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Archives for February 2011

It’s Amazing How Fast You Get Out of Shape

02.13.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 9 Comments

Rode this afternoon with my wife. It was my first ride in a week. In fact, it seems that the only riding I’ve been doing for the last month has been on the weekends, and this week, I didn’t even ride Saturday, because of a day trip out of town.

All that time off the bike is finally catching up with me. Man, am I out of shape! The out of town trip was to visit some relatives, and four of my cousins were there – so we took the obligatory cousins pic.

I’m not running it on the blog, out of deference to them. Suffice to say, it shows five American males in their mid to late 50s, all with substantial girth. In a couple of cases, the gut hangs over the belt buckle.

My wife looked at it, and said, “Well, you have the skinniest gut of them all.” Her definition of skinny differs from mine. I ain’t skinny. I suppose I am the least rotund.

My weight, which usually goes up in winter anyway, is true to form.  I’m about 10 pounds over my good summer biking weight.

That contributed to the way I felt on today’s ride. Oh, I felt good enough – but it seemed that I was putting much more effort into the ride than I normally would.

Disirregardless, the ride served as a needed wake up call.  I know I can get back on track by doing two simple things:

Riding more.

Eating less (junk).

All the nifty organized rides that I want to be on have opened registration. Time to start signing up. Time to get back in shape.

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Categories // fitness Tags // fitness, weight

Tighten Your Cleats!

02.10.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 4 Comments

On a recent ride, I turned into the parking lot of one of those stand-alone Walgreen’s drug stores that seem to have cropped up on every other corner, when something didn’t feel right.  My right foot was looser than it usually is.

I stopped at the edge of the lot, used the opportunity to drink from my water bottle, and then I sat on the curb to take a look at my shoes.

The cleat on the right shoe had come loose.  Not catastrophically – I could move it a little with my hand – but the constant pressure in the pedal had loosened it up.  A few quick turns of the screws with my 4 mm Allen wrench, and it was solidly back in place.

I hadn’t been experiencing the same feeling on the left shoe, but decided to take a look anyway.  Sure enough, I could tighten those screws about a half-turn each as well.

I do periodic checks of the bike between rides, making sure the tires are in good shape, that everything moves smoothly.  I guess I’ll have to add a non-bike equipment check, too, and look at those cleats every couple of months.  It could save some headaches down the road.

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Categories // Equipment Tags // cleats, shoes

Triggering Green Lights

02.08.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 7 Comments

When I wrote my last post about getting stuck at red lights, a couple of commenters noted that the bike should be able to trip the green light.  The problem is, a lot of us don’t seem to know exactly how to do it – and I guess I’ll have to count myself as part of that group, since I’ve never been able to trip a green light while on my bike.

Andrew in New Hampshire says bikes just don’t have the weight required to trip the signal.  That’s true, Andrew, and it’s too bad if that’s the way they work in New Hampshire.  In Austin, Texas, they’re supposed to be tripped by metal – the metal on a car, and even the metal on a bike.  But some of us Austinites can ‘t make that work, either.  Steve says he sat through a red light cycle three times before finally waving a car ahead to trip the sensor.

Alice in Louisville has the solution – at least in her town.  “The sensor plates under the pavement show a “T” shaped seam in the road,” she writes. “By placing your front bike wheel at the top part of the T, that’s supposed to trigger the sensor as I understand it. Seems to work most of the time, although there are some intersections where it just doesn’t work.”

Yeah, that’s the way it’s supposed to work here, too.  In fact, Nadia Barrera, the project coordinator for the city’s pedestrian and bicycle program, posted an item on the Austin Cycling Association’s web site explaining how to trip the light:

“To trigger a traffic signal, simply place your bicycle over or within three inches of the ‘saw cut’ of thedetector loop (pictured). The signal detects metal, so your pedal or even the metal in your shoes should trigger the signal. Once you have situated yourself over the loop, stay put. The signal works in such a way that if you leave, it thinks that you were a right-turning vehicle, and the trigger process to change the light is aborted.”

I’ve tried. Lord knows, I’ve tried. An intersection I cross on three out of four bike rides stymies me. I think I can figure out where the cut is that she refers to, and I park the bike right over it. I have never triggered the light. I assume I’m doing something wrong.

And looking at the diagram supplied with her information … uh, I don’t know what it’s supposed to show. What’s that diagonal off to the upper right? Part of the loop? I assume the T at the top center of the top diagram is the part that Alice uses to get her green light. I will continue to try for the magic solution.

In the meantime, I’ll just inch forward into the pedestrian crosswalk so that cars behind me in the left turn lane will be able to get far enough forward that their metal content will trigger the green and get us going.

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Categories // Safety Tags // red light

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