Helmets; Cool and Dry

February 23rd, 2012

I cringe at the frequent sight of people wearing broken helmets or mis-adjusted ones. Last year, I saw a man riding with a helmet whose strap had been cut (I wonder if it was stolen off a locked bike?); I regularly see helmets pushed too far back or with straps dangling three inches below the chin; sometimes a person is riding an ancient helmet which doesn’t have a plastic outer shell. I always wonder to myself: why don’t these riders take helmet safety seriously? I know that I am unusual in say, religiously reading manuals, however it seems obvious that a helmet pushed way back on your head is both uncomfortable and useless. Why even bother?

As with most things I write about, I’m far from the first to do so, and I’m also probably going to do the least research. In this case, there are many guides out there. The NHTSA has one such guide. Searching for “helmet fit” should turn up many more.

I’ll save the discussion of whether or not to wear a helmet for another day. See also the recently written and very thorough post on Steve Miller’s blog for why to wear a helmet.

I left my commuter bike at work yesterday and chose to ride again today, so I think I will try moving two bikes home today! I’ll try to remember to take pictures of the set up.

Weather

Temperature: 49

Road condition: Dry

Clothing: Rain jacket, timberland shoes, messenger bag.

Comfort: Very much so, thank you.

I hate to repeat myself, but bright lights are for safety. With a few days of riding on my new dynamo light, I now have another anecdote to share. Yesterday, while riding down Mass Ave north of Porter Square, I was about 30 feet behind and to the right of a car. As they prepared to turn and, presumably checked their mirror, I had something that rarely happens, and almost never at night and from that distance (about 45 feet behind their mirror): they stopped and let me pass. In fact, on more than one occasion on that ride did I have vehicles stop and let me turn rather than cutting me off, but this was the most memorable.

Following up on yesterday’s post, I had another close call, this time from a car running the light. In close proximity to my previous anecdote, I started to ride when the light turned green. However, a car going in the other direction had sneaked through the intersection on a dying dedicated turn phase (or something like that). Luckily, he saw me and stopped. In addition, another kind biker called my attention. (The driver then proceeded to honk at either the other biker or a crossing pedestrian.)

Finally, I thought I would add a little spice with a picture of my commuter bike from yesterday.

My commuter bike

I pack the full complement of equipment: two racks (Cetma 3-rail half rack up front for big cargo, Toba rear rack for panniers, both purchased from Hub Bicycle Company), Planet bike Cascade fenders, dynamo hub and Blaze 1-watt, Kryptonite lock bracket, water bottle holder, and even a cycle computer (I mount it under my seat so I don't check it compulsively). With this set up, including lock, it weighs in at 40 lbs. Camera phone apparently only makes blurry pictures...

Weather

Temperature: 41, but feels like 50 🙂

Road condition: Basically dry

Clothing: Rain shell jacket, timberland shoes, cotton Pearl Izumi gloves, Timberland shoes. It’s so lovely outside today! I meant to wear the bike shoes for some variety, but forgot.

Comfort: Lighter clothing and still cool weather means you can ride harder, but managed to stay mostly cool.

Today was probably the closest I’ve come in a long time, maybe ever, to getting hit in traffic. I chose to go through a red light on Cambridge Street near Government Center, and a few factors made this a very bad decision. Luckily, none of them conspired to cause me injury. First, I ran the light in Boston: there is no delayed green, so almost as soon as I was in the intersection, another direction had the signal. Second, I did it as a truck was turning: the traffic on the far side of the intersection had no way of seeing me (not that one thinks when the green light comes on). It just so happened that there were pedestrians in the crosswalk, which kept the traffic from proceeding against me.

Really in the “bikers running red lights” discussion, there are two kinds of red light running. The first is doing it like a car: entering the intersection immediately after the light changes. The second is treating it as a stop sign. The former is nearly universally derided, whereas the latter is hotly debated. (As regular readers may know, I am generally against it.) I won’t say more except that drivers tend to view all red light running as the former, whereas bikers make the distinction (as a pedestrian would with regard to jay-walking).

Weather

Temperature: 31 degrees

Road condition: Dry

Clothing: Heavy winter jacket, Timberland shoes, light EVO gloves.

Comfort: Perfect! The air was colder than I expected, but well suited to my outfit. I rode the commuter bike (Crosscheck), today with both racks attached. My lesson is: if you ride a challenging bike (e.g. fixed gear), every bike feels easy after that (e.g. geared but 40 lbs bike).

Wet Pavement

February 15th, 2012

I have to run off to a long meeting, so I’ll just do the weather today. I’ll curse the clip on fenders I threw on my fixed gear at  a later date.

Weather and Clothing

Weather: 39 degrees

Pavement: A little wet

Clothing: Heavy winter coat, normal office shoes (I forgot to change them yesterday!), messenger bag

Comfort: It was lovely. Surprising how hands either warm up or go numb.

This is a really dumb pet peeve of mine, but one nonetheless: fixed gear bikes are not the same as single speed bikes. The experience of riding them is also very different.

Single speed bikes have exactly one gear combination; they ride the same as a gear bike but without shifting (imagine your bike got stuck in the 6th or 7th speed of 10: you’d be riding single speed). The benefit of this over a gear bike is lighter weight, better power transfer (because of a straighter chainline), and simplified maintenance. These are well suited to city riding, as you don’t do a lot of shifting anyway. (Or if you do, you could probably do fine without it.)

A fixed gear bike is a single speed in which the back wheel does not turn independently of the pedals. Therefore, you could ride it backwards; the pedals are always moving and transferring power between the wheel and and your legs. The maintenance on this type of bike is a wee bit less than a single speed (no freewheel means one fewer moving part), however it is cultish because it’s a totally different riding experience than a bike with a freewheel; you can immediately feel the responsiveness of the road surface and of the bike.

As an aside, Sturmey Archer makes an internal hub which rides fixed, but has 3 gears. It ruins the purity of the fixed gear bike, but sounds pretty fun to try out.

Weather

Easy ride, felt a little cold at the beginning, but I warmed up nicely.

Temperature: 33

Road condition: Dry, but some salt and sand from this weekend still around

Clothing: heavy winter jacket, Timberland shoes, Portland Design Works EVO bike gloves (I lost one of my wool gloves!), messenger bag

Comfort: Worked perfectly! I like the PDW EVO gloves I am using: they have a little vinyl mittens shield that folds down for wind protection. That part is a little light, though, and is getting kind of shredded from the ferocity of my grip.

(For those wondering, I took the day off work yesterday, so there was biking, but no commute.)

Edit: I looked down at my palms later and realized the gloves were EVO, not PDW. Thanks hubcyclist!

Today I’m going to follow up on my previous “Carrying Things” post by talking about big, bulky items. You know, the kind that don’t fit in yours, or anyone else’s bag, such as two weeks of laundry, a CSA share, another bike, or large packages of paper towels. These are the kinds of things I move with alarming frequency with the bike. The only practical way I’ve found to do it is with a front rack (I use a Cetma rack). Other methods, such as a back rack (a device created solely to eject cargo from your bike), or balancing on your handlebars (hard to steer when your arms are busy with other things) aren’t up to snuff. Good alternative I haven’t tried are a bucket bike (bakfiet), basket, or a trailer. Is anyone else moving moderately sized things with their bike?

Weather Today

It was a little warm today, beautifully sunny, but actually shockingly comfortable.

Temperature: 35 degrees

Road condition: Dry

Clothing: Heavy winter coat, Timberland shoes, messenger bag

Comfort: Tiny bit warm, easily solved by removing my gloves

 

Tires; Cool and Dry

February 9th, 2012

There are many kinds of tires; they vary in width, tread, puncture resistance, tubeless or tubed, and accessories. Road racers tend to ride very narrow tires (23 or 25 mm width) and with little to no tread; commuters and bike tourers ride wider tires (28 to 35 mm, sometimes higher) with some tread; mountain bikers ride wide tires (2 inches and up) with moderate to gigantic tread. Almost without exception, in snowy winter road riding, you can get away with a treaded tire, although studs give you the maximum level of safety. I have some 35mm aggressive tread tires which worked wonders last year in the snow, however, they’re useless on trails. I’d love to report on studs, but there’s yet to be any ice or snow worth its salt (har har) this year.

As a transportation biker, the most important thing to me is reliability, which means not having to stop for a flat. I always buy the more expensive tires (around $40 each), which have a Kevlar strip to resist punctures; once the tire tread starts showing little tears and becomes soft (the tire seems to absorb any sand or salt on the road), the its life is almost over. When I’ve gotten a few flats in a short period, then it’s time to replace it. However, the benefit of using these tires is that I get a flat once every six months or so; on my fixed gear bike, I realized recently I haven’t touched the wheels in over a year (granted, it gets less use now that it’s not my commuter).

Despite their reliability, I still carry (and know how to use) a flat fix kit. Most of the time it just takes up space at the bottom of my bag.

Weather

It was a very easy day of riding. I was wearing a suit today (and the weather isn’t crummy!) so I took the commuter, which was an unwelcome change, although I fixed the shifting and cleaned the chain, so it was a very smooth ride.

Temperature: 33 degrees

Road condition: Dry

Clothing: Heavy winter coat, rain pants (gotta keep those suit pants clean), Timberland shoes. I had the suit jacket in my panniers, if you’re wondering.

Comfort: It was noticeably warmer on the ride, and I had to go slow up the Longfellow Bridge to stay cool.

Whoa, Bikers! Cold and Dry

February 8th, 2012

I’m going to switch up the post order, putting weather and such at the end now. It’s been pretty repetitive, so I’ll put the variety up front.

Despite the misleading forecast for rain yesterday, the accurate forecast for slightly warmer weather seems to have gotten bikers out in droves. My operating theory is that they all stayed home Monday reflecting on the meaning of life (and what the Patriots loss means for them) and on Tuesday resolved to leave a better world for their children (and therefore use up their once-a-year bike ride to work). It was, however, a parade of terribly maintained bikes. My classic favorites were out in droves: rusted and gritted up chains, and deflated tires. Which brings us to my “enjoy biking” hint of the day (a two-fer!):

If your knees (as opposed to thighs or calves) hurt from pedaling, your chain needs maintenance. If the bike is painfully unresponsive to your pedaling, your tires need inflation.

Weather and clothing

The weather this morning was bracing, despite being a mild 24 degrees. My face was cold, but happily warmed up with riding and collar adjustments.

Temperature: 24 degrees

Road: Dry

Clothing: Heavy winter jacket, wool gloves, Timberland shoes, messenger bag

Comfort: My face and legs took a little while to warm up. It was definitely on the edge of needing additional covering in those places.

Today was another one like the rest: 43 degrees, sunny, dry. Now that I’m at work without my rain pants, I see the weather says “rain” today. It seems like it may stop by the ride home, but that trip may be messy nonetheless. I took it slow because, well, that’s how I felt.

Clothing: Heavy winter coat, wool gloves, Timberland shoes, messenger bag.

There’s an interesting phenomenon after championship games, such as we had yesterday: there’s much less traffic on the road. You may recall yesterday I observed light traffic, but attributed it to an earlier commute time; the trip home was also quite light. On the other hand, the drivers last night were just plain awful. At Charles Circle (by the MGH T Stop), a biker in front of me got yelled at by illegal cross traffic. I had the satisfaction of yelling at him (the driver). Plenty of dangerous cutting off to urgently park in the bike lane was observed. For what it’s worth, back at my usual (tardy) commute time, today had lighter traffic as well.

The more I blog, the more I wish I had a camera on my bike so I could liven up this site. However, I’m also very lazy, and probably wouldn’t use it…

Cold and Dry; Quick Release

February 6th, 2012

Today may not have been colder, but I did leave much earlier than usual. The temperature was 26 degrees, and there was nothing else notable about the weather or road conditions – it was chilly on my face, but the riding quickly warmed me up. I certainly got into work faster without dodging all of those pesky cars. The ride made me realize how rarely a city cyclist goes without having to stop, turn, merge or dodge, as I did almost none of those things this morning. (That’s right, at 7 am not only is the traffic light, but you can go through buildings and ride on the water. Pretty sweet!)

Clothing: Heavy winter jacket, wool gloves, waterproof shoes.

I have developed a(nother?) pet peeve: quick release. I like them just fine, but I’m pretty sure upwards of 90% of bikers have no idea how to use them. I can actually say that with confidence because up until a few months ago, I had no idea how to use them. Neither did my sister: she once had her front wheel fall off while riding because of an improperly installed quick release.

Wrong way: Use the lever at the end to tighten them. When you have it good and cinched, then you’re good.

Wrong way: Tighten it down all the way with the lever open, then struggle to close it up. Use tools or get a hernia if necessary.

Right way (about halfway down the page): With the lever pointing straight out, tighten the nut until everything is snug and not droopy. Close the lever with it angled in a direction it won’t get caught on anything.

In looking for a guide on this, I think every guide on the internet has a “right way” and a “wrong way” to close your quick release. You’ve been warned.