I both feared and looked forward to yesterday morning’s ride, having been off the bike for a full week (!!!) and gained 2.5 pounds (half a pound a day is pretty much the norm for me for the first week or so; thank goodness it levels out after that; clearly the damage is done quickly!). Thankfully, heading up away from my house everything just felt right. I was home. I was on a bike, the only thing I can comfortably do for any real length of time. No squirming, no sore shoulders, no stress. That last one was strange. I really thought I’d be dreading my added weight and lack of fitness, but no, everything was good.

Maybe it was because we were literally in a fog. Visibility for the first half hour was dismal, so bad that you couldn’t even see the large group at the start of the ride until we were almost upon them. But once in a while the fog clears when you wish it hadn’t, and today that was at the exact point on Kings where Kevin (my son, not the pilot) decided to ditch dad and join the fast guys up front. And yet I was perfectly happy with my 28-something time.

I’ll next be off the bike for a week towards the end of March, when I head to DC for the annual Bike Summit, the big event where 300-500 bicycle advocates meet with every congressional office in DC to try and make this a better place for cycling. Normally I’d just miss one ride, on Thursday (the event is on Wednesday & Thursday, normally allowing me to fly out on Tuesday after the ride and return Thursday night or Friday), but this year I’m a board member for the NBDA (National Bicycle Dealer Association) which has meetings on Monday & Tuesday. Not fun being away from the shop for 4 or 5 days again, and even less fun being off the bike for a week! –Mike–

Hello,
We’re interested in placing a promotional link on: http://www.chainreaction.com/tdfdrugscandal.htm for a websiteabout Drug Rehabilitation.

If you already have an arrangement or ad rates in mind, We’d be more than glad to hear from you.

Regards,

Valerie Elden
http://sellyourwebsiteads.com/
Toll Free: 1-800-208-6257

If you go to the link mentioned- http://www.chainreaction.com/tdfdrugscandal.htm, you’ll find a short piece I wrote in 1998 about the latest cycling drug scandal. Some robot searching the ‘net found the content to be something that someone interested in drug rehabilitation might read. Too late though; Marco Pantani (mentioned in my piece) died in 2004.  –Mike–

You tell me, does this look like a scene from a Batman movie or what? It’s actually downtown Nashville, Broadway to be precise. The home of many, many Elvis shops and high-fat eateries.

So what are Steve and I doing in Nashville? We’re here to attend a high-level fitting seminar for tri bikes, so we can make our fastest customers even faster! But don’t worry, nobody’s turn me into a triathlete, not as long as one of the three events involves running.

At least one person had a much worse day than I did today.

It was descending 84, just before the bottom that we found someone who had a really bad day. Guess it puts into perspective the many things that didn’t quite go as planned for me today, including a lengthy issue with Comcast, trying to install a new phone system in our Redwood City location and not quite getting things right. Oh, and on the way home, picking up some flowers for my wife, only to have them totally spill out onto the seat.

(Next section added after the ride)- Details on our ride below. The original intention was to descend West Alpine and head back up 84, but the fog was so thick on Skyline (and all points west) that I decided to get the heck out of there and did a rare descent of Page Mill instead. Not that tough a ride at exactly 100k (had to ride around the block once home to get in the required mileage), but it did include Redwood Gulch, so it could hardly be called easy.

Kevin ended up with a string of personal best times for various segments, something which is to be expected as he continues to improve, but only if he rides on ahead of me! I can match and even beat him on a relatively-shallow grade, and can still outsprint him, and if the ride’s long enough, outlast him. But not for long, unless I really step up my game. The steeper stuff? That ship has sailed. Unless I wake up some morning with a new pair of lungs.     –Mike–

Whether motivated by the fear of missing out, or the fun of laughing at our “winter” this year, we had quite a large group for our regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning no-matter-what ride. Too large to try and name them all, but not quite so large that my slowness up Kings Mtn could be hidden from the rest. That’s OK, this is “winter” after all! And I have to face facts; as I’ve gotten older, I’m doing increasingly better on longer rides (100k+) and simply can’t quite come up to speed on short “sprints” like our regular 30 miler. And watching Kevin (my son, not the pilot) do so well on this ride brings back memories of my own rides at his age. I owned rides like this back then. Just as he is beginning to do now.

What this means for us more-experienced folk is that we’ve got to consider that not everything about getting older is bad; that we still have some advantages over the younger cyclists, and if we want to exploit those advantages, we can put them into a world of hurt just like they do to us on the shorter rides. Except that we wouldn’t do that, because it wouldn’t be nice. OK, that’s fine for dealing with 18-25 year-old cyclists. Past 25, they begin to do better at those longer rides, without slowing down much on the shorter ones. You’re only hope, if you’re a 55-year-old has-been/never-was (some day I’ll figure out which) like me, is that somewhere between 25 & 40 they become moms or dads and spend a lot of time & energy raising their own future nemesis.

Which brings things full-circle, as did an email I got today from a distribution list for “old timer” cyclists. In this edition, a 20 page pdf of the 1966 Tour del Mar (now called the “Pescadero Road Race”) was attached, and on page 14 was a piece written by my father, then Sports Editor of the Redwood City Tribune. I’m sure my father had no idea at that time that I would become so strongly attached to cycling, or even consider taking up racing, but it shows his openness to sports other than Basketball, Baseball, Football and Track & Field. Hard to believe he’s been gone for 24 years now (I could be off by a year on that, and if so, I’m sure my mom will be correcting me shortly). He was around for the first 8 years or so of Chain Reaction Bicycles, and died just a few months after the birth of his first grandchild. While the beginning of “desktop publishing” enabled him to have a second career after the demise of the local newspaper, the internet was not yet even someone’s wildest dream. It is interesting to think of what he would be doing now.  –Mike–

What the weather was supposed to be. Talk about a no-show!

How ironic that I’m disappointed in this-morning’s ride because it didn’t rain. But after last night’s weather forecast… 100% chance of rain from 7am-11am… how could it miss? Kevin and I got out everything. All the nasty-weather gear, charged up all the lights (figured in really nasty conditions we’d be needing our most-powerful headlights), and went to bed thinking we’d be woken up by howling wind and rain striking the windows in the middle of the night.

This screenshot at 7:10am accurately shows the "no rain zone" protecting us

Nope. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. It rained not a single drop on us. It was as if we were being protected by a “no-rain zone”, a big hole in the green (the color of rain on the weather map). It’s not as if it looked exactly friendly looking out the kitchen window as we made coffee and got ready to ride, but it didn’t look like that one epic day of rain we were expecting either.

It gets worse. Heading out on my rain bike, loaded with stuff I wasn’t going to need (like a heavy plastic rain jacket), Kevin and I immediately run into Nigel, heading up Jefferson to the start of the ride. And Nigel has his “nice” bike, the Madone 5.1 he picked up last week, the bike that makes him even faster than normal. And me, I’m feeling, well, tired & slow & old & broken. Just one of those high-gravity mornings, y’know?

It still gets worse. At the base of the climb Kevin (pilot), Kevin (son), Nigel and I are joined by Marcus, again on on light bike with no fenders, no rain gear. To say I struggled and was far behind on Kings is an understatement. I even wondered what the point was, after I lost sight of everyone, before half-way up the hill. Thankfully I recovered enough to suck wheels for the rest of the ride, and finished feeling better than I thought and much better than if I hadn’t ridden at all. But no epic conditions, no cool video to show. Another day. –Mike–

Approaching the top of Old LaHonda and Kings for the first time. Notice the similar expression.

Oh sure, you can pretend everyone’s all smiles & happy at that point, but pictures don’t lie.

Jack-In-The-Box's Bacon Shake. Seriously. And it's as bad as it sounds.

The Superbowl- do you watch it for the game, or the commercials? Unfortunately I paid too much attention to one of the Jack-In-The-Box ads, the one promoting their site “Marrythebacon.com” And so, after the day’s ride, after the Superbowl, it was off to Jack-In-The-Box for something I felt funny even asking for, because, after all, you assume that it’s a joke, that there really isn’t such a thing as a bacon-flavored shake. But there is such a thing, and trust me, you don’t want one. My first impression was that it tasted like cigarette-flavored ice cream. Oh Snap! It’s true that “riding to eat” doesn’t work; you’ll inevitably eat more than you should. But eating something like a Bacon Shake without riding would be worse!

Kevin and I did have a great ride today. Strava details below; in a nutshell, a 100k ride starting in Woodside, up Old LaHonda, south on Skyline, descent on West Alpine, over Haskins to Pescadero, Stage Road and then up Tunitas and down Kings.

5 minutes up Old LaHonda I cut Kevin loose; I really thought he was going to get a personal record but he missed it by about 15 seconds. He’s still just over 20 minutes for the climb, but he’s now riding consistently fast for the entire ride. And he’s famous; on our way through Woodside we passed a group of 4 cyclists, one of whom said “You’re the father & son team! I read you blog all the time!” So one more person who knows that Kevin’s speeding up while I’m slowing down.

As long as the grade isn’t too steep, I’m OK. Kevin’s sweet spot seems to be around 7-8%, which pretty much mirrors my weakness on climbs these days. Steeper, and I can gut it out. 3-5% and I’m sucking that fast wheel in front of me like my life depends upon it. And if it’s not too long I can even manage the 7-8% stuff, like the bumps on Stage Road. But on Tunitas, once we get to the Bridge of Death, it’s all over (and so today, climbing Tunitas, that’s where bid Kevin adieu and met him at the top, a couple minutes after he arrived).

As usual, no rain, not too cold (didn’t see anything colder than 38) and friendly company. Kevin (son, not the pilot), Karl, Karen, Eric, Ludo, Marcus, Todd, Nigel and one or two others I’ve lost track of. Nigel’s picked up quite a bit of speed since getting his new Madone 5.1 last week; clearly I should have filled his tires with water to slow him down a bit!

Today’s video has nothing to do with this ride. A customer came into the shop earlier, asking about video shot with the Contour GPS camera he was considering buying. That’s when I realized I had a fair amount of raw unedited footage I’d not looked at since shooting it in France, and came across scenes on the Galibier, seen below. Sorry about the strange “floating” frame; I had to use the editor’s stabilizer function because the camera wasn’t mounted very well on the bike so the image was bouncing around a lot.
 

Warning: Political rant follows! But I think I can sign up people from all sides on this one.

I am saddened not just by the failure of the amendment (making sure a certain amount from the highway funding process goes to cycling infrastructure and Safe Routes to Schools) but also by the nearly-complete partisanship of the vote. Check it out. 100% of the Democrats voted for, joined by only two Republicans brave enough to go against party orders.

Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t about Republicans behaving badly. If this was an amendment for something favoring business interests being pushed by Republicans, I’m sure we would have seen nearly 100% of the Democrats lined up against it.

This needs to stop. There is no absolute right or wrong on most issues, but every single thing that comes up lately has become a litmus test of whether you’re a good Republican or good Democrat serving your party, and not whether you’re a good elected official representing your PEOPLE.

The PEOPLE are not being represented in Congress or the Senate these days. Only the polarized battleplans of the two parties. Nobody is interested in a compromise in which they come out with less than they ideally wanted. We’ve gone nuclear. Literally. But at least with nuclear weapons we understood the dangers and avoided using them, due to the believability of MAD (mutually assured destruction). Everyone loses, so don’t start. Right now, everyone is losing. The only people who might think they’re winning are those that believe that paralysis is good.  –Mike–

But I had one email from someone on the “left” who was very disappointed that I would ask people to support an amendment from someone (Representative Petri, Republican from Wisconsin) on the “right”, feeling that I was endorsing the person (Petri). The reality is that it’s extremely important this amendment did come from someone on the “right” since it gives cross-party appeal, something desperately needed right now! It’s very unfortunate that the needs of pedestrians and cyclists have become associated with Democrats and derided by Republicans, as a matter of obedience to their party chiefs. I am willing to work with anyone, but especially those traditionally, well, hostile is perhaps an appropriate word, to our needs.

And I received a very different email from someone at least initially offended that I was willing to mortgage his children’s future by spending money today that we don’t have. This was probably a reaction to the last couple of paragraphs in my piece, where I explained that investing in the future represents our belief in that future, and that it’s not an unusual thing to do (giving the examples of having kids and buying houses, neither of which are things that can generally be done using cash on hand but instead represent a commitment to pay on the installment plan). In retrospect, those last paragraphs didn’t need to be there, but in this case, it did start a dialog with the customer in which discussing politics became “real.” Instead of just digging in and saying this is the way it is (as is the norm in DC right now), he explained why he thinks the way he does, and I explained why I think the way I do, and there was actually significant common ground.

Will I walk this path again? Most likely. Even viewed strictly from a selfish business standpoint, there’s likely more to gain than lose (making assumptions that there is in fact some pre-selection of customers that tends to favor those more willing to tax themselves slightly, or give up something else, in favor of better cycling opportunities… this is a bicycle business after all!).  –Mike–

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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–

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.

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–

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.

Normally we’d ride through Huddart Park on Thursdays, but this morning I wanted to keep an eye on my heart rate, which had been running higher than normal on Tuesday, so I was determined to see if I could keep it at 160 on the climbs. Almost; it crept up to 162 a few times, but by forcing myself to relax I kept it in a fairly normal range. Of course, that also gave me an excuse for not trying to keep up with the two Kevins, who ditched Eric and I about a third of the way up the hill.

That system check thing? Confirmed my worst fears. An excellent dinner the prior night, eating too much of something called Casole (I’m sure I slaughtered the spelling), with chocolate cake for desert, well, let’s just say my rear wheel had plenty of ballast to keep from spinning. The scale showed 2 pounds higher than Tuesday. Adding insult to injury, Strava says my “suffer score” was only 95, on a scale where anything under 100 is wimpy. Hey, I may not have been going really fast, but I was certainly suffering! Maybe now I know why some don’t ride with computers & heart monitors.

But this piece from his blog puts him on the very top pedestal in my book. What he does for that kid on the Alpe d’Huez is priceless.

The process is both lengthy and fast at the same time. It’s amazing, given the scope of the project, that it will all be done by the end of next week. That’s roughly a week longer than the initial timetable (two weeks of the “heavy” stuff will actually become three) but faster than any estimate I’d come up with on my own. Yes, little glitches here and there (like our vault door… what to do with it? The flooring won’t fit underneath, and it weighs more than a big truck so it’s not like we can lift it out!), but progress is sure and steady. That’s from my perspective. I’m sure Tim, the guy from Trek Retail Services division who’s in charge of things, sees things differently. He probably gets to spend far too much time focusing on things that aren’t going according to plan and doesn’t think about stepping back for a second and saying wow, this is pretty awesome. As a business owner, I can relate to that!

So for now, Tim, James & Brian, kick us out of the way when you need room, grab us when you need help, and thank you for lending your talents to a shop desperately in need of them! –Mike Jacoubowsky, Partner, Chain Reaction Bicycles

What, confused about me letting Kevin have the day off because he was “sore?” Let’s say that I strongly encouraged him to ride, pointing out that his muscles would feel better sooner if he rode. He wasn’t buying any of it, now claiming that he didn’t sleep much either. After a few minutes I gave up and headed off on my own, believing then, as I believe now, that he would have been a lot better off had he ridden. Yes, he’s got a tough dad.

Partway up Kings we met up with Marcus, and rode a reasonable pace to the top. Reasonable meaning that things split up into two groups, with Keith, Marcus & Karl up front, while Eric and I worked hard to find any remaining oxygen in their wake. It was a bit of an odd morning for the two of us in that Eric’s breathing sounded worse than mine (although my heart rate was running considerably higher than his, an indication that I’m not in the shape I should be).

But that Keith person. Nice guy. But deceptively fast. Deceptive in that he’s going to ride at whatever level his training calls for, so you can get the idea that he’s “normal” because he’s riding not that much faster than you are. But when push comes to shove, the guy has a motor, and when he switches it out of idle, watch out. I finally looked him up today on Strava. He “owns” 6 pages of KOMs. KOMs, for those not familar with Strava, are sections of roads where you have the fastest time. Of anybody. If you’re lucky, you can find something obscure and make it your own (or create a new one and “own” it until somebody else comes along). But Keith? He has 6 pages of them!

So it’s safe to say that he’s riding way below his level when I’m in the vicinity. Karl & Marcus & George & Chris & sometimes pilot Kevin might keep things interesting on a ride with him, but Me? I’m working my tail off to kepe his rear wheel in sight.

For those interested, the 10 day forecast still shows no rain, and all Sierra passes remain open. The absurdity of a ride in the Sierras in January remains possible.

Thankfully we’re receiving great help with the layout and execution from Trek’s retail store services division. This is way outside my area of comfort. I can diagnose some of the toughest problems on a bicycle with ease, but hanging a picture frame is about the extent of my home/shop-improvement capabilities! –Mike–

But it is winter, and someday it will rain. In the meantime, no reason to feel guilty about the lack of rain. There’s nothing we can do about it, other than pretend to be empathetic to your friends who ski (which is more than they’ll offer you when it seems too nasty outside to ride a bike but there’s great powder at Lake Tahoe).

This morning was really, really nice out. It was up into the 50s on Skyline, and Kevin, Kevin and Eric were willing to ride at a pace I could (mostly) sustain. Mostly? Yeah, I lost contact on the steeper pitch heading up through Huddart Park, and then again when it got steep towards the end. The two Kevins (my son & the pilot) stayed together to the top, while I struggled to try and stay with Eric. I’d like to believe that I’m still a bit slow due to the cold I’ve got, and I’m happy that I didn’t lose as much time to Kevin today as he lost to me on Tuesday.

To check your rim for wear, hold a straight edge across it (in this photo, a tire lever was used) and see how much it's worn away in the center. Many/most modern rims will have wear indicators you can look for; they're often little indented dots which will disappear (because they've worn down) when the rim is too thin to be safe.

How does this happen? If you ride in the rain, you pick up a mixture of road crud, water and ground brake pad that is as abrasive as sandpaper, so every time your brake is applied, you’re wet-sanding the rim. Gradually the rim becomes thinner, and eventually gets to the point that it’s no longer strong enough to hold the tire in place. That’s when it literally explodes.

It’s hard to remember what a normal winter is like; we haven’t seen rain in so long we’ve forgotten about last year! If you did ride your bike anytime between November and late May last year, chances are you rode in the rain. Many people who normally wouldn’t ride in the rain eventually gave up and did ride, because the dry days were few & far between. As a result, we’re seeing a lot more seriously rain-damaged bikes (not just wheels, but chains, cassettes and cranks too) than we’d normally expect.

We need to be really clear about the fact that riding in the rain drastically accelerates wear & tear on your bike, especially high-performance bikes. One mile in the rain damages your bike at least as much as 100 miles on a normal (dry) day. Sometimes even worse. For those of us who ride no-matter-what, the smart thing is to have your “nice” bike and a separate “rain” bike. The “rain” bike is usually the bike you rode before buying your new cool lighter/faster/smoother machine, a bike that’s not meant to be pretty but needs to be basically functional. You’re going to install fenders on it, wider tires (yes, they slow you down but you need more traction in the wet) and cheap wheels, because the rims are going to wear out pretty fast. Sorry, there’s nothing you can do about that, short of using a bike with disc brakes. You’re going to be replacing chains and cassettes and chainrings far more often, due to wear, than on your nice bike… the but price of the parts will be far cheaper, because you’re not worried about weight, you’re worried about stuff that works.

But for now, go check the rims on your bike and see what they look like. You don’t want your wheel to explode on you. For what it’s worth, I go through a set of rims every 18 months or so on my rain bike. Desending from Skyline in the rain does that; and if you want to accelerate the process absurdly, descend Kings Mtn in the rain. Why Kings Mtn? Because there’s no point where you can let off the brakes. You’re grinding away the rim the entire descent. On 84, the more-gradual grade means you use the brakes less and wind resistance helps to slow you down as well. How bad is Kings? I’ve gone through a set of brake shoes on just one descent.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to ride this morning, gradually getting over a pretty nasty cold that gave me some trouble keeping up with Kevin (my son, not the pilot) on Sunday’s ride up Mt. Hamilton, but I became inspired when I saw Kevin having trouble following Eric’s wheel before we got to the Huddart Park entrance. Normally, I would have hung back with Kevin and made sure he wasn’t in trouble, but the Strava guy was even further behind Kevin, and after Kevin ditching me on Mt. Hamilton I was ready to return the favor. I did hold up at Huddart Park for him a bit, but that was it, game on, sick or not.

The fog ended shortly into the Kings Mtn climb, giving us dry roads and clear skies until we dropped back into Woodside at the end (as seen in the video above). Overall I rode more strongly than I expected, but later paid for it as my voice has pretty much left me. I feel fine, but just can talk much, probably a result of rapid breathing on the climb that aggravated my throat. But if that’s the price I pay for getting even with Kevin, it was worth it.

It’s January in the western hemisphere. Winter, right? 70 degrees, no significant rain for weeks and none in the forecast!

This weather has become nearly absurd. As much as it makes for fantastic rides and greatly benefits our business, it’s kinda spooky and you gotta wonder if we’re really going to pay for this later on (maybe 40 days & nights of rain?). But for now, I’m advocating guilt-free cycling. It’s not as if we can do anything about it.

This is not an organized ride in any way, shape or form (in other words, there’s no mechanical support, no food or water along the way). It’s just something that people do to start the new year out in the right way… on a bike, climbing a hill! My son and I will be starting at 9am from the base of the hill (Alum Rock & Mount Hamilton). Unfortunately, CalTrain service doesn’t start early enough on holidays, with the first train not arriving in San Jose until 9:51am.

We’ll be riding a 1 hour, 45 minute pace to the top, which would be equivalent to riding up Kings in about 30 minutes or so. The views of the not-snow-covered Sierras should be great, and if it’s really clear, you’ll see Mount Lassen.

There’s a coke and food machine (“food” being candy and energy bars) at the top, but it only takes dry dollar bills. That means putting them into a plastic bag; anything even slightly damp won’t work in their machines.

If you haven’t been up Mount Hamilton before, it’s mainly… long. Really long! The grade is never steep (it averages out less than Kings Mtn), and it’s got two short descents on the way up. Make sure you’ve got two bottles of Cytomax (or whatever your drink of choice is) and some energy bars for the trip up. And the ride back down? Mount Hamilton, for most of us, is not a descent we look forward to. Random gravel in the turns and invisible pothole keep your speed down so much that you actually look forward to the two short climbs on the way back!

And when will you be back? Leaving at 9am, assume you’ll be back around 1pm, still time to catch one of the New Year’s Day football games, and feel guilt-free about nachos & cokes & whatever else you might be tempted to eat because everybody else is. Everybody else who didn’t ride to the top of the Bay Area’s highest peak!

My grandmother, Nana, closing in on 102 and the final days of her life

This morning after my ride I got a call from my mom, letting me know that my grandmother, Nana, had been admitted to the hospital last night with breathing problems. No biggie, for most people. And for all I know, it could be no biggie for Nana… which would be something of a surprise, since she’s closing in on 102. But my mom sounded like this was pretty serious, so we (the wife & kids included) paid her a visit tonight.

If this is what someone on death’s door looks and acts like, my fears of getting older have been greatly misplaced. Sure, she hears primarily from just one side, but she does hear and understand quite well. Yes, she has trouble recognizing some people sometimes, but retains a tremendous amount of memory of subtle things; events in your life, events in hers, and little things that didn’t seem too important at the time but now, 30, 40, 50 years later, you can see that they were.

Interesting to think about what might be important to you 30, 40 or 50 years from now. It likely won’t be what you got for Christmas or anything having to do with your finances.

She’s also happy. Really happy. Almost to the point of displacement (as in, having no sense of her current situation). She smiles, and in those moments where she gets serious, she’s mostly admonishing people for worrying about things too much. She could talk about all the unfortunate things in her life, in particular relatives she’s outlived by far more than a country mile (my cousin Jon cut down by pancreatic cancer is his mid-40s, my aunt Judy who passed away a few years ago, my grandfather, Pompa, one of the great influences in my early life, who has been gone for maybe 27 years… her sister… ohmygoodness, when you live to be nearly 102, I guess there are going to be quite a few!).

But Nana focuses on life. And it’s kind of strange, because you can’t tell if she’s really aware that she’s not that far from joining those now gone. In her late 80s and early 90s, it (her death) was all she talked about. But somewhere, sometime, that all changed. She seems completely at peace with where she is, and doesn’t spend much, if any, time discussing where she’s going. Is that so bad? I wish I knew. I don’t. Part of me says there are things to discuss, not plans, but questions to ask while she’s still around, and for her, things to get off her mind so she can be at peace. But she’s a pro at the final stage of life, expanding it from the usual too-short a time (a short chapter cut even shorter by an ending that came sooner than expected) to something approaching an epic novel in its entirety. She’s been “preparing” for this for maybe 20 years. Or more.

I will miss her when she’s gone, but probably not as much as I fear, because what I won’t miss will be the memories of many years past, and those memories don’t die with the person. There may be just a few short days to create new memories, and in fact, visiting her, I struggle a bit, looking for something new to learn and share. But that’s missing the point and putting far too much emphasis on the next few days, weeks or months, than should be the case. The point is that she’s been part of my life since I was born, and the memories are already in place. There will be few, if any, unanswered questions upon her passing. And what I am today is at least partly a result of the time I spent on Nana & Pompa’s ranch in the Sacramento Valley during the summers while a young kid. That won’t die with Nana.

Addendum 01/02/12- Nana’s left the hospital and is back “home” (one of those “assisted living” places that can take care of elderly folk 24/7), apparently more determined than her doctors thought to make it to that 102nd birthday in February. Pretty amazing!

Of course, that wasn’t going to happen! He got feeling better up on Skyline, just like I told him he would, as he got above the dirty air below (all those lit fireplaces despite the spare-the-air warning due to atmospheric conditions that keep all the bad air down close to the ground). It wasn’t a pretty ride, but we still felt a whole lot better at the end for having ridden than we would have otherwise. Which is always how it works out!

This is how my day started, the Devil Dog staring at me from the sofa, wondering why anybody was up before the sun (or before the heater turned on)

I didn’t even weigh myself after the various Christmas meals and food substitutes. Didn’t want to know. Don’t need to know, because after all these years, I know exactly what happens if I eat and don’t ride for a few days. Anytime I go past the normal ride routine (3 times/week) I can count on adding 1/4 pound per day since the last time I rode (this applies to the first 5 or 6 days; past that, thank goodness, my weight will level off).

A long way of saying that I wasn’t really looking forward to riding this morning, but the alternative was worse. Much worse! At least Kevin (my son, not the pilot) should have been worse off than me, since he missed a full week or riding due to a nasty cold that he’s just now getting over. Of course, just because things be a certain way doesn’t mean they will be, and so it was this morning as I found myself struggling twice to keep up with Kevin on the climb up Kings, before he finally ran out of gas just prior to the top.

Despite the cold temps we had a respectable group this morning, with George, Kevin, Eric, Karl, James & John. Seems like I’m missing someone, but can’t figure out who. Oh, right, my legs. But even my missing legs made something of an appearance, more than I expected anyway. Will they be ready for Mount Hamilton on New Years Day? We’ll see!

Was it cold? Well sure, down to 29.something according to my Garmin computer (my Trek Node computer said 33, but you get more credibility at 29 so I’m going to assume my Garmin is more accurate), but you can dress comfortably for that. Besides, it gets warmer as you go, right? All the way up to 39 degrees at the end of the ride! It’s actually kind of remarkable that we can ride in such temperatures without excessive bundling up… the miracle of modern lightweight fabrics.

Who rode this morning? Myself, Eric, John, Karl, Karen, Todd and Shane. Neither Kevin today; one was working (flying), the other not feeling well. Both missed a very nice day.

If the first day of winter, one of the coldest mornings of the year, can be this nice… how can I not want to be out on a bike enjoying it?

Who was responsible for that? Certainly not me! So it must have been either Kevin, Eric, Karl or George. Since it was George and nobody else who rode off the front on the west-side Old LaHonda section, I’ll blame him. But thankfully, other than Kings (and George ditching us on Old LaHonda), I was able to hang onto wheels and not get dropped.

It would be nice to believe that the faster pace meant we’re all in better shape that prior years, but it’s more likely the case that Kevin (my son, not the pilot) (should I just create an acronym for that, since it’s used so often? MSNP?) is definitely getting stronger, while Eric and I are getting better at lashing virtual bungee cords to George & pilot-Kevin’s bikes. As long as the climb isn’t too steep the virtual bungee cords hold pretty well!

No cycling this trip although I certainly could have; the weather’s beautiful here. Blue skies, mid-40s. You could really be fooled about Midwest winters on a day like this.

OK, 8:11am was still pretty close. Still had to come up with something that would alleviate the pain of getting on the scale and seeing something unfriendly, so we chose a fast run over 84 to the coast and back via Tunitas. Best thing about that loop is the coast part, because no matter how cold it is on our side of the hill, it’s always warmer near the ocean. Right?

29.7 degrees shown on the Garmin computer; so cold that I had to highly manipulate the image to get it to show up (LCD screens often fade in the cold). The Trek computer registers more slowly and shows 33 degrees. I'm sticking with the 29.87!

Wrong. This morning saw the temps drop nastily in that little section just past the main descent on 84 (prior to LaHonda)… and say nasty. And I really do mean nasty. As in, 29 degrees nasty. That was not expected, nor was it expected that the temps would stay in the very low 30s until we were within a mile or two of the coast, where it warmed up to a toasty 40 or so. But y’know, 40 sure felt a whole lot better than 30!

Predictably, nobody else was out there on the ocean side of the hill this morning, because they knew. Thankfully, my biggest fear didn’t materialize, that being the likelihood that the parallel valley that the base of Tunitas Creeks runs up, which is only a couple miles from 84, would be similarly cold. Instead, we had near-tropical temps in the low-40s, climbing to mid-40s on our way up the hill. Totally comfortable & nice! Even better, instead of getting the usual cold blast coming down Kings back into Woodside, it actually warmed up (fortunate for the very large numbers of cyclists we saw climbing up the hill this morning).

Were we prepared for the cold? Sorta. We had our best cold-weather gloves, and within a few hours the tips of my fingers didn’t hurt anymore, so I think we did ok there. No problem for the legs, with thermal tights doing a great job. Booties for the feet so the toes were only slightly blue, no biggie. But we could have done a better job up top. Thank goodness Becky had ordered some heavy-duty Pearl Izumi base layers, over which we had a standard Chain Reaction jersey. What was missing? That all-important 3rd layer, a light windbreaker, left at home. Won’t do that again! Actually I had mine with me but Kevin forgot to bring one, and I didn’t think it would be very sporting if I put one on while he suffered. Oh, you think because I’m a parent that I should have loaned it to him? The same kid who will exploit any weakness in my cycling and run me into the ground? Well, I could have not loaned it to him due to spite, but the reality is that I thought he should be taught a lesson so he won’t forget to bring the jacket next time.

The reality of course is that I forgot it was in my seat pack.

Not quite sure how it works, but the general idea is that there will be, no matter what, a certain number of us who are going to be out there riding on days no sane person would want to, and because we’re out there, you don’t have to be. You can stay inside where it’s nice & warm and think about what sort of crazy person rides a bicycle in the elements, and you even get to feel superior about it. That’s ok. Those of us in the “no matter what” crowd understand that we’re not normal.

Truthfully it wasn’t that bad this morning. Drizzling at the start, but mostly just very wet roads and a bit of that riding-in-the-clouds thing going on. Marcus, Kevin (the pilot), other Kevin, Eric… I think that’s it. As was the case Tuesday I was feeling better than my son on Kings, who was blaming it on being uncomfortable on his bike because he was on his rain bike rather than his newer Trek Madone, and it’s not set up quite the same. In fact, he rode that bike exactly the way it is now for quite some time, and was fine when he didn’t know any better. But when we got the new bike I set it up the way it should be, which meant less aggressively… mostly a higher handlebar position… which he now understands is what he should have, regardless of the fact that it doesn’t look like how racers set up their bikes.

Now remember that part about feeling better than my son on Kings? By the time we got to west-side Old LaHonda the tables had turned, and it was me having trouble keeping on his wheel. Hate it when that happens. In general, it’s the older guys who get stronger later in the ride, while the younger folk, if they don’t feel great early in the ride, never recover (mentally) from that.

Fortunately, the long-range forecast says that was the last of the rain. Unfortunately, I won’t have as much time to ride, because we’ll be open this Sunday (when we’d normally put in a 60-100 mile ride), and the following Sunday is Christmas, and I doubt we’ll get out then. But that still leaves several Tuesday & Thursday-morning rides before the big event, the annual New Year’s Day ride up Mount Hamilton.

Of course, it would be nicer if I didn’t know exactly what was going to greet us as we opened the garage door. It’s days like these where I’m thinking we only have 7 months of really great riding weather, writing off November, December, January, February & March. That’s nuts; our winters are extraordinarily-mild compared to most! But sometimes you start to feel sorry for yourself; the stiff(er) joints, the lungs work even less well than usual, and you put on a few pounds. Nothing that keeps you off the bike though.

Eric, Kevin (the pilot), Karl, George, Todd, Jim, Marcus and the other Kevin (my son) were out there this morning, heading up the hill at a pace best-described as “semi-casual” with nobody looking like they wanted to go too fast. Surprisingly, I was doing better than (not the pilot) Kevin, waiting a bit twice on the climb. I haven’t rubbed that in at all. Not too much. I mean not nearly as much as I could. I’m sure I passed up at least one or two chances to mention it to him.

Yes, a bit cool at 33 degrees, just under 4o up on Skyline, but pretty darn pleasant when you’re prepared for it and ride at a consistent pace. And it helps when you’re riding with others who share similar feelings about how wonderful it is to start the day with a bike ride.

ORD at 5:30am is a pretty quiet place. Around 6:15 things start to get hopping. Interesting watching a place come to life before your eyes.

Last night I got on a train at 9pm and headed for the airport. Right now I’m in Chicago, waiting for a 7am flight (5am back home) to take me back after spending here, sampling everything possible from the chocolate food group (dark sweet decaf mocha, chocolate croissant & chocolate muffin) before boarding my flight back.

Do I like flying through space in a narrow metal tube in a seat designed to precisely not fit my 6′ frame? Do I feel rested after three hours of on-again off-again sleep, trying not to spill my legs out into the aisle? Heck no! So why do it? Why fly four hours to a distant airport, only to get off and back onto the next plane home?

Yeah, still trying to figure that one out myself. I actually have a perfectly rational reason for doing so, but it’s the intangibles that make the difference. For example, I have virtually zero uninterrupted time to think when home or at work. My creative efforts are often as fitful as my attempts to sleep on a plane. But once I’m “airside” (behind security) I’m in an entirely different world where I actually have time to sit and think things through, whether it be marketing or product decisions or wondering about my place in the world.

There’s also the fun of people watching and picking up on how to deal with unhappy customers. There’s a lot to be learned in that regard, because the sample size (number of people with problems) is so large! Mostly what you recognize is that stressed out angry people have more issues than those cheerfully, or at least not angrily, asking for help.

But the “rational” reason I’m standing in line to get on a plane, again, is because airlines like United set up programs for customers who hit certain benchmarks (miles flown) and the benefits of those programs outweigh the cost and, er, suffering. So when they had a promotion for flying round trips to Chicago with double the normal mileage credit, and I found a relatively low cost fare at the last minute (less than a day before!), I bit and traded a nights’ sleep in a comfy bed at home for 8 hours in the air. I don’t expect any sane person to understand. –Mike–

Not much of a ride though; maybe 15 miles each way. Unless you ride over 92 to Half Moon Bay, north on highway 1 through Devil’s Slide, up over Sharp Park then down into Millbrae and south to Coyote Point.

The direct route. Why ride 15 flat miles when you can do 42 challenging?

The environment surrounding ‘cross is a whole lot more fun and less serious than road or track, but what attracted Kevin were women… his age, not 8 years older. He was surprised to see, in his words, so many “hotties.” I have no problem with that. If my son is attracted to athletic women who likely have healthy lifestyles, and sees the possibilities there as being more fun than hanging out with a bunch of guys discussing Skyrim, it works for me. Now, if they can figure out a way to play Skyrim during a workout, that might be a different thing altogether.

Oh, right, the race. Our Tuesday/Thursday riders did us proud. Karen won her event (she took the district championship last week) while George & Karl rode well in their race.
–Mike–

I got some very nice footage from the video camera that I’m going to try and piece together into something useful for those who want to get a feeling for what this ride is like.

Afterwards, it was back to the bike commuter gig, which is pretty easy & fast on the way to work (something to do with dropping 400ft?), but a bit tougher on the way back. And not just tougher, but potentially ego-injuring as I came across a guy Kevin and I had seen once before on the way home, someone riding an older and pretty hefty Trek mountain bike up the hill. I caught up to him at the start of the climb, and he hung with me all the way to the Jefferson fire station, at which point… he dropped me like a rock! Nice guy who likes to talk about his beer-drinking drug-taking past and how getting into cycling basically saved him. I believe it. Just wish he had a nicer bike when he rides past me on the climb!

Directly across from the new Facebook Campus is this convoluted bike crossing, including a channel designed to keep shrapnel in place to assault bike tires.

There’s a lot of work and opportunity with this one; presently, the Bayfront bike path is a disaster; poorly maintained, improperly signed and dangerously-routed. My son and I reported on this on Oct 24th when we rode through the area on our way back from Mt. Diablo. It’s really bad news. Unfit for cycling at any speed.

Facebook could easily become a model citizen and dramatically improve the lot of cyclists in the area without much effort by embracing the bicycle. Let’s hope this works out!  –Mike–

Too many people to count, way too many! Both Kevins, Eric, Karl, Karen (who won District Cyclo Cross, by the way!), George, darn, forgetting the other pilot who showed up whom I haven’t seen for a while… Todd, wow, I’m going to have to look at the video except that I’d probably still miss some. Lots of people! Moderate pace up Kings after the cold run through Woodside; it was fun watching the temperature drop lower and lower and lower, although it would have been even more fun if it had passed 30 and just kept going another .1 degree further. 29.9 degrees sounds so much more impresive than the 30.4 that I think I saw at one point.

Thankfully, it’s been dry so no ice, just nice fast roads and George giving me a bad time about braking in corners and not having a high-enough gear for the descents. Well here’s the skinny on that- I’m a lot more tense/nervous when it’s cold than when it’s warmer. It just doesn’t feel like my tires stick as well, and my body doesn’t feel quite like it’s one with the bike. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

• Steep climbs!
• Fast descents!
• City limit sprints!
• Great views!
• Awesome food!
• Friendly people along the way!
• And today, great weather!

Well OK, it didn’t have tailwinds all the way, and in fact I recall headwinds but no tailwinds at all. Not that I’d admit to them if they were there. But if you want a near-perfect 100k ride out of Woodside that’s challenging & fun and even allows for a shortcut if you get in over your head, this is it. But please note the word “challenging” in the description, because this ride has its share of climbing.

Steep climbs? Parts of Old LaHonda & Haskins (from the west side) qualify, but more assuredly West Alpine. Fast descent? Haskins & 84. City limit sprints? This has the classics- San Gregorio, Pescadero & Loma Mar. Great views? They’re endless on this ride. The views of the Pacific from west-side Old LaHonda & Stage Road, the valley leading into San Gregorio, the creek along Pescadero Road, and the sweeping vistas on West Alpine and Skyline. Food? Pescadero’s famous bakeries. Ollalieberry scone & turnover for me today, from a place that loves cyclists (unlike the San Gregorio General Store, where we’re tolerated but not too welcome). Friendly people? Lots of cyclists out on the roads today, including one guy who flagged us down on Skyline… flat tire, no tube, no pump, and said we were the first cyclists in an hour and a half to come through (this was at the vista point just north of Page Mill).

And, as is so often the case this time of year, nicer weather on the coast side than near the bay.

It’s certainly not as difficult as the Santa Cruz loops we’ve been doing so many of lately, but rather a ride that might be described as challenging but fun. Today, perhaps a bit more challenging than it should have been, as I’m getting over a nasty cold and got to watch Kevin ditch me on Old LaHonda. But later I got him on Haskins, and West Alpine saw us evenly matched.

West-side Old LaHonda on a windy day

Just Kevin (Pilot Kevin; my son still felt ill) and Todd with me this morning, a very relaxed pace up the hill, at least for them. There were a few places on Kings where the road was essentially narrowed due to debris, but nothing like Skyline or west-side Old LaHonda! A couple of times we were thankful we had helmets for protection from the stuff coming down from the trees. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my video camera on at the time.

Not much color or contrast at the start of the ride this morning

It was pea-soup fog when I left the house this morning, and I figured things could only get worse in Woodside. Thankfully, that’s not how it played out! By the time I got to the start of the ride (which a select few showed up for, no doubt scared off by the fog) it was beginning to clear, and within moments of the start the fog was gone. The video tells the story (including retrieving a water bottle that Kevin had lost on the ride last week).

Neither Kevin showed up this morning; Kevin the pilot was in Minneapolis (why?) while Kevin my son was home with a bad cold (he doesn’t buy into my theory that the best thing to do for a cold is to ride it into the ground). But we had Chris (who’s becoming really fast again), Jim, Eric & Karen (who had won her ‘cross race this past weekend).

If you missed the ride and don’t believe me that it was spectacularly-beautiful this morning, watch the video. It’ll convince you.

Was it really a good idea to do a 112 mile ride to Santa Cruz today? Seeing the sun so low in the sky made me wonder!

Calvin & Hobbes really gets it. As I’m riding south on Highway 1 towards Santa Cruz with my son, Kevin, who’s going to be 19 tomorrow, I found myself explaining to him that the sun isn’t going to get any higher in the sky, it’s just going to travel along an arc fairly close to the horizon… and realized I lost an opportunity to come up with something really interesting like Calvin’s dad used to do. Like the fact that the world used to be black & white until sometime in the 30s, and that the reason old paintings are in color was because artists were crazy. Am I letting him down when I tell him the truth?

And then later on we were looking at the Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin’s giving his mom a bad time because she doesn’t scoop the peanut butter out of the jar exactly right (which is where the phrase “If you can’t control your peanut butter, you can’t control your life” comes from).

Fortunately, we can control our lives, or at least enough of them to feel that our destiny is not entirely determined by fate. We can decide to go out on a long bike ride, for example, a race against the sun actually, to find out if we can get out on the road early enough and ride fast enough to do the Redwood City-Santa Cruz loop (about 112 miles) before the sun sets. Answer? You can! But we did bring flashing tail lights and high-powered head lights (insert commercial plug here for the fantastic Niterider 1-watt tail light and 350 or 600 lumen self-contained headlights).

Just to be (a little) different, we rode up 84 from Woodside instead of the usual Old LaHonda, but other than that, it was basically the same ride we must have done 5 or 6 times in the past few months. Just a few years ago I never would have considered a 112 mile ride to be no big thing. That was then, this is now. What I wonder though is whether I’m doing these rides to help push my son’s limits, or am I trying to prove to myself that I’m capable of more, not less, as I get older? This is where the bit about controlling our lives comes in.

Even, perhaps especially, if it’s something you don’t need.

It occurred to me that “Black Friday” was all about the item, all about the store, and not about what somebody might actually need. Over and over and over again with the same message. Not once did I hear anything about “Quality” or “Service.” It was all about “cheap” and “buy”. Nothing about whether something would be appropriate for your needs. Nothing about durability. In short, no lasting value. Watching the bizarre characters in the ads was like watching an addicted gambler on crack who’d just found $1000 in a wallet lying on the sidewalk.

It was… depressing. Seriously depressing. So much so that I had a tough time getting to sleep Wednesday night, thinking about those ads, Black Friday in particular, and “Holiday Sales” in general. After getting home from my (wet) ride Thursday, I decided that my initial ad ideas were all wrong. The usual pictures showing particular items at “must buy” pricing, enticing people to buy what I thought they should buy… that’s all about “shopping”, not serving the customer’s needs. So I turned everything upside-down, crossing out the “Black Friday” description of the sale and created more-generic categories of sale items that allow a customer to create their own sale, something that suits their own needs. Needs related to cycling and not some bizarre seach for the best deal ever on something that’s made like crap and not what they actually need.

And then, this morning, I get an email from Jeff Selzer at Palo Alto Bicycles, telling me about a full-page Patagonia ad in the New York Times. You can view it here. The cynic in me (and Jeff, for that matter) thinks they’ll probably sell more product by telling people to buy less. But there is an important subtext, something they didn’t actually tell people. Buy better stuff, less often. It makes sense. You’ll be happier with what you’ve got, you’ll be creating less environmental damage, and you’ll spend less time shopping for replacements when it breaks or wears out. That’s my take-away, and that’s something I feel very strongly about at Chain Reaction. Our mission is to set you up with better product that will last longer. (And yes, I went out of my way to avoid saying our mission is to “sell” you better product, because that doesn’t sound as politically-correct).    –Mike–

Riding up Tunitas Creek in the rain

I can’t really blame anyone for not showing up for the annual TurkeyDay Trot this morning; the weather forecast had been for rain, starting at about 8am, and ending about noon. And our ride started this morning at 8am, and finished… just before noon! This was one of those rare times the weatherman really got it nailed; I woke up around 6:15am when my wife got up to do something with the turkey (what, I’m not sure) and it was completely dry out and not even that threatening-looking! But I went back to sleep knowing this, too, shall pass.

So yes, we got pretty wet, and it was reasonably cold, but hardly epic. In fact, it was disappointing it didn’t rain harder, because we were dressed for whatever came our way. I even had a rack on my rain bike with a rack-top bag filled with extra jackets and gloves, just in case.

The original plan had been to do the Pescadero/Tunitas loop, but this was one of those days where the motivation wasn’t there, and I was easily able to rationalize the need to get back at a reasonable hour to get the “Black Friday” sale email finished. And Kevin (yes, my son at least rode with me!) was pushing to cut it back even shorter!

As it was Kevin bonked, and running out of fuel on a day when even the San Gregorio General Store is closed (a very rare event; where did people go for Bloody Mary’s to take the edge off their hangovers?) caused problems because… he had forgotten to put the Honey Stinger energy bars back into his seat bag. But we did have enough Cytomax to get him up over Tunitas and home. Of course he first tried to ditch me at the bottom, but I got even further up the hill.

We should be back by 1pm at the latest, plenty of time to eat and then later watch the 49er game. And plenty of time to wish we could have ridden a bit later, when it’s not supposed to be raining!

–Mike–

Eric, George, Todd, new guy from Colorado whose name I forgot already (hate that!), both Kevins and Jim. Seems like I’m leaving somebody out. Right. Chris! Chris, who’s coming back up to speed very quickly after a voluntary (he claims) sabbatical from cycling so he could spend more time with his family after his intensive training for the Mt. Everest Challenge a couple months ago.

It was a pretty hard start up the first part of the hill, with the time to Huddart Park sitting right at 8 minutes (7:45 would be a very fast time for the summer), at which point I told Kevin (my son, not the pilot) that it was time to “shut down” for a while to avoid a seizure. Which he dutifully did… for a minute or two. Then Jim took off, with Kevin hot on his wheel. For about a minute. And then, predictably, Kevin had a seizure, thankfully one of the seizures where he has enough warning to get safely off the bike and on the ground. Two minutes later and he’s back up, no lingering effects, full-speed ahead.

West-side Old LaHonda, on the other hand, may not do so well this year. Check out the photo; if we have a winter & spring like last year, we may not have a road to ride anymore! The county has already cut into the hillside a bit to make enough room for cars to get through, but it’s entirely possible that entire hill could start sliding down across the road in a heavy rain, and it’s doubtful the funds exist to do a permanent repair. Cross your fingers for mild winters until the county has enough money to deal with its road issues!

Aside from that a pretty nice ride; first chance to get out the rain bikes (as if it’s something I’d look forward to?) and get things checked out before a “serious” ride (such as next Thursday morning’s Thanksgiving Day ride, otherwise known as the annual Turkey Trot, which presently shows rain in the forecast). It was supposed to be a longer ride than it was, the plan being to head down to the Los Altos store via the foothills before turning back. I really didn’t want to do a Skyline ride in the wet until I knew the bikes were up to it. That was until Kevin lets m know, about 15 minutes into the ride, that he’s got to be back for a 4:30 gig with his friends (Lazer Tag). And it’s 2pm. Yikes. So we ended up doing Old LaHonda instead (maximum effort minimum time), down the back side and back over 84 into Woodside.

Amazingly, despite the face that we had waited until it had stopped raining, we saw just 6 other cyclists on the road. Where was everybody? Perhaps watching the cyclocross racing in the City?

My stolen iPhone just called. Sort of.

It’s not really a call from beyond the grave, but it kinda feels like it. I gave up being sad about my stolen iPhone (happened in Grenoble, France this past July) and assumed it had long-since been wiped clean and passed on to someone new in a flea market in eastern europe. But then I get this odd email, from an obscure application I had been testing that emails your location at a regular interval (when activated) so you can have someone track you.

My iPhone had been quiet for 4 months. And then today I get two emails from the app (iPhoneLocUpdater), telling me it’s having a great time in Algeria. I’ve moved on; I have my iPhone4S now, which works even better, in addition to my fake iPhone5. But that phone and its apps reflect who I am, so it’s personal to me and if I could push a button and remotely vaporize it, I’d gladly do so.

Good times are where you find them, and your bike is that place. It’s always that place. You go to bed the night before your morning ride, noticing that there’s a bit of a chill in the area, listen to a noise that’s familiar and strangely comforting but then realize it’s the furnace kicking on (is it OK to be comforted by the sound of a furnace?), and you think back to just two weeks ago when you were able to go out without leg warmers. For the last time.

But the sky was blue this morning, and with daylight saving time behind us, it was also light out. Nothing wrong with being comforted by that! And yet, we had only a handful of riders this morning; myself, Kevin (son, not the pilot), Eric, Todd & Jim, joined up on Skyline by Steve L, whom we haven’t seen for a while (he usually rides with the older, er, I mean, more “mature” guys who ride a bit later and stay out of the hills). Looking at the video reminds me just how nice & clear it was as we set a deliberately non-challenging pace up Kings, hoping to avoid Kevin having one of his all-too-frequent seizures. Since he didn’t, I guess it worked! Unfortunately, when you look at our time climbing Kings, you come to realize that he can climb very fast, have a seizure, and finish in 29:30. Or he can climb at a pace where he won’t likely have a seizure, and finish in 29:30.

We did run into a bit of fog at the top, or maybe low clouds. Not bad, but the slight dampness made the 43 degrees up there seem a bit colder. Soon, 43 degrees will feel nearly toasty for us!

Watching the ride play on the video in front of me reminds me that I actually did ride this morning. What would it be like, riding without cameras or downloadable GPS data recording the ride? Without two computers on the handlebars, set to simultaneously display two different sets of data that I think are important (heart rate & speed in numbers large enough for 55-year-old eyes to read)? I don’t know. I understand there are people out there who have no computer on their bike at all, and somehow that works for them. Guess they haven’t discovered Strava yet.

If you haven’t joined Strava, try it out. Like I said, it’s free (you can pay $59/year for advanced stuff if you want, but the free version does pretty amazing stuff), and you can sign up here. Once you’re a member, follow this link and join our team! No obligation, nothing to buy.      –Mike–

It’s quite the challenge for my group, because our Tuesday/Thursday-morning training ride includes 3300ft of climbing and, of course, 3300ft of descending. What you learn is that it’s very important to keep up a consistent pace because if you relax the cold and wet will get to you very quickly. Dress in a way that you’ll remain warm even if soaking, because there’s no truly waterproof cycling stuff out there. The high-tech stuff (including GoreTex) won’t keep up with a cyclist at high output… you end up as soaked on the inside as things are on the outside.

You could, of course, just set up a trainer in front of a TV and watch your favorite races, but there’s a small number of us who would rather ride through a hurricane than sit on a trainer. Mental defect of some sort. Or just a refusal to believe that anything can stop you and your bicycle. Do keep in mind that I’m in Northern California so the worst winter will throw at me are a few 40 degree days with driving rain, or upper-20s but dry, or once in a while, snow at the higher parts of our ride. We also rarely see ice, because it’s typically dry when it’s that cold. –Mike–

Not unusual today was Kevin (my son, not the pilot) pulling ahead of me, again, on Kings. Not that Kevin (the pilot) hadn’t done that some time earlier! Even more unusual was me holding onto Geroge’s wheel on the 84 descent into Woodside, with most of the rest hanging back a fair distance. It’s usually me that’s conservative there, with Kevin (my son) riding up front with the fast guys.

Meantime, I was worried that I’d come back and get killed on the bike by my son, except it turns out that he didn’t ride while I was gone. Huh? Not quite sure how that all did or didn’t work out, but it did give me some hope this morning, when I finally got back on the bike.

Ugly? No, not really, how could the ride have been bad on such a beautiful morning? But I shouldn’t have hoped to keep up with Kevin, who dropped me twice, first about halfway up Old LaHonda, then again on the Tunitas Creek return. Proof below-

Even if I’d gone full-tactical I likely couldn’t have kept up on Old LaHonda, and certainly not on Tunitas. But I don’t think I did too badly on my first day back.  –Mike–

Clearly, if the Chinese don’t do coffee in the morning, they have no culture.

Yesterday, on the way back from the Terra Cotta Warriors, we found a Starbucks imitation here, King Coffee. Only it was better! They knew exactly how to prepare coffee, each cup personally as if it were special and not just another Mocha Latte. Sadly, the King Coffee locations aren’t open in the morning, forcing me into something from the Twilight Zone. A totally-empty Starbucks. At what would be rush hour back home.

We need King Coffee in the US. Give Starbucks some real competition!

You are looking at a real, honest-to-goodness iPhone5. Really! Says so right on the box!

That’s right, someone in China paid to have them sent back in time, and here they are. And cheap? You can’t believe the deal they’re offering! It stats at just 880 yuan (about $135). And here’s the problem… something that says iPhone5 on it… well, you just gotta check it out, right? And the people behind the counter seriously have no idea that an iPhone5 hasn’t yet been released, so they think you’re a real customer bargaining with them. The price goes down to 600 yuan. They offer to show that it’s real by asking for your simcard to try in it. But the last thing you want to do is risk damaging your sim card, so no-go on that (even though you are a bit curious). And as you leave, the price goes down to… under 400 yuan, with a spare battery! Now, at 400 yuan, it would almost be fun to have it just as a souvenir from China. I mean, how many times have you spent that much ($62) on something to remind you of a fun trip? And let’s face it, what could be more “China” than something as fake as an iPhone5? But I passed, mainly because I was concerned it might not get through customs, and partly (albeit a much smaller part) because I’m sensible.

Obviously you get up, try to be quiet because your wife isn’t into this sort of adventure, grab your stuff and head out to see the flag-raising ceremony with about 50,000 of your closest friends, not one of whom appears to be non- Asian (seriously, to say I stand out is an understatement) and whom, thankfully, are all pretty short. Is it still a stereotype when it’s true?

At 5:30am, there aren't many people on the Beijing subway

I'm not a morning person, by any stretch of the imagination, but have to admit that the streets of Beijing were quite beautiful at 6am (and the iPhone4S camera captures it quite well)

Chinese Army soldiers keeping the crowd at bay prior to the flag raising ceremony

Creating blog entries from an iPhone has some challenges; this was supposed to be the same size as the others, and show the soldiers beginning their march across the plaza to raise the flag.

Oh, right, how do I know this place? By seeing it countless times during the cold war, when they would parade the huge nuclear missiles and 100,000 troops in front of the world, similar to Red Square in Moscow.

Funny to think how scared we were of China back then, with missiles pointed at us and fiery rhetoric about the Capitalist world. Funny because people seem incredibly friendly and curious here in Beijing, with an immense desire to know what it’s like in the United States.

But today (or is it tonight or tomorrow or even yesterday as we fly across the Pacific and the International Date Line, not to be confused with the regional versions), I’m packed tightly into what’s essentially a bus with wings, flying slower than planes did 50 years ago, after having been dropped off at the curb by my daughter who, if she’d taken more than 11.6 seconds to say good-bye would have been given a ticket.

Trains? The golden age for trains had come and gone before my time so I’ve actually seen improvement, especially overseas. Cars? Seem about the same to me and I’m actually willing to admit they have more creature comforts (or at least cup holders) than before, but good luck finding that “wide, open road” that we used to crave so much. Bikes? Definitely improved; more comfortable, easier to use and more choices.

But air travel… What happened? Ok I understand the argument you get what you pay for and the $1105 round trip San Francisco to China would probably be the equivalent of $5000 back in the day. But shouldn’t technology have offered us something, or was Popular Mechanics pure fiction and pipe dream? (And what is a “pipe dream” anyway? Guess when I’m on the ground I can look that up).

No flying cars. Slow planes. Movies that didn’t make the grade in theaters being shown on first gen LCDS hanging down from the ceiling. We can go places, but aside from bikes and high speed rail, the experience doesn’t match the desire.

I guess I’m coming back to that thing about the world going by at just the right speed on a bike. The experience is delivered at a pace that your mind can fully appreciate in real time. The sights, the smells, just the change of pace when you come to a hill or ride through a town breaks up the monotony of the journey, and the journey itself becomes as important as the destination.

Not so for flying. I’ve been in this metal tube for 6 hours and have another 6 to go before reaching Beijing. Trust me, this trip is all about the destination, not the journey. And the funny thing is, this is a pleasant flight with a good crew so it will end up on a relativistic scale as being considered a good flight which, in fact, means it’s simply tolerable.

Can’t we do better? If this was the experience cycling delivered, I wouldn’t be selling many bikes! I am truly fortunate that I get to make a living helping people get out and enjoy the world, instead of having to use wildly deceptive advertising to convince people that you’ve got enough legroom to really stretch out in economy+ when the reality is that, if the guy in front of you reclines his seat, your laptop screen could get smashed and never mind the difficulty of trying to use it 6 inches in front of your face.

I hate riding on a trainer, but if they could set them up on a plane I’m sure the time would pass by more quickly and comfortably! But maybe they’d have to put me out on the wing so I’d at least have a decent view.

And that brings us to a good conclusion. If I were out on the wing, getting to watch (but hopefully not smell) the world go by, 520 miles per hour might be just about right. But inside the cabin, anything less than Warp Speed is too slow. A severe mismatch of desired vs realized experience.

Cycling really wins out in that light. Desired vs realized experience.

Do I always realize, during those first few pedal strokes away from the garage, that I’m entering Paradise? Er… no. Takes a few minutes to get warmed up/awake and, truth be told, it would be so much nicer if I could start the ride 30 minutes later. More sleep, more light (pretty darn dark in the morning right now, and will be until next week when daylight saving time ends) and a bit less rushed. But 30 minutes later wouldn’t work into the schedule (that work thing), and there’s 30+ years of tradition, tradition that says, when the Garmin GPS strikes 7:45am, we’re off & running.

But for the next two weeks, I’m off elsewhere. I may get a chance to ride Thursday morning, possibly an abbreviated version of the usual ride, since I have to catch a 1pm flight to China. Everyone asks if it’s work related, as in, am I visiting Chinese bicycle suppliers. Not this time. Not ruling that out in the future, but this time I’m heading there with my wife to see the “Terracotta Warriors” (plus a couple days in Beijing, where I understand the smog will likely preclude us from actually seeing anything, and a couple days at the end in Shanghai).

But getting back to today, still a fairly large group, heading up the hill at a moderate pace. A bit breezy on the west side of Old LaHonda, a sure sign of changes coming soon. But I’ll be on the other side of the world by then, missing the change, wondering how things are going with the guys, and hoping that the shop’s intact when I return.    –MIke–

But this ride was a bit more “eventful” than most, starting with a treek that had fallen across Pescadero road within a minute or two prior to our arrival (we were the first ones on the scene, along with a couple of motorcyclists on the other side), plus two flat tires (both Kevin’s) (that’s Kevin my son, not the pilot), plus a downed motorcycle (descending 84, just a corner ahead of us).

Nobody was getting through on Pescadero Road this morning!

Very nice day; a bit cool in the morning (needed leg warmers but jacket not required) and passed quite a few costumed cyclists on Old LaHonda. Winds were, thankfully, “normal” which meant tailwinds on the coast to Santa Cruz. Fog burned off completely by the time we got to Davenport, our usual lunch stop, and from there temps were generally in the mid-70s. Can’t get much better than that!

16.2 mph average speed, a substantial improvement from the 13.8s or so that Kevin used to post for longer rides. Also noteworthy was a lack of either seizures or double vision, two too-frequent issues arising from his epilepsy. I’m looking forward to a day when a lack of seizures isn’t noteworthy.

Not too many at the start of this morning’s ride; just myself, Kevin, “Pilot” Kevin, Eric & Jon. On the way we picked up Jim & Marcus. Nice ride up through the park (it was on Greer at the bottom that I saw the 37.3 degree temp) and a moderate pace up Kings. I hung onto Jon & Marcus’s wheels until I figured it would be a good idea to drop back and see how Kevin (actually both Kevins) was/were doing. Kevin (not the pilot) seemed to be doing fine until one of his spots where things often go wrong, with about a quarter mile to go, and wrong again they went. This time, instead of a seizure, it was extreme double-vision (wasn’t that a Foreigner song?) that caused him to hit the deck kinda hard, and it just wasn’t clearing up quickly like usual. Jim lives up on the hill and called his wife (Kelly) who offered to drive Kevin home. Normally I’d turn down the offer, not just because I wouldn’t want to impose, but also because Kevin usually comes out of this sort of thing pretty quickly. This morning? Different story. I am very thankful for their kind generosity.

There are going to be some changes to Kevin’s participation in the Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride in the future. We’re going to put him on a relatively-leisurely 32-minute pace and start out a few minutes ahead of the rest, hoping the easier initial pace will keep his issues at bay. I’ve also killed plans for an end-of-season run at the Sierras; it wouldn’t be a good thing to be on the “wrong” side of Sonora Pass if he ran into issues! What’s not ruled out are the typical 110-mile Sunday loops to Santa Cruz. Long hard rides don’t cause issues like shorter intense efforts.

Obviously we’ve got to get this kid fixed! –Mike–

I spent untold hours trying to put together a reasonable email advertising a sale we’re having, trying to make it somewhat interesting, knowing of course that I’m pretty severely graphically-challenged so I can spend hours at it and it’s still not going to look pretty. To say that is a drain on me is an understatement; I can type all day long and be reasonably coherent and pleased with the results, but it’s rare that, when I finally hit the “send” key and it goes out to 5,238 people, I’m not thinking I could have done better, that many will regard it as yet another piece of spam in the inbox (despite the fact that they are our customers or signed up on-line for our emails).

So that put me in an already-susceptible (to what?) state of mind when I got a fast (maybe 10 mintues after it went out) response from a customer I’ve known for a whole lot of years, someone I’d even consider a friend if I saw him in a social setting (as if I ever get out except on a bike…). One of those people you kind of grow up together with, hearing stories about their kids and telling them about your own.

Please remove me from your email list…ASAP.

That was it. The entire text (apart from his “signature” at the bottom). Oh, and “Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T”

It not for the “…” I might have just passed it by, thinking it was some sort of auto-response. Maybe auto-responders do that these days. Make the message look more menacing. Like, “Remove me, or else!” Except that auto-responders probably don’t think somebody’s actually looking at the message that they’re sending. In fact, most people on our e-list probably don’t think that there’s a real live person looking at the returns, wondering why people would sign up and then leave us (good way of making me feel totally inadequate about marketing a business!). Well, OK, a good number of people mistakenly think we’re the mail-order firm by the same name in the UK, and we actually get quite a few phone calls and emails from customers wondering where their order is.

I sent a reply, asking what’s going on, is there something I don’t know about, does he want to call or email and vent to me about something I did or didn’t do. And in the meantime, I’m checking and rechecking new email every few minutes, wondering if he’s going to respond, and wondering if a lack of response if an indication that maybe it was, in fact, an automated thingee (but I really don’t think so).

That’s today.

Then a couple weeks ago (rather klunkily moving forward into the past here), a good customer of ours, someone who has bought many bikes from us over the years, someone who I’ve always tried to make sure was well taken care of (because I maintain a sense of ownership of the bikes we’ve sold, pretty much forever, and this guy does keep his old bikes around!), brought one of his bikes in for work. A challenging repair, because many of the parts haven’t been available for ages, and it’s questionable how much money you throw at a bike like that, so I try to come up with reasonable, cost-effective solutions. So instead of replacing a shift lever for $240 that’s beginning to cause trouble, I have it flushed with this magical stuff we use (PowerLube) and bring it back to life. Good as new? No. It’s a little bit finnicky and requires more force to get it to engage in the large front sprocket than when everything was working right.

So he brings it back to have it “fixed” because it’s not working. Well it was working in the stand, it had been test-ridden (which he didn’t think was true but definitely the case) and I didn’t have an issue getting it to work right. But *I* know that shifter because I grew up with the darned things, and *I* know that, if you loosen up the cable tension more than Shimano tells you to, it will work better. Something no mechanic who’s been around bikes less than 15 years will likely know. Something many mechanics who have, still don’t know. But I do, and I spent a few minutes of quality time with his bike and, as far as I know, have it working far better than it has in years.

Great, right? Wrong. Later that same day, I get an incredibly-negative Yelp review, talking about how bad it is that he has to bring his bike back in a second time (which has apparently happened once before as well) and how my mechanics need to test-ride bikes before they go out the door (which, at least in this case, I know they did) and how it’s time for him to try someplace else.

Yeah, that hurt. You don’t know how much that hurt. Mostly because I had no clue. No clue whatsoever. I thought I’d worked a minor mirracle on his Trek 2100 from the way-back days with RSX cranks that you can’t get chainrings for but we somehow did and shift levers that were brought back to life. I was dumbfounded. Depressed even. Didn’t sleep well that night. I looked over his entire history with us, all the repairs we’d done, everything, looking for clues. I wrote him an email back, and tonight, left a message on his phone. Haven’t heard anything from him. [Addendum: Heard back from him today (Thursday)! I'm hopeful that we'll earn his trust back and be able to keep taking care of his bikes. Very good news.]

Yes, it’s personal. We haven’t built up a facade that we can hide behind; we’re not WorldWide MegaCorp, believing that we’re OK because statistically we can’t keep 3.25 percent of the customers happy no matter what we do, and statistically we’re better off focusing on the 20% that account for 80% of our business. Maybe that’s the attraction to getting really big. Maybe you can de-personalize things better because there’s no way for you to connect with everybody.

But I don’t want to be like that. I’m about bikes and people and more specifically people on bikes. It is personal. I just have to remind myself that, on a day like today, there were a number of customers who were very happy we were here for them, very happy that we take the time to personalize our service towards them and not treat them as a number, and, in most cases, recognize that we are personal, that you can talk to us, that I’ve got a public email address (mikej@chainreaction.com) and all I want is for people to be happy on bikes and for us to have done the best we possibly could for them, and if we screw up, I want the opportunity to both know about it and take care of it.

Yes, it’s personal. Very personal. I don’t want it to be any other way.  –Mike–

Mid-sized group this morning, with Eric, Karl, Karen, Zack, George, Kevin (the pilot), and a new guy whose name I don’t recall that’s a terror on the morning ride, that 6am ride for crazies who don’t realize that’s when you’re supposed to sleep.

I felt a lot better than I had any right to, having been up later than normal last night due to problems with one of my printers (had to print out some visa photos for an upcoming trip to China, and for some reason, my lips kept coming out green… thinking about it, the printer’s getting on in years, so it may be time for retirement). So I had that working against me, and the first pretty cool morning of the year, down to 44 degrees at one part! At least it was a much-nicer 48 in Woodside.

It would have been one of the faster rides if not for Kevin (my son, not the pilot) and his continuing issues with seizures and double-vision. Will be nice when we can finally get that figured out, but in the meantime he continue to improve his group-riding skills and really looks forward to getting out with the guys (and girl).

We’ve got some decent transit in the bay area, so why not use it? Not really fast transit; you have to go to France for that. But you can put together a good East Bay ride by riding to your nearest CalTrain, connect to BART at the Millbrae Station, and arrive in Walnut Creek ready to go! We left the house at 8:17am, just enough time to pick up coffee and breakfast at Starbucks before catching the 8:41am train, which connects to the 9:21am BART, which arrives in Walnut Creek at 10:30am. Could you drive there faster? Sure. About 1 hour 10 minutes; 1 hour 30 including the stop for Starbucks, so maybe 45 minutes faster by car. But then you’ve got a car that you have to get back to, limiting your riding choices. If you do an out (by transit) and back (by bike), you can effectively increase your radius from 50 miles to 75 or more! Which is obviously what we did.

It was pretty nice out there; close to hot, but not quite. The climb up Mt. Diablo was between 73 & 80 degrees and was surprisingly easy. We stopped once on the way up to help a guy with a flat (new bike and he wasn’t too familiar with it, plus he was using the tubeless road clinchers, something I don’t think is quite ready for prime time). Tried to save a snake but unfortunately got to watch a car drive right over it. Lots of road stain from previously run-over snakes & tarantulas, much more than I’ve seen elsewhere. The road surface is fantastic, far better than Mt. Hamilton.

Interesting thing about the top of Mt. Diablo today. It was just exactly the right temperature to make you a bit too comfortable. You felt like you could sit down and read a book for a couple hours, chat with people, whatever. Seemed like a nice place to hang out. That’s not usually what goes on on a bike ride!

The ride back down was uneventful but slow (slow mostly because the park has radar-enforced speed limits of 15 to 25 miles per hour), after which came an unexciting cruise through Blackhawk and the backside of Dublin. I’d been concerned there might not be many places to eat on this ride, and maybe 15 years ago that would have been true, but things are pretty built up now and it was no problem finding a Subway near Camino Tassajara & Blackhawk Road.

Palomares Canyon was as challenging as ever, and also the finale as far as anything really fun on the ride. After that it was city roads with traffic through Fremont, which was actually a whole lot better than what followed- the Dumbarton Bridge lead in, the bridge itself, and the Bayfront bike path on the other side. Talk about crumbling infrastructure! The road leading up to the bridge is both grainy and choppy, and the bridge? Yikes, unbelievable amount of glass and other tire-biting debris, so much that I had to boot my tire midspan after I noticed an irregularity when I ran my (gloved) hand over it, making sure I hadn’t picked up glass.

And the other side? If this is what I go to DC to lobby for, I’ve got to change my thinking. They’d recently cut down the grasses and weeds along the path, and not bothered to sweep it. Crud everywhere. And the part where you have to cross the street at the former Sun Microsystems location (now Facebook)? Glass so bad in the bike section that you have to lift your bike over it. And when you get to Marsh Road and have to use the push button to get across, just try and find where they hid it in the shrubs! In my opinion, the Dumbarton Bridge bike path is a disaster, something not suitable for road bikes unless you’re willing to risk destruction of expensive high-quality tires.

Smaller group so maybe I can name the players. Myself, Kevin (my son, not the pilot), Chris, Eric, Mike, Millo (picked up later on Skyline), Todd and at least one other. No photos from the ride to help me out either; I’d left the video camera at the shop. Heck, I didn’t even have my garmin computer with me this morning, so I tried out Strava’s iPhone app again.

We rode straight up instead of through the Park, with the faster guys setting a pretty tough pace initially, slowing down just enough for me to keep them in sight as I closed in on the park entrance. Kevin was not too far behind me, and I could have exploited my advantage at that point but instead dropped back to ride with him the rest of the way up the hill, hoping to keep his pace moderate enough to avoid a seizure. Meantime Eric and Mike were gradually catching up to us, or at least I thought it was Eric and Mike; turned out, when we got to the top, we were waiting only for Eric. Mike never showed up, and Eric hadn’t seen him for some time. Fearing that he might have had a flat (or worse) Eric and I went back down the hill in search of him, sending the rest of the guys on ahead.

We never did find Mike (we later found out that he’d simply been tired from a ride the previous day and decided to head for home early), but Eric and I met back up with the group by heading all the way down Kings, back up 84 and south on Skyline to intercept. I said something to Eric about how far we’d go before we regrouped with the rest and he said, since it was 9:02am, it should be any moment… and poof, on command, there they were. I was impressed. Eric is even more-punctual and precise on timings than I am!

Nice ride back down the hill, but no final sprint on Albion as they’ve cut trenches across the road in three places! Yikes. Wonder if they were repaired by the time the noon ride came through?

OK, getting to the issue of whether something actually happened if you didn’t record it. I’m hooked on technology; I carry an iPhone4s, Garmin 800 GPS computer, Trek Node 1 computer, Contour Roam video camera and often a separate Fuji EX200r camera as well. But what do you do with all that information? Why Strava it, of course. Uploading your rides to Strava you can compete against yourself and anybody else who has ever done any particular segment of your ride. That’s right, Strava automatically times you, starting & stopping at the relevant points as determined by your GPS unit (whether iPhone or Adroid or Garmin).

Check out the page I’ve put up for “Club” Chain Reaction. Quite a few of my Sunday 60-110 milers, along with a couple of the Tuesday/Thursday-morning rides. You might find something in there that looks a bit different than you’ve done before and give it a try. Or you might want to compare your own times to those of others… many, many, many others. It really is addictive.

And there’s another site you can upload your rides to, and have good deeds come from it. Plus3Network (that link will show you my Mt. Hamilton ride) gives credit to various charitable organization for each mile you ride, with the money coming from Sponsors like us, and going to the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition or Team in Training.

I’m hooked. Chances are you will be too. Both +3 and Strava offer free iPhone apps (probably Android too) that make it easy. Keep in mind elevation data won’t be as accurate; the iPhone overestimated the climbing on Sunday’s Mt. Hamilton loop by about 500ft, which is pretty typical of units that don’t have a barometer built in (like the Garmin 500 & 800).