Multi-modal trip

It's been a while since I used TARC much. I used to ride TARC when I was a student at Spalding College in the early 1980s, but rarely since. I rode TARC partway home one day last spring, due to a bit of rain, and that was my first "real world" use of the TARC bus bike racks. Aside from the bus trip, it was a "vacuum day." When the bus trip, soggy as it was, served as the high point...

Anyway, I've mentioned using the "Bikes on Board" program to alter my commute a bit before. As mentioned, and as tested today, it takes about ten minutes longer than I usually do on the Vanguard, and requires that I ride the Raleigh (the Vanguard will NOT fit the bike rack on the bus). Aside from a few intersections near the Jefferson Freeway and the construction zone near the Watterson Distressway, the most challenging segments of my route are well outside the range of the TARC route.

Sure, there are express routes that get to Crestwood and LaGrange, but they are simply not feasible for me. They don't go when I want to go, and don't stop where I need to be. All in the fun of working in the hinterlands.

As I started to say, I found that while it's okay to be on the bus in foul weather, to get one's feet warm or get out of a thunderstorm, it's even slower than being on a bike.

All the more reason to ride, in other words.

Oh, yeah, I rode from the end of the bus route to Crestwood, a distance of something like five miles. I rode back from Crestwood, braving the ice patches on Houston Lane, got to the bus stop ten minutes or better before the bus was due, and simply rode the bike the rest of the way home. It didn't make sense to me to wait ten minutes to sit on the bus and get home fifteen minutes or more later.

From time to time, I encounter motorists who seem to be genuinely nice folks. I assume that the vast majority of motorists would prefer to not hit me, they just want to get where they are going without a lot of drama, and want to know what I plan to do as I interact with them. Sometimes, though, someone goes out of his or her way to be nice. Last spring, a motorist followed me across the Clark Bridge, at a polite distance, blocking overtaking traffic from my lane during a rain storm. A month or so back, I mentioned the woman who apologized to me for her inattentiveness and the resulting dangerous pass she performed.

Today's "Polite motorist" award goes to the person who was driving that big honkin' Suburban Assault Vehicle, but who nevertheless let me go down Houston Lane ahead of him or her, following at a polite distance yet providing more light than the SOTA circa 1995 headlights on the Raleigh can create as I navigated the various ice patches on that stretch of pavement.

I'm hoping that ice goes away tomorrow and Wednesday. I may have to drive to work Wednesday, despite the warmer weather in the forecast. I may be able to ride--I'll see how things go Wednesday morning.

I'm off work Tuesday, though. I have some errands to run (by bike), some work to do around the house, and am scheduled to attend the Car Free Happy Hour at The Monkey Wrench in the evening. Jenn won't make it this time, however, as she is hosting this month's edition of Bunco at the house.

Which to attend--Bunco, or Car-Free Happy Hour? Decisions, decisions...

See you at The Monkey Wrench!

blah title

We had a busy day at the store, surprisingly enough.

Most days have gone by slowly. I have stuff to do, mostly in preparation for the coming season, but sales are off this time of year. The recent cold snap hasn't helped much. Small stores like ours have to set aside operating funds for winter.

Nonetheless, we had some great activity today. We filled the last two slots for the Tool School I'm teaching this month (starts tomorrow), and had at least one more guy commit to the one in February. At this rate, we'll have to schedule a third session, in addition to the "advanced" modules I plan to offer in the next month or three. In any case, the group for this session should be a good one. I know most of the folks (big surprise), and like them.

No riding since Wednesday, due to lack of interest in playing in the snow, interest in riding to work in sub-20F temps and lack of interest in dealing with motorists sliding around on slick roads.

I keep thinking about using TARC to "go multi-modal" for some of my trips to work. It really wouldn't save me any time, judging by the schedules posted on their site, but it could get me out of some weather time. If it's snowing, riding TARC gets me out of riding the easier part of my trip, rather than the part I'd prefer to avoid in snowy weather. Using TARC to haul a bike also makes it necessary that I use the Raleigh, as the Ryan won't fit the bus rack AT ALL. The Raleigh is probably a tad bit more reliable in snow (simpler systems), but I'm more comfortable on slicker roads with the Vanguard--something about being closer to the ground.

I drove today, and I didn't think to drive my side roads to see how they look. I don't know whether I'll ride or drive to the store for Sunday's Tool School class. I should be able to ride to work after Monday, though.

This Tuesday is the monthly Car-Free Happy Hour, held from 5:30 to 8:00 PM at The Monkey Wrench, located at Barret and Winter Avenues, not far from Bardstown Road. I've not attended any of these to date, having been at work for the last several, but I'm making an effort to go this time. It could be lots of fun--usually is, judging from the posts I have seen after the parties in prior months. Ride on by!

Okay, I'm jealous

My friend Kirk, who has been conducting his own car-free experiment of late, got a new vehicle.

He'd been building up the suspense for several days, asking folks for their opinions on what sort of vehicle to get. Of course, many (to some degree, myself included, embarrassingly enough) thought he was talking about getting a car (in my defense, he did indulge in a bit of misdirection). My suggestion? Get a velomobile. I wasn't even thinking in terms of his purchase of yet another bike. However, the Pashley Roadster Sovereign he bought (and had already chosen, in all likelihood) is a marvelous machine. It's a purpose-built commuter, from a company that has been building such works of utility art since 1926. It has all the esoteric stuff--Brooks B33 saddle, Brooks stacked-leather grips, and smooth-riding 28" (635 ETRTO)Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires, er, TYRES, the fully enclosed drivetrain, and a proper Brooks saddle bag. I can already see some green on my own jealous brown Raleigh--another purpose-built commuter (albeit a less-sophisticated one). Did I mention that Kirk got an awesome bike?


In the course of Kirk's blog entry on his new bike, he inserted a link about Walk Score--a way to see how an address fares when it comes to stuff to do within walking distance. I tried it, even though I already knew the score for my home would be fairly good. My score? 78/100. There are LOTS of restaurants, pharmacies, shops, taverns, and other places to get what I might want within a mile or so, and many more within the two mile radius I've mentioned before as part of the Clif Two-Mile Challenge.

Still, I am in a better mood this morning, and not entirely jealous. I awoke to an ambient temperature of a balmy 20F outdoors, meaning I can do my errand-running by bike today! Yay!

I'd better get busy...

B-r-r-r-r

I have a couple of friends who are still riding their bikes to work this week.

I have not. Probably won't, either, for a few more days.

It's just too darned cold for my tastes.

I didn't used to be a cold-weather-wimp. In younger days, I was able to deal with temperatures down into the single digits wearing little more than a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled. I was a high-strung kid, burning hundreds of calories just standing still (well, as still as I could stand at the time). I'm still more tolerant of cold than many folks I know--to a point.

As I get closer to fifty, my tolerance for cold decreases. It's a fact of life.

I pressed my temperature minimum down a bit this year, with better gear. If the low temperature would stay above twenty or so, I'd be fine. Spending an hour on a bike in ten-degree weather (not counting wind chill index) doesn't appeal to me.

If my commute was fifteen or twenty minutes, or half an hour, I'd probably go ahead and ride. I don't know what it is about that extra half hour that buffaloes me into driving, but I just don't enjoy the prospect.

I mean, the bike is plenty reliable. It's not like I am using a crappy bike that breaks down all the time, and flats have been thankfully rare on this route. The headlights don't much like the cold, but the biggest problem coming from that is a short stretch behind Pewee Valley (Of course, my sense on the headlights could be left over from times using the SOTA Circa 1995 Vista Light set that's now on the Raleigh. The new lights on the Vanguard may be more cold-tolerant--I haven't tried them yet).

I could go multi-modal, I suppose--TARC has a line that would get me about halfway there--I just need to get organized a bit to use it...and use the Raleigh, since the Vanguard won't fit on a bus-mounted bike rack. After all, that's one reason I bought the Raleigh--to make it possible for me to go multi-modal.

At the time I bought the Raleigh, I was working in the urban area of N'Awb'ny. I was riding through the urban area, not out in the 'burbs. "See me" lights were far more important than "see where I'm going" lights. The multi-modal route now would have me riding the more challenging part on the Raleigh--the darkest segments, the hilliest segments, the narrowest roads--and that is taking the fun out of the idea.

I'm off work tomorrow, and will spend most of the day working on some last-minute weatherization chores around the house. Maybe I can tinker around with the bikes a bit--move the light set over on a short-term basis, re-install the small panniers that I took off since I use the trailer with that bike so often, and set up the Raleigh to be my multi-modal commuter for a while.

We'll see.

End of the year post

It's been over ten days since I bored anyone with a post here. I don't know that there was any particular reason, other than I've not thought to post anything for over a week.

Yes, there was the legal holiday, er, holly-daze last Fried-day. Today is something of another noteworthy day--we flip the calendar over to the teens decade from the aughts decade tonight.

It's customary to have and share year-end thoughts, or plans for the coming year, or something. I kind of like the attitude my cat takes on the topic, though--it's just another trip 'round the sun, another time the sky outside gets light, another day to enjoy watching birds. Cats have much to teach us.

I didn't ride to work much over the last ten days--not at all this last week, in fact. Temperatures have been below my thresholds, or the combination of cold and wet has been outside my range of "willing to be out in it for an hour on a bicycle."

I've been working on improving some practices at the store over the last couple weeks. I've implemented some inventory-control measures that will help us be more profitable this year, and better serve our customers in the process. It will take time to get all the staff "up to speed," but we are already seeing benefits. We started carrying Specialized as a brand a couple months ago, and I think it's going to be a great help for us--Specialized has a great range of products, with full-on race bikes, time trial bikes, kid bikes, and the Globe line of urban bikes, not to mention the Body Geometry lines of gloves, helmets, shoes, and saddles. We get to drop some lines of bikes that were not doing well for us. We will get to be a destination store instead of "Oh, yeah, there's a bike shop in Oldham County, now, too. Wonder what they sell?"

Oh, and we are the only shop in the Louisville area selling Specialized's "S-Works" products.

We've got a couple of Park Tool School sessions coming up--one this month, and another in February. The January session is over half-full as of this afternoon, and the students seem like good folks. I know of a few others who are interested (which reminds me that I need to call a couple folks this weekend...).

Tomorrow will see the Club have its annual Polar Bear Ride, pot-luck chili dinner, swap meet and club meeting. It's going to be a bit chilly during the day, so I don't know who will be riding. I plan to ride over, since the party is less than a mile from the house. We'll have to figure out what we are going to carry and how, but unless we ride the tandem for the first time in over a month, I can easily haul whatever food we take in the trailer.

See y'all next year!

blog-reading finds

Poking around on blogs can be one of those "black hole of time" things. Sometimes, however, interesting nuggets of information can come out of the clutter that is the internet. In terms of bike safety, some of the posts I've seen are thought-provoking.

This one, for example. It's an article on a recent study done in England, showing that cyclists' deaths are not commonly due to poor behavior on the part of the cyclists. It's usually poor behavior on the part of the motorists. A quote from the article: "With adult cyclists, police found the driver solely responsible in about 60%-75% of all cases, and riders solely at fault 17%-25% of the time." Wow. That differs from my sense of the data taught in LAB-certified classes.

Even so, a quote from the study is interesting:

"We believe this report strongly supports our view that the biggest problem for cyclists is bad driving. With that in mind we are greatly concerned that the government still seems fascinated with analysing (sic--British spelling) and promoting cycle helmets, the value of which appears to be inconclusive. We believe that the government should now focus on tackling the causes of injury which appears to be mainly inconsiderate and dangerous driving. Reduced speed limits, stronger traffic law enforcement and cycle-friendly road design are the solutions."

A brief digression: To read the source study, you would have to register to receive the .pdf download. It doesn't cost anything, unless you want to have them send you a printed copy.

Getting back to the study and the article, I mentioned that it's thought-provoking. I have an assortment of ideas that come immediately to mind, in no particular order. Based on a quick read of this article:

• "Bike Ninjas" will claim that they can continue being such
• "Wrong way riders" will make similar claims
• "Sidewalk pedalers" will echo the claims above
• Motorists, or rather, "Anti-cyclists" will gripe that all the blame gets put on them again when "the roads are meant for CARS, stoopid! and get those dratted bikes off the roads!"

I'll keep riding as part of traffic, though, thank you very much, and I'll do my usual things to remain visible to other road users.


Also found, in responses to an NPR article on cargo bikes (well worth reading, BTW), was this gem: "If you divide the number of miles you need to go by the amount of time you spend in your vehicle PLUS the amount of time you spend to pay for it, for gas, and for insurance, you may find that a bike is faster than a car. This kind of calculation yields what is called 'effective speed.' For most people in the United States (yes, here) bikes have a higher effective speed than cars.

My effective cycling speed is around 7mph. My effective driving speed would be about 1.5mph. (I don't make a lot of money and don't need to go very far)."

I'm no mathematician, so I'm not sure how to set up that equation. Still, it's an interesting concept--that time it takes us to pay for stuff affects how cost-effective that stuff is in our lives. It makes sense to me, but I can see how it would confuse many folks who are dependent on their cars.

Of course, cost-effectiveness isn't the only reason we do things. We are emotionally driven animals, after all. On my to-read list is Cotten Seiler's Republic of Driving, in which he explores some of the emotional baggage associated with automobiles and their (mis)use. Of course, the Louisville Public Library seems to not have this book, so I'll have to cycle over to Carmichael's to order a copy.

Morning errand

As a club officer, I am sometimes called upon to help make club business happen quickly. Today is such a day. We have a mailing we must get "out the door," as the information didn't make it into the last newsletter.

I volunteered to fetch the printed matter from near U of L, and host the labeling/stamping party this afternoon.

I also have been putting off a trip to get more cat litter, and the Feeder's Supply location where I usually stock up is not far off my path.

It was about 20F when I was getting ready to go.

Jenn has my truck today.

What's a somewhat logically-minded person to do?

Ride a bike. The Raleigh, specifically, pulling the trailer.

It wasn't the quickest way to do what I planned to do, but it worked well. I was not cold (save for my fingers, and they were not intolerably cold). My shirt even has a fair bit of sweat in it.

On the way home, I stopped at Nancy's Bagel Grounds for some yummy bagels. I also felt a desire for some sweets, so a stop at Plehn's Bakery happened before I got to the house.

I'll share some of what I bought with Rachel, as she is (hopefully) going to help me with some chores today.

I kind of sort of took a day off today. It wasn't carefully planned, so I wasn't off all day, but I got to have some fun and ride a bike for a while.

I did have some things I wanted to do at the store, of course. I had to follow up with some customer requests from the weekend that required I talk to a live person at each of two or three of our suppliers, and then report to the respective customer.

I had a couple bearings I needed to fetch for a repair, so that was first on the ride trip list. Of course, it was the opposite direction from the store.

I'd spent some time over the weekend riding the Raleigh, just for a change. I still like the bike, especially for short-distance work. It's fairly easy to lock to whatever is handy (tree, light pole, etc), too. I rode it to Albert Crush Bearings and Drives, on Baxter Avenue, then stopped at the Feeder's Supply to look at the cats they have for adoption before heading home (and no, I didn't adopt any cats this trip--we have enough cats for the time being--but I did pet a few that were awake and tell them that I hope they find good homes soon).

When I got home, I changed the bearings in the idler for the repair bike, then decided that since I was only going to the shop for a little while, and coming back in daylight, I'd ride the Raleigh out just for the change of style.

Until now, I've considered the route segment from Westport at Collins Lane or so to the other side of Pewee Valley hillier than I would enjoy on the Raleigh--that thing is NOT the climber my Ryan is, and the Ryan is no "mountain goat bike." The Raleigh also lacks the level of headlight I have on the Ryan (although I suppose I could move the light system over easily enough, should the need arise). My ride today did not do much to change my perspective--I know I'm capable of the small hills I encounter on just about any bike I'd be willing to ride, but I still think I'd prefer to ride the Vanguard as my daily get to work bike.

It was a grand day to ride, too! The temperatures were MUCH warmer than those of just two days ago, although the wind was something of a challenge, and more of one on the trip home. It was cloudy as I rode home--it looked like a storm front moving through at some point. Still, I arrived home after making the round trip to Crestwood in shirt sleeves, as the jacket was simply too hot!

On the trip home, I had one twit in a pickup truck blow his horn at me repeatedly, as if to say, "Get the @$#% off the road!" When he passed me, his passenger flipped me off. I mainly ignored them, until I saw that the next traffic light held them up to the point that I could pull up beside them and say, "See how far ahead of me you got by being jerks?" By then, however, their windows were closed, and both guys waved with fake smiles. I just shook my head and let them go--I'd not shown them any indication I was paying attention to them when they were behind me, and didn't want their oafishness to ruin my day.

My ride was brightened quite a bit, though, when I passed Plantation Racquet Club. There is a garrison-sized American flag flying by there, and it has been replaced within the last few days. The one that had been there was tattered terribly, and was saddening to see. It's good to see a new flag there, and the wind had it flying straight out. Now if some of these other places with tattered flags aloft will replace them...

Once home, I changed loads in the bag and took some books back to the library. On the way home, I stopped for a sandwich at Jimmy John's on Shelbyville Road at Saint Matthews Avenue, where one of Jenn's daughters works. I got to see her and talk to her for a moment or two without interrupting her work.

It's good to be able to say I like both of my step-daughters. My goal for my relationships with each of them is that I be a positive influence on their lives. I want them to live well, and happily. They are good people. The world certainly needs good people.

Night images

A few weeks ago, there was a discussion regarding headlights on the kycyclist, a local list-server. One poster mentioned that it's a good idea to see how one looks at night--one suggestion is to have someone dress in your night gear and have that person ride for you and see how visible your friend is while you are in a car.

Not wanting to burn the gas for that, I took some pictures in my driveway.

Awkward-seeming pose notwithstanding (I was wearing a down vest under the wind shell), here's a side shot. Hopefully the only time motorists will see this, they already know I'm moving along as they are waiting for a safe opportunity to enter the road. I like the reflex band on the rear tire. When the front tire wears out in another year or three (it was installed early in 2002), I'll replace it with the current Schwalbe Marathon with reflective stripe. I didn't have the headlights on when I took this.





Here's a close-up of the Urbanize helmet with the reflective stuff I added. This thing shows up quite well.

I'm not as enamored of the lights in this helmet as I had hoped to be. I still like the lid, as it fits well and is readily adjustable. I'd like for the lights to be brighter, but they still are an improvement over simply passive reflector stuff.



My biggest complaint about my camera is that the flash is fairly weak. I can't "reach into" a nightclub stage to pull images of, say, the drummer unless I'm right up by the singer. In the image below, though, the weak flash is kind of a good thing. It's showing how visible I am with partial headlights on me from behind. This is the view that most motorists see as they approach me to pass, at least if I'm signaling for a left turn. If the car has good headlights, I would be even harder to ignore.





I may still have someone ride the bike for me so that I can get a motorist's-eye view of things. I figure that most motorists don't have any interest in marring their driving records by hitting me, so I might as well make it easier for them to find me. Almost half my bike miles are after dark these days, so it makes sense to me to have good lights and good reflectors.

Still chilly

My wallet is, indeed, a bit lighter, but not because of the shoe covers I mentioned yesterday. They don't fit over my sandals.

In general, I'm finding that stuff from that brand (Pearl Izumi) runs a bit small--I typically wear large men's trousers/tights, and the AmFib ones are XL and snug. We have a pair of Pearl Izumi lobster gloves at the store, and they fit my hands pretty well--they are XXL. I don't think I want those, anyway, at least until I ride regularly in sub-20F temps.

The tights work well, though. My feet were much more comfortable on the ride home last night. I'm sure ambient temperature was a factor, but haven't looked to see how much warmer it was. My Campagnolo jersey was damp with sweat when I got home, too.

Yep, my low threshold has gotten lower.

Another Fried-day

I wound up driving yesterday, in part because it was colder than I like, in part because I had cargo to haul out to the store.

A supplier of BMX bikes we sell has a warehouse in Bluegrass Industrial Park. Rather than have bikes shipped, we sometimes pick them up at the warehouse. Since I was going to use Hurstbourne Parkway at least part of the time, I offered Jenn a ride to work, and took her bike with us for her trip home.

However, I decided that I needed the bike miles this morning.

Last year, I lowered my threshold for winter commuting rides to the mid-twenties, by adding better gloves. A friend showed me some gloves he has that have a fluid sac in the palm. Heat from his palms warms the fluid, which then gets pumped out to the fingers to keep them warmer. Seeing these, and talking to him about riding temperatures, I found myself compelled to ride in cooler weather yet.

So today I did what any sane person would do: I rode the bike to work.

I have a couple of winter jerseys that haven't seen enough use, so I wore one of them today. I wore a pair of matte lycra shorts inside my coldest-rated tights, with two pairs of socks, my trusty pair of Rocky Gore-tex socks and sandals on my feet. I wore one wind shell, and found that just right, when combined with a fleece balaclava and the aforementioned cold weather gloves.

My only complaint was that my feet were almost cold by the time I got to Crestwood. They weren't painfully cold, but they weren't comfy, either. Warmer than they were would have been better.

I've long held that part of the key to keeping one's feet warm is to keep one's legs warm. My legs were cooler than I would prefer, which contributed to the mild discomfort in my feet. At the store, I found that we have a pair of winter tights in my size that are better quality than what I've been using. We also have a better pair of shoe covers than my current ones, and they happen to be ones that my friend recommends highly.

I can see that my wallet will be a bit lighter before I go home tonight...and my low temperature threshold will be a bit lower this year.

Wow, it's windy today!

I'm glad I'm not working today--riding to work in wind like this is challenging, to say the least. Unlike many of my car-reduced/car-free pals, I don't have the option of riding TARC most of the way to work, then pedaling a few blocks, so when it's bad enough that I'm not going to ride, I have to drive a (gasp) car to work.

Of course, one of the family motor vehicles is in Georgetown this week, so if Jenn needs to not ride, and I need to not ride, we have to coordinate things. Her contribution to such coordination today was to take the bus to work. I'll have some more odds and ends to accomplish today, but will do most of them from home (I do have a trip to Bluegrass Industrial Park to make today or early tomorrow...).

Not much else of note, although I did get the new monitor in use last night. It's quite different...a 23" wide-screen/flat/thin unit--much larger and with much higher resolution than the old CRT-based one (which was new circa 2003). I may have to watch a movie on it, just for the fun of it...

New week, new challenges

Yesterday morning, I awoke to the sound of my cell phone ringing. It was my sister, asking how I dealt with snow when riding my bike--did I use chains or studded tires? As my alertness level adjusted, it occurred to me to answer her that I could, indeed, get studded snow tires for my bike (thinking of my Ryan, of course).

As it turned out, though, the snow accumulation was limited to grassy areas--the streets were merely damp. I rode to work, despite my mild head cold.

Yep, I also discovered that I had a head cold yesterday morning. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be a bad one, and generous application of Zicam probably helped. I felt much better when I got up this morning.

When I got home from work Monday, Jenn was working at her new laptop, getting it configured for use. She has a router that supports wireless device use in the house, but that function was not switched on. In the process of reconfiguring the router, something went awry, and now we have no internet service at the house.

I spent an hour or so playing telephone games with our ISP before running up against a time limit (had to get to work), with nothing accomplished other than exacerbating the DSL disconnect. I'm typing this during a break at work. As I told Jenn, some time when I have a spare hour or three (or five) to kill, I will get back on that project. She won't have time until at least Wednesday evening, so I may do it tomorrow. Such adventures always try my patience.

I realized this morning that with all the activity over the weekend, I managed to forget getting to the library to pick up the book they had waiting for me. As it's now been five days or more, and I haven't thought to call them to ask that they hold on to it for another couple days, I'm sure it's been sent back into circulation. If it's the book I have in mind, it's already happened once, and I've been waiting to read this one for several months. I just can't bring myself to buy it, as it's only out in hardback at this point. Phooey! On the other hand, it may be a book I had requested for Jenn, in which case I'll simply request it again--I don't think too many folks are waiting for that one.

Sunny-day morning

I didn't get to ride to work as much as I would prefer this past week. Tuesday afternoon, I picked up a trike (while not as fancy as the Team Dual on the web site, still a large, heavy "sociable tandem") that was to be repaired at the shop. Later that evening, another friend dropped off her bike at the house so that I could take it to the shop with me Wednesday as well. So, with a load in the truck, I drove to work--in the rain.

Given my preference for NOT riding in the rain, my timing worked pretty well.

I rode again Thursday, and received quite a few "Weren't you COLD!?!?" comments during the day. In fact, I was not cold at all during my rides to or from work, simply because I've learned to dress fairly well for commuting. Would I have wanted to ride sixty or seventy miles in those conditions? Probably not that day, although I've done centuries at near-freezing (above and below) temps.

Friday (or, as I often spell it, Fried-day) morning was one of those, "Oh, phooey! I can't get going" ones, and I wound up driving. I don't like using the car as a fall-back option, but there it is.

Saturday was a day for other things. Jenn's younger daughter asked us to attend her soccer team banquet at Georgetown College, so we did that, and brought her home with us afterward. She is taking one of the cars back to school with her today for a couple weeks, so any "fall back option" driving will have to be coordinated a bit more than usual. Basically, it means I have to be more disciplined about riding to work.

During the two days I rode to work, however, I had a couple of bothersome incidents with motorists. The more aggravating one was with a tow truck driver who cut me off as I approached a traffic light. As a supposedly-professional driver, he should know better, but as a former wrecker operator in a prior life, I know that many of the drivers don't share my knowledge of road rules and laws. He certainly didn't, although his employer will soon receive a letter (a copy of which will go to the police department) suggesting he learn a bit more.

I find that I get many more such experiences in my commute to Crestwood than I did when I was commuting to N'Awb'ny. I've mentioned this in prior posts, and it is one of the reasons I don't enjoy this commute as much as I did the older one.

I still prefer riding to driving, of course, it's just that the ride is not as much fun.

In those prior posts, I mused on the reasons why I'm not having as much fun. I think the largest one is the perceived animosity from motorists I encounter. This behavior from motorists is in keeping with an observation I've made for some time: there are zones in which motorist attitudes are better than others, and along my corridor I see the demarcation pretty clearly. I'm treated more equitably inside the Watterson than outside, better west of Hurstbourne Parkway than east of it, and generally better inside the Jefferson Freeway (or as some insist on calling it, the Snyder Freeway--although I've also heard it called the "Shameless Political Hack Freeway") than beyond it. Once near Crestwood, I usually don't have any troubles with motorists, although there will be exceptions there as in all my zones.

I won't get to ride today, sadly (or not). I've got family things to do--Jenn wants the seasonal tree-like object assembled (both of her daughters are helping with this, so I get to see them as well), and a cousin is coming through town later today on her way to some westward destination. I'll spend the afternoon with my stepfather, helping diagnose a problem he's having with one of his tractors.

Back to the preparations for all this...

That was different...

I scheduled my day off for today so that I could help at Seneca High School. Mr. Keswani, a teacher there (who also rides to work fairly often), asked for someone to do a presentation for his first-hour class, then participate in a panel discussion with a few other local folks working to make our community a healthier and more sustainable place to live.

Of course, I rode a bike to get there.

Having done a presentation in Mr. Keswani's classroom before, I know it's on the second floor. I opted to ride the Raleigh this time, simply to make navigating the stairs less of a hassle.

On the way to my next errand, though, is where the title originates. I was pedaling along Hikes Lane, a bit east or north of Klondike Lane, when a motorist passed me with almost no room to spare (with no other traffic going our way, she could have used the left lane, but...). Being the person that I am, I yelled out a variant on, "Hey! Watch where you're going!" To my surprise, the motorist stopped--in the middle of the right lane of a four-lanes-with-left-turn-only-median roadway--and waved me up to her window. She said something along the lines of, "I'm not trying to start nothing, I want to apologize for not moving over further. I'll be more careful in the future."

I was gobsmacked. I asked her to please give people she's passing more room in the future, and let her go on her way.

It's a first for me, to have a motorist stop and apologize (albeit in an unsafe manner, stopping in a traffic lane as she did).

In my travels today, I've had a surprising number of motorists stop, without need (i.e. stop sign) or legal suggestion, to allow me to make left turns from, say, Breckenridge Lane to Grandview Avenue, or from Grandview to the entrance for the public library branch (separate trip), or similar sites. I don't know how to tell these folks that I'm perfectly happy to wait my turn to turn left, and I don't want them creating a disruption in traffic flow (and thus a potential safety hazard) to be so polite. I usually wave them on and wait anyway, but one guy today wouldn't go until I had made my turn. I don't know if having the kid trailer on my bike had anything to do with it, or just what his thing was (the first two times it happened today I did not have the trailer attached).

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.

Every ride is an adventure

Some rides are more of an adventure than others. Sometimes, I could do without the excitement.

Yesterday morning, for example. As related in my prior post, I got to watch a school bus pass me unsafely.

Or this morning, as another example. A motorist came up behind me, going at least the speed limit (45, on Westport Road), with nobody in the left lane. Clear weather, pretty morning, little other traffic. I waved my hand (wearing my Glo Glove, as usual), which broke through the fog in the driver's head enough that she saw me and went around me. A quarter-mile down the road, I got the same experience, except that this time, the driver was in an Acura coupe with tinted windows. When I waved, she realized I was there and hit the brakes hard enough that I heard a chirp from her tires.

Why are folks so clueless and blithely ignorant of other traffic?

On the other hand, some of the adventures turn out to be pretty funny. Wednesday evening, on my way home from work, about 7:15, I had stopped at the light on Westport Road, heading toward town and home. I was at the front of the line for the light. A van came up beside me suddenly, and the driver said something along the lines of "do you have a license to operate that bicycle?" The light was bad, so while I could see his face, the question and the motion of the van on my right side like that put me immediately into a thinking mode of "am I going to have to tell some twit what the laws are, or defend myself in some way?" and I didn't recognize him immediately. His daughters were in the back seat of the car, and ran their window down to talk a bit. I quickly figured out that the driver knew who I was, and that I knew him, but I was busy getting back out of defensive mode so didn't realize who it was right away. Then he told his daughters that "this man used to ride across Grampa's bridge every day," and it clicked--it was George Cronen, son of Chips Cronen, who had been killed on the Second Street Bridge in July of 2007. George and I have talked several times, in person and via forums here and there, and I felt bad for not realizing just who it was at first.

George reported to me that he'd seen me as he was going the opposite way out by the Jefferson Freeway, and had to turn around and say, "hello." My headlight was easy for him to spot, and seeing my other lights convinced him of who it was (the Ryan does sort of sit out in a crowd...). We had a laugh, and the light changed so it was time to get on with my trip home.

auto-centric concerns

One way I can tell that utility cycling is still too far outside the norm is that folks, even experienced cyclists who know me fairly well, will offer--insistently at times--to give me a ride in their cars if it's rainy and/or dark when I'm going home.

It gets to be mildly offensive at times. I mean, really! Offering me a ride home, as if the three or four or ten or fifteen miles is a huge thing better done by car than by bike. To some degree, I can excuse one offer as being an attempt at politeness. By the time the same person offers three or four times in one event, especially if it's someone who is capable of riding thirty or fifty miles without a whole lot of preparation, and who knows I'm just as capable, it's really baffling, and not a little annoying.

Unlike the bike I use for club rides (which I've not ridden in over two months as I type this--all club riding has been done with Jenn on Bill and Kate's tandem), my commuting rigs are both well-lit and well-marked. I have reflectors facing most directions, and wear a jacket of Illuminite if it's cool enough that I can tolerate the extra layer (I have a couple of reflective vests for warmer-weather use). The Raleigh has a SOTA-circa 1995 headlight set mounted, in addition to the Planet Bike front flasher and rear SuperFlash. I kept a second LED flasher on that bike until recently, but it died of old age and over-use. I wasn't and am not too worried about replacing it, as that bike usually pulls the trailer which blocks the view of the flasher and has two flashers of its own on it. The Vanguard has two SuperFlash lights on the back, plus two reflectors that are my home-made four-inch-square things. I have recently added a CygoLite DualCross Pro NiMH LED headlight to the SOTA-circa 2000 VistaLite Nightstick Code 15 set (that has had the 5-watt bulb replaced with a 10-watt one), along with the Planet Bike 1/4watt flasher. Anyone who cannot see either of my commuting rigs when I'm on the road is either not looking or cannot see well enough to drive legally.

I'm also an experienced utility cyclist, and while some motorists get through my safety perimiter, I usually know where they are ahead of time. I ride as if they won't see me as much as I can, so that when they don't, I'm not in such a precarious position.

I suppose it falls into the realm of perception of relative safety. Folks are taught that cycling is a dangerous activity--witness how we are always told to wear our helmets--when it's typically safer than many other common pursuits, like driving a car. The perceived safety margin due to the cage structure of a car is an illusion--far more folks are injured in car crashes than in bicycle wrecks. Mixed modalities on one road is not the big problem, either--I'm visible enough that motorists, most of whom would rather NOT hit me, can see me easily from a fair distance.

The things that scare or spook me when I'm riding are the same things that do so when I'm in a car--things like the clown who passed me on Westport Road last night, well after sundown, in a light rain shower, driving a dark-colored car with no lights illuminated at all. The only way opposing traffic would know he was there was that he had the sense to use his turn signal for his left turn off Westport Road. If that driver is so oblivious that he's doing without his headlights at that time of day, I wonder about his ability to pay attention to his surroundings enough to be a safe driver.

Oh well. At least he wasn't driving a school bus...I got passed by one of those this morning, and it merited a call to the driver supervisor at the bus compound. When the driver passed me, two drivers coming the other way had to divert from their travel paths to avoid colliding with the bus.

I'm used to folks crossing a double-yellow line to pass me--it happens many times each trip to work or home. I often see folks who have to move to the right to keep from hitting the car that's passing me illegally, attesting to the idiocy of the drivers' choices. When it's a school bus, though, I expect a bit higher level of safety-consciousness, as I told the supervisor this morning when I called to complain about it. I'm not bashful about calling companies if their vehicles pass me illegaly or in an unsafe manner, either (although I make a point of calling while standing still in a parking space or other site out of the roadway).

More training for that driver!

Now USA Today is in on the BS...and a rant about car costs

In addition to local rants, we now have a national columnist with USA Today, part of the (Gag)net, er Gannet corporate ruination of the print media, asking if "motorists (have) let bicycle 'rights' go too far." The columnist presents distorted opinions of two bicycle-car crashes as if they are factual, then goes on to rail against the cyclists for being "in the way" or being at primary fault. One case was of a woman who hit a cyclist who was taking the whole lane, and who the driver simply did not see (right in front of you? You didn't see her? Where was your attention?). The other was the fairly infamous case of a doctor who angrily passed three cyclists near Los Angeles, then allegedly swerved in front of them and hit his brakes hard enough to force the cyclists to rear-end his car. Not surprisingly, many people posting on the related forum cite the analogy of blaming a rape victim for dressing provocatively. Read the column, and see what you think. If you feel compelled to respond to USA Today telling them that their columnist is a twit, feel free.

Anti-cyclists often say things along the lines of "bike riders don't pay their way to use public roads." They seem to think that roads are paid for purely as a function of fuel taxes and vehicle taxes. Aside from the inanity in their failure to recognize that none of the tax revenue dollars are so discretely channeled, their claim is specious on many other grounds.

There is much documentation on how much the car-centric facet of our society costs our society--both in real dollars and in terms of lost opportunity/productivity and damage to our environment. Kirk puts some numbers out in a recent post on how society is subsidizing auto use. A couple data points in particular jumped out at me: we have three parking places for every single car in use, and over 90% of those are "free" to the user. I don't know whether this number includes the spot where the car is kept when the owner is sleeping--if so, it would be FOUR parking slots per car--but that we as a society feel it necessary to devote so much real estate to empty parking spaces seems pretty insane to me. As Kirk points out, the cost of creating and maintaining those parking spaces is paid by all of us, in higher retail prices and higher taxes. This says nothing about the ecological impact of all that asphalt (more on this in a moment).

Several years ago, I was working for a company that sold small storage buildings. Part of my job there was to secure building permits for those buildings that required them--anything with a one-hundred square feet or larger area, and anything on commercially-zoned property. In the course of doing that part of my job, I learned a bit about parking lot size rules. I've forgotten the details, but a business is required to have adequate parking for its clientele unless certain other factors are in play--a coffee shop that is a couple blocks from Kirk's home is allowed to use on-street parking shared with several other businesses in that block of Frankfort Avenue, for example, because most of those buildings were already there before the coffee shop opened. Another location of that coffee shop company a mile or so away (and right around the corner from where I live) must have at least so-many spots, because there is room for that many spots. They cannot enlarge the building if their business grows to need the room inside, as it would require them to sacrifice parking spaces to do so.

Granted, there are a few times a day that the parking lot is full--those slots are pretty important to the business. However, if one considers a parking lot like that at, say, Oxmoor Center, where there are slots that are filled perhaps once or twice a year, the picture changes a bit. The lot at Oxmoor covers acres and acres--I am not good at counting acreage, so I'd be hard pressed to estimate how many acres of asphalt is there, but it's probably over forty (George Rogers Clark Park, on Poplar Level Road across from Audobon Hospital, is roughly forty acres in size, and Oxmoor is larger). That's a lot of asphalt, and with all that pavement, rainwater control is a big issue. None of that ground under the asphalt gets a chance to help control run-off. All the water goes directly into Beargrass Creek, which runs UNDER the south wing of Oxmoor.

And Oxmoor is not the largest sprawl of open parking lot in our town. There is as much, if not more, parking at a popular mega-church a few miles east of there. Since it's a church, the community doesn't even get tax revenue on the property (and I could go on a long separate rant about that church's impact on the local ecosystem, with its many massive traffic snarls per week of people driving cars to the see-and-be-seen church services).

When a road is repaved, I always have mixed emotions about it. Like most road users, I certainly enjoy a smoother road surface and the resulting comfort and safety benefits. I can't help but think about the ecological impact, though. That's a lot of oil holding that aggregate together, and where does it go as the roadway wears to the point of needing to be repaved? When road crews grind old ashpalt away before repaving, they do so to re-use the aggregate. I'm fine with that, to a point--re-use of gravel means less quarry digging, reducing somewhat the impact on the ecosystems AND is less expensive for those funding the road repairs (you and me). The rough surface left between the grinding process and the repavement work is a temporary inconvenience, for the most part, although it does require a bit more vigilance when riding a bike on it. To make that reclaimed aggregate into asphalt, though, they have to add oil. That's a LOT of oil. Again, where does that oil go as the asphalt wears?

I mentioned that a parking lot creates problems in terms of water run-off. If there is an acre of asphalt parking lot, it's reasonable to assume that a good portion of the ground under that lot gets VERY little water in it. Sure, the water table rises from time to time (witness floods), but there remains a section in the middle of that acre that doesn't get much chance to absorb, even for a little while, its share of that water. The water goes into our storm sewer system until that system is over-loaded. A couple months ago, much of Louisville got to see first hand how bad things get when a storm sewer is forced to operate far beyond capacity.

Concrete lots are not much better than asphalt. While there is not as much oil in concrete, there is the silica dust of concrete production.

In both cases, there is the cost--financial and ecological--of moving the materials from where they are produced to where they are used. Those are big, heavy trucks, and the roads have to be built to withstand the abuse from those vehicles. Those trucks take a fair bit of fuel, oil, and other resources to operate. They drip oil (as do most vehicles to some degree or another).

Rain, rain, go away--AGAIN

Then again, I'm kind of glad I drove this morning. I really dislike riding in the rain, and it rained hard while I was on my way to work (it isn't like we really need more rain right now). I would have arrived looking like a drowned rat, and we really don't have an ideal place to "freshen up" at the store (unlike Kirk, who has a gym and shower facilities at the Humana Building he can use).

Speaking of Kirk, his entry for today mentions "invisible cyclists." Not surprisingly, I recognize a few of the names in his list and *woah!* How'd MY name get in there?

Yeah, I'm car-lite, not car-free, but Kirk and I have known each other for some years through cycling-related social circles. He's a good guy, and I'm enjoying reading his tales of being car-free.

Ceej editor receives more screed

There is a letter to the editor of the Ceej today, blasting bicyclists as mere hobbyists with no rights to the roads (some idiotic rant about taxation being required for road use). Its titled, "Tax this hobby." A friend of mine has already posted a few comments in rebuttal, but I expect there will be numerous counter-claims by anti-cycling lemmings of the petro-collapse.

On top of that, it's raining as I type this, and I haven't ever liked riding in the rain. I don't have the right rain gear for the bike I ride to work (I have some that is so-so for use with the Raleigh, but it does NOT work on the Vanguard). I'll probably end up driving to work today, which is less than optimal for me, as the weather in expected to improve after the morning drive time and I could ride home happily.

I may ride anyway, just to be contrary.

More light, please!

As I've noted, my current commute includes a stretch of road that is quite dark at night. I've been on dark country roads at night--I used to commute on Aiken Road going east from Middletown to near the Shelby County line, and with SOTA 1995 headlights (Vista Light VL-430, two lamps at 6VDC/10 watts with 4- or 5 AH lead-acid rechargeable battery), and was more-or-less happy with the light output (one almost cannot have too much light for night cycling). The newer Vista Light NiMH NightStick set (bought circa 2000), originally a five and a ten-watt light, but eventually upgraded to have two ten-watt lights, is no better, albeit lighter in weight.

When I was in my teens, I discovered car headlights made by a French firm, Cibie (said, SI-bee-a, I think). By my early twenties, I had installed 85-watt low beams and four (yes, 4) 100-watt high beam headlights in my '72 Cutlass. I could see two full seconds at 70 mph without blinding oncoming traffic (the lenses were that good) on low beam, and could tell where there was a reflective license plate more than a mile away on high beam. I miss those lights.

In other words, I like to see what I'm doing when I'm operating a vehicle. Call me crazy, but, well...

I decided a couple weeks ago that my weak, lame, twenty watts of halogen light was not enough, so I bought a new handlebar-mounted headlight: a CygoLight Dual Cross Pro model, found on sale at one of the bike shop's suppliers. This is a $250 light, and while perhaps not state of the art (SOTA), it's far better than what I've had for the last several years. I opted for the NiMH version, as it's a) cheaper and b) offers more run time. I suppose the LiIon version is probably lighter, but since the bike weighed over thirty pounds BEFORE I mounted the fenders, rack, bottle cages, kickstand, panniers, rack trunk, and lights, a couple ounces of battery weight won't be a big deal.

I've had the lights on for one trip home so far. My first impression was that I was going to have to rework the mounting system. This was not the fault of the light set--the light bar on my Vanguard is a Chromium-plated section of steel handlebar, cribbed from some wrecked junker bike over a dozen years ago. The plating is thick, chip-resistant, and SLICK. Most bar-mounted lights I've had would pitch over with little provocation, and an end-heavy light like the Dual Cross re-aimed itself by thirty or forty degrees going over a rail road crossing.

Once home that night, I rummaged around in my toy, er, tool box for solutions, and found that I had some double-stick black stuff in a thickness that seemed appropriate. I cut a piece of it to roughly the length equal to the circumference of the bar stock, applied it, and re-attached the light. I took it out on a short test hop in the 'hood, and was happy with my results. I will see how things go on the homeward trip Thursday--I have a rail crossing to navigate early in the route (Pewee Valley), and a couple rough spots closer to home (Westport Road under I-264) that will test my reworked mount thouroughly.

As for brightness, though...WOW. I've had Quartz Iodine car headlights long before they were the norm--the new stuff isn't quite as good as the lights in my old Cutlass, frankly, even some of the radically high-output stuff I see on upper-tier imports is pale by comparison (but, then, I DID have 400 watts of high beam available--and could scorch paper at a foot from the headlight. I'm talking bordering on airplane lights). Even with that benchmark, these things are bright for road use.

I have noticed that my halogen lamps get "washed out" by other road users at times--usually when I most need their illumination to get around pot holes in the road, of course. I haven't yet been in similar circumstances with these lights, so I'm curious about how they'll fare. Otherwise, I'm quite happy with the amount of light and the beam pattern given by this set. I'm sure there are better options--more lumens, lighter weight, easier to attach battery, whatever, but these will do well for me.

I mentioned to Jenn that I want her to have more light for her night riding, especially with Westport Road so fouled up with construction for the coming year. We'll have to rearrange some of the stuff on her handlebar to make room for this light, but it would be worth it. I have some other upgrades I want to make to her lighting, anyway, as I think we could improve on how easy it would be to see her from behind and from the sides. She leaves the house before I do, and while she could ride a mile or so and catch the bus, it's almost quicker for her to ride straight to work instead (it's something like six miles each way), so it makes sense to have her lights do as well as mine.

Now to pay for this stuff...

Hauling the load

Wow--three posts in one day!

Well, one of the first two posts came to me while posting the other one, and the topic was different enough that it warranted its own post.

I took the Raleigh out for some errand-running today. First trip went east, to Westport Village, more specifically the Trail Store. I was looking to see what they had in the way of headgear, as suggested to myself in my post on seasonal milestones. I was looking at all sorts of things while there--it's a cool store, after all.

On the way home, I stopped for a few odds and ends at the grocery store. Not a big load for the trailer--just one cloth bag full.

Once home, I put away the groceries, then gathered the jugs we use to buy bulk cat litter for a trip to Feeders Supply on Baxter Avenue. The Feeders closest to me, in Shelbyville Road Plaza, doesn't stock cat litter for bulk sales, sadly--it's less than two miles away and it's a flat ride. The Baxter Avenue location is about five miles away, and the haul home is uphill for a good part of the way.

On the way to Feeders, I was pedaling along Frankfort Avenue near the Water Company's site, and got to enjoy seeing a hawk swoop from the trees across the railroad tracks to a tree along Frankfort Avenue. I called out, "Aren't YOU a pretty bird!" which apparently wasn't the right thing to say, as the hawk then flew back across the railroad tracks and out of my sight. It was a gorgeous and somewhat uncommon site for me along that stretch of road, and one I would have missed had I been driving a car.

I'd lost track of the last time I got cat litter, but if memory serves, I only bought two or three jugs of it at the time--probably forty pounds or so. This time, I had our largest jug, two of the three mid-sized jugs, and an empty Perpetuem (one of my drink mixes for longer rides) jug. When we rang up the bill, I was hauling eighty-three pounds of cat litter home in my little trailer.

Eighty-three pounds is not that much in the overall scheme of things. I weigh a bit less than three times that. I weighed more than twice that when I was a senior in high school. There are bike trailers that are rated for several times that weight, too.

But, I am using a kid trailer rated for one hundred pounds, and pulling it with a three speed, not a mountain bike. It's a little bit different.

The trip home was a good hill workout.