Bike Blog

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.

A few days last week, I commuted to work looking 50% like I was Lance Armstrong, in a long sleeved blue cycling jersey, and 50% like a jeans-wearing valley nerd. It looked silly.

Now, in the old days, gearing was simple. There were four or five gears in the back and two in front. Because the derailleurs of the time sucked, the gears in front would be a few teeth apart. Occasionally, and only weird people rode those kind of bikes, you'd have *gasp* three gears in front.

I had several thoughts. First, that Reese rocks. Second, that I'm glad that, were I to be a Caltrain rider, that I can now have doughnuts. Third, that I'm missing out on a major opportunity to hang with the cool cycling kids because I don't have CalTrain as part of my ride.

I biked 3811 miles, lost 14 pounds, got better at hill climbing, and more...

I've been trying some road bikes out, looking for my road bike. I want to do it right, so I've been taking it slowly. I took a few more on Saturday out for test rides. I tried them all "the right way" where I wore my usual set of bike clothes and made the salespeople put on the right sort of pedals and adjust the seat height. For the more recent rides, now that I've got my Garmin 305, I started a new lap and put it in my jersey pocket so I could make sure that it really was faster and wasn't just feeling like it was faster for vaguely the same reason why a car with bucket seats feels faster than a car with a bench front and back.

Decking the bike instead of the halls.

The thing to remember about bikes on mountain roads is that all non-wuss cyclists can descend at the speed limit. Whereas, even really good Olympic-class cyclists probably will be decidedly slower than the speed limit going up.

Hence, in theory, you only need to make wide shoulders on one side. However, if you do that, you'll rapidly discover yourself being knocked down while riding up by somebody who's brave enough to descend a hill at 35+ mph but not brave enough to do it in traffic. So I'm sure that they will probably end up having to add more shoulder than is strictly necessary. But the CA-9 needs shoulders in the zone between Skyline and Saratoga. I tend to avoid riding up it, just down.

Einstein one said that things should be "as simple as possible, but no simpler".

I, personally, wear a helmet whenever I ride. The mental association is such that if I drive or walk down certain streets, I feel like there ought to be something on my head. But I also make sure that people know that helmets are not compulsory for adults in California....

Overall, I'd like to think of the other cyclists on the road as my biking brethren. We are all disadvantaged users of the road. Even the fixie riders and slow people in expensive carbon fiber bikes...

Audi's "do your part" commercial compared to reality.

Noise pollution is a bad thing. It takes quite a loud noise for people to start dropping dead the instant they hear it, there's plenty of research that shows that it is, in fact, not just a nuisance but causes health effects to man and animal alike. On the other hand, getting run over by cars is also a bad thing.. and car noises is one way to detect that a car is near you.