Bike Blog

Frankly, I'm not especially interested in pro-level cycling. In the real world, you have to consider details like flat tires and chain life and can't toss your bike at someone to have the bar tape re-done. You can't have a follow-car trailing you with spare bits and pieces or switch bikes as needed. And it takes something that is a beautiful participatory activity that is both transportation and recreation and turns it into a spectator sport for people getting fat watching on TV. It also means that people tend to want to buy whatever bike the tour de france riders are riding instead of a more rational and comfortable and sturdy bike.

Five years ago today, I went to the store and purchased a Trek 7100 with the intention of biking to work. That's when everything changed..

If I stop biking for more than 2 days, I can feel it. I don't feel right. After more than a few days without exercise, the full brunt of depression starts to weigh on me. There's probably a rebound effect involved because I end up with the scary sort of depression that psychologists call Major or Clinical depression, not just a depressed mood...

Cyclists do run red lights. And, as if I'm some duly elected representative of cyclists everywhere, people will point this out to me and suggest that they'd actually feel bad for all those cyclists who get killed by motorists every year and support my cause if we'd all just behave and start obeying stop signs, all the time without realizing how incredibly stupid they sound. On the scale of stupid-and-annoying, it's only slightly less annoying, but possessing the same tone, as if you were to tell a woman with an abusive boyfriend that everything will be fine if you just don't piss him off so frequently.

One of my coworkers had a bit of a bike accident. Pretty much exactly the same one I had a few years prior. Riding along, front wheel stops instantly, bike pivots around your front axle, and any residual energy is dissipated between the rider's head and the ground. So he walked in with a scraped up face. And one of my coworkers mentions that he's suddenly a lot less interested in biking. And so I told him that if biking scares you, you can always die on your couch of a massive heart attack at age 40 instead...

I hear this frequently: "I can't wait for the weather to get better so I can cycle outside". And, as somebody who lives in California, it's hard for me to give an answer without relying on the experience of others because our weather is fairly nice out here... although most people think of San Diego weather when I talk about living in California.. and Silicon Valley is very much not like that. Furthermore, I was hoping that my awesome coworker Chris who is at least as insane as I in many ways wouldn't have broken his ribs at the beginning of winter. Because he got a Surly Pugsley to bike in all winter but he's presently laid up.

So, while I can go for long spans of time without needing a car and, whenever my wife is out of town on business, let the car sit in the parking spot or let her take it with her... well, my wife still drives. And last weekend, without much warning, we ended up carless all weekend because the car needed to go in for maintenance and it took much longer than expected. Now, it's not like we spent the whole weekend wailing and gnashing our teeth, maybe even rending our clothes... but it did throw a loop in our plans...

We have a mailing list for my neighborhood. And we have a problem with cars in my neighborhood. See, we've got a grade school near the park.. and the park has a crossing guard. And so a few months ago the crossing guard was hit and injured by a car while trying to ensure that things were safe. And then a month or two later, a six year old got buzzed by a speeding car. Yesterday morning, a pedestrian was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

I deliberately avoided posting this for a while because you need to understand the context behind it. But I always like to tell all of the stories that I've done...

I was biking home from work. Behind me, two other cyclists were helping a third one, who was a bit lost and trying to get to Santa Clara, one town over. So, eventually, I offered to ride with her to get her un-lost and closer to her destination.. because it was pretty much on the way home for me.

This is pretty much the reason why I bike in jeans most of the time...

Last year, I did the 200km Lighthouse brevet on a mountain bike, crashed, and walked my bike to the finish. This year, I aimed to do it on my new road bike and to not crash...

I'm signed up for the Point Reyes brevet with the San Francisco Randonneurs next weekend. This was, for a while, a cause of a certain amount of bellyaching...

Garmin has been fat and lazy, being the only real provider of GPS units for the bike, so it's good that Pioneer is also in the marketplace... albeit, a soon-to-be-smaller marketplace given that most riders are going to be happy enough with an iPhone in a handlebar mount.

Even though I'm saving an insane amount of money because I don't drive most of the time, I still hate spending too much money on bike stuff. Even though it's one of the activities I do extremely consistently, it still feels like a little bit of affectation...