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.