Monthly Archives: January 2012

10 minutes of your time, today, could save cycling in the US

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Congress, in the next two days, may kill off virtually any expenditure having to do with making cycling a routine & safe activity, including-

Safe Routes to Schools is a program that works! More kids riding & walking to schools, less congestion.

  • Safe Routes to Schools, an amazing program that is getting kids to walk and ride to schools again, is going to be gone. And with it all hope of relief from traffic gridlock anywhere near a school in the mornings or afternoons. And this is a program that has had widespread bipartisan support.

  • Efforts to make sure new road projects accomodate motorists, pedestrians and cyclists will be set back years. This affects everyone, even motorists, as all users will continue to fight it out on poorly-designed roads and intersections. Congestion, gridlock and road rage will only get worse.

What can you do? In 10 minutes, you can make a difference.

Call your representative’s office and ask them to support Representative Petri’s amendment to restore funding to Safe Routes to Schools and Transportation Enhancements. Tell them it’s important, to you, that we invest in the future. Tell them that you’ve used a bicycle to commute, to shop, or just for fun. Let them know that, when gas gets above $4/gallon again, you’d like an alternative that’s safe and easy to do.

How do I do that?

Follow this link to find out who your Representative is and their phone number. For example, when I go to that link, it asks for my zip code (94062) and tells me my Rep is Jackie Speier. I click on her link and at the bottom of her page it gives me her phone number (both local and DC; I called the local). I call the number, speak to a staff person in her office, explain that I’m concerned about the future and that cutting all support for cycling is not something I want to see. Please support Representative Petri’s amendment. They take notes, and report to the Representative that “x” number of people called today asking that she support Representative Petri’s amendment to save funding for pedestrian & cycling projects.

That’s it. Seriously, just 10 minutes of your time. You don’t have to know any details about Representative Petri’s amendment. They don’t expect that you do. They just know that the amendment supports cycling infrastructure and that you believe in that.

My personal pitch for investing in the future-

I get that people think the country’s deficit is too big and we’re spending beyond our means. I get that we have to prioritize and make painful choices sometimes. But what I don’t get is an insistence that we only spend what we have, and cannot afford to invest in our future.

Anyone who has kids knows that’s not how the world works. If you’ve made a decision to have kids, you’ve mortgaged your future, plain & simple. Anyone who owns a house knows this isn’t how the world works. You borrow against the future, believing that the investment will pay off. These are generally intelligent decisions supported by society. Not subject to naysayers telling you that’s crazy, you don’t have the money today to support what it’s going to cost you tomorrow.

Investing in a future that helps us fight health issues, congestion & reducing our dependence on resources other countries can hold us hostage for is, I feel, worth spending 1.5% of the federal transportation budget on pedestrian & cycling needs.

Thanks-          Mike (& Steve) Jacoubowsky, Partners, Chain Reaction Bicycles

It’s like Hawaii only 30 or 40 degrees cooler!

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Big big big turnout for this morning’s ride; I left the video camera at the shop so I don’t have a chance of remembering them all. But there were lots of them, all of the regulars except Kevin (the pilot) and I was a bit surprised not to see Nigel out there, since he’d just picked up one of our super-hot deal Madone 5.1s during our big sale.

The pace was leisurely… really leisurely… until just before hitting Huddart Park, where things split up. I was taking my duties at the back very seriously (somebody’s got to keep an eye on things back there) while I expected Kevin (my son, not the pilot) to handle the front-end business. As expected, he got to the top about two minutes ahead of me. Still not up to speed yet, but feeling better each day.

It’s nice to have the really cold days behind us, although it is still possible we could see some in the month ahead. Rain? Not for us, although there will supposedly be some sprinkles tomorrow morning, but that’s for someone else, since I don’t ride Wednesdays! I do suspect we’re going to see some slightly-warmer temps ahead though, since we had quite a tail wind heading towards west-side Old LaHonda.

Main excitement was provided by yours truly on the 84 descent back into Woodside, when either I hit something or just tensed up badly and had my front wheel go a bit sideways. Very unsettling, but thankfully I stayed up. Probably just a slightly-damp bit of pavement I didn’t notice.

Riding with guys half your age

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I should know better than to ride with guys literally half (or less?) my age. But for good or bad, I feel like I have more in common with most 25 year olds than I do 55 year olds. I want to be fast, and don’t believe it’s beyond reason that I can get faster, while many 55 year olds are paying attention to AARP (American Association of Retired People) and thinking about cruises and getting senior citizen discounts at movies.

Actually, I don’t even know how old the guys I ride with are. Todd? Late 20s maybe? And Mike & Andrew? Maybe very early 20s? It’s actually a bit strange thinking I’m twice as old and then some. Besides trying to keep up with them, my main concern is to not become those older guys I rode with when I was much younger, who’d keep trying to come up with ways to put the young guys down because they had bad form or didn’t do things just right. Besides it being a way to try and make up for them (the older guys) being slow, it also had the unintended effect of backfiring on them, causing us younger guys (yes, I was young once) to really want to ride them into the ground. Which, of course, we did!

Todd, Mike & Andrew don’t try to ride me into the ground; they just let me run near 100% for as long as I can before they eventually get bored and take off. On today’s Woodside/Pescadero/Tunitas ride, our early start (7:45am) meant that it was still pretty cool out, so my breathing was pretty ragged climbing up Old LaHonda. I was OK on the moderate grades and had them waiting for me when it got steep. A pattern that repeated later in the day as it got warmer, so it’s probably not really fair blaming my 22 minute time up Old LaHonda on it being cold.

Best reason to not ride quite-so-early to the coast? Because the Pescadero Bakery doesn’t open until 10am! Fortunately, the general store/coffee shop/bar just down the street opens earlier, so I was able to buy a coke to help with the grades on Stage Road. And yes, it was beautiful out there! No clouds, hardly the slightest breeze and not much traffic.

I’d be lying to say that I was looking forward to the Tunitas Creek climb; up to that point I’d taken a few pretty short pulls at the front but didn’t feel like I had my good stuff this morning. We held together until just past the Bridge of Death (the bridge over the creek on the right, just as it starts to get steep) and then I got to watch them charge up the hill while my world was literally swaying from side to side. About 15 minutes later I caught up to Andrew (on the upper, flatter part of Tunitas) and we paced ourselves back up to Todd and Mike, who’d been soft-pedaling for a while so they didn’t finish the climb a day ahead of us.

In the end about 58 miles, just over 15mph average speed (sure seemed faster than that!), and back before noon.

I declare this “A Winter to Ride!”

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Pretty amazing out there this morning. 50 degrees, warm enough that most of my breathing problems were gone (still have a cold that’s been hanging on too long, but the difference in how my lungs work in 50 vs 40 degree weather is huge). I even hung with the fast guys up to the first hairpin (just over 5 minutes into the climb) before throttling back. Pretty big group despite some of the regulars not in attendance (no Karl, Karen or Eric, but we did have Todd, Kevin, Kevin, Ludo, Nigel, MikeF, Andrew and was Marcus there?).

It was so nice climbing in nearly-balmy weather, warm enough that I was slightly overdressed. Kevin (my son, not the pilot) was apparently overdressed enough that he overheated less than a mile from the top and had a seizure, very unfortunate since he was heading towards one of his best times on the climb.

I’d prefer it if it weren’t quite so wet ont he descents though. Most of the guys don’t seem to mind much, but I’m just not comfortable with my tires sliding around on the rain stripes, probably because it’s been a very, very long time since I hit the deck so I’m riding a bit too conservatively.

In the totally-absurd category, just heard Roberta Gonzalez (Channel 5 weatherperson) say that the computer models aren’t showing any rain until February 10th???!!! That’s pretty unbelievable. While it’s not likely they’ll reopen Sonora Pass, it’s quite possible Ebbets (Highway 4) and Tioga (120) may give us some interesting opportunities in the weeks ahead.

I like contrast, yes, but not this much contrast

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I’ve often said that any day you can see your shadow is a good day. I like the sun, I don’t like gray. I like contrast, and when you can see your shadow, there’s contrast. This morning the sun was out for most of the ride, as were quite a few people. No way I’d be able to name them all but I’ll try… Karen, Karl, Marcus, Kevin, Kevin, Eric, George, Todd, Nigel, Mike… including me that’s only 11. OK, that might be right, 11 is a pretty decent size group for our ride.

It was on the climb up Kings where the contrast actually become a bit much for my tastes. The contrast between myself, admittedly weakened a bit by a cold that’s hung on for several weeks, and my son, who’s getting faster and faster. He got to the top of Kings wondering where 9 seconds went (27:08, a very good time for the middle of winter) while I got up just over two minutes later. It was less than a year ago, seriously, that we considered having Kevin start up a couple minutes earlier than the rest of the group.

Shadows & Fog. MikeF, KevinJ & Nigel rounding a corner on west-side Old LaHonda

Shadows & Fog. Shadows are a reflection of what and where you are. They’re definitive, as in, right now, everyone else is faster than me. The Fog represents a potential that may or may not be reached. I’ll get stronger and lose weight as we emerge from winter, but will it be enough? Kevin is at 182, I’m at 173. I hope to get back down to 167 like I did last season, so I have potential. But if Kevin leans out, things could really get wild. Thus a foggy future!

One less car trip (my bike knows the way to Frys)

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Kevin pulling up to Frys Electronics in Palo Alto. It was only a matter of time before my bike found its way there.

The weather reports had been questionable; it seemed like there would be an opportunity for a quick run to the coast and back via Tunitas ahead of the storm, so Kevin and I got up early enough to give it a shot. Unfortunately, while at 11pm last night it showed the rain not hitting until noon today, at 7:30am this morning it showed it nearly upon us, with the skies confirming that we would, indeed, need to be riding our rain bikes.

Yuck. It was a great ride while it lasted; over a month since we’d last seen any rain, the longest stretch of dry weather I can remember. So instead of riding our Madones it was time to check out the rain bikes, which needed new brake pads, something I don’t have at home. No biggie; we rode down to the shop and got a bit of much-needed work done on them before heading back out onto the now-wet roads. Tunitas Creen was no longer in the cards, because I had to get back in time to pick up some hard drives at Frys. And that gave me the idea of using our bikes to avoid driving to Frys. Why not pick up the stuff via bike? Plenty of room in the rack bag for some hard drives and a copy of Windows 7, and why not walk through the place in cycling garb? The only thing I didn’t plan for was my inability to read product details without my reading glasses! Hate that.

After Frys we dropped in at Mike’s Bikes to check out how they’re doing things; now that we’ve got most of the remodel under our belt I feel a bit more secure visiting other dealers. Funny how that works. Graham, their manager, showed us around. Very nice guy; I should have asked if he’d be interested in attending the annual DC Bike Summit in March.

From there we rode home via The Loop, 48 degrees and raining and generally pretty comfortable… which caused us some amusement when, watching the 49er game later that day, the announcers were talking about the “miserable” conditions at the game… 52 degrees and raining. Wimps. :-)

A 90-second tour of our Redwood City remodel

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A fast & furious look at our January 2nd-13th remodel in our Redwood City store. Yes, we have bravely brought our retail standards up from 1980 to 1997 or so, with help from Trek Bicycles Retail Services Division. There are some on our staff who were disappointed that I wasn’t more actively involved in the design and final layout, but too much input from me would have resulted in an extrapolation of what we already had. We needed a new look, which is beyond my expertise. I know bikes, the Retail Services guys know what a great store looks like. So I pretty much let Tim, James & Brian have a free hand in most things, including picking flooring, fixtures and walls. My primary contribution was an insistence that we have a workable mechanic area downstairs, so we could have more expertise writing up repairs and running down unusual parts (and, hopefully, fewer people calling to me for help). So far, so good!

If you’re on our email list you’ll get something early next week promoting our grand reopening (never mind that we were never actually closed during the remodel, which was quite remarkable). I’m looking at this as the Bay Area’s newest bike shop is 32 years old!

We’ve still got more to do, and a now modern-looking facility that’s worthy of better upkeep (which means more sweeping & wiping & keeping things in their place). And I’m still trying to figure out where everything is, but remarkably, the most-significant thing that got lost in the transition was a paper shredder. Might have ended up in the massive pile of old electronic stuff we’ve collected over the past 24 years at this location.

Stop by and check out the place. Same friendly and helpful people as before, but a much nicer presentation. –Mike–

Back on-line again (A frustrating day yesterday)

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It was bad enough that a cold I’d thought I’d gotten over had its own second wind and had me feeling like I was going to turn a lung inside-out on yesterday morning’s ride, but then I get back and find a cryptic message from LunarPages (the company hosting this blog) saying that I’ve been taken off-line due to excessive CPU usage on their server. And they had supposedly scheduled a call from their “help” desk (which never came) to explain things. I didn’t fully understand the severity of things until a bit later in the day, and when I did I made the call myself, being on hold for over 30 minutes before finally speaking to someone who said I should talk with my “IT department” who would know what to do.

IT department? I am the IT department! Anyone thinking there’s enough money in the bike biz to pay employees for working with bikes and have someone else whose job it is to keep the computers running doesn’t know much about running a brick & mortar business these days.

So I go to bed last night with a non-functional website (not a great feeling) and wake up this morning to find this email-

Thanks for getting back to us. For your convenience, I have restored the disabled script to default. Please closely monitor your account so that it should not cause any issue on the server. We will also keep our monitoring parallel. For your recent modifications, we will not know immediately whether this has dropped your usage levels because resource usage statistics are cumulative over a 24 hour period. We will check your usage after 24 hours and update you if the modifications have helped to reduce the resource usage. 

At least the diary is back on-line, for now, but he tells me I have no way, in real-time, to discover the effects of any changes I might make. Kind of like saying you can work on the brakes on your car but won’t know until sometime tomorrow if, while driving, they might suddenly stop working. And for this I pay a premium monthly fee (compared to the various cheapie web hosting companies like “Go Daddy” and “1-2-3″ etc) for reliability.

Thank you, LunarPages.

What gives a ride bragging rights?

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So let's get this straight. It's literally feezing (32 degrees) outside, and we're out on our bikes, pretty comfy actually, while passed by a car with windows up, heater turned up to "7th level of Hell" setting, and the driver's wearing ear muffs. And probably complaining about it being cold.

The chart below shows this morning’s regular Tuesday-Thursday ride, and references distance, speed, climbing, heart-rate… all the usual things that the usual people use to determine how tough the ride was.

But is that really enough?

What about road conditions (clearly 100k on nicely-paved roads is a lot easier than the same distance on rutted trails), the bike you’re riding, and how you’re feeling on a given day? For the most part we compare road rides to other road rides, and off-road rides to other off-road rides, and how you’re feeling is pretty subjective. And for the bike, we’ll just assume everyone’s riding the fastest, smoothest-riding, best-handling bike there is (obviously, a Trek 6-Series Madone, which we’ll be happy to sell you!).

How about weather? If we want to come up with a truly insane ride, something epic, shouldn’t weather factor in? That’s where that last set of numbers come in. Temperature. A two-hour ride with an average temperature of 33F. Just one degree above freezing. A minimum temperature of 24.8F. Maximum 48.2 (probably just outside my east-facing garage, which the sun had heated up). How much cred do George, Kevin, Kevin, Eric, Todd and I get for riding when it’s that cold outside?

Truth be told, we were pretty comfortable, partly because we dressed appropriately (even stopping a couple times to add or remove windbreakers), partly because we know enough to ride at a consistent pace so the motor keeps the body warm but doesn’t run out of gas, and partly because we enjoy talking to each other about our recent rides (George just got back from the UCI Cyclocross Masters World Championships, where he took 8th place!) and what’s going on in our lives. Nevertheless, cold is a starkly-definable and easily-dealt-with adversity compared to the rain that is coming our way shortly.

It’s tough to assign a number or otherwise quickly define an epic rain ride. “It was crazy out there, trees blown down, rain so hard your eyes were constantly stinging from the sweat washing down  your forehead, and almost no cars on the road because sensible people were staying home rather than driving in that muck!” Yeah, I’ve had those rides, and during the 3 or 4 day window where people really remember what the weather had been like that day, you get substantial street cred. After that, it’s just another ride in the rain.

But a number defining the temperature doesn’t lie, and translates equally well to the physically-fit and the couch potato. 24.8 degrees. That’s a number that will define today’s ride tonight, tomorrow, next month, 5 years from now, without degredation. At least until I figure out a way to see if my Garmin is reading correctly and not 3-4 degrees too low, which might be the case. :-)      –Mike–

Why we ride #333- Watching the donkeys play

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I like to try and find something new to see on each and every ride, even when it’s the same route I might have done many, many times. Like today’s ride, a classic Woodside/Pescadero loop with the added kicker of West Alpine thrown in for good measure. This was Brian’s birthday ride; not sure how old he is (was he 42 before so now he’s 43, or is he now 42?), but it was an all Chain Reaction cast, with Kevin, Mike, Mike (me), Andrew and, of course, Brian. What was new? On West Alpine, passing the big ranch towards the middle of the climb, there was a pair of donkeys playing around like puppies. Not sure why it seemed so surprising; maybe that’s normal for donkeys, but it wasn’t anything I’d seen before.

Winter is beginning to seem more real with each passing day; the lower temperatures (low 40s everywhere but the coast) and winds remind us that there’s more to winter than just rain. The mental quandry is due to end shortly; rain by Thursday, or so they tell us.

Today’s route took us up Old LaHonda and down the other side, then out to San Gregorio where it finally warmed up to the mid-50s. Then it was south on Stage Road to Pescadero for lunch, followed by, for Kevin & Mike, a very fast run up Haskins Grade. Smokin’ fast, as in so fast I could only watch as they rode off. So fast that Kevin now “owns” the fastest time for the Haskins Grade climb (from the Pescadero side) for his weight class (180-199) and 4th fastest for his age (24 & under). Details here. The kid is getting way too fast!

An even-bigger accomplishment than Kevin’s was scored by Karen Brems, a fairly-regular member of our Tuesday/Thursday-morning rides, who today won the Masters UCI World Cycling Championship in the 50-54 age category! Obviously, if Kevin races Cyclocross next year, we know someone who can give him some pointers.