Monthly Archives for January 2015

Running Interference

We’ve been enjoying the newly-striped roads in our immediate area. As I’ve mentioned before, in some places there are parking lanes for cars, with bike lanes next to them. The bike lanes are fairly wide, which squeezes moving cars a bit, but has the effect of slowing them down — theoretically.

But I still see cars that follow bikes to an intersection, pass them, and then cut them off to make a right turn. My friend Maggie said she nearly followed a woman into a parking lot to yell at her about it. Maggie is better at controlling her temper than some, and thought better of it.

It doesn’t seem like it’s too much for cars to pull in behind bikes when approaching a right turn. It will cost them, what — only two or three seconds?

So I’ve decided to intervene — surreptitiously. When I’m driving my car, and a cyclist is ahead in a bike lane, I make sure he or she will get to the turn unmolested. I slow down and ease over so the side of the car is right at the edge of the bike lane. That blocks following cars from trying to pass me on the right in the bike lane to beat me to the corner. It also forces them to stay behind me so they can’t cut off the biker.

The beauty of this is that the cyclist is probably unaware I’m even there. They can keep pedaling without worry and get through the intersection. Drivers might get impatient, having to follow behind this slow guy, but they don’t honk or complaint. At least they haven’t yet.

Some of use from the club were sitting around after a ride recently, and the topic of running interference came up. Every person — all six of them — claimed to do something like what I describe here.

How about you? Do you take an active role in protecting cyclists from cars?

Year in Review — Looking Back, Looking Ahead (Guest Post)

Our friend Don Blount is reflecting on a banner cycling year.

BlountOnBiking2014 was a big cycling year for me.

Here are my totals: 6,512.46 miles (10,481 kilometers), 191,828 feet (58,469 meters) of climbing, 401 hours, 51 minutes of riding time.

That was 1,045 mi (1,682.8 km) and 80,000 ft (24,384 m) and 70 hrs of riding time more than in 2013. I completed one organized century, and five centuries in training; three double metric centuries, including the Tour of the California Alps Death Ride, and a double century.

Yet when I was asked my most memorable ride of the year, I struggle to answer as I had a number of memorable rides

Here is the list:

  • January: Climbed Mt. Diablo in Contra Costa County, Calif for the first time. This ride was 49.44 mi. (79.6 km) with 5,853 ft (1,784 m) of climbing in 3 hrs 57 mins.
At the top of Mt. Diablo.

At the top of Mt. Diablo.

  • February: Pedaling Paths to Independence metric century in Linden, Calif. 64.43 miles (103.7 km), 1,115 ft (340 m), 3 hrs, 30 mins. I received my handmade, custom steel Tallerico bike a few days before this ride and this was my first significant ride on it.
  • April: Tierra Bella double metric century in Gilroy, Calif. 127 mi. (204 km), 8,632 ft. (2,631 m), 8 hrs 54 mins. This was the first time I traveled with my bike to do an organized ride. This double metric would also be my biggest ride to date and I did it on the 10-year anniversary of having my right hip replaced.
At Tierra Bella.

At Tierra Bella.

  • May: Lodi Sunrise Century, Lodi, Calif. 101 miles (1652.54 km), 2,391 ft (893 m), 7 hrs, 43 mins. My sister-in-law, Gina, came to California from her home in Columbus, Ohio to celebrate her birthday and ride her first century. I rode with her and it was fun to help someone achieve that goal. It was only in the previous October that I had completed my first.
  • May: Sierra Century double metric century, Plymouth, Calif. 122 mi (196 km), 10,965 ft (3,342 m), 8 hrs, 41 mins. I had not ridden this course but I was feeling poorly going up a difficult climb called Slug Gulch. Once I finished that climb, another rider and I raced to get to the lunch stop before the cut off. One rest stop worker told me that I had arrived too late and could not continue. And then a friend also worked at the rest stop intervened, telling that worker that he was wrong and that I had arrived well within the cutoff. I set off, recovered and finished the double metric.
  • June: Canyon Classic, Patterson, Calif. 93.34 mi. (150 km), 7,756 ft (2,364 m), 6 hrs, 50 mins. This was my first time riding to the top of Mt. Hamilton. At the lunch stop at Lick Observatory I remembered talking to this guy who was basically telling me that I could not do a double century. I remember thinking, “I will show you….”
  • June: Four-pass training ride with my crazy doctor, Bear Valley, Calif. 83.04 mi. (133.64 km), 11,033 ft (3,363 m), 8 hrs, 10 mins. This would be my first time riding in the Sierras. We started in Hermit Valley, rode Ebbetts Pass, both sides of Monitor Pass then to Markleville, the other side of Ebbetts and back to Hermit Valley.
Monitor Pass.

Monitor Pass.

  • July: Death Ride Tour of the California Alps Markleeville, Calif.124.21 mi (200 km), 15,030 ft (4,581 m), 11 hrs, 19 mins This was the hardest ride of the year. I knew I could do at least four passes but I wanted to do all five. And I did.
The Death Ride.

The Death Ride.

  • October: Bass Lake Powerhouse Double Century Clovis, Calif. 201.4 mi. (324 km), 11,503 ft (3,506 m), 14 hrs 30 mins. My first double century.

Clearly, I entered a whole new world of riding in 2014.

In 2015, I am registered again for the Death Ride but I am also training for my first California Triple Crown, three double centuries within the calendar year. I was on track to do them.

But you might have heard the old proverb: Man makes plans, and God laughs.

The Weather Wuss

That’s me. I haven’t been posting much lately because I haven’t been riding much lately. And I haven’t been riding much because the weather has been lousy around here.

Not only has it been cold — okay, cold in Austin is anything below 40 degrees (4C) — but it’s been wet, too. We’ve had lots of rain over the last week, and even if it was midsummer, I probably wouldn’t do any riding. But with daytime temps not getting out of the 30s, the bike was not on my mind.

Icicles in Austin. Not a common sight.

Icicles in Austin. Not a common sight.

Now, I know lots of you ride in much colder weather. You know what’s keeping me from joining you? I’ve become a weather wuss. I grew up around Chicago, and lived for more than 20 years in Minnesota. I can handle the cold. That is, I used to be able to handle the cold. Fifteen years down here and my blood has thinned out. We were in Minnesota in November a couple of years ago, and I thought I was gonna die! Not really, but man, was it cold. I’m glad I moved away from it.

Living in a mild climate means you don’t have an abundance of cold-weather riding gear, either. I can bundle up to handle anything down to about that magic 40-degree mark, but not much colder than that.

So, guess what I did Sunday? I rode the bike! Took it out in the afternoon for a little over an hour. It was sweet. Never thought 45 degrees could feel so temperate.

But Monday, when I had planned to get out again, it didn’t happen. I wandered outside around 2 p.m., stood around for awhile, and decided it wasn’t as nice as Sunday. Maybe Tuesday. Maybe.

Starting the New Year with a Pfsst!

Finally got a break from the cold, rainy weather that started 2015, and I was anxious to get out on the bike Saturday. My wife had already done her ride for the day, and I was moving too slow to go with her. Once I finally did get saddled up, she was back, showered, and already hard at work in our home office.

I figured I’d start the new year with one of my most frequent rides, about an hour and a half through the neighborhood. The bike was performing well. It shifted silently and rolled smoothly. On this sunny, 55-degree (12C) afternoon, I saw a number of other bikers, but no one I knew.

I turned south to go to a hilly subdivision. While climbing an easy hill toward a highway that I had to cross, I became aware of a click from the rear wheel. It came regularly, with every revolution. Oh, great! Another broken spoke!

I stopped the bike and spun the rear wheel. No broken spoke, but the click was still there. I slowed the wheel and located the problem. A staple had punctured the tire, and its trailing end was catching the seat stay with every turn.

Hm. I was a little over two miles from home, and the staple seemed to be holding air in the tire. At least, it hadn’t gone flat yet. I seriously considered trying to make the return trip with the staple in the tire. But then, I had a change of heart, and pulled the staple out.

Pfsst! The tire flattened out immediately. Okay. I carried the bike up onto an adjacent sidewalk and started to work. The spare tube I carried was a patched tube, and I always wonder if the patch will hold. In addition, I had abandoned my trusty Road Morph pump awhile ago (I still have it — I just don’t carry it with me anymore) and I had one CO2 cartridge and a valve chuck. I had to get it right the first time. My track record in this area is pretty dismal.

But it worked! The tire filled, and it held. As I put the wheel back on the bike, a couple pulled up and offered to help.

“it’s all done,” I said.

“All done?” asked the man, who was about my age. “Fan-tastic! Our timing is perfect!” We chatted for awhile, but his wife wanted to move on, so we said our goodbyes.

I headed straight home, not willing to trust the replacement tube any further. So, my first ride of 2015 was a whopping 10.7 miles — a little less than half of what I’d planned. But there was a silver lining. It seems that Strava wipes the slate clean at the beginning of the year. The hill I was climbing when I hit the staple is a Strava segment — and I got a King of the Mountain! Of course, my time on that segment was 16 seconds slower than my best time on it in 2014, but hey — it’s good to be king.