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Archives for May 2010

Is Cycling Dangerous?

05.23.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 6 Comments

Our friend Don Blount got some bad news last week: In addition to a broken wrist from a fall during his first century ride, it turned out that his arm was broken, too.

Don had surgery on the arm Friday, and says it went well, but he’ll be off the bike for six to eight weeks while he heals.

That gives him time to do some thinking. He’s been thinking about his second major crash in the last nine months, and breaking the same wrist in those crashes. On top of that, many of us rode in the Ride of Silence last week, which commemorates riders who died in bicycle crashes.

So Don poses the question: Is cycling dangerous?

Don says some of his non-biking friends are telling him to give up cycling, because it’s “too dangerous.”

A couple of studies done in the 1990s found about 500,000 visits to the emergency room each year in the U.S. as the result of bicycle crashes. Just a small fraction required a hospital stay.  Over half the accidents involved motor vehicles, and road surface and mechanical problems with the bicycle are also common causes of accidents.

That reminded me of a club ride I was on a couple of months ago. We were nearing the end, but had to ride for a short distance on a two-lane highway with no shoulders. The road is hilly and curvy, and we mostly avoid it. When we turned off it to cut across a parking lot to another road, one of the riders remarked how glad she was to have survived another ride.

“Well,” I said, “it seems to me that every time we get on our bikes we’re taking a risk. It could be the car that doesn’t see you, or the car that does, and wants to ‘teach you a lesson.’ Or you could hit some bad road surface and lose your balance, or any number of things. But usually we don’t. We’re smart enough to know the risks and we watch out for problems.”

I guess that’s how I’d answer Don’s question, too. Cycling can be risky, but it’s not inherently dangerous.

Don concurs. “I never thought of riding a bike as dangerous,” he emailed me, “probably because it’s something I learned to do as a child. And if I felt it was dangerous, I doubt I would have taught my children to ride.”

He says his injury occurred because he became overly concerned with one risk factor – cars – and lost sight of another – a railroad track at an intersection bad for riding.

But he also notes that other adults get hurt in sports like skiing, soccer, or basketball, and don’t think twice about getting back to them.

And after his convalescence, he says, “I intend to get back on my bike as soon as I can. After all, I received my new helmet just a few days ago.”

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Categories // crash, Injury, Safety Tags // crash, Injury, Safety

Breaking Out the Mountain Bike

05.20.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

The other morning, my road bike was out of commission. I had taken off its handlebars in anticipation of replacing them with a different pair. As the previous post mentioned, that didn’t happen. And when Pat suggested we get out for a short morning ride, I thought I’d have to decline. Then I remembered the mountain bike.

Why would I forget I have a mountain bike? Because this is the way it spends its time.

It’s not exactly at top of mind. But I did remember it, and realized it would be an excellent way to ride with Pat, and stick close to her. Usually when we ride together, I’ll get way ahead, and stop and wait for her.

So we rode. The fat knobby tires and the squishy front suspension really slowed me down from my usual speed. Several times, Pat pulled ahead of me and stayed there for awhile. Because she had to take a work-related call, we couldn’t ride long. But we did 40 minutes on a favorite neighborhood route, and I got a nice reintroduction to the bike. It has some possibilities.

The first thing that came to mind was that I have to get serious about using it for an errand bike. I’ve run errands on it from time to time, like going out to our community mailbox to pick up our mail. But the supermarket is only a mile from the house, and I should be taking the bike. It’ll just be for the small, occasional items we always seem to need, like milk, bread and cookies.

The second thing to come to mind was modifying the bike. Those knobby tires suck on pavement. I’m going to have to get some narrower, slick tires. Then a rear rack of some kind — and maybe a milk crate to mount on top of the rack to carry larger bags of groceries.

The third thing was — this bike needs help. It will be a great opportunity  for me to develop my repair skills without messing with the road bike.  The mountain bike won’t shift out of the middle ring, and only has use of five cogs there. So over the next few weeks, as the spirit moves me, I’ll be getting some derailleur adjustment time in.

And back when Pat gave me the bike as a birthday present, I never bothered to get a fitting. Time to fiddle with the seat height and fore-and-aft position.

Hey, this ought to be fun. It’s almost just like getting a new bike.

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Categories // Bikes, Maintenance Tags // mountain bike

Wrapping Bars – Fun and Frustrating

05.18.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 14 Comments

This afternoon, I put my bike on the workstand and remounted the handlebar. Why the bar was off in the first place is a whole other topic, and I’ll probably post on it next week, when that saga comes to an end — I hope.

Anyhoo, I got the bar positioned the way I want it, then got the brake levers back on.  I even rode the bike around the block to make sure the levers were just where I was most comfortable with them.

Back in the garage, it was time to do one of my most favorite bike maintenance activities — wrapping new bar tape.

Freshly wrapped. Looks pretty good -- but wait. (Notice the leftover tape dangling from the shift cable?)

Why fun? Well, if you’ve never tried it, take a shot and see for yourself. With a little bit of care and patience, your bike can assume a whole new character in a matter of minutes. Or, you can do as I did, and use the same old black tape. I think it gives my bike a slightly understated look, and that’s fine with me.

There’s only one problem with wrapping tape: starting and stopping. Okay, two.

To start, you leave a bit of tape hanging down at the end of the handlebar. Then you have to make sure you pull the tape taut while wrapping it, or you’ll get gaps in the wrap — and we can’t have that.

Eventually, you get to the point where you want to stop, and here’s where one of my continuing bar wrapping problems crops up. I see all these pictures of nice bikes with one wrap of contrasting color tape to seal the wrap job. When you buy bar tape, you get a short length of the end tape — maybe it has the manufacturer’s logo on it, maybe not. But it’s all of three or four inches long, and only a half inch wide.

But the bar tape itself is wider than that. So one wrap of the contrasting tape won’t cover the whole end of the bar tape, and you get a square-edged corner sticking out from under. I don’t like the feel of that.

So I do it the Bike Noob way. I use black electrician’s tape to seal the job, and I cover the entire width of the bar tape, plus some.

At least it's a comfy place to rest my hand.

This is one of the reasons I prefer black bar tape. My electrician’s tape overdose is not so obvious to the casual observer.

Once I’ve overdone the electrician’s tape, it’s time to go back to the beginning. The length of tape left hanging from the bar end gets pushed into the bar, and kept in place with a bar end plug.  Sounds easy, but mine always comes out like this:

Lumpy on the left, lumpy on the right. Help!

No set of instructions on bar taping clearly explains how to cleanly get all the tape into the bar end and plug it without leaving unsightly lumps. Anybody got any pointers?  I’d love to hear ’em. In another week or so, I’ll be replacing the handlebar, so I’ll be going through the whole process all over again, and I’d sure like to get a clean looking end.

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Categories // Accessories, Maintenance Tags // bar tape

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