Bloodied but Unsquished

For those who haven’t heard, Unsquished is suffering/opiate-addled after a bike wreck last week. He was out riding in a light rain when his bicycle hit a super-slick train track and slid right out from under him. Five days, four surgical screws, one metal plate and untold Vicodin later, he is still not up for much in the way of typing, or anything in the way of riding. Still, he reassures his readers, he intends to get right back in the saddle when joint mobility/stability allows. In the meantime, he remains bloody but…unsquished.

Waterlogged Dogs

So I began bike commuting this June, in the middle of a long drought. You may have heard the South is suffering – and no doubt, we are. But as a newbie cyclist, it’s been a fantastic time to put in some miles.Until this week, that is, when the storms rolled in for a multi-day stay. As someone who owns land that has trees on it, I’m happy. As a bike rider, though, I’m a bit bemused. The question is, where to draw the ride/not ride line, and how to prepare?

Now, on some level, I recognize everyone’s going to make different decisions. And I’ve already set out some basic parameters for myself. An electrical storm, for example, is no time to get on a big metal frame and speed around town. A light sprinkle of rain, though, is no big deal – I have a rain-resistant windbreaker, a rear rack that works well as a fender, and my panniers are mostly waterproof (which is to say the fabric is fine, but the seams aren’t taped).

No, my big problem is my feet. As all cyclists know, water from below will soak you much faster than water from above. And sooner or later, I go through a puddle, or get passed by a car that hits a puddle, and my dogs are drowning. I never thought this would be such a big deal, but it’s mysteriously unpleasant. Seriously – it’s really, really crap.

At the same time, it’s no reason not to ride. Mountain bikers must get their feet wet all the time (insofar as mud is wet, that is). So here I am, before the cycling public, asking for any tips. Are you able to keep your feet dry, and if so, how? Help a comrade out here.

Judgment Time

I’m an incredibly judgmental and self-righteous bike commuter. Clad in my fluorescent shirt, with my various flashing lights and my ostentatious turn signal hand gestures, I have a lot of disdain not just for bad drivers but for bad cyclists. In that spirit, I offer the following suggestions to both…

1) First, for the motorists out there:

Please don’t actively try to kill me. I know that might seem like an unreasonable request, but think about it for a moment. Do you really want a death on your conscience? I’m just asking ’tis all. Some of your actions can, frankly, only be interpreted as part of an active intention to end my life. Admittedly, I tend to operate on the assumption that all drivers are homicidal, but it’s fairly clear that some really are.

For example, please don’t pass me by quietly sneaking up right behind me, honking your horn as you’re right at my back wheel, and then aggressively speeding past me at a high rate of acceleration, barely missing my handlebars. If you can avoid doing that it would make things much easier. And safer. People actually do this sort of thing.

2) For cyclists:

Wear a sodding helmet! I know, in a way, that it’s none of my business, but biking without a helmet makes you look bad. And it makes me look bad by association.

Don’t bike with headphones on. Or iPod earbud thingies. What are you, some sort of moron? There’s really no excuse for that sort of thing. How are you going to hear the motorists who rev their engines loudly after sneaking up to try to kill you?

And don’t, for the love of God, bike into traffic. What the hell?! A lot of people tend to do that. Why? Were they told that it was safer when they were five and just sort of stuck with it? Biking directly into traffic not only makes you – and, by extension, all cyclists – look like a complete bonehead. It also means that occasionally you will bike directly into me. Just stop it, okay?

On the other hand, DO smoke while cycling. People who smoke while cycling are cool, because it means that they’re biking for transportation purposes, not out of some sort of bourgeois leisure impulse.

Okay, I think that’s all the ranting I have in me today. Consider yourselves warned.

Introducing…

… a new contributor to this blog, Lady MacSquish. See the profanity laden post below. She will be providing occasional rage-inspired anti-car invective, as well, perhaps, as shedding light on what life is like for someone who averages three hundred miles a month. Welcome!

An Open Letter to the Fellow Driving the Gold Toyota Corolla, Who Passed So Close to Me as I was Biking to Work This Morning That His Rear-View Mirror Struck the End of my Handlebars, And Who Drove Off Without Looking to See if He Had Squished Anyone (Which, Fortunately, He Had Not)

Dear Mr. Corolla,

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

Yours from the land of the (still) living,
lady macsquish

Italian Faux Bike Theft

Mysteriously hilarious…

Shameless stolen from the Planet Bike blog.

Lightfinder

Planet Bike’s “lightfinder“, their web page for gauging the relative power of their various lights, deserves its own mention here just because of its delightful whimsy. Note the range of creatures caught in the various beams. Including a gnome. If they’re trying to win me over to their products through sheer charm they’re doing the right thing. And, in a test ride last night, their Super Spot behaved amazingly, illuminating not just the road but a whole light cone of trees. Which will, I hope, prevent another incident of tree-on-cyclist violence.

Spoked

I am, as anyone reading this blog will have gathered by now, a complete novice when it comes to many cycling issues. Especially bike repair, or even basic maintenance. I can change a tube, but still haven’t needed to adjust my dérailleur (thanks, three months of free adjustments!), so don’t yet know how to do that.

My shear incompetence was brought home this morning while putting air in the tires of my road bike, when I noticed a little metal protrusion hanging down from the inner surface of the rim. Hmmm… what the hell is that for? It took me a disturbingly long time to realize that I was missing a spoke.

When Russian Capitalist, with whom I was due to go for a twenty-five mile ride, showed up he suggested that I’d probably be fine. Two miles in we checked and the wheel had a bit too much wobble to it. All was not lost, as we headed back, I switched to the commuter bike, and he, Lady MacSquish and I went for a very pleasant sixteen mile ride (making a total of twenty for me today, with the four abortive miles, and fifty-five for the week).

But I guess I’ll be taking my wheel into the store later today. Spokes are beyond me.

Lighting the Way

So I’m having to leave the house ridiculously early two days a week, at 6.45 am. And already it’s more or less pitch dark out when I get on the bike. Once we change the clocks it will be lighter, at least for a while, but at the moment illumination has become a critical issue for my morning commute. This was brought home to me this week when I was whacked in the face by a tree branch.

I have one of those fairly bright LED lights, but it’s really only able to shed light on a small patch of road in front of my bike. The rude, arborial slap in the face made it abundantly clear that I need something better.

It turns out that the world of lighting is a bit of a minefield. Or at least that it can be deeply bewildering. Last night I forsook my regular dealer to visit the mega outdoorsy emporium REI, which has a huge selection of lights. Confusingly huge.

What, for example is the difference between candlepower and wattage? Cat Eye sells a mean 1200 candlepower light, but other brands use watts as their measure of power. My experience with the REI staff confirmed my suspicion that it’s probably a bad idea to buy a bike there. The guy couldn’t answer my candlepower/wattage question (fair enough), but nor could he recommend anything for me to buy. Instead he took two of the lights that I was looking at, went to the back room, turned the lights off, and started repeatedly turning first one bike light on and then the other, concluding, finally, that “I guess that one’s brighter.” Um, thanks. He then told me that anything that wasn’t a $120 halogen light with a battery pack was really designed to allow you to be seen, rather than to see. Only the stuff that trail riders use in the pitch black could be of any help in lighting the road ahead.

A trip to my regular bike store was a little more helpful, in that the person I spoke to knew what he was talking about and had actual opinions. But their current range of lights was a bit limited, and he too confirmed that in order to really see in the dark I have to pony up well over a hundred bucks for a halogen light with a rechargeable battery. The one he really recommended was $245. Er, no thanks. I’ll take the tree branch to the head.

In the end I returned to REI and bought this, the Planet Bike “Super Spot”, which, contrary to the assertions of bike store personnel, claims to have been “specifically engineered to illuminate your path.” It has 1 watt of power (how many candles that compares to I’m really not sure), costs $30 and runs for 30 hours on four AA batteries. I’ll keep my smaller LED on as well for extra mega lightage. But this new light, at a first test, seems alarmingly bright.

I’m not saying that I wouldn’t be better off with a great big rechargeable halogen light. But I’m also not biking in the pitch dark. Even Atlanta has some street lighting. Hopefully, though, with one wide-beamed light pointing at the road (with, apparently, a 25 foot range) and another straight ahead, I can avoid being slapped in the face by a tree any time soon.

What I Ride

Okay, time for some gratuitous bike gear-related info, to scare away almost everyone. If I’m going to have a bike-related blog, I should probably say a few words about the bikes that I ride.

First off, the commuter bike, a KHS Urban-X:

This is a delightfully comprehensive ride that I can’t recommend too highly. A mere $370 or so buys you pretty much all you need: rack, fenders, the works. That’s the cost of filling up a Jeep Cherokee seven times. I’m not gearheady enough to be able to rant convincingly about the components, but everything works well and has never let me down. The seat is pleasingly old-school, with springs and rather appealing metal studs (if you like that sort of thing). It’s much more comfortable than it sounds.

I also have a road bike, a Giant OCR-3:

The world of road bikes is an intimidating one to a relative novice and, shockingly, the dude in the bike store referred to the OCR-3 as an “entry level road bike.” It cost me $650, which at the time felt considerably un-entry level. But in serious biking circles this apparently qualifies as the far bottom end of acceptable, at least in comparison to all those nifty bikes that cost over $1500. No matter. It’s a lovely bike, super for the 25-30 mile rides that I do on the weekend. So until I start shaving my body hair and demanding carbon fiber it’s good enough for me.

There’s something very pleasing about riding a lightweight road bike after spending a week weighed down by panniers, a change of clothes, books, lights and a great big u-lock. But there’s also something delightfully utilitarian about switching back to a heavier bike with some serious accessories for the commute. I’d initially thought that having two bicycles was decadent. And it is. But only in the best possible way.