Short break

I hadn't intended to take time off, but between moving and not having active internet service at the new house I haven't been able to write. I'm going to yield to the inevitable and take a short vacation through next weekend, when my internet will be hooked up.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe New Year's.

Random bike-spotting (4 in a series)

Today's "bikes in life" comes from a while back. It actually has me a little puzzled, but more on that in a minute:

"Marriage is a wonderful invention; but, then again, so is a bicycle repair kit."

I've seen that quote attributed to two different people. One, the link above, is Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales. The other is comedian Billy Connolly. My confusion here is over the age of the bicycle (~1816) and the writing of the Canterbury Tales (~1380-1400). I'll freely admit I have only read sections of the Tales, in senior English in high school, so I have no idea what context the quote is in, or if it is a modernized translation. (My reference for citing it here is the great Short Attention Span Philosopher podcast from Roy Trumbull, followed up by some Googling). Whoever said it, it qualifies as a bike reference in a non-bike setting.

A little help?

I have written about Elden "Fatty" Nelsen before. First off, I identify (far too much) with someone who goes by "The Fat Cyclist" and secondly I really respect what he's doing. Elden's blog is largely about his wife's fight against breast cancer, which isn't going so well. He has been a long-time supporter of the LiveStrong foundation, resulting in Lance giving Fatty's wife a shout out. This year he decided to put together a grand scheme to have the largest team ever pulled together for the LiveStrong Challenge and raise more money than any team had before. (For the details from the horse's mouth, go here.)

I've decided to jump in, and have signed up for the San Jose ride. If you are willing to sponsor me, please go here and make a pledge. I think it's a great cause and will be using this as incentive to get myself in shape to do a metric century (100 km) ride. If you have questions, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Joel

Update: 12/16/08 7:00AM

One thing I forgot last night - If you are interested there are a number of other riders who are raffling off prizes for people who donate. I'm not able to do that, but Fatty is (see the link to his site above) and as I come across others I'll post them.

New gear

Sometime in the next few days I'll be moving to a new house. My new place is on the west side of the hills, which means I'll be in a better place to ride into work. Instead of being about 30 miles away and on the wrong side of the Berkeley Hills I'll only be about 10 miles away on mostly flat roads. Additionally, there is a BART station about halfway between my house and the office which has a full service bike parking facility.

Since I'll be riding farther I won't be doing it on the upright, which means I won't be wearing my work clothes. To make transporting my duds a little easier I ordered the garment bag fromTwoWheel Gear. The short version is that the bag is a full length garment bag which hooks to bike racks like normal panniers. I don't need to carry much other than some papers with me, and the bag has plenty of pockets for various things.

In the upper picture you can see the non drive-side of the bag, which has most of the external zipped pockets on it. The bag also has a zipped pocket on the top in the section that sits on top of the rack. The bag has two types of handles with shorter carry handles as well as an adjustable shoulder strap. Also, clearly visible in the pic are the day/night-glo strips on the rear of the bag. The reflectiveness of the strips is more evident in the lower pic. Also visible there are the angled hooks for attaching to the bike rack.

I just got the bag and haven't been able to test it yet, but once I have I'll write it up.

Another bike/camera post

Rather than repeat the post, I direct you here to a post from mid November on Bike Hugger. The post is about a nifty little rig the author saw in Japan, where a cyclist had mounted a small camcorder (looks a little like a Flip but isn't) to the front axle on his bike. 

With the right angle adjustment and a sufficient record-time on the camera this could be a really cool way to record a tour. It would require either a remote on/off (like I discussed when I posted about mounting a still camera to the racks on my Trucker) to allow easy recording of fun stuff (crazy descents, great views and the like) or an amazing amount of time and patience allowing the rider to flip through a day's worth of riding to find the segments worth keeping.

Either way, I've been thinking that a camcorder like the Flip might be a nice addition to documenting a tour. Hopefully I'll be in the shape to start some S24O tours early in the new year and wills tart playing with some of the ideas I have.

Random bike-spotting (3 in a series)

Today's "bikes in life" might be a little bit of a stretch, but I think it's worth a mention anyway.

REI is my toystore. I spend too much time and too much money there. When I was looking at getting into touring I checked out some of the Novara bikes for the OTS option before finding the LHT frame I wanted. Now REI is taking their support of bike commuting from being a supplier of cool toys to something more.

Recently REI launched "Bike Your Drive", a website loaded with utility/commuter information including:

• Cycling myths exposed - what it sounds like
• An interactive parts guide
• How-to videos
• and of course - links to gear and classes available at your local REI

The site is also tied into the Green Bike Project which is a project aimed at getting more people to bike commute by offering commuter-equipped bikes for people who pledge to shift 60% of their commutes to cycling.

Like I said - the REI site is on the edge of non-cycling specific. In this case I chose to view it as a major company using its clout to encourage more people to ride.

More lighting, again

I've always been a bit of a gear snob when it comes to cycling, preferring to buy cool toys rather than DIY. Specifically, I've been of the "go big" school of lighting and have felt that the multi-tool option of using flashlights attached to the bike instead of a headlight was gauche. I'm beginning to change my mind, especially as more and more high quality, low cost flashlights come on the market.

The other night I was watching TV with my dad and saw a Home Depot ad for two sets of LED flashlights. I have no idea how bright these are (either set), but if they're any good they can at least be used as "to be seen" lights. A little work with some red plastic and you've got taillights to go with the headlights too, since the one set is 5 of the things.

Another interesting option for visibility was recently featured on Urban Velo - reflective lanyards. The post is about a company (Scott's Knots) that makes to-order lanyards, some of which are made from reflective cording. The site actually has a section specifically for bicycle use, which actually qualifies them for inclusion in the bike-spotting series, where they feature seat danglers and side markers (for handlebars). Reflectors are a secondary "look at me" (see Sheldon on the subject) and I put these in the same category as reflective tape - a great, passive way to draw extra attention to your ride at night while also adding some style.

Can't we all get along?

A little while back I griped about the animosity directed from some bike activists towards the general driving public. Today I have a similar gripe, this time about the conflicts between mountain bikers and hikers over access to parks.

This gripe was kicked-off by this article from BRAIN (Bike Retailers And Industry News) on proposed changes to national park rules. Currently, there are few national parks that MTB riders can access, and the new rules would essentially reclassify MTBs (all cyclists actually) like other non-motorized trail users, like horse-back riders. The International Mountain Biking Association has been advocating for this rule change since 1992. The proposal drew a rapid response from the American Hiking Society, which sent an alert citing specific concerns about the rule change: namely that it would go into effect without appropriate environmental impact and public comment, and that the new rules would negatively impact Wilderness designations.

I'm not going to debate one side or the other. Frankly, I haven't studied the issue well enough to form an opinion on it. Instead, my issue is with the fact that there is an issue. What I mean is that these are two groups that advocate for expanded outdoor/wilderness activities and instead of combining efforts to make sure that their respective constituencies are getting the most out of membership they're butting heads. I fall into both camps, although not a member of either group, by being a hiker/backpacker and avid cyclist (and aspiring MTBer). I would love to know that I could take my bike to national parks that lend themselves to trail riding (my one visit to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park left me dreaming of trail riding through it) and I doubt I'm alone.

I hope that a reasonable compromise can be worked out and that the two advocates can somehow find the common ground in the middle, the place where they are both working for increased access to appropriate backcountry areas rather than fighting over who should be banned from where.

Random bike-spotting (2 in a series)

Like I said last time, I will be filling this series with random places I see references to bikes in the real world (read: anything not related to cycling pros, hipsters, or other aspects of bike culture.) Today: The Economist.

First, About the Economist for those who aren't familiar:

Established in 1843 to campaign on one of the great political issues of the day, The Economist remains, in the second half of its second century, true to the principles of its founder. James Wilson, a hat maker from the small Scottish town of Hawick, believed in free trade, internationalism and minimum interference by government, especially in the affairs of the market. Though the protectionist Corn Laws which inspired Wilson to start The Economist were repealed in 1846, the newspaper has lived on, never abandoning its commitment to the classical 19th-century Liberal ideas of its founder.

"Classical Liberal", for those unfamiliar with the term, is similar in many ways to Libertarianism, and I don't want to get diverted into an economic/political argument about differences between the two. Suffice to say, The Economist is not the sort of place that biking would be covered for the sake of "being green".

The point of that was to bring you this:

PEDALLING to work each day, I spend most of the journey looking out for London’s deadly, articulated “bendy buses”. The 60-foot beasts can happily scissor a cyclist while turning, so as I speed along High Holborn I have never given much of a second glance to the buildings that whizz past on each side. (Emphasis from the original, all articles in The Economist start with the first word capitalized).

This came from an article entitled "MI6's secret tunnels: A deep, dark secret", an article in the Correspondent's Diary. The article itself is about a bunker complex in London, dug during the German bombing of WWII as an air-raid shelter for 8,000. The article covers the history of the complex, but that's not what I am interested in. 

My interest was the nonchalant way the author mentions not once, but twice, cycling to work. The riding is only mentioned as a lead-in to the story which could have been done as simply by the author talking about walking down the same street. But because the author (all Economist articles are presented without an author credit, so I can't say he or she) rides to work the bike was used.

An excellent example of real-life cycling drifting into the mainstream.

Grumble...

There is a gremlin haunting my commuter bike, the Schwinn. I've already written on my problems with the rear tire, and it has once again attacked me. This time I know it was a gremlin.

I rode Monday and Tuesday of last week because my truck was in the shop. Tuesday afternoon I got off BART a few stops early to pick up the truck, then drove to the Concord station to pick up the bike. Both days the ride was fine. When I got to BART the bike was fine. When I unloaded the bike from the truck at my house the back tire was soft, and by Wednesday evening it was flat.

I'm taking the lazy way out, and trying the "pretend there's no problem" option of just pumping the tire back up without actually doing anything. My hope is that there was something in the way I loaded the bike into the truck that caused the tire to flat, but I'm not expecting to get that lucky. Thankfully work takes me out of town on Monday so I couldn't ride anyway and that will give me Monday afternoon to take it apart and try to find the problem...