How about no helmet?

I just got back from a trip down South which gave me an opportunity to observe biking culture in that part of the country. Despite the horrendous heat in places like Texas I saw a few bikers out there, some hitting it hard, others just out for a ride, and one or two using the bike for transportation. I was a bike jealous seeing people out since I did not bring a bike along. I particularly enjoyed seeing this guy who was riding on a steamy day in Louisiana.

I liked the combination of safety green shirt and bright orange hat but no helmet. Not sure that a helmet would help much at 60 MPH but I usually opt for the brain bucket. By the way, that is sugar cane growing in the background so you can tell I didn't fake this picture here in MN.

A friend recommended this curious video about a helmet-less bike helmet. You can see a video here. They claim this is just as safe as a helmet and the concept is pretty innovative, even it if looks wacky in operation.

Bike touring, RAGBRAI style

I just returned from riding the last two days of RAGBRAI in Iowa. For those of you not familiar, this is the grandaddy of long distance but casual bike rides. In fact, this year was the 40th anniversary of the event and with almost 15,000 riders it has been an amazing success. The route varies year to year but the idea is it goes from the Missouri to the Mississippi, border to border. It takes a week and always occurs in the hottest part of the summer. I got lucky this year since earlier in the week, when I was not riding, temperatures reached into the 100s with high humidity. Imagine thousands of bikers camping in city parks and the like after riding 70 miles in 104 degrees. Not a pretty picture (or odor).

This year I invited our friend Leo from Chile to come along. Leo had been visiting for a wedding and was staying with us for several days. He is usually game to try anything once so I got the winter bike set up for him and we spent some time in Iowa. My wife came up with the great idea to put this little sign on the back of the bike that said Chile.

Since it is a RAGBRAI custom for the locals to shout out and ask where you are from, this fit in perfectly. Leo met more people in 2 days than many meet in years on the ride. 

The first day was a challenge since I brought 'the train' for the kids. Since I like to involve the kids in biking when I can I end up pulling a 5-wheel monster that consists of my bike, a third wheel trailing bike, and a Burley bike trailer.

The six year old's pedaling does help a bit but the Burley more than makes up for it by acting as a parachute. At one point we turned north into a gusty NW wind and I was struggling. It is a bad sign when you are wondering at what speed you will need to put a foot down so you don't tip over! So, I was ready for a break by the next town and as we rolled in, we passed a 'Santa' who had apparently been enjoying some early holiday cheer. We waved and said hi but it took him a few seconds to remember how Santa is supposed to act. He eventually asked if my kids had been good and did manage to avoid tipping out of his lawn chair. Not sure if this was a suit he won in a bet or if he really does this around the holidays.  I was just relieved to not have to explain what was wrong with Santa.

This was kind of a typical RAGBRAI moment. You roast in the heat, roll through some glorious countryside, eat great pie and drink some cheap beer. There are ups and downs but there is often something just around the corner that will amuse, entertain, and, occasionally, enlighten.

One way to beat the heat

I can always tell when I am getting close to home on the evening commute since I start seeing the piles of free stuff people set out. You could call this a type of recycling or just pure laziness on the part of St Paulites who just can't bother to set up a garage sale (or have never heard of Craigslist). Anyway, sometimes you can find some pretty good stuff. I once got a full size ping pong table, including rackets, in one of these alley finds.

It has been hot here lately and I stopped by one house with a sizable pile of treasures and found this small clip-on desk fan. My initial purpose for grabbing this was to set it up at my desk at work both for cooling me down and helping air out the bike gear. Of course once I discovered this clip fit on the handle bars I got a kick out of mounting it on the front of the bike.

The obvious benefit is I always have a breeze to keep me cool even at those intersections with long red lights...

Just to set some context, you can see the temp on the bike computer at the far left of the display. It is tiny but this is one of the only times I recall seeing the readout go to three digits at 102. We will have a winter day when we drop to -20 which makes for a pretty impressive range. But for now, I am finding ways to manage in the heat.

That's what I call utility biking!

I was recently invited to a bachelor party for a friend who has a wedding coming up this July. Just to set some context, this is a party at my friend's house, it is on a Monday night, and the bride's father is invited. I don't think there will be a knitting contest but clearly this is not at the same level as a trip to Vegas.

Since this friend lives about 2 miles from downtown Minneapolis, where I work, I decided to bike to the party after work. The event is a BYOBBQ so I had to pack some food to grill and beverages. Fortunately, I have an old commuting pannier that did the trick.

I have the food supplies ready to go. This is 1 1/2 pounds of jalapeno peppers, 1 pound of beer brats, buns for said brats, and 3 cans of Great River beer.

What made this arrangement work was the soft-sided cooler that I could stuff into the pannier. I added a few ice packs for the trip to work, zipped it up, and stuffed it into the pannier. I didn't try to cool the beer instead waiting until I could put it in the fridge.

This is my version of a bike mullet: business on the left (work clothes), party on the right. It was a nice change to ride with a balanced load. I don't notice the imbalance riding with one pannier until I change the load and the second bag almost always makes it easier to ride.

The party was good: we gave the groom a good sendoff and there were no arrests or injuries. It was also another chance to prove that a bike is a great vehicle for everyday life and even special events.

Hot storms in the summer time

It has been cooking in Minnesota lately, and I don't mean on the grill. The temperatures have been warm and the air really humid. I need to set some context before I state the actual temperature, however. Minnesotans are known to put on shorts when the temps hit 50F (not pretty, by the way) and start to complain at around 85. We are just not used to hot weather. Still, we have been pushing the upper 90s and may even go over 100 tomorrow. This means the morning bike commute will leave your author a sweaty mess by the time he gets to work.

This morning, there was some additional interest on the bike trail: tree damage from a strong cell of thunderstorms that moved through this morning.

Most of the damage was to small branches. There were a couple of large branches torn down and one or two whole trees. The storm wasn't exceptionally strong so I assume these had weak spots in the wood.

This one was laying across the bike trail on the West River Parkway along the Mississippi. I had a brief bit of panic when I realized the trail was completely covered and I didn't have both hands on the handlebars while I tucked the camera in my back pocket. Some would suggest stopping but there isn't much sport in that. I did manage to get around the tree and just chalked this up to the hazards of working on the blog while out on the road. Oh, and of being impatient.

By the way, the city of Duluth, to the north of us, has had some huge flooding this past week. Doug, at MN Bike Commuter, has pictures of some pretty wicked road washouts from the flood. If you like the topic of winter bike riding, I recommend Doug's blog. He tries it all and posts some great pictures. But for now, it's summer.

Tunnel mystery solved

A few weeks ago I wrote about some mysterious tunnels that were being dug into the cliffs along the Mississippi. I have been watching the crew creating these with some fascination. The machinery, the ventilation systems, the precautions for rock collapse are all neat stuff. Doesn't this seem like an ideal construction site to explore after hours when the crew is gone? How cool to see the ancient limestone, hear the water dripping, and get a little claustrophobic? And of course, what an idea that your author would never, ever endorse.

Of course that doesn't mean a few pictures wouldn't help illustrate. Here is the entrance to one of the two tunnels showing the vent pipes that run down the sides of the tunnel. Each one is terminated with a round fan I suppose to bring in fresh air for the workers and remove exhaust from the machinery.

 Farther in the ground was really mushy and the air smelled of rusty water.The tire tracks are from a bobcat-size machine which gives a good sense for the tunnel dimension. This isn't a claustrophobic space although it gets dark pretty fast.

I learned later that part of the smell was coming from the sewer pipes the crew was repairing. The pipes were over 100 feet into the cliff and the only safe way to access was to bore a hole through the cliff wall. How do I know this? Meet Todd.

I was able to catch Todd while he was unloading his truck and he took a minute to explain the project. Apparently there are ways to access the tunnel from on top of the cliff but given the volume of sewage in the pipes it was not considered safe to send a technician. As Todd explained, if something happened and he got swept down the pipe with the sewage...uh, yeah, you can imagine.

I suppose it would have been even more true to the bike commuter spirit to have actually ridden in the tunnels. I did learn that bike gear, like clip shoes, is not well adapted to the tunnel rat environment. I got to work and the shoes needed some serious TLC. Not sure how the chain would've fared - maybe some day, I'll find out!

Back at it

Today, I was back in the saddle. A lot has happened recently but what prevented me from riding was trillions of foreign organisms invading my body. Even your intrepid bike commuting author can be distracted by this type of thing and has to take some time off. I wasn't hugely sick but it was enough to put me on the bus for a couple of days this week.

The day turned out to be a gorgeous Minnesota summer day: bright, 60s in the morning, 70s in the evening, tons of people out. It is a great time to see how nice summer can be and how desperate we all are to get out of our houses until the next blizzard.

Bike couriers vs commuters

I like to think that riding to work every day makes me a bit healthier and maybe even a little tougher. My co-workers even reinforce this idea. There are days when I get to work and people say, 'Dude, you are HARD CORE!' meaning that it was sprinkling outside and I must have gotten wet. This is obviously more of a statement of how easy it is to avoid going outside rather than a reflection of my inner Grizzly Adams. If you ride daily you are going to have days that are uncomfortable and, yes, sometimes really unpleasant. The unspoken secret among year round commuters is even the lousy days can be fun because...you are riding a bike. But I digress.

The true hard core folks in my mind are the bike couriers. These are professional bikers although they don't have the tight pants and workout coaches you are thinking of. These are people who haul stuff on their own two wheels, year round, hours a day, come rain, shine, or hail. If they have been in the job for a while they tend to look like a Grizzly Adams who has spent a few years living at your local bus stop.

This is a bit different in Minneapolis. Probably the most common courier you will see here is the Jimmy John's sandwich delivery guy/gal.

They ride year round but seem more numerous in the summer. These people often look like a cross between  a fixie-riding hipster and your typical midwestern college student.  This is probably because they are fixie riding midwestern college students. Still, they are out there in all kinds of weather delivering small orders of sub sandwiches. It is probably busy during lunchtime, quiet the rest of the day, and I can't imagine what kind of tip you get for delivering a sandwich and a soda. So, from a bike commuter: you may not be leathery and scarred, Jimmy Jane, but you are still a bike ridin' hero to me.

No tire will stop that

I ride with tires that claim to have some type of teflon material embedded in the rubber to help prevent punctures. This presumably works since I haven't had a flat since last fall, about 1500 miles ago. The difference between the winter and other times of year, however, is people. It seems that no one is out smashing beer bottles in the winter (do they just bounce?) or shingling their roof. This must change in the summer since this is the time when I get flats. Meet the enemy:

I don't know when I ran this over but only heard a click...click...click coming from the back of the bike. I didn't see anything stuck in the spokes and figured a flat would eventually make itself known so I kept riding. I made it over the Lake street bridge and up the hill on the St Paul side before the back end of the bike started giving me the classic wobbling feeling of a flat tire. I pulled over and started to remove the tire when I saw the nail was so far into the tire that it poked through the rim tape and into the underside of a spoke nipple. This got me thinking: what would the best way be to demonstrate how good is a tire's flat protection? You really don't know until it fails. In this case, probably only the solid rubber tire of a tricycle would have stopped it. I wonder if they make those in 700c wheel size?

30 Days of Biking - Cool off

We have had a wonderfully warm Spring this year in Minnesota, almost a month ahead in terms of temperature. I was looking back at some of last year's posts on this blog and we had snow on April 20th last year. Yikes. I would hate to give up the shorts at this point so when the forecast was calling for 'snow showers' last night I got a case of the hives. I am in a Summer biking state of mind already and the Winter bike is put away (well, in the garage awaiting the ritual tear-down and clean-up). When I woke up this morning, I saw that the forecast was more the weatherman getting his undies in a bundle than reality. It won't snow at 45 degrees! Right??!

30 Days of Biking - Cycling in Old Japan

Several years ago I spent a week in Japan and somehow the opportunity came up to rent a bike. We were in Kyoto, a city packed with old temples, gardens, and palaces. You could spend months seeing everything. I am into that kind of stuff and we were running out of time so using a bike to get around seemed like a great solution.

It turns out that it was. Many of the old parts of Kyoto are great for biking. The narrow streets lend themselves to slow cruising without fear of traffic. And you get attention as the gangly American cruising around on this little Japanese bike. My wife,  7-months pregnant, was riding behind and took this picture. We got a few friendly waves and probably a couple of chuckles.

30 Days of Biking - Mystery tunnels

Biking along the Mississippi - especially before the leaves come out - you can see mysterious inlets, ravines, and the dark entrances to caves near the waterline. Some of these are real caves and others are man made. In either case it isn't everyday that something new shows up on the cave map.

So, I was quite surprised to see that some new caves were being dug into the bluffs right along my bike route. Equipment started showing up a few weeks ago and they cleared two areas. Here, there was a need to excavate more above grade so they built a gravel driveway up to the site.

I assume the corrugated metal tubes are to stabilize the entrance. The limestone in the cliff is very convenient for free landscaping mater...I mean very loose.

At the second site (below) you can see the shattered rock around the entrance. Once past this initial stage, they started tunneling into the cliff. I will get some better photos since the work is pretty cool to watch. The tunnel itself has a rectangular profile and so far it looks like they are going to leave the walls natural stone.

I have tried to ask one of the construction workers what the project was about but they aren't too responsive over all of the drilling noise. My assumption is that since these two tunnels are just below the East Bank of the University of Minnesota campus that they are meant to service the buildings on top of the cliff. In fact, just upstream there is an underground archive that does just that. This stuff is quite cool! And, all on the bike route to work...

30 Days of Biking - April showers

We have had light rain showers yesterday and today during the commute. In the morning there was just enough rain to make greens greener and bring out an earthy, damp smell in the air. Crossing the Lake Street - Marshall Avenue bridge between St Paul and Minneapolis there was this really dramatic sky as the rain moved off to the East.

I took a pic and then just stared for a minute as those low clouds cruised by. By the time I arrived downtown (you can just see the buildings peaking over the trees about 4 miles away), the sky had changed completely. It was bright, windy, and the ground completely dry by the time I returned in the evening.

30 Days of Biking - Bike switching

I rode the same bike year-round when I started commuting, come rain, slush, snow, salt, and all the other gross stuff that messes up a bike in Minnesota. I would go through a few chains a Winter and usually burn through a set of brake pads, rust through a fender bolt, and cause other sundry damage. This isn't Iron Man, this is just grubby streets takin' it out on the machine. I finally figured out that having a separate Winter bike would allow me to spread out the wear and give me time to get the main bike in shape for next season.

This year, my Winter maintenance took much longer on the Bianchi since it is 6 years old and there were quite a few things that needed cleaning and replacement. Here is an odd picture I took last year showing, in part, how chewed up the bar tape was getting on my handlebars. (The bike is standing still but I took this to show how my wireless bike computer would go haywire near this particular building on my ride.)

So, this year the Bianchi got: new front derailleur shift cable, brake pads, and miscellaneous bolts (not chainring, although I noticed later it could use a new set). The bike got a thorough cleaning. 

And...drum roll...new bar tape.

A few of these projects were new for me so certainly the next time I go through this I will be faster.

A quick job will be to hit the Brook's seat with proofide. You can see where the seat got banged up on a bike-car incident last year downtown. The proofide doesn't seem to take out the gouges...oops. 

30 Days of Biking - Windy Spring

We have been enjoying a very long Spring in Minnesota, one that started early and has continued to bring us warm temperatures. No complaints here, even from a Winter biker. The last two days we have had a really consistent weather pattern: a huge wind out of the South, grey skies, light rain, cool temperatures. What does this sound like? A normal Spring in Minnesota.

Here is a sunrise looking South over the Mississippi. The sky looked more pink than shows up in this picture. We are starting to get to the time of year where it is light as day when I leave in the morning. As much as I love the sunrise, it is great to not have to be concerned about visibility to vehicles. Happy Spring riding!

30 Days of Biking - More metal shoes

I mentioned the other day how much I love these sculptures of shoes on the Midtown Greenway. I still don't know who created these but I love the concept. When you cruise by on the trail unless you look closely you might think someone has just abandoned a pair of shoes.

I stopped today to look more closely at these since they also look like a pair of beat up hikers I own. 

The detail is great and adds to the realism. I am the kind of person who likes to see how things are made and, yes, there are little drain holes in the soles to let rainwater out!

30 Days of Biking - New brakes

A few weeks ago we were looking at our stash of kids' bikes getting ready for warm weather. Our 6-year-old daughter got a hand-me-down bike last year from an older cousin. It was bigger and heavier than any bike she had ridden before. She learned to handle the bike alright but the brakes were always too hard to pull. We realized after watching her ride that her inability to stop was making her anxious. It also meant it would not be safe for us to do anything but sidewalk riding.I did a little bit of research and found that others had similar problems with hand brakes that were too hard for small hands to pull.

I thought about replacing the bike but it seemed like I shouldn't have to throw away an entire bike just for brakes. Somewhere online I saw a recommendation for the Avid Speed Dial 7 brake levers to use for small hands. 

What is cool is the lever can be adjusted to bring it close to the handlebar. Also, the really neat part is the red dial that adjusts the tension of the pull. 

I ordered a set of levers and also added a set of Avid SD-5 caliper brakes to replace the OEM gear. I was able to dial in a good tension setting and set the levers to a short spacing. The result was a huge improvement in braking for my daughter. The best part was she is much more comfortable on the bike to the point we can ride out in the street safely. For $50 this was a really great investment. 

30 Days of Biking - Alternate routes

I sometimes find myself too often taking the same route to and from work on my commute. Without realizing it, I may go weeks and longer taking the same streets, the same trails, parking in the same spot. Every working fool has this problem and most of us rarely notice it. A cool thing about biking is that often it will take the same amount of time to vary the route, try a different street, take an alley, hop off the trail. In a car this could add tens of minutes but on a bike your speed is fairly constant so there isn't a reason not to try it.

I thought about this on my Friday ride where I left work and headed to South Minneapolis to attend an....Easter egg hunt! I tried some new roads I hadn't biked on, checked out some new on-street bike lanes, and saw some different scenery. It reminded me that finding variety is refreshing and must ultimately be good for the brain.

30 Days of Biking - Look for the shoes!

There is a fun series of sculptures on the Midtown Greenway along my route. It consists of different pairs of shoes, cast in bronze, set on benches as if they were just left by their owners. Each pair is a different style, some are meant to look quite worn, others like they will be picked up shortly and used again. Sometimes they look quite real, adding to the sense the owners might return in a minute.

The pair in this picture looks kind of like my beat up hikers I wear in the winter. The phrase 'walk a mile' really applies in this thought provoking art piece.

30 Days of Biking - Favorites

I bike to work daily and am happy to report I have kept this up pretty much every day since last August. This is fun for me and I don't think of  it as an accomplishment since I get exercise, enjoyment, and time to listen to podcasts. There are some things I enjoy in particular every day, regardless of the weather. One of those is that I get to bike over the Mississippi and see the river traffic.

Sometime in late March, the University of Minnesota rowing teams come out and practice in the morning. I have different routes I take but at this time of year I like to ride on the West River Parkway which runs down at the level of the river for part of its route. It is hard to see the rowers here but there is one rowboat and a motorboat with a coach following the crew. The undulation of the water was really cool this morning, too.

30 Days of Biking - Spring Sunrise

I love the dark/light contrast in this one. The color lasted just a few minutes.

30 Days of Biking - Bridge out

We have a fairly prominent cycling landmark in the Twin Cities known as the Sabo bridge. The structure swings out dramatically over highway 55 as it enters downtown Minneapolis. The bridge's designers used a cable suspension design that was much more visually imposing than your typical pedestrian bridge. Unfortunately, just a few years after its opening, metal plates that help anchor the cables to the structure began to fail. When bridges begin to fail...we close them. Bummer.

The bridge is...er...closed.

Even the temporary scaffolding bracing the deck makes for an interesting picture. 

Fortunately, no one was hurt when the cable plates failed. Also, there is an alternative route which involves crossing the rather treacherous Highway 55 at road level. Once this bridge is opened back up to bikes, I'm sure we will all appreciate the sense of safety it gives. At least from traffic.

30 Days of Biking - Where I learned to ride!

The 30 Days of Biking starts today. If you need an excuse to make yourself ride, this is a great one. There are few requirements: just ride your bike every day for 30 days. You decide how far, where to go, iron man, weenie, beer run, however, wherever, with whomever you want. Then, post online about it. Cool concept so take a look.

My 30 Days started with how I learned to ride: cruising around the neighborhood with tiny people.

We went probably a bit over a mile, down alleys, raced down 'hills,' and had just one or two crashes caused by gawking. Fun stuff!

Bikeway blues?

The Jefferson Avenue Bikeway is a project that seems to have been going on for years. It was originally going to go pass through a completely different route but local opposition made the city of St Paul move it to Jefferson. There is much to tell in all of this about conflict between non-cyclists, cyclists and city planners. There has been a lot of drama and, to my mind, an excess of 'input' from the various parties that has resulted in a less-than-optimal use of money and possibly even a compromised final design. But, there are many voices on both sides and the project is regularly referred to in the media as 'controversial.' Read some comments online and you will realize Minnesota nice only goes so far.

The saga deserves more attention, but for now I just have a few pictures to show what a section of the bikeway looks like today.

In observing this project I have learned that a bikeway means a shared car/bike route. Otherwise, the only indication you are on a something other than a street is signage.

Look closely for the bike icon in this picture.

Another way in which this isn't an ordinary street are the half removed 'sharrows.' I say only half removed because you can still see them. As part of the agreed plan, the residents in this specific section did not want sharrows. The city's contractor placed them here because the rest of the bikeway has them. Seems logical, right? Once the complaints came in the city tried to cover them up, with limited success. This of course prompted more complaints about wasted resources. You can only imagine!

 Otherwise, this is a street. It has stop signs, car parking, shared lanes and all of the other stuff a residential street has. In my mind the primary benefit of this type of bikeway is just the formal recognition of bike traffic. The jury is out on if this creates safer conditions or encourages more use.

Summer in...March?

I can't say anything about the last 2 weeks of riding other than that it has been great. The temperatures have been between 50 and 75 degrees, very little precipitation, and the bike is humming. The strange part: its March. Last year at this time we were still under feet of snow, the roads were icy, and it was an un-wunder-winterland.

I get to cross the Mississippi every day on my commute and the river is a great marker of the seasons. Typically this time of year the ice would start to break up, forming weird puzzle patterns of ice, water, and snow.  Biking along the Mighty Miss in the Spring will also often include a fair amount of fog as the water warms and the cold night air makes mist come off the water. The year 2012, however, has been more impatient: we went right into summer. No icebergs, slushy slow thaws with slick morning black ice, or freak snowstorms. I am a skeptic of the 'season skipping' theory but I have to admit the sudden appearance of open water on the river makes it feel like May.

The sky was gorgeous this morning too.

It's amazing how much more of the weather you notice biking. Since any change in the weather impacts how you ride, you pay so much more attention. This year, it has just been a gorgeous show.

You can see the weirdest things

One of the things I love about biking is how in touch with your surroundings you can be. If I drove to work, I would be in touch with: a) the interior of my car, b) anger management techniques. Note I am not anti-car, but anti-car-commute having had 40+ mile commutes in the past.

I was a bit surprised riding on the Midtown Greenway several days ago to see a curious, humanoid towering over a dumpster. See him? He seems like a he for some reason.

This building is used by a local theater group Bedlam. I haven't been to one of their productions but from the looks of it, you might be in for something fun and certainly non-traditional.

Why does this seem like something that would've been 'relocated' back in the college days?

Varied terrain, white knuckles

We received a bit of snow this week, at the very end of winter. This was forecast to be the storm of the year: 12+ inches of snow, 20mph winds, slow commutes, mass hysteria. It turned out to be a bit less than 4 inches of thick, sloppy snow, all of which made for a quite unstable riding surface.  The first couple of miles I ride are on street and the route was gross slush with hard chunks of ice frozen to the pavement. When it is like this I will usually ride on the sidewalk and stay as far away from cars as possible. The snow was so wet today that this wasn't an option unless I wanted to push the bike the whole 8 miles to work. I didn't leave early enough for that so I rode out in the lane in the tire tracks which were pretty clean.

I got through the white knuckle part and made it to the West River Parkway trail which had been plowed at some point during the storm.

I ride fatter tires in the winter but not "fat" tires and you can see the difference in this picture. The weaving dark lines are from what are probably chubby mountain bike knobby tires. They break through the snow to the pavement but in the process push the bike all over the place (notice the crazy weaving). The wide, straight, and light colored lines are from true fat tires - 4" wide wheels probably from a Pugsley or Mukluk. These babies go straight as an arrow; the rider was probably sipping coffee too. I might have to get one of those...

I passed some of the Minneapolis park staff plowing a narrow detour on the trail with snow blowers.Who can complain with hand grooming?

I made it to work fine, slower than usual but in one piece. Had I taken the bus or driven I would have wondered how it would have been and would have missed the exercise and fresh air. Despite the negotiating of the route and occasional trudging I didn't regret riding, just that a fatter bike might have made it easier.

Wrench success!

I had an odd mechanical failure over a month ago when the bracket holding my front shifter/derailleur just snapped off. This happened while I was pedaling slowly up a steep incline leaving the parking ramp I use during the day. Somehow the chain caught on the derailleur and the derailleur bracket and even the chain both snapped. I carry a chain tool with me, having been through similar situations before, and used it to remove the broken link. I then tied off the loose derailleur cable and rode home on one chainring, not being able to shift but able to ride reasonably.

It turned out that this was the easy part. I will spare you the details, but I went through a lot of research figuring out what kind of replacement derailleur would: a) fit my bike, b) be a reasonable choice given riding style/price point, and c) be compatible with the bike's thumb shift lever. I mean A LOT of research since I am a newbie to fixing the bike and the world of bike parts is...er...not exactly as well organized as it could be (NAPA auto parts it ain't).

After a few different online parts orders, a failed attempt to revive the old derailleur, a misfire trying to reuse the old shifter cable (note to self: not worth it trying to save the money), and letting a week go by just because I was sick of staring at the bike, I finally got everything put together. Voil-la, I can now shift on the front chainrings! Wee!

The best part of this is I learned a lot about how the bike works, which is probably the best reason to do some of your own repairs. It is time consuming and sometimes frustrating. But, the sense of independence at being able to do my own repairs and the independence of being under my own pedal power while riding is a great combination.

The un-studly winter

I am probably not alone in developing a sort of folklore about past winters and the type of riding conditions each brought. I catch myself discussing the winter of 2009 and how bad the ice was. And, geeze, wasn't '10 beautiful with 5 feet of snow? Over time, I may fall victim to the natural tendency to exaggerate and have some memories harden over time such that I will remeber each year by just one image: the lack of a thaw, the very cold mornings,the sand-dune like drifts and the like.

I am ok with this since, after all, the great thing about biking in the winter is how incredibly different the riding conditions can be. The amount of moisture in the snow, the patterns of freeze and thaw, one week's crusty snow covered by the next's light powder all affect the riding surface and make for a new experience each time I head out.

This year may be the year of the non-winter. In fact, I have been riding for almost a month without my studded tires which have been a life saver in winter's past. There has been bare pavement for weeks and almost a monotony of decent weather. Since there is no prize for pain and suffering, I will take it gladly. But, I will know I have become delusional if I ever catch myself bragging about the winter of 2012.

The (ipod) hazards of winter riding

We recently received a reminder that yes, it is actually winter. A couple of inches of snow fell and I happened to be biking back from work at the tail end of it. It is really beautiful to ride in fresh snow even in the city.

 

I realized by the time I got home that the front pouch of my windbreaker had been unzipped. This is where I keep my iPod and miscellaneous accessories that allow me to adapt to conditions (sunglasses, extra gloves etc). Needless to say, I was thrilled I had the iPod in a case: looked scary, but the snow was safely on the outside!