One of the enjoyable spots to hang out on the web (when you aren’t drooling over the Current Classics, Singlespeed, Working Bike or Cyclocross Galleries…) is over at BicycleFixation.com. Rick and Gina have pulled together a nice collection of stories and essays, photos and more. It’s a great honor to be able to point folks over there for what seems to be a pretty cool photo contest. So, without further ado - hot off the mojo wire from RickRise:
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Riding a bicycle for transportation inevitably means having to park
your bike while you shop, dine, visit, work, or play, and in this car-
addled world, especially in the US, that often means a parking meter,
signpost, fence, or tree serves as your parking structure.

More and more cities and businesses worldwide, however, are making an
effort to accommodate those of us who travel using the world’s most
efficient machine, and some of the resulting facilities are
wonderful…while many are not.

In order to explore what’s out there for keeping our beloved velos
safe while they await our return, we have decided to hold the Bicycle
Fixation Great Bike Rack Contest. We are asking you to go out into
your city and photograph what you think is the finest bike parking
rack you can find (or the worst!) These must be intentional bike
racks, installed specifically for bicycle parking.

If you think you’ve seen the best (or worst) in bike rack design and
placement, read through the details below, take your picture, and
follow the submission directions at the URL below. Pictures will be
judged by a panel of experts in urban design, architecture, and
bicycle transportation, and by popular vote of our readership, and
three winners will be rewarded with Bicycle Fixation products!

http://www.bicyclefixation.com/bikerackcontest07.html
http://tinyurl.com/2nteaj
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–
Richard Risemberg
Bicycle Fixation
http://www.bicyclefixation.com

The nice thing about this route was that - like last year's Fairfax Cross Race - it's just too danged close to home to ignore. I opted for the "Traditional" 100 Miler. It covers some parts of southwestern Sonoma county that I haven't ridden in a long time. Once upon a time, when we lived out of Petaluma near some llama farms, those were the roads that I finally ventured out to when returning to cycling. If you aren't familiar with them, there are a wide number of connections which criss-cross the agricultural stretches between the Highway 101 corridor and the coast.  Sadly, civilization continues to backfill and encroach upon them, but when you get out there, you realize just how much area still doesn't have a trendy name and only minorly varying home designs.  Thank goodness.  But, I digress.

My hope was to cover the distance without resorting to using the freewheel side of the Quickbeam.  I wasn't trying for some big manly-man kinda thing, It actually has more to do with perspective and timing: flipping the flop to get a coastable gear takes a couple of minutes. But, sometimes walking for 20 or 30 steps can let the drums stop beating in my ears and recharge me enought to take another shot at pedaling.  Since walking for that distance only takes about a minute, the effect can be equivilent to gear-changing. On a long, steady uphill, especially something followed by a tricky downhill that requires a bit of pedal-leveling and coastable techniques, grabbing the freewheel is a good thing. But for short, sharp climbs, sometimes a bit o' the hoof is in order.  Besides, sometimes I even suprise myself with what I can climb when fixed.

Tags: brevet, century, cycling, rides
Current Mood: accomplished

I know this feeling very well.  It slides into my brain like a cat entering a new room. Usually, it comes in about a week before a serious ride, but given how silently it glides in, how unobtrusively it tickles at my attention, it could have been quietly sitting next to me for several days, and I wouldn't have noticed it. It's a quiet little neurosis, one that wants me to fret endlessly about exquisitely small details, when the time for that has long passed. It is the Need To Tweak.

Simply put, it is the urgent desire to change something fundamental in the days (or hours) before an important ride.  The roots grow from several places - the worry that you haven't done enough riding, or the right kind of riding, or even that you may have done a little too much riding. You start looking at your bicycle and thinking, "these wheels turn a bit rough", "those pedals feel just a little funny..." or "that saddle seems a bit heavy for all this climbing..."

If you succumb to this evil guidance and remain lucky, you dig into a small repair - a hub overhaul or a reinstallation of the bottom bracket.  You don't break anything and manage to get everything back in place without finding something else to tangent onto, overtorque and snap off.  In the wee hours before the ride.  When every bike shop is closed and you have no backup bits to replace it with. Because the only feeling worse than leaning over your bike with part of a bolt inside a nut in the wrench in your hand is that horrid feeling of torquing down on something you suddenly realize was crossthreaded because you shouldn't be working on your damned bike at 1 am the night before a big ride.

"Upgrades" are even more dangerous tricks, normally targeted at contact points. Your cleats may be slightly loose in the pedals, your saddle may creak just a hair, your bars may not be exactly what you want.  But, change any of them before a big ride and you'll cause muscles and connective tissues to come awake like a collicky two year old, coming down from a bad sugar jag because you left a plate of cookies within reach. As for the dermal layer - let's just say it gets ugly, real fast.

So, I've got a rule: Nothing gets changed in the week before a big ride.

Unless it utterly snaps off, it can only be cleaned and lubed before the event. Anything that is new is unproven - a variable which can fail completely in ways you haven't considered. The time to change pedals and cleats was 5 or 6 weeks earlier, before you put the finishing touches on the repetitive leg motions which took into consideration the minor imperfections of the systems.  The saddle? I don't care if I've worn through the thing - it won't be modified until afterwards.

But, as I said earlier, it's here in the room with me now. Sitting there purring a bit, this time focusing mostly on the pedals, how they're a little worn on the outside and how the cleats are grooved more deeply than I'd noticed before. I mean, I've got newer pedals on the singlespeed, and I won't be using the ones that came off the cross bike anytime soon. Maybe just the cleats - crikey - what would happen if one of them broke? I should replace the cleats - that can't make that big a difference...

...breathe.

Repeat the Rule.

Tags: bike tech, cycling
Current Mood: amused

Note - I had posted this over on my cyclofiend.com blog, but wanted to start being a bit more regular over on LJ, so here it is again:

So, yesterday, a bunch of the folks at work are all a-flutter about the Imus thing*. Someone ropes me into the discussion and I say something like, “…he’s just the current Howard Beale.” and return to my task, confident that my stunning insight will be met with some knowing chuckles and even moderate hilarity.

Instead,  the silence is instant and pervasive. Never a good result for a quick & sideways attempt at group humor.

I turn around again and say, “Howard Beale - the newscaster in Network…” 

More blank stares. I scan the faces present.  The one guy whom I know knows this is not present.

“Faye Dunaway, William Holden…Peter Finch plays Howard Beale.  C’mon!  Network! Haven’t any of you seen Network?”  I punch it up on imdb.com for them, and when I repeat the “…I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” line, there is a flicker of recognition, though it is clear most of them really didn’t know where it came from. I look at the year it came out and realize that at least two of the people in the room had not even been born in 1976. There are some muffled “hmmm’s” and a couple of, “oh, yeah, I’ve heard of that’s”, but no one in the room had actually seen the movie.

If you haven’t, you should. Get it to the top of your Netflix queue, or find a DVD copy, or get your local non-cineplex movie house to show it. Really. It’s spot-on satire for much of what goes on today.

And as long as I’m on a rant, get your hands on a copy of “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television” by Gerry Mander and read that as well. I’m certainly not television-free myself (I mean Paris-Roubaix is on this Sunday…).  But, it’s important to try to understand the media which engulfs our society.

*and I’m in no way trying to diminish his actions. He should lose his job. But, he won’t, at least not yet - see Network.

Tags: history, movies
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Translator - "Everywhere I'm Not"