Monthly Archives: May 2011

Mr Mustard to the rescue! (88 miles in, 24 to go, perfect time for a coke)

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20110529-042616.jpgOur first Century of the year, and an old favorite- the Santa Cruz loop. Kevin and I haven’t ridden this far since at least last August, and we didn’t get off to the greatest start this morning when he suggested maybe a shorter ride so he and his sister could head down to pick up coffee and bagels for breakfast. But I know the routine; the first 15 miles or so Kevin isn’t, how shall I say this, the best company? But then he gets into the routine and things go smoothly.

The biggest challenge today was the wind! Yikes, it was crazy windy out there, but fortunately we had a tailwind down the coast, with slight headwinds elsewhere.

Probably more signs than I've been able to identify! An amazing sight, at Rancho del Oso

Our route took us over Old LaHonda (where Kevin was a bit disappointed with his 24:35 time), down the other side to Pescadero, then Cloverdale to the coast at Gazos Creek. We skipped the Gazos Creek Grill, choosing instead to grab some pastries at the Whaler Cafe in Davenport (don’t buy sandwiches there unless you can wait a very long time!). Check out the tree in the photo, on the climb just past Rancho del Oso (near the big lumber yard on the left). and then south to Santa Cruz & up Highway 9 with lunch in Boulder Creek (but not until first fixing a flat on Kevin’s bike). Kevin finished the ride very strongly, riding up Highway 9 much faster than he has in the past, and in the end we had 112 miles and an average speed of 15.7mph.

Why buy your next bike from Chain Reaction?

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The PDFs below will give you an idea of why so many people have been happy with their Chain Reaction bikes! We do a lot of things that surprise people, including caring about you & your bike long after you’ve handed over your credit card and we’ve given you the owner’s manual. There are significant differences between various bike shops, and you’ll pick up on this if you’ve visited a few. Fortunately, we’re in an area with a number of reputable, caring bike shops. It’s not too hard to figure out which are good & which aren’t. Perhaps the best question you can ask yourself is this- Is this a shop that’s going to take good care of me if I come back a few months down the road with a gear issue, or maybe need some help with getting rid of a pain I get in my shoulder on longer rides?

And what if you didn’t buy your bike from Chain Reaction Bicycles, and something’s not quite right about it? We’re a bike shop, so we have an obligation to try and keep your bike on the road, whether purchased from us or not. But if our backlog gets so large you’d have to wait weeks, we may refer you to Eric Fetch, also known as THE BIKE DOCTOR. For quite a few years he’s run a mobile repair operation, offering fast turnaround, high quality and reasonable rates. Call him at 408 202 8833 to set up an appointment, or email him at efetch@yahoo.com.

Does it seem strange that we’re advertising a competitor for bike service? Perhaps. But we have an obligation to the cycling community that we take seriously, and if we can’t take care of something ourselves, we’re very happy to find someone who can.

For bike fittings, we can do a very limited number of bike fittings (on bikes purchased elsewhere) on Wednesdays between 1:30-4:30pm in our Redwood City location. These have to be scheduled ahead of time, and are available only as staffing and business conditions allow (during the busier time of the year, typically from mid-March-September, we may not be able to do them at all). The cost is $50 for the first half hour, and $15 each subsequent 15 minutes. A typical fitting will involve interviewing you regarding the type of riding you do, your goals, and the issues you’re having. We’ll likely observe you on your bike as it’s presently set up, so we have a baseline. Then we may take arm, shoulder, torso, inseam & foot measurements, and make changes to your bike according to recommendations from the New England Cycling Academy’s FitKit. We will then look at you on the bike again, because measurements are just the beginning. Depending who is doing the fitting, you may or may not be set up in a trainer (I would rather observe someone doing laps in our parking lot. It’s my feeling that people tend to “perform” when set up on a trainer, trying to figure out what I’m looking for. When outside, after just a minute or two people relax and I’ll see things I otherwise wouldn’t. But that’s just me; most prefer to set people up on the trainer, feeling it’s a more controlled environment and easier to work with. –Mike–).

Just to be clear, when you buy a bike from Chain Reaction, there is no charge for fitting you to that bike, including subsequent reassessment down the road. On bikes we have sold, such service is included with the sale of the bike (but applies only to product purchased from Chain Reaction Bicycles, which includes things like handlebars & stems). We will swap out stems during the period of time where we’re getting things dialed-in (provided changing the stem doesn’t involve re-cabling the brakes and/or gears, as might be needed if someone were to go to a dramatically-taller stem than a bike would normally come with).

Our goal, when we sell a bike, is to do everything we can to make sure that bike is everything it can be. We want someone to be thinking, every time he or she walks past their Chain Reaction bike, I want to get out and ride! And doing that takes time & effort on our part. It’s worth it.

Thanks-   –Mike–

“Clean Air Vehicle” that runs on gas? I don’t think so!

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This is a "Clean Air Vehicle?" It runs on gas, it requires large amounts of asphalt for parking, and it encourages driving for errands. Maybe "cleaner" than some alternatives, but cannot compare to a bicycle. Your bike is a true "Clean Air Vehicle."

Hybrid cars. Some people love to hate them, mostly for how they’re driven (if only they’d get rid of that meter telling them how, if they roll through the stop signs and drive like Grandma they’ll get 53 miles per gallon instead of 48). OK, so they have one thing in common with bikes, but getting stuck behind two of them today and having that orange sticker staring me in the face that says “Clean Air Vehicle” while they’re burning gas running errands to the shopping center… I’m sorry but that’s just too much.

A “Clean Air Vehicle” shouldn’t burn gas! It probably shouldn’t even run on electricity. The only true “Clean Air Vehicles” are those self-propelled. Your bicycle is a true “Clean Air Vehicle.”

Besides the recreational/fitness aspects of cycling, you truly can use a bike to avoid driving. Today, I did a run to the bank before heading to the shop, and how much gas did I use? Exactly zero. How many square feet of asphalt were required for me to park my bike? Exactly zero. The air would be a whole lot cleaner if there were more bicycles used for shorter trips and fewer “Clean Air Vehicles.” It’s time for some truth in advertising. Or maybe a new advertising campaign for Chain Reaction!

Some days the legs have it, some days they don’t. But it’s still a great day to ride a bike!

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It will be nice when it finally warms up, when the pavement is finally dry everywhere on our Tuesday/Thursday morning ride, when I’ve finally got my weight down to where I want it. OK, actually that last project is coming along fairly well; I really can’t complain too much when I’m sitting at 171 or so, a couple pounds lighter than this time last year. Would I like to be at 158? You bet. Do I have the willpower to do what it takes to get there? Uh… no. But the combination of my three weekly training/recreational/fitness rides plus the commuting I’ve tacked on is allowing me to feel like I’ve done an effective job of reversing the negative aspects of getting older.

So if this one morning out of the past many months I’ve felt like my legs just didn’t feel very lively, it’s not the end of the world. It wasn’t fun watching the guys (Eric, Karl, Marcus & John) ride on ahead of me through the park (it’s a Thursday so we often ride up through Huddart Park to Kings), but one bad day out of a hundred I can live with.  And, it helps me to not take for granted my decent health; there are many who, on their best days, don’t get to feel as good as I do on a bad day.

Not too much unusual on the ride this morning, other than watching a Scrub Jay pickup up what looked at first like a mouse and then realizing it was actually a baby rabbit (on west-side Old LaHonda). This surprised us; Scrub Jays aren’t that big! But it might explain why we haven’t seen many rabbits so far this year. Glad we don’t have to live in fear of death diving down on us from the skies.

Just another nice day on a bike

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Monday & Wednesday nights aren’t my favorites, because I know I have to get to bed at a reasonable time so I can get up at 7:05am and not feel like… well, like the last thing I want to do is get up. That pretty much requires that I’m in bed shortly before midnight, and don’t spend too much time reading the news on my iPhone before getting to sleep. But when Tuesday & Thursday mornings roll around, there’s no fear or trepidation about getting out there and being run into the ground by the fast guys, and even when I didn’t get the sleep I should have, I still don’t have that run-over feeling that’s typical on 4 or 5 hours of sleep. When it’s time to ride, it’s time to ride.

Thankfully, now it’s time to ride without rain. We did get a bit of drizzle up on Skyline for a few miles, but it quickly passed, allowing a fast descent into the Sky Londa sprint (not sure whether George took it or I did, and it’s a bit tougher to know than it should be since the finish line is imaginary). Oh, the roll call. Eric, Kevin, Karen, Karl, Millo, Marcus & George.  Updating the status of each-

  • Kevin will probably be getting really fast again, now that he’s finally given up on running. Hate that!
  • Marcus is fast and undoubtedly will remain fast.
  • Eric is showing rapid improvement over the past couple of months; fortunately his focus is more on distance than speed, so I may be able to hang with him.
  • George has got a pretty good combination of climbing & sprinting that I wish I still had (and has served him well in races!).
  • Karl’s well on his way to coming back after a crash-induced hiatus.
  • Karen remains as focused as ever, riding according to her plan. Pretty much impossible to rattle her.
  • Millo really doesn’t have to start up the hill 10 minutes ahead of us. 5 might be more like it, and even that’s questionable!

Me? I’m just working on gradually getting my weight back down and trying to not ride up the hill only for speed. I’ve got at least a couple of really long days in the saddle coming up in France and it’s not going to be speed that gets me (or my son Kevin) through! I’m also making commuting to work by bike a regular habit, and definitely feel some benefit from the hard ride back up to my house at the end of the day. Bikes really are useful for more than just recreation.  –Mike–

Regarding Lance, Tyler & that 60 minutes piece-

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Near the top of the Aubisque, July 19, 2005. Right to left Ivan Basso, Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich and Floyd Landis. At first thought Basso was Tyler, but thanks to John Murphy for correcting me. Doh! Oh well, what's swapping one doper for another these days? The only one in this group still in question is Lance.

(This is copied over from our “racing” blog) So Sunday we got to watch Tyler Hamilton in Act II of the supposedly-repentent cycling sinner’s club, telling us that he, like Floyd, now sees the light and wants to set the story straight, and part of that story is to tell the world that Lance Armstrong cheated his way to his Tour de France victories.

This would all be so much more believable if Tyler and Floyd weren’t circling the drain, after years of professing their innocence despite failing doping controls (in Tyler’s case, twice, although he did admit to the latter event). This would all be so much more believable if there wasn’t lots of $$$ involved… the huge number of $$$ each of these former athletes lost when they were caught and spiraled downward, the huge number of $$$ to potentially gain from book contracts and media access fees.

In the Tyler Hamilton 60 minutes interview, you couldn’t escape a feeling that he was making some of it up as he went along, with long pauses and lots of blinking. To be fair, he was that way with easy questions too, but it causes me to wonder if the guy cannot distinguish between the fantasy world he lived in for years and the real world.

If there’s a real bombshell that’s going to harm Lance’s legacy, it’s the Tour de Suisse angle, the supposedly-failed EPO test that was covered up by the UCI. That would be huge, if there’s credible evidence it happened. But there were issues with that as well, as we were shown evidence of a “suspicious” test result, not failed. And the money trail, the $125,000 donation to encourage the UCI to cover things up? You’ve got to be kidding; that might be a down payment but certainly doesn’t come close to what it would (or should?) take to buy off something like that.

And finally, there was the “white lunchbag” story. Tyler telling us how he lost his virginity to EPO via one of those “white lunchbags” the team doctors and trainers assigned to their best athletes, with EPO and/or HGH inside. This was a big thing for Tyler, a recognition that he’d arrived. And then later in the broadcast he talks about “reaching out” to Lance for… EPO. In a way that made it sound like Lance really helped him out; as if if hadn’t already gotten onto the EPO train previously. But he had. The “white lunchbag”, remember?

Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to compete at the highest levels in cycling, against people who are doping, without assistance. That’s the polite way of saying it. Assistance. We all need help from time to time, right? So we’ll make doping no more evil than someone down on their luck taking food stamps or a tax credit. But at some level it’s not. What is that level? Back in the day, we had a clear distinction between the supposed purity of college sports vs the evil commercialism of the professional world. I think I bought into that; I never assumed that all was clean & nice on the professional side, and maybe that’s why doping in cycling hasn’t bothered me as much as it should. But that’s not an argument with legs to stand on, because with the professionals in football, baseball, soccer, cycling etc leading the way, the amateurs have been encouraged to step up their game. Doping is clearly rampant in amateur sports, even at the high school level.

If there had been a distinction between professional and amateur sports and any sort of purity or honest competition, I think it was lost when the Olympics allowed professionals to compete. That, for me, was probably the “Dave Stoller” moment. “Everybody cheats. I just didn’t know.” –Mike–

Trains & bikes, no planes, no automobiles as we took on Mount Hamilton

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The last mile up Mount Hamilton, with an over-the-top soundtrack.

It’s Sunday, you need to get in something tough, and it’s tough to get in something tough without heading out to the coast. But how many variants of a ride to the coast can you do before it starts getting a bit repetitive? This coming from the guy who’s done the same loop every single Tuesday & Thursday morning for the past 30+ years, by the way. Kevin likes variety, while I like consistency and dedication. But looking out the window this morning and seeing the heavy marine layer still hugging the coastal hills, I was thinking maybe it’s time to head east, away from the clouds. Trouble is, it’s not so easy to head east on a bike; you’ve got the bay in the way, or a really long boring ride around it if you want to get anywhere decent. Or you drive, but I’ve really been trying to avoid that car thing lately. What to do.

Simple. Ride to the train station, take CalTrain to San Jose, ride up Mount Hamilton & return. Not much different from last Wednesday’s run up Sierra Road to see the Tour of California come through. So that’s what Kevin and I did, leaving the house at 10:50 to catch the 11:07 train (which ran 20 minutes late due to track work), got off in San Jose, hit every single red light you could possibly hit and had a very nice ride up Mount Hamilton. Nothing super fast; just under two hours, but Kevin’s not yet up to speed, and this was a very good opportunity for him to see where he was with the France trip coming up in less than two months.

I took a lot of video on the way up; still working out the kinks on that, figuring out how things work, how to get the least camera jitter, but what I really need to work on is the post-ride editing. Adding music is key to an interesting video, and clearly what I need to do is lay down the music track and then edit the video around it. Or I could ride with music playing and try to set the tempo accordingly, but that’s probably not so practical.

Eventually I’d like to set up a bunch of rides that can be easily accessed via public transportation (trains), so you can leave your car at home. Key to that will be identifying train stations that are close to places we like to ride, and hours that particular train system allows bikes. CalTrain allows bike on all trains, but BART is much more restrictive, keeping you off them during commute hours. That still leaves weekends! Using a combination of CalTrain, BART and the Capitol Corridor lines, we’ve probably got access to a pretty wide area.

Three days in a row… I could get used to this!

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It’s not that often that I get to ride three days in a row. Well, if you included commuting to work, sure, but that’s not quite the same as 2+ hours of hard riding. Tuesday was the usual Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride but with rain, yesterday was my ride from the San Jose train station to the top of Sierra Road to watch Stage 4 of the Tour of California, and today it was first Marcus and then Karl’s job to beat me up.

It was a spectacular morning, with few clouds, a bit warmer (I honestly never checked my computer to see what the temperature was) and dry roads despite a heavy marine layer that had blanketed the hills the night before. We rode up through the park, as is often the custom on Thursdays, and I glued myself to Marcus’ rear wheel as solidly as I could, which will never be solid enough to hold on much more than half way up the climb. At the top of Kings we met up with Millo, dropped off Marcus (he lives just off Skyline) and the four of us rode at a reasonably-civil pace the rest of the way, at least until the last half of west-side Old LaHonda when Karl and I found ourselves a bit ahead of Marcus & Eric, and rather than ease up Karl just kept going. Today, I could keep up with him. Soon, probably not! Just like the way I couldn’t stay on his wheel when he pushed things on Manuella ahead of the final sprint.

No ride tomorrow, or Saturday, darn. But Sunday the rain’s been called off, and I’m ready for something big.

An awesome tune-up for the Tour de France… for me *and* Chris!

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I'm not going to reduce the size of this photo because there's no way to reduce the size of Chris Horner's ride today!

Wow. I had no idea this day would turn out quite so spectacular. First, the rain that had been forecast stayed away. Second, getting to the race without using a car went without a hitch, taking CalTrain to San Jose with my Bike Friday (didn’t want to risk damage to my Madone on what passes for a bike rack on CalTrain) and riding from there to the course. Third, I saw lots of friends & customers (often one & the same) offering encouragement as I climbed the hill, and on Sierra Road, with camera gear on my back and a rack bag with all sorts of other stuff, I needed all the help I could get! And fourth, I saw a fantastic race, with Chris Horner showing that getting older doesn’t mean getting slower.

I’d by lying to say Sierra Road was easy. While the temps were moderate, I felt overdressed for most of the climb, with a warm base layer and leg warmers causing me to consider stopping along the way to remove them… but stopping, once on a climb, is something done only for “external” reasons (or should I say excuses?). Such as coming across a friend you haven’t seen in some time (saw a few of those today but didn’t stop), or maybe an imaginary mechanical problem. I was sweating more than I have in ages, and wondered how close my heart rate was to red-lining (hitting the maximum that I can reach, which these days is going to be around 175). I was getting a much-tougher workout than I had planned, and that, of course, was a good thing.

But everything worked out great. I made it to the top without getting passed by too many along the way, and the Bike Friday and I felt like we were up to the task of some challenging rides in France. I’ll admit that initially I felt like I wanted my Madone but it wasn’t too long before that feeling passed and it was just me & the hill.