Bike Blog

I've got my deraileurs adjusted, the handlebars angled differently, I'm trying a new saddles... and I'm pondering tires.

I formally decided to get a BikesDirect bike and then move the parts over to a new frame with a more reasonable set of wheels in the next few months because that's the cheapest way to make the exact bike I want...

So it turns out I belt the rear derailleur on my bike after the 200km brevet as well...

In 1979, the Gossamer Albatross flew into history by crossing the English channel showing that humans really could fly an interesting distance. Since then, computers to model aerodynamics have become many orders of magnitude faster and our ability to fabricate lightweight sturdy structures, while not improved as much as computers, has also improved. Human powered aircraft have replicated the mythical flight of Icarus, a 74 mile distance....

I'm fairly close to buying a road bike...

Let's say that you are basically a noob to cycling and aren't transitioning over to cycling from something like jogging or another athletic sport. Maybe you want to get more fit or maybe you just want to drop some weight. You should be eating some food while you are riding on the bike. You'll have an easier time getting in shape if you do. Let me explain...

One mark of a lot of salespeople is that if they've got one product in stock but you want a different product, similar but not exactly the same, they'll push you towards what they've got with the hopes that you'll be out the door with something out of their stock. Sometimes, they will even tell you that the product you really want but they don't have is crap and that you will hate it.

I've seen tons and tons of pictures of spokeless bike wheels. But it's always been from industrial designers who haven't done much bike riding, have never wrenched a bike, and who have no idea about what's possible or practical. Sometimes they claim that it's somehow "freeing" to not worry about such things, but I tend to think that there's a fine line between genius and stupid.

Anyway, some engineering students actually made one. I suspect that it's not the sort of thing you'd be comfortable riding a 200km brevet in, but at least they built it in real life instead of in a design program.

I've found it's actually quite hard to buy good mountain bike wheels that aren't set up to only work with disc brakes these days. And there's a bunch of fancy new designs for disc-brake specific road bikes out there. Disc brakes have buzz going for them. I can see why. Adding disc brakes to cars was a huge improvement because previous drum brakes had real problems with controlability and fade. But disc brakes on bikes pretty much mean that you move the braking surface from the rims to the hubs, both being equally "perfect" designs, so I tend to think of disc brakes as wasted weight...

I was talking to one of the bike shop guys, while still bruised up from my fall, and he told me how shocked he was about all of the cycling injuries and their beat up bikes he'd seen. I told him "Yeah, but imagine if you were working at an auto repair shop."

"Yeah," he replied, "but cars have all the protection around you."

"True," I replied, "but if you worked in auto repair, you'll get to repair cars with bikes smashed on the hood, while here you don't have to repair bikes with cars smashed on the hood."

At 6:30 AM, about two weeks ago, I found myself near the Golden Gate bridge, ready for my first randonnée. I was one of very few people who were there with flat handlebars. Most everybody had road bikes with roadie handlebars. I had my mountain bike with a suspension fork (which is, after all, the only bike I own). We had our safety briefing and then went on our way. I had my first problem of the day when my front light popped off and I had to rescue it on the Golden Gate while not getting run over or knocking down any of the other cyclists. Soon, we were all riding down through Sausalito on our brevet.

A motorist lays on the horn to harass a police officer while he's demonstrating safe cycling, thereby demonstrating why cyclists generally hate motorists.

You should note that my diploma from college states "BS Math and Computer Science" on it. I took coursework in abstract algebra, formal languages, linear algebra, numerical methods, differential equations, and other fairly unpleasant forms of math.

The first 200km brevet of the year is next week. Sunday, I took an experimental ride through the rain. I have my commuter raingear well characterized because I do ride rain-or-shine to work, but I was wondering about my long distance riding gear...

Copenhagen, apparently, has been installing footrests and handrests so that you don't have to put your foot all the way down on the ground while stopped at a light. Here, I just pull up to a curb and use the curb.