Mid-Week Stutters

I was looking forward to my time off from school, so I could finally start building up some decent mileage and get myself in shape for the rest of the summer’s riding. But the best laid plans, as they say…

I spent most of Tuesday in Houston on business with my wife. Got back too late to ride.

Then, rain popped up this morning. After my last fall, I must admit, I’ve wimped out. I will no longer ride in the rain.

So, my big ride plans have stumbled somewhat. In the meantime, I can find some amusement in the plans of other members of my club.

There’s a good organized ride coming up Saturday — the Real Ale Ride. I’ve ridden it once, and volunteered for it once. It’s a great ride, but in my opinion, has gotten overpriced. However, a contingent from the club are heading out there.

One of the ladies, in particular, was making big plans. She wanted to do the 100-mile version, but learned that the longest route is 85 miles. Not to be stymied in reaching her mileage goal, she immediate upped it — to 150 miles.

Her plan is to ride the 85 miles. Then, she’ll start the course again — this time taking the 65-mile route. Or, maybe turn around at the finish, ride back for 32.5 miles, then turn around and ride to the finish again. What?

“150 miles on a road bike is not really that long,” she said. “I’ve done longer on a mountain bike.” She’s looking for others to join her in her quest.

So far, no takers.

The Only B

It was Mother’s Day, and I anticipated a small turnout for the Sunday club ride. But riders kept pulling into the parking lot in front of Starbucks. As we sat around the outdoor tables before the ride, there was a lot of good-natured banter. But once the women riders started to come in, New York John said it was time to stop.

“We sound like a buncha construction workers from the ’50s,” he said. He was right.

I was starting to get concerned. The women — Janice, Pippa, and Judy — are all pretty fast. All the guys were fast. When the club president said we should get going, it was apparent that I was the only B-level rider out today.

We always start out easy. I rode at the front with Joe, the president, and we talked about my rear wheel. Our club mechanic had it all day Saturday, and told me it was on its last legs.

“If you replace the rim, the hub is still shot,” he said. “If you replace the hub, the rim is in bad shape.” He said I should start shopping for a new rear wheel.

Joe offered to lend me a set of American Classics he has in his garage.

“It’s nothing imminent,” I said.

“That’s not the point,” he answered. “Use this time to try out some different wheels. You’ll find out what you don’t like, as well as what might work for you.”

I think I might take him up on that offer.

The riders separated at the first big hill, about three miles into the ride. By now, I was in my accustomed place — at the rear. But Joe’s wife, Judy, wasn’t much ahead of me. She had ridden a killer club ride yesterday, which saw lots of hills out in the country. After that 66-mile jaunt, she was spinning easily today. Joe, as he often does on these rides, held back to ride with her. I caught up, and we were the gang of three, as the peloton quickly disappeared ahead.

Jordan, a club member who lives closer to downtown, met us about 15 miles into the ride. He had tried to time his start to meet up with the main group. “But they were having a criterium!” he exclaimed. Joe and he talked about how the Sunday ride does tend to become a race among the faster A’s.

We rode along Shoal Creek Drive, which is a popular in-town biking route. It is a two-lane arterial through a nice residential part of the city, and has generous bike lanes in each direction. By this time, I wondered where we would meet the A’s on their return leg. I guessed that they would be at a convenience store where we make a rest stop on this route. But they weren’t there.

However, it was only another mile or so before we encountered them, blasting down Shoal Creek in our direction. We turned around to ride with them, and all pulled into that convenience store for a break.

Joe had proposed a departure from the usual return route, to tackle more hills on the west side of town. New York John had other ideas. He had also been on the previous day’s long ride, but he rode an extra 20 miles, because instead of driving to the ride start, he rode from Starbucks. That effort was catching up to him.

“I’m goin’ back the way we came,” he said. “And head home on Mopac (an expressway) instead of the long way.” I agreed.

I thought we had more takers, but it was just John, me, and one other guy. We hit some big hills just past downtown.

“My legs are like jelly!” John complained. He still managed to stay ahead of me. John is 65, but rides a carbon Specialized Roubaix, and is probably 60 pound lighter than yours truly. Over the last two miles, he steadily pulled farther ahead of me. By the time I got to Starbucks, his bike was already on his car’s rack.

It was a good ride for me, but if two tired A riders hadn’t hung back from their usual Sunday pace, I would have been completely on my own. I’ve got some time off work until the summer session begins, and I’ll be spending a lot more time on the bike than I have been. I’ll never become an A, but at least I can build up the stamina to stay closer to them.

Noob Mistake: Helmet on Backwards

It’s spring. In most parts of the country anyway. And that means organized rides are springing up all over. Lots of noobs turn out for their first organized rides ever, and they make their share of mistakes. Here’s one that I noticed a few years ago.

I was walking across a parking lot toward the ride start, when I passed a couple also headed in that direction. They were obvious first-timers. As I looked at the woman, something struck me as odd. She had the weirdest looking helmet I’ve ever seen.

Except on closer inspection, it wasn’t the helmet at all — that turned out to be a fairly common variety. It was the way she wore it. The black scalloped rear was facing forward.

“Your helmet is on backward,” I said quietly, as I walked past them.

She stopped, pulled off her helmet, and stared at it.

“It is? On backward? How can you tell?” she asked.

“The smooth part goes in the front,” I replied. “It’s more aerodynamic that way.”

She looked at her husband. He looked back and shrugged. She turned the helmet around and put it back on, the right way.

She’s not the first I’ve seen making that mistake. Lots of people figure that since the helmet slopes down in the rear, and had lots of openings that must suck in air, that’s the front.

This is not the front.

This is not the front.

This is the front.

This is the front.

But as we all know from basic physics, the airfoil shape of an aircraft wing is rounded in front, and tapers toward the rear.

I can understand why a noob might be confused.

I can understand why a noob might be confused.

If you see a newbie looking extra dorky on a ride this spring, come to their rescue. Show them the proper way to wear a helmet.

Different Rides, Same Result

Because of the odd schedule we’re on at the university during final exam time, I didn’t get home in time for my usual Friday evening ride. So on Saturday, I decided to combine that ride with one I normally reserve for Saturday morning.

I headed for Convict Hill, a neighborhood nearby. As its name implies, there are some hills there and I try to do this every week. It builds leg strength, but it’s not all that tough. One of the nice parts about it is the end. I get to ride a bike lane down the hill, and it’s fun to exceed the posted speed limit for vehicles. In fact, I could sense someone beside me during the descent, and when I looked, it was a guy in a pickup truck, keeping pace with me but not trying to pass. I think he was trying to get a read on just how fast this crazy cyclist was going (33.7 mph).

After Convict Hill, I headed back to my neighborhood. The route stays in the bike lane of a nice wide residential arterial out to Farm to Market 1826. I turn around there, and wind my way through Circle C Ranch, on a route I’ve talked about before. Then it’s a run over to the nearby Veloway, where I did one lap and headed home. A nice way to spend two hours.

This morning, the club ride was doing one of their hills excursions. I’m still not in the ballpark with them when it comes to climbing, so I decided I’d ride on my own. “Oh,” said my wife, as she saw me drinking coffee at 8 a.m. “You’re not riding this morning?”

“I am,” I said. “In fact, I’m leaving right after I get dressed.”

The morning was bright and cool. The wind was light. I decided to do the “Zoo Route,” which a lot of the club members have taken to lately. I rode the first six miles on the same streets we take when we do Fitzhugh, but as soon as I crossed U.S. 290 I turned onto a different road. This one could be considered semi-rural, with houses on large lots hidden behind old stands of live oak. After looping through that area for awhile, I was back on Circle Drive, but soon turned onto Rawhide Trail for the next two miles to the Austin Zoo.

They’ve done a good job of screening the zoo from the road. Some of my friends tell me they’ve seen critters through the trees in the past, but none were in evidence today. At the end of the road is the old Paisano Ranch, formerly owned by renowned Texas author J. Frank Dobie. The road ends at the gate, and I turned around .

I had come just a tad over nine miles, so I was looking for more mileage. I knew that some riders will head back, but divert onto a road that intersects Texas 71, several miles west of our neighborhood. I got through the stoplight at that intersection along with a large furniture delivery truck that had no use for me, and eventually made it to Southwest Parkway.

I used to like riding on Southwest Parkway. The shoulder is wide, and the road is hilly. But a few years ago, the county chip sealed it, and for much of its length, it’s jouncy.

At the high point, where AMD has its new semiconductor plant, the parkway dips in a longish downhill where you can achieve a decently-high speed. Farther on is a neighborhood called Travis Country, and I turned onto the road that loops around the periphery. Lots of cyclists like to ride this area, and there were a number out this morning. I didn’t make contact with any of them however, and continued my solo ride.

After Travis Country, it was time to head home. I pulled into the driveway, stopped, and glanced at my bike computer.

27.7 miles. One hour, 59 minutes, 33 seconds. Avg. speed: 13.9 mph.

Remarkable.

Not because I broke any speed records or anything, but because the numbers were so similar to Saturday’s: 27.5 miles, one hour, 59 minutes, 5 seconds, 13.9 mph average speed.

Except for the first three blocks, I did not ride any of the same roads on Saturday and Sunday. Since I had never ridden the Zoo Ride before, I had no idea what to expect in distance or time. But they came out to almost the same distance and same riding time.

I’ll have to figure out a route next week on still different roads, and try to approximate the same distance and time again. I think I know where I can do it.

A Dialogue Over Cycling

Two of my biking friends recently had unpleasant encounters with drivers. In one case, a car passed unnecessarily close to a cyclist, and he was concerned about being hit. That didn’t happen, but it upset my friend enough that he followed the car to the next stop sign, and started a dialogue about car-bike safety.

The driver didn’t take to it well, and my friend — one of the most mild-mannered folks you’d want to meet — thought it could have escalated to blows. He pulled away and continued his ride.

My other friend is naturally cautious while riding the roads, and most often stays on the suburban-style residential streets in our immediate area. But even there, problems can arise. At a stoplighted intersection, he had the green light and started across the intersection. An oncoming truck started to turn left across his path without signaling. My friend yelled and waved, and the truck stopped just five feet from him.

“I would have let it go at that,” he said. “But then he starts yelling at me like it was my fault. I had the right-of-way!”

He threw down his bike and started toward the truck with clenched fists. Believe me, you don’t want to tangle with him one-on-one. The truck driver figured that out, and drove on.

“What gets me is that some people figure if they’re in a motor vehicle, they’ve got the right of way,” my friend said. “They need to be better educated about the rules of the road regarding bikes.”

The guy in the first incident had another point of view. “We really need to start showing our neighbors who we are,” he said. “We’re just like them. We live in the same kind of houses, we work jobs — the only difference is, we choose cycling as a form of exercise or recreation.”

He suggested making an affirmative effort to talk to our neighbors about our biking, why we do it, how we hope cars behave around bikes, how they should expect bikers to behave around them.

People for Bikes, an organization that aims to promote cycling to more prominence in public discourse, offers the same idea in this video.

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Others suggest that as more people ride, biking will become more a part of our culture. This article on Business Insider urges more commuting by bike.

I agree with all of the above. I’m just not optimistic that things will change much. Recently, the city laid chipped stone over a lane of one of the main streets in our area. As my wife was riding along that section, a pickup truck passed her, and spun his wheels to throw the stone-gravel mix at her. “Some people,” she said, “are just asshats.”

Hey! It’s Bike Month!

May 1st…a big day for bikers everywhere. According to the League of American Bicyclists, whose bash this is, we can celebrate the reasons we ride.

Let’s see…riding to work or school…nah, I live 30 miles from work, which happens to be at a school. Saving money or time…hm, I’ll be hitting the bike store in the next day or two to get some much-needed accessories. Hardly a money-saving visit. Preserving health or the environment…well, biking has been good for my health. My blood pressure is down, my resting heart rate too, my legs are awesome, if I do say so myself.

But my health has never been the main reason I ride. I ride for the fun of it. And you know what? I don’t need a special month for that. I ride year around, so Bike Month is every month for me.

Are you planning anything special for Bike Month?

Sketchy Shorts

I was doing some laps on the nearby Veloway recently, when I ran into the president of our neighborhood cycling club. We rode together for a bit, and then he said, “You know, when I got my white bike shorts, everybody was quick to tell me how bad they looked. I’m going to do you the same favor. You need new shorts.”

But my shorts aren’t white. Turns out, that’s not what concerned him.

The shorts I was wearing that day are a black pair of Pearl Izumis that I’ve had for probably four years or so. They’re pretty good shorts. What he was pointing out (that I already knew) was some discoloration on one of the legs. It shows up as a whiteish blotch, and resembles salt stains more than anything else. The discoloration doesn’t affect the performance of the shorts, which are still in fine condition, even after all these years and miles.

It might be a bit tough to see the stain-like marks, but they're there.

It might be a bit tough to see the stain-like marks, but they’re there. I find that moving around, changing your viewing angle, will help see them.

But it does make the shorts look ugly. I know that. That’s why I ride them only on my neighborhood rides, when I intend to ride by myself. Meeting him this day was a fluke.

Frankly, I have wondered what causes that? My wife has a pair of PI shorts, and it’s really bad on hers.

The problem is a lot more obvious on my wife's shorts, because it's a lot worse. (Click to embiggen.)

The problem is a lot more obvious on my wife’s shorts, because it’s a lot worse. I think I’ll be getting her a new pair soon. (Click to embiggen.)

I have a hunch that it goes back to when we were new bikers. When we washed the shorts, we would also toss them in the dryer to dry. Of course, we had the dryer on the lowest setting. Later, when we read that bike shorts should be air dried, we started doing that, and they haven’t been in the dryer since.

By the way, the problem seems to be confined to Pearl Izumi products. I also own shorts by Sugoi, Nashbar, and Castelli, and none of them have had this problem. The Nashbar shorts have been around even longer than the PIs, and are still the same shiny black color they were when they arrived in the mail years ago.

Can any wiser, more experienced riders suggest what causes this problem?