Posts tagged cycling
The odd thing is that the tire didn’t actually lose pressure after I ran over this. I only noticed because of the noise of it hitting the fender each time it went around. This was a brand new tube too, and the first front flat I’ve had on this bike in a year. I patched it, but looks like the patch isn’t holding. The tire was only at 20ish PSI this morning, and was soft again when I went to ride home today.
I was driving home on Wednesday and pulled up to the head of the line at the corner of Route 7100 and Foxmill Road near Herndon. As I’m sitting there, I see this guy filter forward through traffic, and dismount off of his unicycle:
I was a little surprised to say the least. However, I wasn’t completely shocked, as I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this same guy commuting on the bike path on 7100 once before, in even weirder circumstances. I was looking forward to seeing him mount up, and ride across, but unfortunately (for me), he just walked the unicycle across. I’m guessing that’s probably a lot safer, but unfortunately I didn’t really get to see him riding. Unfortunately the quality of the picture is pretty bad, but you can click the photo to see the higher resolution version at Flickr. I pulled my formerly trusty Canon S400 out of my bag, but it appears that the sensor has bitten the bullet. Well, I’m not positive, but I do know that all the pictures on the LCD show up purplish, and really wavy/fuzzy. I need to decide now whether or not I should buy another Digital Elph, or wait until the 3G iPhone comes out, and just use the camera that is on that. I’m thinking I’d like a separate camera, since on multi-day bike trips it would be a lot easier to keep a camera charged than a phone
I’m a big fan of the Shimano bike sandals, and I’ve been wanting to get a pair of normal Keen sandals for a while. So I was pretty pleased when someone on the PPTC mailing list mentioned this morning that Keen is now making a bike sandal:
REI is selling them for $115.
Update: I picked up a pair of these, but haven’t had a chance to mount cleats on them yet. Once it’s a bit warmer in the morning I’ll start using them for my commute and hope to post a review.
So, if everything goes well, next Wednesday I’ll be leaving to from Cumberland, MD to ride the length of the C&O Canal. It’s 184 miles, fairly flat, and should be mostly downhill to the end point in Georgetown. I’m planning to do the trip self supported over 4 days or so, although Caitlin will be staying in the area for the first day or so, if something comes up and I need something.
I’ve been stressing a little bit about the prep work, but it’s mostly coming together now. I’ve got 80-90% of the gear I’m bringing with me gathered together, and the tent, sleeping bag, etc are already packed up.
It’s going to be a little tight, since I’m traveling to Tampa for a business trip on Monday night, and coming back on Wednesday morning, but I’m planning to head home when I get back into town and finish my packing. Then we’ll load the car up and Caitlin will drive Paul and I up to Cumberland. I’m tentatively planning to ride the first 10-15 miles of the path that evening, and then I’ll setup camp.
If you’re curious, there is more information on the C&O canal at Bike Washington and the National Park Service.
I noticed this morning when I uploaded 8 tracks to Motionbased that I’ve apparently passed the 1000 miles ridden point, almost 1100 miles. If I ride in 4 times a week on average, then I’ll come pretty close to 1500 miles for the first year of bike commuting to work. I’ve also lost around 40-45 lb over those miles, although dieting had a lot to do with it. I’m definitely in better shape, and I definitely have a lot more defintion in my legs than I did before. I also have some really weird tan lines, especially on my feet since I usually wear sandals when riding. Overall I’m pretty happy with bike commuting. It takes about twice as long to get to work (30min vs an hour, with showering), but it’s still a lot faster than going to the gym, plus it’s a lot cheaper overall.
I’ve been fairly disappointed with the bike stores in Fairfax. Occasionally I’ll merely get mediocre customer service, but usually worse. On top of that they generally treat me like an idiot, when I it’s not unusual for me to know more than they do about the topic I’m asking about. Perhaps this will get better when the weather gets worse, and all the college students go back to school.
To give an example, I went into Spokes, Etc wearing this shirt and wanted to test ride a bike with drop-bars. I wasn’t real picky, I just wanted to ride something with drop bars since I’m thinking I may buy or build a new bike this winter. I walk into the store, look around a little, and find the Specialized Sequoia and Trek Portland. Pretty quickly one of the younger guys comes over and asks if he can help me with something. I explain what I’m looking for, and he starts explaining to me what carbon fiber is, and why I want it (I don’t), and explaining that I’ll want fenders on the bike, and a rack etc, after I tell him I already bike commute to work.
One nice thing about test rides at Spokes is that all they require is your ID and a credit card. The weird thing is that not only did they not require me to ride a helmet, but they didn’t even mention anything about it. I had bought mine and left it in the car, but I thought that was really odd. It seems like from a liability and advocacy standpoint they’d want to push that push people to wear helmets. I have to think that marketing concerns won out over the others (people are more likely to test ride, and buy a bike if it’s less hassle).
So I rode the Trek Portland two blocks down Maple Street and and about two miles down the W&OD and back. I noticed pretty quickly that something was making an awful racket, like one of the derailers were dragging on the chain or something. I pulled over on the side of the trail, and figured out that they didn’t remove all the packaging and there is a sticker on the front derailer that’s dragging on the chain and making all the noise.
Overall I liked the drop bars, but I didn’t like much else about the bike. The disc brakes were mushy, the shifting was loose, the seat was horrible, and the ride was generally really rough, even with the suspension seat post.
One thing I didn’t realize about the Shimano STI 105 brake/shifters (The Sequoia has the same ones), is that they’re setup so that you can easily shift with your hands on the top of the bars, and you can brake from the top of the bars fairly effectively also. However, I found it really difficult to brake with my hands down in the drops, due to the long reach required. This seems pretty odd to me, since I have fairly large hands to start with. In addition, it was really awkward to actually shift with my hands in the drops, due to the very large amount of travel required to get it to click over to the next gear. I wonder if the STI levers were installed higher up on the drop bars than normal to make it easier to shift from the top, and that compromised the shifting and braking from the bottom of the drops.
When I brought the bike back to Spokes, I mentioned that I thought the shifters were pretty awkward when shifting from the bottom of the drops. I was going to ask if I could test ride a bike with Ultegra or Dura-Ace levers to see if the feel on those was better, when the guy cut me off and basically blew me off with a line about how “you’ll get used to it”. I’m pretty sure my fingers aren’t getting any longer, so I don’t see how it’d be possible for me to “get used to” the levers being too far away.
Anyway, this just reinforces my idea that I’d be a lot better off doing all my own maintenance, and building out my next bike on my own.
