. It's important to me that I'm seen, for what are fairly self-evident reasons. I get to tell whether I'm seen frequently as I ride, too.

When I'm on a four-lane road like Westport (my primary corridor for my to-work commute), I can watch in my mirror to see whether overtaking motorists see me. It's clear to me that I'm seen from well away, judging by how many folks change lanes hundreds of yards before overtaking me. If those folks can see me more than a quarter-mile away, and move to avoid confrontation well ahead of the need, why can't others?

I've long said that too many motorists have their focus too close in. They don't look "outside the cockpit" much, if at all. They fail to plan for things they could reasonably foresee if they bothered to think about stuff a bit.

Some complain about the sun being in their eyes. Folks, the earth orbits the sun such that the apparent path of the sun in our sky is predictable. As in, there is a listing called Civil Twilight based on sunset times, and the table presented is accurate to within a few moments every day. Even without knowing that such a table exists, we know that the sun sets every day, and that at times nearing sunset the angle is such that if we are driving in certain directions it will be hard to see what is happening. Intelligent drivers take action to minimize the problems this could present--we slow down, or drive in a different direction if practical, or wait a bit if practical (I've planned meals stops on road trips around sun angles, for example).

Maybe they are metaphorically blind in addition to being willfully blind. In any case, anyone who honestly cannot see a bicycle in daylight is either not looking (and is thus at fault) or cannot see well enough to drive legally (and is thus REALLY at fault). The only third option implies that the person claiming he/she can't see me is not telling the truth.

Doing a century and RAIN in one month will change one's monthly total. I now have a year-high 700+ miles for the month, and it's only the 21st. I still have ten more days to pedal another hundred or hundred-fifty miles (or maybe a few more).

The ride that tipped me over the 700-mile mark was the thirty-six mile round trip that encompassed the New Rider Clinic happening in Iroquois Park on Wednesdays for June and July this year. Adding this third session has been a very good thing for our program--there is a group of something like sixteen students that are VERY good about attending, excited about learning their skills, and looking forward to riding more. One woman in that class has already ridden a century this summer!

Although I've been encouraged to ride a club century this coming weekend, I won't have time. We still have some cleaning out of stuff to do at the old house to get it "broom clean" by the end of the month. Jenn is having some folks over Tuesday evening, so we need to sort/arrange/clean some stuff in the new house as well.

I wonder what my mileages would be if I had time to ride club rides...

brief RAIN comments

Another RAIN is in the books. Wow.

It was my slowest RAIN yet. However, it was a day of firsts for us: Jenn's first RAIN event (mindful that when she and I met less than three years ago she hadn't been on a bike in over fifteen years), it was my first RAIN on a tandem with a "significant other" as stoker (my first RAIN event was done on the same tandem, but with Larry as the stoker), it was my first RAIN "flying formation" with another tandem (at least part of the way)...

And it was a heck of a way to celebrate my first wedding anniversary!

It didn't all go as planned, of course. One lesson learned is that each of us has to take ownership of making sure our gear is loaded into the car--in this case, Jenn's cycling shoes didn't make the trip. The only other shoes she had with her were her Vibram Five Fingers Classics, which were NOT going to work, especially on SPD pedals. After some fretting, we noticed that Nita's pedals were "dual use" models, allowing for use with street shoes. Nita loaned her Teva sandals to Jenn, we found another rider who had a pedal wrench we could borrow long enough to make the physical switch of pedals, and off we went.

I'm sure Jenn's output was reduced a bit by her not having ideal footwear. Even so, I always knew she was putting effort into the system.

Larry and Nita rode her Screamer, and logged a rolling average some mile and a half better than ours. I'm okay with that--both of them have been riding long miles more than either Jenn or I have this year. Indeed, almost all of my miles are utility miles this year, and I've had two days this year that saw me ride more than sixty miles--one of them being RAIN. Jenn's "training" for RAIN wasn't even as extensive as mine.

Our rolling average of 16.43 for the 158 miles my cyclometer recorded (Larry insists that it's 162 miles per GPS) is fine by me. We didn't crash, did not SEE any crashes (I was VERY glad to not see a repeat of last year's car-vs.-motorcycle incident), and aside from the pedal/shoe stuff had no bike problems.

Phew! I'm still tired.

Time to get on a different bike and go to the grocery store.

Ride Across INdiana this weekend

Warning: blog post topic wanders (or should I say, "meanders?").

In a bit more than thirty hours, I'll be setting up for RAIN. This will be my seventh in the last eight years (I missed 2006 due to a work-related SNAFU).

This will be an interesting trip on RAIN for me. I will be celebrating my first wedding anniversary by riding a tandem recumbent bike 160 miles or so with my wife.

I think it's cool to think that three years ago, she hadn't been on a bike in over a decade--perhaps over fifteen years. Now she's excited about riding 160 miles in one day. She rides to work much of the time (on her own Vanguard, now!). We use bikes for much of our errand-running--something I'm not sure she had even considered three years ago (we met a bit less than three years ago). It was almost like some part of her said, "Wow, this is a great way to do things," as I showed her my own modus operandi (and how my own methods have changed over the last three years).

Yeah, I've been a sometimes-bike-commuter for over fourteen years--indeed, I have used a bike for transportation (albeit sporadically some years) since I was a kid (I rode my bike to work for my first job--pretending to be a fledgling bike mechanic--as a fourteen-year-old). In my late teens, I still used my bikes for transportation when it was necessary (although like many in that age group, I LOVED to drive a car!). I lived in Denver the summer after I turned nineteen, and didn't have a car there at all. I could sometimes drive a car my aunt had, but typically rode instead.

I haven't always thought about being car-free, and I still have things that are most easily done with a car. I'm kind of enjoying the "car-free-light" life, though. Jenn and I are managing, for the most part, with only one gas-powered vehicle these days (one car has been out of service since April, and we haven't gotten around to fixing it simply because there has been too much else happening). We borrowed a car from her folks for a week or two, but used it little enough that I haven't really missed it since we returned it to them some weeks ago.

Oh, well. Lots to do yet in preparation for tomorrow. Off I go...

Finally, a long-mileage day!

With a sense of "what am I doing here?" and a sense of "I can do this, I ," Jenn and I rode the LBC "Pretty Good First Century" today.

In Tom fashion, I rode to the ride (and since we were on the tandem, Jenn rode as well...). A bit short of ninety miles into the official ride, we were done enough that we split off and rode on home. Jenn was having some heat issues, I was getting very tired, and we still had to get the bike (and ourselves) home, so we split off when the ride crossed Kentucky Street and worked east--Mad Dog course rules be damned, as we covered more than a hundred (107, to be more precise).

With this ride, my mileage for July exceeds my mileage for all of June, and the month isn't half done. Next weekend will be another high-mileage weekend, as we plan to do RAIN.

After today, we are having to re-think whether either of us is really ready for 160 miles in one day. However, the plan is to take the tandem and my Strada, so that if Jenn decides to stop at some point I can finish the ride on the single bike. We'll see how things go--I find the tandem tiring sometimes, although I think it's a function of lack of miles on the bike rather than anything specific to how the bike is built.

In any case, I'm now tired enough that I need to go to bed a bit earlier than usual. I have a lot to do tomorrow before teaching the class on tire repairs in the evening.

Other thoughts for today

While thinking about and writing my last post, I also got to thinking about convenience. I do a lot of thinking about why I ride instead of driving, as I am asked that from time to time in face-to-face discussions. I keep coming back to that I enjoy riding more than driving, even when I can discuss the long list of other benefits.

One of those benefits is the perceived convenience. I see it as more convenient for me to ride a bike when doing my errands. The time involved isn't a big difference--it takes me perhaps twice as long to ride as to drive within a five-mile radius, and about the same amount of time within a two-mile radius. My ride to work--all eleven miles of it--takes me less than three times as long as I can do it in a car.

However, in that extra time, I get to: a) exercise, burning carbs and fat grams instead of petroleum, b) think about stuff that I wouldn't have time to ponder when driving thirty-plus miles an hour (not that others don't let their minds wander...), c) re-allocate gas/insurance/car upkeep money into the grocery and bike parts funds (I far prefer eating to filling the gas tank).

I also get premium parking spaces, often right at the door of whatever shop I'm patronizing! It's nice to not have to walk across acres of hot asphalt parking lot to pop in to the local grocery store, although one could say I'm paying for that by riding my bike for more minutes than the guy who is walking across the parking lot. I figure I'm more acclimated to the heat by riding, so it doesn't bother me as much, so I'm ahead. Or I think so, anyway.

In my errand-running today, I hit on an idea that solved a problem I've been perceiving for some time. The problem: convincing motorists that it's a good idea to stop with their front bumpers above the Stop Bar (that foot-or-so painted strip across the lane at a stop light). I had dropped off some paperwork at an office off Millbrook (near the Northeast YMCA), and my next stop was the ValuMarket on Whittington Parkway. Rather than ride Hurstbourne Parkway all the way to Whittington, I opted to use the roadways within the ShelbyHurst development that used to be called Shelby Campus for the University of Louisville (and which was Kentucky Southern College before that). Recent construction has changed the entrance of the campus to be directly opposite the Shelbyville Road end of Whittington Parkway, conveniently enough.

As I neared this intersection, I was passed by a guy in a pickup truck. He reached the light, and stopped with his back bumper above the stop bar. The light is set up so that it will only offer a green if its sensor is tripped, and his truck was not over the sensor at all. I pulled up beside him, and suggested that he'd get through the light quicker if he backed up over the sensor, and that the stop bar was a guide as to where the sensor is so that he could use that information on other intersections as well. He genuinely seemed to appreciate the information, telling me that my tactic was well-received. It didn't hurt anything that almost as soon as he backed up, the light turned green for him. I was in the process of getting back in line behind him, and the short light there almost caught me, but I made it under the yellow...

Parenthetically, one of the things I like about the new house is its proximity to ValuMarket. It's a great, locally-owned grocery that stocks a much wider variety of food stuffs than any Kroger I've seen, preferring to simply stock one row of a given item than six to allow for better selection. They have a lot of things I have no idea how to prepare, but that they have such things makes them stand out as local merchants.

Sure beats going to Kroger. It's a fifteen-minute bike ride home from ValuMarket with a trailer full of groceries, by the way.

musings on what it means to be a Vehicular Cyclist

Earlier this month, Mikael at Copenhagenize posted on Vehicular Cycling as a philosophy. His posts usually make a LOT of sense to me, and the two or three of you who read my musings often enough know I quote him from time to time--probably more often than most blogs I read.

In this post, he explains Vehicular Cycling in ways I had not considered. Prompted by this, I pondered my own outlook on VC, as I certainly consider myself a Vehicular Cyclist.

He has a lot of valid points. More or less separate infrastructure for cycling, even to the exclusion of cars from certain urban areas, would be wonderful. I would love to see bike lanes like those in Copenhagen in Louisville--all over the place, used all the time, cleared of snow before the main roadways, and all that.

I'm pragmatic enough to know that just about any philosophical position will have inherent compromises, though. VC is no different, to me, as there is a severe lack of political will to create the infrastructure like that in Copenhagen, let alone the dollars to do so. There is, in many places, a severe lack of room to emulate the Danish model. We are a young country by European standards, and much of our cityscape has been fashioned in the post-World-War-II era, with the assumption that if you were you would drive everywhere instead of walking/riding public transit/bicycling. There simply was no impetus for leaving room for bicycles in the traffic plan, such as it was. VC is thus a compromise, cognizant that unless our politicians develop brain functions more complex than, "I must work to be reelected to this office or a higher one," and the citizenry who bother to vote develop more of a conscience than to simply say, "it's so much more convenient for me to drive than to walk/ride/cycle, I won't vote for anyone who threatens my status quo as a driver!"

In the comments attached to Mikael's post, Anna opined, in part:

My opinion on this is different, because I can partially understand this behavior. It is not that "vehicular cyclists" are against bicycle infrastructure (although they might not know that themselves), but they are against crappy bicycle infrastructure.

I could not agree more. "Crappy bicycle infrastructure" is far worse than nothing, in many ways. Creating it, municipalities say, in effect, "Cyclists are inferior/second-class road users, so we leave them with inferior lanes so as to discourage them from using the roadways. Let the trash/debris/detritus from the traffic build up in the lane we leave them, further discouraging them from obstructing traffic with their fly-weight machines. Then rail against them even more when they refuse to use obviously-more-dangerous-than-necessary lanes we made for them." Sort of a parallel to the Jim Crow laws, in a way, if you will allow the analogy.

An anonymous respondent typed, "This is a strawman depiction of Vehicular Cycling." To some degree, I agree. Another opinion was that realists like Anna, whom I quoted above, are quite different than hard-core Vehicular Cyclists who decry ANY bicycle-specific infrastructure.

Yeah, I've heard that one before, too. I went through a brief phase of that myself, some years ago. I quickly figured out, though, that Multi-Use Paths (MUP) have their place in giving folks a place to ride as leisure riders, or semi-neophyte riders, or those of us who have the skill set and the confidence to ride on the roads but who want a low-stress alternative for a different style of ride, or whatever.

Since I'm all about getting folks on bikes, I figure that having a place for those with less of a chip on their shoulders than I to ride is a good thing.

Just don't tell me I have to ride there to the exclusion of roads that take me where I want to go.

We are a 'bent-up family

...and that's with the two of us!

The stable currently consists of the following bikes, roughly in order of their acquisition: my 1996 Vanguard, my 2002 Bacchetta Strada, Jenn's 2002 BikeE RX, her 1980-something Peugeot mixte-frame commuter, my 1975 Raleigh Superbe three-speed, her 2009 Bacchetta Giro 26, and her 1995 or-6 Vanguard, shown below:






Jenn's employer is big on United Way as a charity. There was a United-Way-based fundraiser at her workplace on the 30th of June that involved showing off rides, so we dolled up her birthday bike for the occasion. We mounted a good rack, a set of Axiom waterproof panniers, Planet Bike fenders, Planet Bike taillights and forward blinky light, Cygo-Lite Dual Cross Pro headlight set, a Delta AirZound horn (LOUD), and a Planet Bike rack trunk. Shown are two of the limited-edition RAAM Polar bottles that we managed to score during our trip.

In the long-range plans for this bike, I intend to upgrade the fork to accept modern linear-pull brakes, install such brakes front and rear, and modernize the drive train. I'm toying with getting SRAM X-7 rear drive parts, now that the 2011 model is ten-speed. The SRAM mountain derailleurs are compatible with the bar-end shifters of their road/time trial groups, so I can go that route with a compact crankset and give Jenn all the range she needs with two chainrings instead of three.

Oh, yeah. Not in the list, but in our garage nonetheless, is the younger stepdaughter's BSO, given her by her father several years ago. It's far too small for her now, but she is not ready to part with it.