Lighthouse 200K Ride Report - Pt. 2
“Pt Reyes Lighthouse to Marshall and Return”
(continued from Part 1)
The beauty of the scene at the Lighthouse parking lot was compelling. I could have sat there for an hour, soaked up the sun and been totally happy. It was a rare and gorgeous day. Other randonneurs - One Happy Cog, The Box Dog Boys and a few others I recognized rolled up to the control and all was well in the world.
Luckily, the flow of riders in and out of the lot set off my “get moving” alarm, and after half-filling my empty water bottle (the big SFR thermoses were getting low), I commenced the pre-flight ritual. On the return leg, those little pitches that climb up to the main mesa always seem to bite after the short time off the bike at the control. Plus, the initial downhill from the Lighthouse has an incline and surface conditions that fixed-gear nightmares are made of. So, I elected to keep the rear wheel flopped onto the coastable side of things for a few miles, though I did notch it back up to the 40T chainring, assisted by a helpful guy in a Freewheel SF vest, who has riding a really nice Hunter.
It’s pretty disorienting to be able to suddenly coast. Sort of mucks things up for the first few hundred yards, but I got spinning fairly quickly, dropped down to the first ranch and got stuck in a scrum of oncoming cars, farm equipment and randonneurs. We sorted things out reasonably quickly and commenced cussing our way up the first climb. While it’s good to use the lower gearing of the freewheel, you do lose the momentum of fixed-gear climbing. However, it did seem prudent to allow my legs to rest a bit.
I even dropped back down to the low/low for the final pitch up to the mesa. Then misjudged the QR setting when I reclamped it and immediately pulled the axle forward on the first pedal stroke. Ack! It’s the simple things that catch you. Just as I was messing with it for the second time, another rider on a Miyata checked to make sure there was nothing wrong. Admitting to user error, I got spinning along again.
Reaching the mesa, where Drake’s Beach Road angles off to the south, I commenced to reflipping the gearing. The next section is a fine dividend for the suffering bits encountered earlier. While there are still a few inclines to resolve, the road drops down ever downward in a series of steps, limited solely by how fast you want to pedal. The smooth road surface hummed under my tires and I enjoyed every moment.
As things leveled out, I had a curious feeling - that of being very hungry. I’d had oatmeal at breakfast before leaving the house, and I’m not sure if this happens to everyone, but for me, oatmeal just evaporates. I go from full to empty in about a second and a half.
Here’s the other thing. I’ve been writing and erasing, rewriting and chucking out those sentences for a while now - which is why the second half of this ride report has been so damned tardy in getting posted. It’s been very hard to write about the second part of this ride, because things are about to go really well and very poorly. In the hopes of smoothing things out for the future, I’ve been thinking about where things really bottomed out, and tried to backtrack to the point where I wish I’d done something a little bit different - where I’d been alert enough to recognize I was making an error and smart enough to do something about it.
And here is one of those places where I should have recognized a budding issue. All the articles I’ve ever read encourage pretty much the same thing - eat before you are hungry and drink before you are thirsty. And I was hungry - growling-empty-stomach, “dang I gotta get some food” hungry. Luckily, I’d packed a sandwich, and as the roadway stayed roughly level, I commenced to dig it out of my Zugster Rando Bag and nibble away. It made me feel very rando-ey. I tried to take reasonably small bites, as it seemed as though there wasn’t too much extra saliva in the system, and the reasonably dry food was not doing anything other than sucking up any moisture to be found. That would indicate that I was also a bit thirsty. After getting about a third of the sandwich into me, things felt OK, and I stowed it back into the bag.
Wearing the stylin’ Elvis glasses of hindsight, this was the time not to be dainty, foodwise. While it might not have been the brightest move to cram the whole thing down my throat as quickly as possible, it may have been prudent to keep nibbling away, a bite or two every five minutes or so until I’d finished the whole thing.
As it was, I worked my way upwards towards the Inverness Ridge pretty steadily. During my first time on this course back in 2007, I’d used the distraction of standing and sitting to go up this longer but easier incline to the crest. 20 standing pedal strokes, followed by another 20 in the saddle. It had been a grind then, but it broke things up and kept the pace up a bit. Today, I did the same thing, but had some oomph and was able to do “40’s”. That result was more than likely a direct benefit of the recent caloric intake. Before the top, I managed to catch up with Franklyn again, after he’d eased past while I was flopping my wheel back on the mesa.
Before I knew it, it was high alert mode, zig-zagging down the descent towards the Tomales Bay side of things, dodging sketchy pavement patches and howling through the turns. Again at bay level, if I’d been clever, the sandwich would have come out again. But I wasn’t and it didn’t.
Here is the benefit of consideration after the fact. At the time, I was spinning along strongly over the rolling roadway with a specific goal in mind: stopping once again at the grocery in Inverness Park for some fluids. While it may have been considerate to not drain the common igloo of water at the Control back at the Lighthouse, it would have been smarter to walk a ways up the path to the actual water source and refill my bottles completely before shoving off. They were both pretty empty at this point.
And if I, Current Self, could time travel back to chat briefly with the slightly under-watered and low-caloric Randonneurring me, I think I might have suggested that since Inverness Park was only about 2 miles away from the Bovine Bakery, it might have been a better move to suck it up, stick it out and proceed to the sunnier destination (passive solar recharge), which has high caloric hot pizza (thermal/caloric assistance), in addition to coffee (”Hi, I’m Jim and I am a Caffeine Addict…”), which would give me access to their sink for water refilling (hydro-sustenance), just to name a few points of concern. Which, if I’d been smarter and eaten up my whole damned sandwich back a while before that, would have been a simpler idea to come up with, rather than the too-easy decision of “Stop. Buy water now” which cycled through my brain.
Also, my brain for some reason thought Pt. Reyes Station was a bit further away. So, I pulled on the reins and stopped. 
Got some water and such, spread out and nibbled away, listening to the bleating goats and watch the odd randonneur ease past. The rider I’d seen earlier on the Miyata had stopped and opted for a run on the bakery next door. We chatted a little bit and I think I was able to form reasonably coherent sentences. At this point it was about 12:45, and I was happily within my “good” time for the day. I finished off my sandwich, but didn’t really want to do too much more eating.
There is a difference - stop me if I’m wrong here - between a 5 hour ride and a 10 hour ride. One big difference is the whole refueling aspect, which I mentioned earlier. At the former, you can push the gas tank needle past the half-full mark, even let it drop down until the warning light goes on. On the latter, the trick is to keep the calories coming in while the exertions of the day are using them up.
And that trick strikes me as one I have yet to really master.
Which is, of course, a thought that I wish had occurred to me quite that clearly as I was sitting there as the clock edged into hour six, nibbling the slices of tangerine I’d packed along. I’d marveled a bit at the way that the sandwich seemed to fuel me over the ridge coming back - just didn’t seem able to draw any larger conclusions from that behavior.
I packed up and rolled out again, coming up on a couple of riders on Rivendells as we reconnected to Highway 1. Another half a mile up the road in the town of Pt. Reyes Station, the familiar figure of One Happy Cog appeared before me. I caught up to him as we finished the rise to get out of town, and chatted a bit on our way north to Marshall. The winds had remained reasonably still, and though a few clouds sat to the west, the sun shown on our path.
It was good to share the miles with another rider. Even better, it was a chance to ride with him a bit. Although we’d crossed paths a few times, we had not ridden together before. Our pace seemed well suited to one another, his range of gears helping to entice me up the rollers on the way to the second Control. We traded the lead now and again, chatted a bit and hailed the randonneurs who had reached the turnaround point and were heading back to San Francisco. At some point, he dropped back and snagged a little video footage of me.
Can’t quite recall what was hanging out of my back jersey pocket…
We rolled up the final bit to the Marshall store, and upon stepping inside, found a goodly line of sweaty brevet riders all queued up to buy some food and get their card stamped. With the gorgeous weather, a fair number of folks had driven out there as well, and were seated along many of the outside tables, sampling the chowder. The place was about as busy as could be, and I tried not to fret about time being lost while standing in place. As it was, my purchase time was 13:45, frighteningly spot on to where I’d hoped to be for the day. This whole having a timepiece easily accessible on the bike was not at all bad.
It made me realize too that I’m normally not very time or distance oriented when riding. Riding without a computer, as I’d been doing for recent years, you become a bit reliant on your own, highly fallible, internal clock. Segments of a ride which required the most effort often times felt like it also took the longest. Putting a timepiece against it makes you realize that while mentally you range from “all hope lost” to “dang, I’m good!”, it may have only taken 2 or three minutes to move from one place to the other. (One of the reasons that Kent P’s “Keep Pedaling, It Will Get Better” mantra works.) There are times on that some stretches of roadway and incline become endless, relentless cycles of turmoil. But, then you can’t replicate that combination of exhaustion and timelessness ever again, rolling over the spot that held you for hours, according to your recollections. There’s a tendency of the mind to become a bit unhitched sometimes, and when doing so it tends to assume the worst. Recognizing that the last year of purgatory took only 2 minutes can sometimes snap you back a bit.
Back on this ride, what was assuming the worst was my taste buds. I don’t know if it was the sudden thump of boiled oysters and seafood on my nostrils, or just the combination of a few too many Clif Blocks combined with Vitamin Water, but when I tried to drink the fruit juice I’d bought, my throat was having none of that. One the one hand, I wanted to trust what my body was telling me, but felt like I needed to get some calories somehow. I didn’t really think that hanging around in Marshall was an ideal game plan - so I used the facilities, failed once more at sipping more than a smidgen of juice and then just decided to roll on out of town.
There was a small group of three riders ahead, so I eased my way up to them. Unfortunately, the curse of the fixed-gear system raised it’s head, as they - equipped with a range gears and coasting mechanisms - tended to climb and descend at a considerably different pace than I did. I’d ease off the front on the short rollers, and they’d zip past me on the sharper downhills. It was actually nice, though, as it took my mind off of the effort being made. Then they all pulled off the road together, and I noticed that there was a strong pitter-patter sound of raindrops hitting my helmet.
Ahead I could see sun on the hills. Behind I could see the sparkly white clouds to the north. But, for some danged reason, there was a reasonably thick cloud overhead intent on doing nothing other than pissing down big wet drops of rain. The only concession I made was to quickly stash the camera into the front bag, choosing to focus only on the sunny bits in the distance. When the splashing started coming up from the roadway as well, I finally decided to protect my saddle and stopped to haul out the cover which was rolled up in the back bag.
Leaning over the saddle to keep it out of direct rain, I positioned the cover, worked out the slack and tightened down the cord to keep it in place. One Happy Cog rolled past with a wave. I remounted and tried to find momentum once more.
About 20 pedal strokes later, the rain stopped for good. Nature has a heckuva sense of humor. But, it did get me laughing.
The last little pitch on Highway One is near the Pt. Reyes Vineyard. This one bit a little harder today, and for the first time for the day, I got the distinct negative message from the legs when encouraging them to give it a little more. Luckily, the group of three caught up with me just then, observed politely that fixed-gear riders might be a little off their nut, and eased ahead just slowly enough to give me a carrot once again. I cut down the distance a bit on the flatter mesa that followed, and by the time the left turn came up for the Petaluma-Pt. Reyes Road, we were more or less nearby.
At this point again, I started thinking a bit about food. I suspect that somewhere down in the operating system, the word had gone out that the reserves were getting a little thin. The wind had freshened slightly, and the last molecule of boiled seafood had removed itself from the olfactory system. As we rolled along the river valley, the clear thought manifested that I should dig out something and eat it. I couldn’t figure out what to eat however, and somewhere the big dumb animal instinct that seemed to be taking over was getting a bit transfixed by the idea of pedaling strongly, rather than opening up the front bag and rooting around for calories. The Hunter/Gatherer was not strong with this one.
Things got worse as we made the turn up towards the Nicasio dam. The problem was that I was actually feeling rather good, and the bike was moving well. The three riders pulled off for a natural break out of sight of the roadway, but momentum pulled me forward. Even though I stood on the pedals for a portion of the incline to the reservoir level, things felt strong. Once on the flat, there was just a hint enough of a headwind that I could push the speed up towards 20 mph. Meanwhile, my voice of reason was tapping me on the shoulder, saying, “Hey! Dummy! Eat something!”
The Rouleur brain was saying, “yeah….got it… uhhh…just a sec….ummm… in a minute…” Maybe it expected the team car to ease up next to it and pass over a croissant and some other goodies. Its non-linear counterpart was egging it along, saying we’d be in Nicasio before too long, and that would be a good place to stop and recharge.
If I find myself in this situation again, I hope I will recognize it for the error that it was.
Somewhere on the way out to the Lighthouse, the phrase of the ride popped into my brain - “Discomfort is Temporary.” Typing that now makes it sound a little bit like the more macho statement, “Pain is Weakness leaving the body” and I really want to distinguish between those two ideas. Discomfort is the condition when you ask yourself to do a little bit more. It pushes the needles a bit into into the red zone, but you are within what you can do. Pain comes from telling your body to do something. It’s your brain asking for more than you can reasonably do.
This isn’t to say that you should let your lazy body off the hook. It’s knowing the difference between enabling what you can do versus doing damage.
This phrase, “Discomfort is Temporary” had cropped up a few times so far since then, helping me to remember that the roadway would crest out soon, and though I’d be a tad uncomfortable for another minute or so, that would soon end. Here though, as I spun past Nicasio Reservoir with some momentum, the phrase misled me, and I continued to keep both hands on the bars and pedal along. I wonder if I wouldn’t have been more cautious if the sun hadn’t been out and the winds so moderate.
Reaching Nicasio, I parked, used the blue plastic phone booth and dropped into the store to get some water. 
Nothing I had seemed too appetizing. Maybe I should have trolled through the store once more, looking for crunchy/salty. Finally, in anticipation of the rise and pitch to get back over to the San Geronimo Valley, I squeezed a GU-analog into my mouth and followed it up with some water. I chatted briefly with a couple of other riders, one of whom was riding a tan Bob Jackson rigged up as a fixed-gear. He was talking about a group of single-geared who were doing various centuries together. They rolled out a minute or two before I did.
Even though the sun still shone, the temperature felt cooler, and with the next few miles under the redwoods, I added my windvest underneath my flecto vest. At some point, I’d also put on my wool gloves, and correctly reckoned that this was a good time to switch out of the cotton cap back to the wool, and add a little ear coverage.
Oh, and for those of you playing along at home, feeling suddenly cold is a good indicator that you are not eating enough.
Now, I’d made Nicasio at around 15:25, and was hoping to get back into Fairfax at around 16:10 or thereabouts. Though it felt like I was crawling up the first incline, I didn’t have to walk. In fact, when I hit the pitch that crests out at the Cecy Krone Memorial, I only stopped once. With auto traffic at zero here, I managed to tack my way through the steepest section while remaining on the bike, and just like that, was looking down at the valley below.
I always like this point in the ride. My feeling has always been that I can limp home from here. Clipping back in, my cadence got a hair past the second “hop” in my technique - one goes through right at 25 mph, and the second one comes in at about 32 mph. Perhaps someone with more of a math background can explain why. By the time the road ended back at Sir Francis Drake, a few of us had collected waiting for a gap in the cross traffic. We were finally beginning to truly backtrack on the initial course we’d headed out on this morning. Chatting a bit as we swung left and eastward onto SFD, the Cooper rider noticed that we were non-coasting kin. I hung along with them for a while, but was feeling the unmistakable condition of marshmallow legs setting in.
Things were OK as long as the roadway was dead flat, but as soon as any topography introduced itself, there was just nothing there. The slight rise near the treatment plant got to me, and the incline up to White’s Hill bit pretty well. The two riders I’d met in Nicasio had stopped here as well. One set off again pretty quickly, but the other hung back. Here, I took a few moments to focus a bit before the descent. Auto traffic back from the coast had picked up a bit, and I wanted to make sure that my brain was going to be ahead of me. Riders have been hurt here on brevets, and I did not want to break my earlier pledge to “do nothing stupid.”
It proceeded without fanfare, avoiding several nasty spills of loose gravel to the right and taking the lane when conditions and speed warranted. Squeezing every bit of momentum out of the slight decline into Fairfax, I kept the pedals turning, hooked into the town proper with a quick right and left, avoiding a driver who didn’t understand STOP when applied to their direction and rolled down Center Ave again. Though I looked longingly at the Java Hut, the lure of momentum and progress kept me on the path. I slugged a little Vitamin Water down and immediately felt the worse for it. It started doing the slappy dance with whatever bits of GU (technically “Honey Stinger”) were attached like moss to the inside of my stomach.
Log that combo for a definite “No, Thank you.”
As already admitted here, I know better than that. Once you start the GU packs, you need to keep chaining them. Or, you need to throw some real food in there to absorb the artifacts. And you need water, not more sugary sippy juice. By the time I was halfway to San Anselmo, my helpful brain was trying to recall the last time I actually threw up. Swallowing and breathing helped a bit, as did focusing on not hitting pedestrians or getting run down myself. Finally, I took a small sip of water, and things calmed down slightly. This seemed to reactivate some shard of logical behavior, so when the stomach started churning again a half mile up the road, I sipped a little more water.
I’d like to apologize to anyone who passed by me, or rode near me between San Anselmo and Corte Madera. If you said something cheery or encouraging and I just sort of stared past you, I’m sorry. It was just that I didn’t really want anything other than air passing in or out of my mouth.
That’s really the way I got to the base of the Camino Alto hill - sipping and hoping that I wouldn’t get sick. As the road began easing upward, I pulled over and tried to assess things a bit. I remembered that I’d tucked a package of dark chocolate into the front of the bag, and finally decided that a couple bites of that would send me one way or the other very quickly. The funny thing is that it wouldn’t really melt when I put it in my mouth (how’s that core temperature workin’ for ya?), and when I finally started chewing on it, the bits just kept seeming drier and drier (see Dehydration: symptoms of). There was about thirty seconds of “hmmmmm” when it hit my stomach, but by then I’d remounted and was leaning on the pedals in a slow-motion effort to get the Quickbeam moving once again. Considering I’d been standing in front of a pizza restaurant, it seemed that barfing while moving would be a better option.
Happily, my stomach started to settle. Less encouragingly, my legs felt like dry capellini. It was about the ugliest climb I’ve ever done up that hill. I might have stopped once or twice. Must have once, because I recall biting off a little more chocolate. A couple riders passed me on a turn, said something upbeat and eased passed. If my eyes were focusing correctly, my speed was somewhere in the 3’s. “Walking speed” thought I. “Faster than stopping!” suggested another voice. “Discomfort is Temporary,” offered another.
I just concentrated 10 feet ahead of the bike, shifting all my body weight onto each pedal in succession. I knew that would get me to the top.
Sometimes, a brevet is about faith.
At this point, it was not about optimism. Optimism implies a future. My brain was having none of that. The moment was just lean, weight, pull with the arm, shift to the other side and repeat.
Then, on one pedal stroke, it was just a hair easier. And again.
This is the blessing of the fixed-gear - the intimate connection with incline, traction and gravity. I looked up just a bit to confirm my location. The hiking path on the right meant the top was near. I could even sit for a few pedal strokes now, using different muscles and finding a slight glimmer of momentum. And suddenly, at the top, there was only the pull of the descent.
Looking at the above photo, I see a couple of things. First, my recollection had been that I looked at the camera when taking the photo. But, the image shows a weird thousand yard stare. It also shows another inattention to detail item - my wind vest is clearly unzipped. It’s even a bit outside of the flecto bib. And I was wondering why I felt cold at this point… I wouldn’t zip it up until after I’d finished and hung around for a few minutes at the final control.
Though the climb was disheartening, the descent brought my spirits back once again. Since I don’t get to coast on the downhills, there’s little chance of letting my mind wander. Working the rough pavement and easy curves of the descent into Mill Valley sharpened up my outlook a bit, and upon reaching the bottom I remembered how close I was to my goal. The pie-in-the-sky hope had been for a sub-10 hour finish, and that had pretty much evaporated when I crested on Camino Alto at 16:56. The realistic goal had been to match my 2007 finish time of 10:31.
Back in Nicasio, I’d rigged up my headlight - a NiteRider MiNewt USB - so when the sun dipped behind the clouds at the horizon while rolling over the Mill Valley Bike Path, I flicked a switch to stay as visible as possible. At the traffic light on the far end of the path, I bumped up with a couple of other randonneurs. We all rolled out when we got the green, and I saw that One Happy Cog had slipped into our midst. I was in serious pit bull mode at this point - clamping down with a death grip on anyone’s wheel and trying to hold it.
Between chocolate kicking in and the vagaries of the Bridgeway traffic and lights, I held on almost to downtown, when a gap appeared and half the group made a yellow that we didn’t. We threaded our way through increasingly erratic drivers and then swept uphill for the final climb to the Bridge. Unfortunately, the combination of sugar, cacao and enthusiasm was not a match for the realities of the incline. The first pitch upwards did me in, so I eased over and caught my breath, crammed another bite of chocolate and focused for the next and steepest bit. Here also, we were begining to intermingle with the return migration of light-less, bike-renting tourists.
Slaloming and grunting, I got up the worst bit, then just tried to be a machine for the rest of the climb. Reaching the Bridge level, I saw a few riders ahead pull left to cross on the east side. I continued under the narrow tunnel, whooped my way up the final insulting pitch, eased over and dropped down to the west sidewalk. By midspan, I could see several randonneurs learning the hard lesson about crossing on the east walkway - the folks on that side can’t hear you and don’t care. On the west, it was cool runnings. 
Enough light remained from the setting sun that it felt like daylight on the Bridge - an extremely uplifting condition. Before I knew it, I swung below the roadway and chicaned down to the Final Control. A couple other riders were negotiating paperwork with RBA Rob Hawks, who aimed his pen at me and said “16:43.” Signed my card when he finished with them and passed it back to Rob.
Done. Whew.
I would have loved a strong espresso or even a scalding hot chocolate. Alas. None to be found. Nibbled on some pretzels and potato chips which seemed to turn to dust in my mouth. Dug out all my layers and zipped everything up. About that time, One Happy Cog appeared, stood me up and we posed for a photo:
Unfortunately, the flash didn’t fire, and I misjudged the 1890’s era portrait exposure timing, so my features are slightly doubled.
But, the act of standing together in a photo reminded me that brevets are about camaraderie. We’d passed some beautiful miles together on the roads today, and now we had both arrived at roughly the same time where we’d left some ten and a half hours earlier.
I whooped and hollered for a few more folks easing in under the dwindling light before realizing that heat was escaping like air through a nicked tube. Said a few goodbyes, and rolled back onto the Bridge, in search of a car with a heater that would soon be blasting.
Rolling down towards the north tower, I think I glimpsed Franklyn again as he made his way on the other side walkway. I waved but could tell he hadn’t been looking. I can’t imagine riding that course with a cold.
I reached the car, sore and chilled. Recontacting the saddle on the way back had not been a positive experience. My feet hurt a bit and I was just really happy to be done for the day. This ride had gone both very well and reasonably poorly in spots. A few more miles, a bit more concentration on climbing, a lot more awareness about food all would have helped.
Brevets are about learning too, I reckon.
The one last thought I had, before calling my wife to let her know I was done and heading home, was that after brevet number three, I feel as though I’m more of a beginner than before my first one.
Not really sure what that means, but it was clearly in the jotted down notes from later that evening. It will be interesting to see where that thought leads.
San Francisco Randonneurs - Lighthouse 200K - 1/23/10
~125 miles - finishing time: 10:43
Results
This report will be edited and posted to the brevet section of cyclofiend.com
Lighthouse 200K Ride Report - Pt. 1
“San Francisco to the Pt Reyes Lighthouse”
Brevets are sometimes about faith and confidence.
I had faith - and I was confident - at 5:30 am on Saturday morning, that the rain pounding the roof would pass. I was so confident, in fact, that I turned on the computer - something I said I wasn’t going to do - to check the Doppler radar image of the sky above the SF Bay Area. The screen showed several big clumps of green and yellow moving east and south. As near as I could tell from the resolution, the trailing edge was directly over our place. And almost just like that, it stopped raining. In the range of signs, this had to be good.
There really wasn’t all that much to do. Quaff some strong coffee and stuff down some oatmeal. As I have been more or less obsessively documenting, this past week has been a series of short checklists and scribbled notes. The bike was ready, the clothing had been laid out, the options winnowed down and items that made the cut packed. Nothing to do but ride, really.
So, I sipped the last bit of coffee, loaded the bike and got out the door. It was pretty clear from the standing puddles on the roadway that a good deal of rain had fallen in the night. Not a lot of other cars on the highway, but up ahead, I noticed a small white car with a bike on a roofrack.
Just guessing here, but I thought possibly, the only other auto on the roadway splashing through large puddles towards the Golden Gate Bridge at 6 am with a visible bicycle strapped on just might be another randonneur. As I got near enough, it was even more odd - the bicycle on the roof rack was clearly a Rivendell A. Homer Hilsen. My Quickbeam was lying down out of sight in the back, so the poor driver probably never quite figured why someone was shadowing him so closely down the freeway at that early hour. Still, it seemed another good sign.
He continued over the Bridge, while I turned off to save the toll and ride the last couple of miles to the start. A couple other reflective outfits flashed from across the otherwise vacant lot as I angled in. Again, a pretty safe bet we were all heading to the same place.
The only thing left was to change into proper riding shoes and get going. I ended up opting against wearing my new rain booties - the only piece of gear I’d brought that was untested. The clearing skies made me think that they were just not necessary, and I’d just end up carrying them for the whole day. Did pop on the toe covers, though.
This year, the gate was open on the west side crossing, so I didn’t have to use the pedestrian subway. Rolling along felt good, especially after a week of virtually no on-the-bike time. 
The solitude of the crossing ended as soon as I rolled down the ramp to the area around the Strauss statue. Bikes and riders were everywhere. Somewhere in the scrum, volunteers were checking folks in as fast as possible, but for some reason that didn’t register in my brain. Ended up rolling past that gang down to the dirt parking lot, seeing no one and turning around again. This time I saw an obvious line in the middle of the sea of yellow jackets and reflective gear, stowed the Quickbeam and worked my way in. Within a few easy minutes, I confirmed my information, had my brevet card stowed in a fresh ziplock bag and was only 200K or so short of my goal for the day.
Many riders I recognized by bicycle or face hopped in place a bit to keep warm, or enthusiastically greeted friends and swapped stories. Whatever else, randonneuring is definitely for morning people. I looked around, spotted and greeted Carlos, chatted briefly with our RBA Rob and enjoyed a bit of bike watching, spotting another Quickbeam that was prepped for the day. 
I knew JimG was out of town for this ride, but figured I’d run across a few folks during the course of the day. The breezes were still pretty damp, and I kept my rain jacket on, listened to the instructions provided by Rob, fretted that it surely must be past 7 am, put my hand on my heart and pledged not to do anything stupid and we were off, rolling northward under lightening skies. 
Since my flash went off (new camera, y’know), it kind of skewed the lighting balance a bit. A more accurate feel of the day’s start can be found via One Happy Cog’s video of the rollout.
I’m always a little hyper-concious during the first miles, as everyone can get bunched and your reflexes may be too taut or not quite grounded enough to react well to the unexpected. But, it reminded me again why I like brevets - folks rode steadily, predictably and alerted one another to their movements. It was 180 degrees difference compared the the sketchy, bunched miles of the Marin Century this past August (a great ride in its own right, but as we moved through the descent on Lucas Valley just a few miles from the start, there was a near-perfect-storm of nervous/erratic slower riders and swarming hyper, “what’s wrong with jumping a double yellow line on a blind curve” proto-racers which went on for too damn long. This year, on that ride, we start earlier! But, I digress…). We skimmed down into Sausalito under clearing skies and wet pavement. Even among the randonneurs, a few folks ran relatively narrow tires and no fenders, and they seemed most ill at ease here. Hopefully, they’d remember to keep their lips together when we passed through the farm effluent on the way to the Lighthouse.
All that lay a bit in the future, of course. As the riders grouped and strung out along Bridgeway, it seemed like I had the traffic light charm, and managed to hit every green light change without losing a bit of momentum. When we hit the Mill Valley Bike Path, I even had the presence of mind to unclip and raise my feet while rolling through the deep, floody puddles in front of the bike shop. The sky continued to gain shades lighter than we’d seen all week, and I felt well rested and better with each turn of the pedals. Even a pit stop at the restroom didn’t knock my mood. I doffed my rain shell, rejoined the route and managed to perfectly catch the tail end of the green light at the end of the bike path, transitioning towards the Camino Alto climb.
Another easy, curving descent on wet pavement, everything feeling rock solid with feather bed comfort on the new Jack Brown tires. As I’ve written before, descending on a fixed gear can kind of mess with your technique, as you can no longer just drop the outside leg and carve. One of the great things about the Quickbeam is that Grant’s designs corner exquisitely for my riding style, even when your feet are whirling about and the pavement is soaked.
As I reflexively twisted my way through the lower portion of the route (which takes up so much of the 200K cue sheet), I’d been mentally ready to feel kinda cruddy. Between the rains and deciding to err on the side of low miles in the week before the brevet, I’d managed to ride pretty much not at all. Yeah, I’d whirled around the neighborhood a bit after installing the new chain and tires back a couple days before the brevet, in that brief moment between the showers. Not much else though. I was not really sure how that would work out, as I’ve always had the feeling that things go better when the riding is more consistent.
For the couple nights before the ride, I’d been having to get up and stretch at o’dark thirty. Maybe they call it excess energy. Whatever. But sometimes, that ends up with a fairly clunky start to the riding day. When work or other commitments has cut down on my rides, the first hour or so of the first ride back can be pretty blocky, and things feel better as the distance increases.
On the other hand, Carlos has written before of taking time off the bike before his long rides - his “not training” training. While I may not have felt super smooth yet, there was a certain amount of latent energy in the system.
As my mind churned these relatively useless thoughts and comparisons, it made me realize once again that using the fixed-gear system of drivetrain does tend to isolate one on a ride. You don’t really climb at the same pace, and you certainly don’t descend in the same manner. I’d been aware of some other riders in the general vicinity, but I wasn’t really going the same pace as anyone.
Until reaching San Anselmo, that is, and finding myself behind a couple of fixed-gear randonneurs.
This was pretty cool. Not only were there others with the same mental affliction as myself, they were moving at roughly the same pace. They were also chatting with the geared, coastable rider seen in the above image, so I held back a bit as we negotiated the stop signs and pedestrian traffic in town.
Then, just as suddenly, they were gone. One of the back road connectors between San Anselmo and Fairfax. They had gone straight and would have to go right a couple blocks up, while I went right and followed the road as it veered left. We’d end up in the same place, but I think they added an extra zig-zag to the route.
On the way out to White’s Hill I came upon a couple of riders here and there, but grunted my way up the first big incline pretty much solo. I recall passing a pedestrian on the way up, which struck me as reasonably odd - probably the first I’ve encountered over the years.
The hill was kind of the first real test of the day. While the riding has been consistent over the past couple months, there hasn’t been a lot of extra climbing involved. This would really be the first goodly chunk in memory, though I’d gone up it a few weeks before when Esteban was in town. Climbing is funny. It gets easier each time you do it. But, it still hurts. Since I knew I hadn’t been doing it, I tried to keep things as throttled back as you can when you’ve elected to ride away off for the day with no shifty bits. It went pretty well, with a pause-for-recharge near the summit.
Dropping down into the San Geronimo Valley, a couple other riders had passed me, and I tried to keep them in sight. Spinning along on the flats here things actually began to feel pretty good. Moving through the straight section of the main valley, then easing into the twisty and narrower sections under the redwoods, it made sense to stay on the pavement until reaching S. P. Taylor State Park. Here, I steered the Quickbeam into the campground, crossed Paper Mill Creek and connected with the Cross Marin Path. Under the towering trees and rushing waters, large drips fell and a consistent mist made it feel as though I were under water in places.
About halfway along, the sun broke through in a meaningful way, adding to the fairyland feel.
And it was damp and drippy, but not rainy.
And I seemed to be making pretty good time. The appearance of the rainbow was just icing on the cake. 
(I’ll digress here briefly as I’ve already read a couple of accounts of this ride by others. For some reason, folks are associating rainbows with unicorns. Please, speaking from the strain of Irish blood in my heritage, it’s “pot o’ gold” people! Rainbows and unicorns are an 80’s marketing phenomenon…)
Up until this time, things had been mostly in solo mode, which was ok. But, it did make me wonder if through some quirk of momentum, I’d be spending the day by myself. Rejoining the roadway, I saw the Box Dog Boys a quarter mile up ahead on the climb over Bolinas Ridge. They climbed steadily and disappeared around the dogleg near the crest. On the descent down the over side, I came upon a solo rider on an Ebisu.
This turned out to be Franklyn W, who I’ve “known” for a while via Flickr and his submissions to the Gallery (1, 2, 3). It was great to finally meet in person, especially while out enjoying a day which seemed to be growing more gorgeous by the minute. He said he had been overcoming a cold this week, but decided to roll out on the 200K anyway.
I’d seen some of the images of this newer bike, but they really don’t do it justice. The Ebisu has such a wonderful, understated quality to it, and seeing them on the road is always a pleasure. In my mythical Barn of Bikes I Want, the Ebisu is definitely on the list. By the way, the Barn is well sealed against the elements, heated, has wooden floors and looks conspicuously like either Peter Weigle’s or Richard Sachs’ places. It does not currently fit in my backyard.
We chatted a bit, separated slightly on the slight rise past the Earthquake Trail, and passed the Box Dog Boys, who had pulled up to fix a flat. They waved us on and we skimmed along the wet pavement, pulling into Inverness Park fairly quickly thereafter.
I topped off and shifted some fluids, anxious to get going again fairly quickly. One of the differences between the 2008 (geared) 200K and the 2007 (fixed) edition had been briefer stops. The time difference had been about an hour between the two years, and although I’d been a bit under-miled in 2008, and there had been strong winds to deal with on the course, my motto this time was to be efficient off the bike as well. I bought some sugar - uh - “Vitamin” water (though I had to ask the clerk to take my money) and got rolling.
The other reason I wanted to get on the move had to do with the climb up from Inverness, which skirts the shoulder of Mt. Vision. It’s deceptively steep and it hates me.
OK. Maybe it doesn’t hate me. It is deceptively steep in a couple spots. You realize this on the way back, when the descent invigorates your senses and fills your sails, but there’s something about the way up which is a bit mind-crunching. It bit pretty well on the first section, and I rolled to a stop to regain my breath. The incline had collected some other riders - most of whom were smart enough to bring a wide array of gearing options - and we chugged upwards, giving thumbs ups or encouragement when we met eyes.
I used the lack of auto traffic to tack my way up some of the pitches, which helped quite a bit. Somewhere in my brain, I wondered what that would do to my cue references, had this been a brevet on an unknown route. But, since realizing I can’t quite focus on the odometer while riding anyway, it’s a bit of a moot point. The crest came a bit quicker than anticipated, and momentum began to work its magic on the bike.
Pedaling down a moderate grade is always such a recharge - it makes me think of the phrase “blowing the ballast” (as in submarines, not fluorescent lighting fixtures). The sun was out, reflecting off the wet pavement and roadside trees. My Jack Brown tires hissed along and the pedals seemed to pull my feet. This was a great section.
I bottomed out at the turn to the Oyster Farms, having skimmed through a section of flooded roadway. This was 0′ elevation once again.
This is also where the route wants to make sure you are serious about going to the Lighthouse. It starts with a couple little pitches to get onto Pt. Reyes proper, then you turn south towards the Lighthouse and it shows you where need to go. 
These are not bad climbs, but if you click through and view the full size version, you’ll get a little better sense of the scale. I had worked my way back to The Tandem With the Hypnotizing Tail Light, a couple other riders and Franklyn, who had eased past me on the Inverness climb. We worked our way along, the tandem climbing like, well, a tandem and then descending like a peregrine falcon. The rest of the single cockpit bikes found and lost momentum and we wheezed along the road like an accordian bellows. The pain was temporary and even with the efforts, I was actually feeling pretty good.
Somewhere up on the mesa, a group of 3 + 1 riders came towards us - the Fast Kids moving along to what would be a sub-8-hour 200K. I looked down at the fuzzy font of my odometer, maybe to work out some math or another diversionary project. If I saw it, the number didn’t stick. What ever the equation, they rode fast.
Another rise and fall of the landscape and the point appeared.
…again, the embiggened version is helpful.
This view is always both depressing and invigorating. You’ve been
climbing a bit and thinking you have made some progress. The you come
up a rise and see the far-distant-seeming point of the Lighthouse,
remember the angle of the last pitch and go “unnghh!”. Then you
remember you’ve done it before and realize you have a goal - especially if
you are near the time you’d hoped for.
And as the slow-ly switch-ing, reh-ed, mon-do, home-brew, tail-light mount-ed up-on the-uh tan-dem a-head forced me to admit, my time estimate was pretty spot on. I may have also spewed my social security number, PIN code, various passwords and admitted my involvement in any number of crimes. But, I chomped down on the bit, followed the light up soul-crushing S-turns up from “Historic B Ranch” and made it to through the swill (actually, not bad on this day) at A Ranch, before pulling up a the Y (not a Ranch or a workout locale, an actual “Y” in the road) for the “Rivendell Shift.”
Here, another rider was coming back from Chimney Rock. I figured he was not on the brevet, as that’s quite the wrong direction. Then he laughingly said, “That’s not the right way…” and I had to agree. It’s gotta get better, right?
As I flipped the wheel and rerigged the chain to the freewheel side, riders hit the 20% last pitch to the Lighthouse, grabbed the wrong gear and wobbled to a stop, or motored up cursing Zeus and the gods of topography. A few riders screamed down at what I would describe as dangerous speeds, pebbles skittering and tires scrabbling for adhesion. Most dropped down under control, aware that things get sketchy right there, between autos, bikes, cattle effluent and metal stock guards. Franklyn checked in as he went by, offering to hold the Quickbeam as I went through my ritual.
Soon it was butt down, bars up and try to stay stuck to the roadway. As I wondered inwardly why it was exactly that I liked cycling in any form, another rider edged up to my side. It was Barley, one half of the fixed gear couple I’d seen back in San Anselmo. He was thumping his fixed Specialized upwards, and the effort was evident. As we hit the tougher sections, I eased up a bit faster, feeling like the consummate slacker for bringing a coastable option. 
However, this would be an example of the maxim that old age and treachery usually trumps youth and enthusiasm. (Well, only briefly - they would finish a chubby half hour ahead of me on the day).
Before you could say, “Cough up a lung”, I found myself in front of a cheery SFR volunteer, getting my card signed for 11:03. 
This was my third time out here under the clock of a brevet. The first was 11:18, after a flat, and I felt like crap and really, really needed to sit for a spell, calm myself and refocus for the rest of the ride. The second was 11:01, after pushing hard into a headwind which wrung me out pretty well. Today, I felt, strangely, good.
The weather was utterly perfect. The bike acted well. I’d tightened up the cue sheet to just show pertinent info for my ride. Since I knew the route, that meant waypoints with Good and Slow times. Plus, as I noted at the start, my bike computer was 15 minutes fast. In other words, optimism was high and I was, well, confident…
I mean, how could it not be, on a day like this?
Please Continue to Part 2
Kind of a slow paced day today. No riding this weekend, though Saturday would’ve been about perfect - no wind to speak of, glimmers of sunlight here and there plenty of folks seemed to be out enjoying the day. I was in an advanced voice acting workshop with Tom Pinto on Friday night and all of Saturday, focusing on fine-tuning auditions and enjoying the company of a great teacher and several stellar VO contemporaries. It’s the first class of the this year, and always good to see folks in person.
It also worked me like a long ride, as it’s a day and a half of pretty high concentration, focused efforts and extreme attention to very intangible things. And although I had vague intentions to get a little leg stretching ride in, I must admit that the alarm got quickly thwacked and I rolled over until the rains hit, worked a Sunday crossword with my wife and generally bumped around for the morning.
Hey, sometimes you gotta just recover.
I also began fretting a bit about next Saturday’s San Francisco Randonneurs 200K, as I realized that, curiously enough, it was going to take place next Saturday. Add to that the fact that no one has shown up for an intervention, despite the fact I seem to be favoring the Quickbeam for this year’s ride.
Things do feel a bit better this year, though that may have more to do with not doing last year’s ride. Memory can be soooo subjective.
On the other hand, there are some issues to deal with before setting off at the Golden Gate Bridge, mostly minor tech issues. But they all begin with the bikes being clean enough to deal with, so when the morning rains subsided, I threw on the Grundens bib and rubber boots and pretended to be a pit wrench on the cyclocross circuit. The hot, soapy water felt good on my cold hands, and I scrubbed both the Quickbeam and the Hilsen down a bit.
The Quickbeam is pretty much ready to go. It’s feeling as comfortable as ever these days, and between the Zugster Rando Bag afore and the Keven’s Bag aft, it can carry enough in the way of jackets and bits to be perfect. I’m going to double check the sprocket teeth for wear and see if I can’t remove the slight play that’s in the rear hub, check the chain (which I think may be worn) and replace the tires, which are just a bit thinner than I like them to be on what is shaping up to be a damp ride.
I decided that the Hilsen needs to be ready as well, if only as a spare so that if I freak out late in the week and decide I need a coastable many-geared setup, it will be ready at a moment’s notice. There are a couple of issues there - first, the bottom bracket started making some very crunchy sounds the last couple times it was out, especially when I was out of the saddle. This makes me just super-happy, as you can guess, because it’s an excuse to pull the Ritchey Cross Cranks off the bike. As much as I like the gearing and the lightness and Q-factor of these cranks, it’s just hard to trust them entirely any longer. I’ll be interested to see if they have started to slip a bit. (More on that story here.)
However, the slightly taller gearing has been nice, so I’ll probably pull the chainrings off and change the Sugino XD2 triple to a 48/38. That way I won’t have to move the front derailleur (though it will be interesting to see what that does to the shifting, since I’ll be leaving the 26T inner ring in place.)
Other than that, it needs fenders remounted. Since riding with Gino a couple weeks back and enjoying the shiny smoothness of his Honjo fenders, I’m feeling a need to upgrade. However, that’s probably not in the immediate budget, so the SKS’s in the garage will have to do in the meantime. I did get a set of Sheldon Nuts to simplify the mounting, but that’s going to skew the position a touch, so I’m not sure I’m going to mess with those yet.
The other things to resolve will be giving the saddles a treatment with the Nikwax Aqueous Wax, and hoping that the new style of Brooks saddle cover which came with my Swift will do the job in terms of protection in case of torrential rains. The downside of using the Quickbeam in fixed mode is that you do tend to be out of the saddle more, especially on any type of climbing, so that the saddle gets exposed to rains. This one does look pretty sturdy and “Grunden’s-like”…
One area which concerns me is my feet. I finally retired my old solid lorica SIDI shoes for new ones, which have a couple of mesh panels on them. Didn’t really need those under summer conditions, and now that rain and cooler temps prevail, mitigating the damp is key. I’ve got a set of Pearl Izumi “CalienToes” which are OK for cool, but pretty useless in the rain. Though I’ve silicone-sprayed them, they just don’t really cover all that much acreage. I do have an old pair of neoprene booties, but find that those get pretty danged hot over the course of a day, and they tend to collect rain at the top. I’ve got a little credit at REI right now, and was looking at the Pearl Izumi Soft-Shell Shoe Covers (as opposed to the Barrier model, which seems to be heavier neoprene.)
For the rest of the outfit, I’ve got Rainlegs and my trusty old eVent Jacket, which I’ll probably retreat once more before the ride. If I really think the rain will be torrential, I could always swap in a pair of GoreTex rain pants I have, though I’ve only ridden in those for shorter commutes.
I also spent some time forwarding route options to RBA (Regional Brevet Administrator) Rob, who had asked for those of us with local knowledge to comment on what to do if the creeks rise.
Mill Valley Option #1 (Hwy 101) -
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Mill-Valley-Flood-Option-1
Mill Valley Option #2 (via ) -
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Mill-Valley-Flood-Option-2
Kentfield Flooded Option -
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Kentfield-Flooded-Option
San Anselmo Flooded Option -
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/San-Anselmo-Flooding-Option
Then, in the last hour or so before it got dark, I cleaned out the gutters before the rains returned, slicing my palm on the sharp edge of a connector. Good thing I got a tetanus update when the I was in the ER back in June. Took a while to clean out properly, and it made me realize that I should also pack a pair of danged glasses on the brevet, just in case I need to do detail work at any point in the day. But now, as the winds rattle the windows and the rain begins in earnest, I’m glad I did the prep work.
Finally, I’ve been looking at times on the course in the two times riding the brevets. (Though I’ve filed my danged brevet card from the 2007 ride and can’t lay my hands on it…going by timestamped photos on Flickr.) Finding it interesting that the difference of about an hour between 2007 and 2008 completion, all took place in the latter part of the ride, and just averaging another mph faster over the last 40 miles or so would’ve been helpful. But, when you are out there and doing it, you give what you’ve got. This is the first time I’ll actually be using a computer on the bike, so we’ll see if that helps to keep me on track a bit better.
Thinking again to last weekend’s ride. As with all fine outings, there were a couple of specific moments that stick in my mind. The ride report I posted on Sunday seemed to have a little more emphasis on the framework of the day, and I wanted to jot down these before I forgot about them.
Spinning my way down White’s Hill towards the end of the day. I was somewhere in the low 30’s, pedalling quickly but not insanely so. Near the bottom, JimG shot past on my left. He took one hand off the bars as he went by and his bike shuddered with a bit of a speed wobble. When he brought his hand back, it stopped immediately. Then I could see him shift his weight somehow and it began resonating again. It was pretty freaky to watch that happening 10-15 yards out. Just as quickly, it ceased.
When I caught back up to him, he said that while he had never been able to eliminate the incidence of wobble entirely, he now had a very good sense of when it was going to happen. He had actually intentionally caused the second instance. Jim’s been working to dial in that bike for a while, his engineer’s sensibilities picking things apart and reassembling them. Shorter stem, thinner tires, different rack setups, saddle heights and more. But now it seems like it’s becoming much more his bike. Watching him go in and out of the wobble made me realize he knows that bike now.
Stopped on the side of the road in Mill Valley, near the base of the Camino Alto climb. Esteban had set Aaron up with a tube and we were waiting while he swapped it out. It was misting lightly, that fine, foggy, SF Bay Area weather. I pulled out a saddle cover and nibbled on some dates. Of the five people who were not working on a flat tube, I don’t think any more than any combination of two of them had ridden together before. But, we were just hanging out, happily chatting about all sorts of things (well, certainly about bike gear…) as though we’d known one another for years.
In one sense we have - reading one another’s ride reports, seeing bikey photos and trading the odd email now and again. Sometimes, when a flat happens in a group, you can feel the tension increase palpably. Here, it was an opportunity to relax and enjoy each other’s company in real time. We hung out, the mist built up on our outer layers. The “go with the
flow” vibe seemed to infect us all.
Hanging out at the Strauss statue before the ride and realizing that I’d never ridden with another orange Quickbeam. It’s interesting how the same bicycle model can be set up so differently. I have this feeling that we need to call an Entmoot before too long and see how many of these step out of the forest.
The Cross Marin Path is one of the true jewels in the many ways of getting around marin county. That was made abundantly clear when riding with a group. You get to spread out a bit as you ride, enjoying one another’s company without feeling like you need to keep a weather eye out for impending auto traffic. The fact that it eases through a beautiful valley and is just another plus. Like most interesting routes, it manages to go through many microzones - the redwoods of Samuel P. Taylor State Park, the meandering course of Lagunitas creek, the damp and wooded stretches,
the open grassy sections - all in the course of just a few miles.
One of the really inspiring and gratifying things to come out of overseeing the Rivendell Owner’s Bunch list has been watching folks find one another and set up local rides. The SoCal Rivendell Riders have seemed particularly adept at gathering up and down the SoCal coast - I think they managed 12 or 14 monthly rides to date. I keep hoping to schedule a visit to my sister at an opportune time, so I can attend one of these rambles. Ok, there’s a resolution for the new year.
Up here in the SF Bay Area, we are perhaps a more clannish bunch, as those types of Riv-oriented get-togethers have not occurred with the same frequency. Though, given the geographics of region, maybe you are more likely just to run into another while out and about. (Granted, I did miss the ride back in October).
So, when SCRR riders Esteban and Aaron announced they’d be up in the region around the New Year, making the ride became a high priority. Couldn’t swing the mid-week ride, but cleared myself the Saturday just fine, which is why I found myself muttering minor curses at 8 am or so, realizing I’d left about 10 minutes late after a few last scattered tasks at the house.
All was not lost, however, as JimG checked back in via communicator to let me know that most folks had really just gathered, and one of the riders had to deal with a flat. When I rolled up to the Strauss statue at the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge, it was pretty evident which group was mine.
Wool, steel, lugs, tweed, canvas, twined bits and big ol’ road tires. These were my people.
It was a fine group of six - Esteban and Aaron up from the southland, regular ride-buddy JimG, ZugsterBags Adam and Bradley on a Quickbeam and me on mine - evenly split between coastable many-geared bikes and those with proper drivetrains. Rivendell bikes held a slight majority, with a pair of Romulii (Aaron and Esteban) and two orange Ents (me and Bradley) versus a Kogswell P/R700 (JimG) and the Box Dog Bikes Pelican (Adam). Another statistical impossibility played out as there were actually three Zugster Rando Bags represented on one ride - a beatable record, but still pretty danged impressive. (Which made me very happy to have spent a few moments remounting mine before the ride.)
We introduced ourselves around, oohed and ahhed over one another’s bikes, and then headed north over the bridge. Fell into an easy rhythm with JimG, and we realized we’d not ridden together in waaaaaaay too long. In fact, I think there some rumors flitting about the tubernets that we were, in fact, the same person. While there has certainly been a preponderance of Jims about, it’s important to quell such rumors with periodic public appearances.
I’d been enjoying a mild tailwind assist when zipping down toward the bridge, and now it was clear that we needed to push a bit to head north. Despite some happy talk on the forecast to the contrary, the weather had not yet cooperated, and things remained resolutely overcast as we dropped down into Sausalito. Still on Bridgeway, I managed to be looking at a car edging in us, rather than the gang ahead of me at one point, and may have put a brake-lever-shaped bruise into Bradley’s buttock when I had to shoot into a slim gap as a traffic light caught us. Hopefully, he will someday see fit to forgive me…
The clouds dropped lower as he hit the Camino Alto climb, with visible mist in the air. The flat gremlins chose this moment to bite into Aaron’s front tire again, and he was again forced to change tubes. At first he took this as a sign to head home, but we talked him out of it after taking a tube and patch kit count among the rest of us (more than some small bike shops). We hung out as the mist came down, watch a few packs of all-logo-all-the-time groups go upwards on the hill. Other than a single Pinarello tacked onto the back of one gang, they were all devotees of the Church of Carbonium. They also had Occultorotaphobia - fear of the covered wheel.
Back when were gathering at the statue, I’d asked Esteban if he knew what Latin was for “covered wheel.” He allowed as how though he was a professor, he was not a Latin professor, and the question remained unanswered (until I started writing this and looked it up). I nattered on for a while about the consistent parade of folks I’d seen on the way down who were fenderless, until it occurred to me that the only folks who where not running fenders our group were Esteban and Aaron. Since I didn’t want to be a flippant host, I tried to let the subject drop.
I think there are four main regions of fender culture in this country - (1) The Pacific Northwest, where fenders are assumed, and if you don’t have an extended fender with flap that scrapes the ground, no one will ride with you (2) Most of the rest of it, where if you want to roll out the door every day to ride with a minimum of fuss, fenders (or at least a fendered bike) is a good idea, (3) the SF Bay Area (and a goodly chunk of California), where fenders go on in November and off in March, and (4) SoCal, where fenders are simply not necessary. In short, Esteban and Aaron are totally off the hook with respect to need for fenders, which really do complicate things when trying to pack a bike for travel, anyways.
But, it cracks me up when I see local folks out on road rides, tattooing themselves with reverse skunk-stripes courtesy of the road grit flung upwards from their 23 mm tires. Mind you, I’ve done it myself many once upon a times, and there’s nothing like starting out into the rain and sensing that first feeling of damp cold seeping into the back of your shorts - a feeling you know will not leave until the ride ends. Of the many, many bikes that went past, a mere handful had even a spray guard, and I think only one (a mtb-ish Cannondale sporting drop bars heading south) had a proper rigged set of fenders. I mean, it wasn’t like the day had started out sunny or anything.
Aaron rejoined us and we pressed onwards. It was still holding air in Larkspur as we rolled past the Village Peddler, but by the time we made the left turn towards Shady Lane in Ross, he was running about half pressure. He took that as a further sign - unfortunately the old “third time’s not a charm” - peeled back towards Breaking Away Bicycles in Ross Commons, and bid us to continue on without him. This time we honored his wish.
We paused for a damp refueling at the Java Hut in Fairfax. One of the things I appreciate about riding in Marin County is the opportunity for glimpsing cycling royalty*, and in this case, Otis Guy was hanging out under the awning with a couple of friends, clearly having just finished off a ride. He commented a bit on our setups as we settled in and pounded down some calories and caffeine. White’s Hill and thickening fog beckoned to the west.
*It should be noted that said glimpses involve those folks actually riding their bikes.
As we hit the initial incline, “Oh-you-know-I-haven’t-really-been-riding” Adam rocketed forward on his fixed Pelican. At first it seemed he was going to leave us in the dust, but then he pulled over and set up for some excellent climbing images. My eyes crossed a bit as I tried to keep up with JimG and Esteban, who kindly pulled up near the summit for a regroup in the fog.
At this point, Bradley decided to head back to the City, as he had to connect with a friend. If I caught it right, it was his first time that far north of the GG Bridge, and hopefully I’ll see more of him on the roadways now and again.
Still maintaining drivetrain parity, we pressed on into San Geronimo Valley. Encouraged by gravity during the decline, I got that good feeling and pressed onward through towards Lagunitas. I don’t know if it’s having the White’s Hill behind us, but for some reason things often feel strong for me there. Esteban connected up, and we buzzed along, skirting sharp rocks and trash cans until the road narrowed before the turns began. We caucused briefly, and decided to stick to the pavement of Sir Francis Drake - probably one of the oldest stretches of oddly improved roadway left in the county - rather than veer onto the unpaved section of the Cross-Marin Trail. The old concrete of the road has been reconfigured and patched, but once inside Samuel P. Taylor Park boundaries, it remains an esoteric reminder of driving along the river in your 1947 Hudson. Depending upon the attitude of the autos, it can be a wee bit sketchy, but a fair amount of rain had fallen here on New Year’s Day, and things felt even more damp in this narrower and more wooded section. Rather than splatter mud over all of us unnecessarily, we went straight at Inkwells Bridge, did a little coffee shifting at SP Park and caught the paved section of the Cross Marin Path.
Here we were able to spread out a bit and chat, snap excellent photos of one another and enjoy the first inklings of sunlight we’d seen all day. We chugged our way up the soul-crushing incline to Bolinas Ridge and dropped down to Olema.
At this point, I must admit that I was becoming a little fixated on food. The Sirens on the rocks at Bovine Bakery sang so loudly that I neglected waiting at either the Ridge or at the stop sign in Olema. So, it was with some embarrassment that I realized no one else was near me on Highway One.
It felt good to stretch a bit at this point, but it did little but underscore my poor host-y-ness. Esteban, Adam and JimG rolled up, the latter not sure if we’d taken the Bear Valley Road option. Luckily, he’s ridden with me enough to know my beeline-to-Bovine tendancies, and had chosen wisely.
As we unsaddled and tethered our mounts in town, it suddenly dawned on me that the already seated rider who had said “Howdy” was indeed One Happy Cog. It was indeed a day for Flickr-interactions, as we’ve chatted and commented through that medium for a while. I’d met him once before, back at the Marin Century, and we enjoyed pizza, baked goods, real sunshine and each other’s company for a while. And of course, more bike-geeking, as he had ridden his Eddy Merckx, which we had to enjoy.
About the time we realized that we still had to ride back, Aaron suddenly appeared on the roadway. When he stopped in the bike shop back in Ross, he and the wrench went through the front tire with a dental pick and magnifying glass, removing all errant shards of glass before wrapping things up and sending him on his way. Reinvigorated, he decided to set off after us. Despite the fact it threw the balance back in favor of coastable, many-geared bicycles, it was great to see him again. We regrouped briefly at the public facilities and headed out, JimG going one way and me the other.
JimG’s routing proved to be the superior option, and we scaled the pitch out of town and grabbed the Pt. Reyes - Petaluma road for a while.
We cut back towards the Cross-Marin Trail again, enjoying the greening hills and rural landscapes. There have been enough rains to reinvigorate a bit of growth, without making things excessively sloppy. Once on the trail, opted to slog through the unpaved bits rather than duke it out with the vehicular traffic returning from the coast. The worst part was the first half mile or so, with sloppier mud and more leaves. As we continued onward, the terrain firmed up again and I realized why Aaron had caught up to us - the man could move his bike pretty danged well. We ended up on the Inkwells Bridge awaiting the rest of the gang. I was a little worried they’d hate me forever for dragging them (figuratively) through the muck, but there were mud-flecked smiles all around when the rest of the gang rolled up.
Back on the roadway, we retraced our path of earlier in the day. By now, the clouds had moved off, and the light played beautifully in the San Geronimo valley. Esteban, Aaron and I rolled along just fine for a while, and then I heard a couple of knocks from the pistons and they eased away.
It was definitely one of those “keep pedaling, things will get better” moments. Shifting up around on the saddle into the climb seemed to help a bit, and we regrouped again at the top of White’s Hill, collected the rest of the gang and then plunged downward. The descent can be a little hairy, but we timed it pretty well against the cars and everyone swooped back towards Fairfax. After a short mixup as to the whereabouts of Adam, we all gathered once again at the Java Hut, this time in the waning sunlight. Double-E’s all around (well, I think Adam had something more fluffy) and then I decided that it was late in the day enough for me to vector homeward rather than tagging along to the bridge once more. Adam had connected with his wife who was nearby and planned to take advantage of the conveyance.
JimG agreed to ferry them onward through the rapidly increasing dusk, and after a round of “Great riding with you’s”, we went our separate ways. By the time I hit home, I’d notched about 82 miles.
Now, that was a great way to greet the New Year. Here’s to MMX!
My Flickr set
Adam’s Flickr set
JimG’s Flickr set
Esteban’s Flickr set
One Happy Cog’s photos
Through a fluke of the calendar, very regular commuting, odd days off and weather this last month of the year went pretty well indeed. It also helped that things started with an excellent Fixed-Gear Loop, which notched a goodly chunk o’ miles to start things off. Felt good enough about things by the end of December to mail in my registration for the SFR 200K, for which the Quickbeam is actually seeming like the first choice. Of course, I still haven’t done an inordinate amount of climbing on that bike, and that’ll be the final test before I make the decision.
Snuck in 22 days of riding and nabbed 522 miles this month (high water mark for 2009!), mostly on the Quickbeam, but with a nice mix of Hilsen and Dawes miles as well. With a no-class-on-holidays schedule combined with our teacher having a couple of subs (which we opted out of), only got to yoga 5 times. Definitely feel a little tighter, especially with the increase of mileage.
Total mileage for 2009 - 4132. Happy with that.
Everybody be safe tonight. See ya next year.
Was trying to track down a photo from a couple years ago, and the google machine gave me a link to an old blog post I’d made. I absent-mindedly clicked on it and - poof - I’m realizing that I’m looking directly at my cyclofiend.com blog. This is really only of note to me, as I seem to be the only one who can’t actually access the danged thing (tech details here).
But, since home-access seems to be working for the first time in several weeks. I thought I’d just honor the un-glitch by making a quick post. Now, I need to decide if it is worth actually posting the snippets and notes from the past week or so.
I guess the only one which comes to mind is from last weekend. Rain ride. Fenders on the Quickbeam. Rainlegs and jacket. As I’m starting to working my way north again, at the base of the Camino Alto hill, a vehicle edged up next to me and slowed to match my speed. Driver started hollering something.
Then it sort of registered what he was calling out -
“I love that bike! That’s my favorite bicycle!”
I smiled, thanked him, we chatted a bit and then I waved back and he motored onward. Made for a damned fine ride home.
(Still having bloglogon issues at home, so this is a little tardy of a writeup - sorry for the delay. Perhaps it should be retitled “A Previous Weekend’s Fixed-Gear Get-Together”…)
Although we awoke today (12/7) to snow levels as low as 800′ or thereabouts, and I’m fretting tonight about my lemon tree and cymbidiums dealing with projected sub-freezing temps, it was certainly a fine weekend for riding.
Ron L. had been agitating for a fixed gear ride up in Marin, and since it is my home turf, I was looking forward to the opportunity. He picked last Saturday for the date, and announced it on the RBW group. It hit on a good (i.e. no classes or plans) weekend for me, and a few other list denizens answered in the affirmative as well.
I’d been feeling pretty good in the week leading up to the ride, and planned on honoring momentum if I could get up and out on time. I’d done a little tech tweaking, waxed up my Keven’s bag which had been awaiting it’s first use since I received it as a birthday gift and laid out the riding gear in order.
Things flowed well the next morning, and before I knew it, I’d slipped out the door into a brisk day and headed south to the meeting spot at the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a beautiful time of day to be out, with bright sun for most of the way.
The only mishap was a bloated group ride which forgot to remember that the Mill Valley Bike Path was actually a two-way route. It’s important to remember that just because you are following a few wheels, not to turn off your brain. C’mon kids.. Y’see, if everyone fades slightly out to their left, then you end up spread across the pavement. Yeah. So. Anyway.
Rolled up to the meeting point at the south end of the GGBridge, and when I saw a Quickbeam on a double-legged kickstand, I knew I was in the right place. 
Said hey to Ray, and finally met Jim and Tom in person. Ron pulled up a few minutes later and we coalesced into a moving group. As I’d mentioned, the plan had been for a fixed-gear ride, but none of us was going to kick anyone out who wanted to attend. As it was, Ray was running his Quickbeam in coastable mode, and Mike showed up with a full array of gearing options, as well as one of those chain-bending-shifty things to help him choose between him.
Of course, the fact that Mike was running his multi-geared coastable setup on a repainted FUSO didn’t hurt a bit. That was really a fine looking ride. Actually, every bike on the this adventure was pretty gorgeous. Tom runs a “low-key” Della Santa that is just beautiful to behold, even under the plain-wrap paint choice. The-other-Jim had his Gazelle out for a run, and it has seen some miles, but wore it quite well. Of course, you probably know I’m biased about Quickbeams, and it was nice to have 2/3rds of the stock color spectrum represented. Ron rolled along on his Bilenky, which had a “bent” seat tube and curly chainstays. Between the metal work and the rich paint job, it was a stunner. The last rider (whose name I just totally drew a blank on…) had a Steve Rex track bike, which showed off the stunningly smooth fillet-brazed finish work that Rex is known for.
As we went across the bridge, the sea breezes bit in noticeably, and it was a hunker-down-until-the-warmth-builds-up period to be sure. Unfortunately, as we reached the north tower, the-other-Jim’s chain started acting up a bit. This continued to plague us as we dropped down into Sausalito, and we limped a bit until we decided to lose a link from his setup.
Rule One on a Fixed-Gear Ride: Always have a chain tool and at least 4 extra links to the chain you are running.
Luckily, I did have mine, and since we were shortening rather than replacing a bum link, it went smoothly.
At some point, though, we lost Ray. I mean, we didn’t try to ditch him or anything, but he’d gone ahead on a natural break while we were messing with the chain mid-Sausalito, and I thought he’d rejoined us when we finally paused to let Jim-who-I’m-gonna-hafta-give-an-initial-to flip into coastable mode. Then when we turned right at the end of the MV path towards Tiburon, I realized we only had 6 riders. Drat.
Ray-less, we continued onward towards the former rail-spur industrial port turned upscale bedroom community, planning to assault the Paradise drive loop in a counter-clockwise direction. This meant rolling down the Tiburon bike path, which was luckily pretty under-utilized, and then around towards Belvedere, entering downtown Tiburon via Ark Row.
At that point, the siren call of coffee and calories could be heard, so we stopped near the waterfront and refueled. For some reason, I missed the bread pudding that everyone else attacked. Not sure I’m a fan - can’t really recall every having any. As we got to know one another over sustenance, Ray rolled into view. He’d headed out Trestle Glen (the cutoff road mid-Paradise loop) and then backtracked towards the point, figuring that we’d cross paths.
However, our sloth on the road combined with gastronomic necessity meant that he’d had to go all the way down into town. Still, he was refreshed upon finding us, and joined us for some of the chatting and eating.
Now together, we gathered to go, taking time to poke and prod at a gentleman’s orange Bertin with fenders, rear rack, lights and chainguard. He showed up as we were enjoying his bicycle, and said it had been sitting under his house for the past 20 years. He’d just oiled it up and was really enjoying having it out again. I think he got a kick of our excitement at such a practical bicycle, and I’m kicking myself for not nabbing an image of it.
Once on the road again, the wind still had a bit of a bite, and as the group stretched a bit (the Rex track bike seemed to have some speed…) I ended up pulling off to the side and digging my wool gloves back out. Just couldn’t get my hands to warm up. Rejoining the ride, I came up on Ray and (I hereby dub thee) JimM. Ray was spinning out a bit, still running the smaller chainrings he’d rigged up for a planned camping tour. JimM was arguing with his gearing as well, only his was the other direction - I think he called it his “California Blvd” gear and it stacked a goodly 77″ against him, in coastable format.
I slugged along feeling pretty good. Just due to my schedule for the past few months, it had been a while since I’d ridden with other people. Our direction reminded me why I usually like to take Paradise loop in a clockwise direction - in addition to the swooping down into town bit that always reminds me of the finish to Milan-San Remo, there always seems to be some longer stretches of slight decline. I’m certain that the geometrically inclined among you have played ahead, and realized that means a slight incline when heading the other direction.
The faster kids waited for us to collect by Trestle Glen, and then we buzzed the banked 180 and tried to keep the momentum going for a while, finally getting caught up by the first traffic light since we’d left Tiburon.
You do come to appreciate traffic lights when you are riding fixed. After a steady and longish stint of action, not pedaling for a moment is a sublime pleasure.
Rolling up into Corte Madera, Ray and JimM were thinking about vectoring home via the Meadowsweet Dairy. Actually, they were going to roll up Meadowsweet Ave, which has a kinder, gentler grade than the anticipated climb over Camino Alto. At my suggestion, they stayed with us for a bit and I showed them the super-secret-local’s route over Chapman.
Now, our plan here was to enjoy the easier incline of Chapman, then regroup with the others at the summit. I’ve always thought that this alternate route was a bit longer than the traditional Camino Alto climb from the Corte Madera side of things, but thanks to the somewhat suspect mapping feature (the thing that catches my eye is the two “descents” that show up in the elevation profile - I’ve never been able to coast up that particular hill…) of Bikely.com, it seems to be exactly the same distance. Which meant that we figured the fast kids would reach the summit before us.
So, when we popped out into a few gathered groups (it’s a very popular spot for regrouping, for some reason) and saw a sea of coastable many-geared riders, we figured that the others had continued down the other side. We’d circled around a bit first, and tried to get a look down the road to see if anyone was climbing and cursing their way upward. Convinced that we were the laggards, we dropped our way down to the Mill Valley side. At this point, the route options were increasing slightly, so, nudged along by a slight tailwind, we decided to head for the bridge.
And a short while later, we all were standing back where we’d started. At this point, under significantly sunnier conditions. Ray noted that the flags above the parking lot were lying limp, which you can see by looking at the water in the background. Whatever else the Golden Gate of San Francisco is noted for, low winds and clear skies is not necessarily way up there on the list. (Of course, the fall/winter can be a lot nicer than summer months.) (Dang - I’m giving away all the local knowledge today…)
We dispersed shortly thereafter, JimM and I heading north (he had parked in the lot at the north end of the GG Bridge), and just as we picked up speed on the decline of the bridge, saw Ron, Tom, Michael and RexRider coming towards us. Hollering “hey”, we continued past one another. Definitely felt badly at getting separated, and I think I’ll need to work on being more specific about a meeti-up place, should we vector differently in the future.
Rolled homeward, and distracted myself from the “gee-I’ve-been-riding-a-while” feeling by snapping photos of the impressively high tide, large spherical objects, and the pending completion of the Lincoln Avenue bike-ped path tunnel. Just rolled into the 77’s on the computer when I turned into the driveway. First “real” longer ride in a while.
A huge thanks to Ron for kicking this often-talked-about idea into reality.
A couple o’ months back, I was stomping my way down to engineer a class in Sausalito and ended up pedaling the last few miles single-leggedly. (The initial post appeared here, and then I nattered more about it yonder.) Now, the fine folks down the peninsula at Ritchey Logic did address the problem quickly and effectively. It turned out that my initial left crank arm had been subject to a voluntary recall, as it had been built sub-spec (got one? ID yours with this handy Ritchey Design Voluntary Recall pdf ) They received the crank and had another one out to me within a scant few days. All good.
Well, yes and no.
Let me say a few things about the crankset. Because I really like the crankset, and it’s important to know that. They are light and have a comfortably narrow tread (“Q-Factor” AASHTA citation), use a 110mm BCD chainring and have generally done their work reasonably quietly and efficiently. But, dealing with these breaking has reminded me of a whole host of other memories and experiences concerning crankarms, their failures and the fact that manufacturers have really managed to go out of their way to complicate this part. For the most part, my frustration is with the general area of cranksets, a needlessly stormy sea in which these cranks just now happen to be swimming.
This whole discussion is multiplying and expanding in my brain right now - because the Ritchey cranks remind me of why I went with them in the beginning - replacing a reasonably high-zoot set which failed egregiously. I broke two of those. Or, more accurately, I had two sets catastrophically fail on me. That recollectioin got me thinking about the sheer number of chainrings that wore out on the mountain bike - especially during the El Nino years - ground what seemed to be too soon into nasty shark fin profiles, which reminded me of the grease-and-voodoo-incantations engaged in attempt to quiet the continually squawking but beyond elegantly beautiful Cook E2 cranks I had, and how those were horsetraded to switch over to the then-new Shimano XTR 4-bolt design, which had wonderfully meaty and long lasting chainrings. I loved that setup - until I priced replacement rings, which - I kid you not - were only a couple of movie and burrito nights difference in price from a new crankset with rings…!
I think what I really want is a set of steel cranks. But, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.
It’s possible I have crankset issues. Didn’t really realize it until writing all these things out. I do hate to rant, but, dang it, there should be a simple solution for all of this stuff. It should work and be solid, hard to mung up, and not look like it was created by an art director. There should be an elegant solution. This should be available.
Man, it does seem that I’m all worked up over this. But, I don’t think I should have to buy a 10 year old set of cranks to solve this problem. Again, I digress. Back to the story.
The replacement arm arrived from Ritchey and was a “B” fit. In other words, it was tighter than what I sent back to them, and I had to really press it to set it onto the splined interface of the bottom bracket. These cranks - the Ritchey Cross Cranks (which curiously do not appear any longer on the RitcheyLogic.com website) use an “Octalink” design which Shimano brought forth to sunset the square taper design which was simple and proven, but non-proprietary. On the Octalink, the 8 splines should mesh like gears and prevent the crank from rotating on the bottom bracket spindle. Unlike a square taper, it should not really be a force fit.
I lined them up carefully, pushed them on as tightly as I could, then tightened the new arm down, then removed the bolt again to make sure it had seated correctly. Took a couple of short, post-flu rides on the bike and from about the middle half of the first ride, something felt funny on my left hip and low back. Then it would get better, then it would appear again. As I was negotiating some slow speed maneuvers, coasting with the cranks level, there was a definite shift in the left crank arm. Flipping to the other foot forward, I felt it again.
Got home, broke out the good camera and took an image of the worst of it. Digital straight-edge added for reference:
click for bigger than is really necessary.
The image is slightly misleading, as I used the non-drive crank arm as the reference. The drive-side arm is really the one that didn’t move. I could bring the arms in and out of alignment by leveling the cranks and weighting the left - forward equaled out, and back equaled in alignment. After sending this image to Ritchey, they wanted the arm back to see what was wrong. I did so and the day they received it, sent back a detailed email saying that the splines had been misaligned upon installation and that was what allowed the shifting. They also said they’d replace the arm so I could try again.
That was darned nice of them to do that. Honestly, I didn’t agree with their assessment. But, there’s certainly a possibility that my ham-fists and incrementally increasing farsightedness combined to do that. I’ve bent bits, snapped bolts and generally mucked up mechanical adjustments. Just didn’t think I did then.
Now, I did have an unplayed card had they chosen not to replace the replacement. Y’see, this is actually the second time this has happened. The first set I got of these had a similar issue, and as seen here the angle was more dramatic, but I rode more miles before becoming convinced there was an issue - 
In this instance, Ritchey had dealt very kindly with the situation. The first arm had actually stripped out, and this was the replacement set. They replaced this as well, with the crankarm which ended up snapping. In the case of this arm, it had set easily upon the splines, so there really wasn’t an installation issue. My eyes were better back then, too.
Back to the Future - well, the future of a couple weeks or so ago. The 2nd replacement arm that Ritchey sent fit more easily onto the spindle. Just to make sure, I used the camera to make sure that things lined up before tightening everything down. 
click for bigger than is really necessary, but it does give good detail.
I tried to be extremely mindful about the installation. Got it set into place, checked and double checked and even looked at the photo image onscreen before I put the bolt in and turned it tight.
And that’s pretty much the moment when I thought, “y’know, I really shouldn’t have to go through this to hang a phuh-reakin’ crankarm on my bicycle…”
It got me thinking that small splines are always fiddly little bits, and square tapers are stout simple means to install something. It’s actually easy enough to mount an Octalink crank one spline tooth off, so that the arms end up misaligned. You certainly (well, you certainly should) notice it before you get on and pedal, but it’s darned near impossible to not notice the 90 degree aberration if you did that on a square taper bottom bracket.
In other words, why did Shimano - or any of the manufacturer’s who signed on for the non-compatible ISIS version that came out around the same time - feel it necessary to take a simple working standard and change it?
I expect the answer might have had something to do with CNC-machining, and the boom of the mountain bike market. In the early 90’s, it seemed that anyone with an expired military contract and a machine shop was cranking out bike parts. Cranks were particularly sexy - highly visible, easy to make, easy to make unique looking. Just going to the BikePro crank overview gives 20 or so different manufacturers. My paper catalog shows about 18 pages of cranks, from companies like Kooka, Grove Innovations, Adventure Components, Flite Control, Grafton, Sampson, T-Gear, Sims and TNT. A goodly number of names that surfaced then and have since submerged.
Thing is, groovy-cool CNC’ing from raw billet can lead to some pretty dramatic failures, especially when the raw billet gets swaged onto a tapered connection and then really cranked down. Well made cranks are generally cold-forged, which means that you have to spend the money to make dies and such, but you align the grain of the metal in specific ways, to offset stresses from things like, oh, attaching them to the a tapered spindle and then torquing the heck out of them by pressing the pedals.
My recollection was that the ISIS standard and the Octalink standard came out at the same time, but I’m not sure that’s entirely correct. Maybe what happened was that Shimano wanted to regain the crank business - because at that time, they were really losing ground to non-Shimano cranks (and generally, across the board, on brakes, levers, etc.) - and so unveiled this new design of bottom bracket to make sure people used their cranks. The ISIS may have been a reaction to gain the claimed benefits to the newer BB design - since the larger, hollow spindle was supposed to be - wait for it - stiffer and lighter (lordy, how many times do we need to hear that?). But, I have to believe that setting a CNC’d crank arm into a fitted interface reduced the stresses from installation.
Which is why, some 10 years later, I’m looking at my computer monitor with a magnified image of a greasy splined interface, knowing that I have it lined up properly, but still making sure that I’m removing any variable that could be claimed as my incompetence.
At this point, a couple of rides later, things continue to work as they should. But, I really have not stressed things. In fact, my working plan is to have another moderate ride or two, then remove the arm and check the splines for galling.
That working plan got me thinking about cranks which are actually made these days, because at some point, I’m going to get tired of messing around with this thing, or Ritchey is going to run out of replacement arms for me.
Sugino is the the logical first visit. They have the XD2 which was the original crank on the Hilsen (shown below), and was used on the Quickbeam as well. It’s a very good value for the money, cold forged, silver uses a square taper. There are probably only two things that fall into the negative column for me - they are a hair wider than they need to be (Q-Factor/Tread):
As a non-scale comparison, here’s the same view of an totally different crank on an entirely different bicycle:
This image was taken of the Dawes, which has narrower rear triangle spacing (hence a slightly straighter angle of the chainstay) and uses an older Shimano 600 series (last year before they renamed it “Ultegra”) road crank.
To inaccurately illustrate the difference, I hand-positioned my XD2 non-drive arm in roughly the appropriate position while balancing the bike and snapping this photo with my other hand:
You can at least get a sense that the new/current design will sit further away from the chainstay - necessary if you are designing a crank for more current, shorter wheelbase bicycles which tend to have wider stays. And, I have shown a complete inability to be hampered by slight changes in this area. Some riders may be more directly impacted by it. I get on a wider set of cranks, go “whoa! those are wide!” and then promptly forget about it within the next half hour of riding.
The Sugino XD2’s also use the evil hidden bolt arrangement. The EHB arrangement is peculiar to triple chainring cranks, I think. The first time I came across it was with the Specialized crank (Strongarm? Son of Strongarm? I’m pretty sure it’s out there someone in the parts pile…) that came on my old M2 Stumpjumper. The outer two rings are held on with a standard “sandwich” of outer ring / machined spacer on the crankarms / inner ring. The fifth bolt position is in line with the crankarm itself. At this position, they machined a small gap so that you can fit the threaded nut into position. (I don’t have an image of this detail right now. You’d think, with all the pictures I’ve taken….)
What you end up with is a gap that is a bit too narrow for the chainring bolt tool to get in there. Which means you’ve got to figure out some combination of tools and angles to keep the threaded bit from turning as you torque down the bolt. With the Specialized design, I used to have to shove a rag and screwdriver tip in there. It’s a minor inconvenience, and I seem to overcome the issue. It just always gets me frowning when dealing with it. It seems really slick to integrate the 5th bolt to the arm itself, but just doesn’t work for me.
(As a comparison, the Ritchey Cross Cranks I have use the same hidden 5th bolt design, but just threaded the hole so you use a standard length bolt and go for it. I’ve never had the threading fail, but have had one of those bolts back out on me.)
One design I like is the Sugino Alpina 2 
Simple, silver, 5 exposed bolt design, but with the clever addition of material as “webbing” near the arm itself, presumably to distribute stresses effectively. What Sugino doesn’t indicate is whether or not they have a similar tread width to the XD2’s. Unfortunately, the website doesn’t have anything other than a side view. It’s only possible to guess from the images. There are a few vendors which list the Alpina (or Cospea) which appears to be more expensive. The only domestic “for sale” listing of the Alpina2 had it at ~$125 (significantly less than the Alpina/Cospea), but also says this isn’t available.
Poking around their website again, it appears that Sugino has also added a “Mighty Tour” to their lineup. Hard to say what the differences may be - it does seem to have sharper finishing and may be an actual replacement for the coveted Alpina/Cospea. But, it also seems that sometimes models surface on the Sugino site which don’t migrate into production models.
Returning again to the larger picture, a few years ago, Shimano came up withe the Hollowtech II series, which featured an outboard bearing design and “two-piece” crankset. Basically, this let them run an even larger spindle, which they permanently attached to the right crank arm. The left arm was then attached to the other end (using smaller teeth on the spindle, but wisely using a wider alignment notch which prevented misalignment. The outboard bearing design meant that all of a sudden, facing the bottom bracket of the bicycle frame became important again. It also meant that the chainline gets adjusted by using spacers between the bearings and the frame. You aren’t going to be able to tweak the position of the front chainrings by a few millimeters by getting a shorter bottom bracket spindle.
And, I’m not against this design precisely. Initially, there were a few simple designs, but everyone now seems to be phasing those out in favor of carbon. SRAM, for example, initially brought out a Rival series crank which was silver and looked pretty darned nice and allowed the use of a smaller inner chainring due to the 110BCD. Which of course meant that that they had to change the design, going to a black anodized finish and electing to use a 130BCD (minimim small chainring size of 38T). If silver was the only concern, you can still find their “Cross” crank model around (or the indistinguishable S300 GXP), but again, you are back to using the “road” rings of 130BCD. Everything else in the upper end is a carbon crank.
Which is really off the table for me, as the cranks which I alluded to way back at the beginning of this saga - the ones which failed twice on me - were carbon. More precisely, they were carbon wrapped over an aluminum skeleton. Light and stiff and all carbony, they both failed the same way, going from perfectly fine to “that feels funny” to rubbery, bendy, twist-em-with-your-hand delaminatedness within 15 minutes. Had it not been for the aluminum bones, they would have been useless. As it was, I was lucky enough both times to be relatively close to home.
I know why they failed - it’s simple enough. The resins had not permeated all the layers of carbon - clearly a manufacturing issue. The company (which curiously enough then got out of the crankset business entirely) replaced both pair after each failure, but I never used the third replacement - sold ‘em off (with full disclosure) to someone for whom carbon held a compelling allure and bought the Ritchey Cross cranks.
The companies who are still making carbon cranks have certainly had more than a few manufacturing cycles to shake down their processes. My guess is that they have more weight in resin than they do in carbon, and cranks are probably a reasonable application for the material, as impacts tend to be few, and you can, theoretically make the highest use of the directional nature of carbon. If you are going to hang carbon on your bicycle, it probably makes sense to put it there.
I just don’t really want them on my bike. Or maybe it’s just that I’d like to have a little more choice. Carbon just strikes me more and more like a disposable material. Maybe it’s aesthetics. For me, carbon starts shiny and sleek, but gets ratty when it ages, while to my eye the metals gain a burnished and rubbed finish as the years go by.
When looking back to aluminum, I have to admit that two aluminum crankarms failed on me as well. One was pretty danged old, failed exactly as aluminum tends to - minor warning cracks (which I did not notice), followed by immediate separation. That was the most dangerous example, as I went down reasonably quickly with vehicular traffic behind me. The other was sub-spec material, as I’ve rehashed to death at this point.
All of that strangely points me back to steel. On a set of cranks. Which is about as common in the current market as…well… a set of steel cranks.
What it could let you do, is work with some of the newer, lighter steels, have something which takes impacts well, fails in a slow manner and could look really nice. The only downside would be that they require plating for that snazzy shiny silver look that aluminum does so well. As I poked around the inerwebs, muttering about this and the kids on my lawn, I came across something that fit the bill - 
I found this image on Greg Terzian’s blog, with some really interesting historical information. First, these “Redline” Flight cranks were made by…Sugino. Second, as Greg states, “the Sugino 400 drive arm had a 110BCD five-bolt aluminum spider permanently installed.” And, the sharp-eyed among you have already noticed, it’s designed for a traditional square-taper bottom bracket. As his writings mention, these are of course highly coveted by collectors, who probably wouldn’t think of slapping ‘em on a bike and actually using them.
But, if I had some, I’d run ‘em…
A nice solid month, aided by the helpful holiday (snuck in an extra 45 mile ride which would have been difficult on a work day…), better health and ridiculously nice weather.
Ended up riding 21 days and covering 468 miles this month, mostly on the Quickbeam. (Do fixed miles count extra?), Managed steady commute mileage and a nice steady chunk of 40+ mile rides. Actually began to feel good now and again, found myself seatedly climbing up pitches that had been tongue-waggers at the beginning of November. Managed 7 sessions of yoga (no class on Thanksgiving…) and didn’t run at all. The last item doesn’t really bother me, as it’s pretty clear that this year’s CX campaign is minimal at best. Ahhh well, happens that way sometimes. The first SFR 200K is less than 60 days away…
Got the Dawes running again, which it deserved. Stately and simple.
Any month that ends with the ceremonial removal of a worn out Pasela has got to be good. This one had moved back and forth between the Quickbeam and the Hilsen, where it ended its days. I thought maybe I’d scraped through there due to skidding (traffic related… I do not skid-stop, or skip-stop or anything like that). But, after removing it, there were numerous other “show-throughs”. The tire felt paper thin in the center. I do love wearing bits out… 
Sometimes, I get a little edgy this time of year, as the nights lengthen and sunlight seems tenuous at best. But, so far, there hasn’t been that holding-on-until-the-Solstice feeling, whether aided by lunchtime loops, the feeling of good things coming together or the aforementioned ridiculously glorious weather. Three more weeks until the Solstice, and then the days start getting longer again.
3609 Bikey Miles so far for 2009.
Out and about on a ridiculously gorgeous day. In November. With little wind and dry streets. Started the month one for one, and this is the 5th ride in as many days, which feels good, though a bit tiring.
A month layoff is really nasty, as you definitely drop a notch or so, but your brain won’t let you off the hook. It seems to remember how you could climb a bit faster and keep things rolling on the flats. It’s that damned grey matter which thinks it would be a good idea to sit and grind up a couple of climbs which probably were doable last month, but definitely took a bigger bite today.
In other words, I’m feeling it a bit tonight.
The other part, I’m sure, stems from using a coastable, many-geared drivetrain system for the past four months. With the Quickbeam running a fixed setup, when you ride for a couple hours or so, you are actually riding the whole time, just to state the obvious. Not that I’d want to change that. And while it makes you stronger, reminds you how to be comfortable when you are pedaling at a ridiculous cadence down some hill that you didn’t really register for the last couple months, and strips away the unnecessary whining, it also has its weakening aspects.
I noticed it immediately on the hills, the momentum of the bicycle feeding back into the drivetrain until you feel somehow lifted and you begin to climb like you’re dreaming. No weakening there, but it does convince you to just squeeze a little more power out. Of course, when you get back on a coastable bike, your image of yourself as a king of the montain gets more than a bit tarnished. Climbing fixed is an almost illicit thrill.
The more sinister bits lie in wait at the bottom and top of the pedal stroke, where after months of riding a fixed-gear system, you end up letting the cranks do the work a bit. It’s actually easy to loaf with a fixed gear setup, let the momentum pull your feet through the toughest parts of the pedal stroke to maintain power.
But, that’s probably a few weeks off. Today, I picked a slightly hillier route towards the bridge. I was able to breathe a bit deeper today, and didn’t have any bad coughing jags while out on the road. I’d hoped to make it all the way to the bridge today, but had started late after some chores, looped around a bit and realized that the engine probably wasn’t willing today. And by the time I’d gotten home at 4:15 or so, the cars had already been turning on their lights in some of the more shaded areas of the county. Dang, it ain’t summer no more.
Alas, the season of dark commutes has descended upon us again. Not that I haven’t been running lights on the way home recently, but the end of Daylight Savings has ensured that the evening rides will be well and truly dark.
But, even though sore and a bit worked, it was great to be out.
A bit spotty this past month, to be sure. Started slowly, and then was out on my back for a couple weeks with a flu.
When vague lucidity returned, I did manage to get the Quickbeam rigged up and running again, which was especially good as the Hilsen’s replacement crankarm from Ritchey seems to slip on the splined bottom bracket spindle. Nothing like a slightly out of alignment crankset to get your attention. To their credit, they wanted it back immediately, which means Homer is currently one-footed.
Cobbled together 140 miles on the bike, almost all of it in the last four days. Got out in beautiful weather today and rolled around on a nice loop for a couple hours. It felt long, but good. Really, really good.
Even with a week and a half gap, snuck into yoga for 7 sessions, though a couple times I think all I managed was mewling kitten pose. No running. Lotsa coughing and sleeping at odd hours. A 5 day span with only a total of 3 meals, more ‘cuz I was sleeping through it was wasn’t hungry when awake.
But, y’gotta get one of those out of your system now and again. At least I rode today.
2009 Bikey Miles So Far - 3141
and a Happy Halloween to you!
Through a quirk of the calendar, 4 months to the day after someone popped their truck door open at
precisely the wrong time, the Quickbeam headed onto the
roadway again. After a frame check to make sure that nothing structural got bent or damaged, followed by attaching new handlebars, brake levers and stem (all replaced out of pocket because I’m still waiting for the other driver’s insurance to
settle up…), and another saddle swapped over, the bicycle seemed ready for duty.
Yes, I did set the brake cables using an underwrap of hemp twine, shellacked with, uh, shellac. (An intervention may be necessary, as I’ve observed before.) Left the barends open, so they can take a core sample of anything that impales itself upon them. (I thought I had a set of Velox bar plugs - hell I know I do - but couldn’t find them before the ticking clock of “gottagetgoing” chimed…) Don’t think I’ll need to tweak the setup too much, but didn’t want to jinx it by wrapping everything into place. Commuted and did a short
errand after work, reminding myself again why I like this bicycle so
darned much.
Specifically -
It was great not to coast again.
It was great not to have to shift.
I really, really like the Jack Brown (Green) tires. Had them set at 65/75 psi and they felt like velvet.
Having a front bag (the L’il Loafer) that fits exactly on the rack (Nitto Mini Front) makes my heart sing.
It was funny, the bike I rode most recently before this was the Zeus, which is nothing if not an acquired taste. The frame is smallish - in the way we all downsized frames back in the last century - and between the lightish, standard gauge tubing and the significant leverage provided by the moustache bars, the bicycle flexes without hesitation under load. With the 650B (584 bcd) tire conversion, it has the low stance of a badger, and the head angle and fork rake combine to give it a unique trail. The first mile or so on the Zeus are a lesson of correction, finding the combination of position and input to let the bike move the way it wants to. Since I was using that more frequently, the idiosyncrasies became normal.
So, getting back on the Quickbeam took a little adjustment again - mostly to get used to a bike that acted entirely differently, but much, much more trustworthy. Four months without riding this bicycle has been a travesty, and it felt wonderful to enjoy the cool sunshine of late October, pedaling, pedaling, pedaling the whole time.
I’ve finally figured out that I get depressed when I break bike parts. Maybe that’s overstating things a little. I mean, it’s not like I’m weeping-in-the-streets depressed, but nonetheless, it bugs me. I don’t like seeing the parts break.
Certainly things break. And the recent crank failure appears to be a sub-spec part, so it wasn’t operator error. However, there’s a distinct lack of alternatives, and that’s pretty much my own damn fault. My combination of sloth and deferred maintainence kind of caught up to me. And that gets me clearly depressed.
Let me explain - I’ve mentioned this axiom before:
“As the number of bicycles increases, the chance that none of them will work correctly increases exponentially.”
Which means that when a wheel on one bike isn’t quite true, you tend to start using the next one, which then develops a bit of toe-in error and squawks whenever you squeeze the rear brake. So, you leave that one hanging in the garage - certainly meaning to get back and spend a few minutes with the wrenches to heal that up - and use the next for a while.
In my case, I’d been riding the Quickbeam until my forward motion was rudely interrupted by my index finger coming between me and a suddenly-opening truck door. That bent up the brake lever and bars well beyond repair, tweaked the stem and saddle rails and introduced me to the glacial-molasses world of insurance reimbursement.
Since the Hilsen was looking for use, once my shoulder and neck would allow it, that became my main ride.
Now, I did figure that I’d get the Quickbeam up and running again once the broken and damaged bits were replaced. (And, just to divert briefly, the other driver’s insurance company has been decidedly mute on paying off my damage. Hey, it’s only been 90-freakin-days!!!) So, maybe my sloth is a little off the hook on that one…
But, before I decided to try out the Brooks Swift on the Hilsen, I had been moving saddles around a bit, and had pulled the B-17 off of the Dawes fixed gear. Which meant it was dutifully awaiting its next assignment while brandishing a naked seatpost.
My geared hardtail mtb has a variety of issues - rear wheel, drivetrain, ratty cables - most of which have been multiplied by disuse and the removal of pedals sometime during last year’s cyclocross season. In fact, the geared mtb has been used so little, my most-frequent ride buddies have actually never seen me riding it. This is both comedic and tragic.
(And is starting to veer a little off-topic as well. It’s just meant to put a couple of asterisks next to the players on the scorecard - to see the ones who are nursing injuries. )
With the snapping crank of a week and a half ago, that pretty much left me with a set of mostly unrideable bikes. Oh, the Zeus is still plugging along, and it’s been my local errand bike reliably for a while. But, there is something in the back of my mind that troubles me when I’m relying upon a twenty…no… thirty year old bike and components of somewhat unknown provenance. I tend to treat it with the respect and fear that demands.
The last horse in the barn is the Bridgestone MB1SS. Which, by virtue of its singlespeedyness remains reliable, generally capable of being run hard and put away wet. But, there too, the gremlins of entropy chew greedily upon the tendons of hope. The last few times I’ve been out on the trails, there has been the relatively infrequent slip of the freehub, the tinny and thin alarm sounding the beginning of pawl death.
Now, it isn’t that I can’t fix these issues (well, except for the Zeus, which will only - hopefully - continue to grow older). But, free time has been at a premium this past month, and riding rather than wrenching has been the course I chose. And, if the folks at Ritchey Logic had suggested that the whole crankarm thing would be something other than a replacement, I would’ve pulled the other arm, swapped out the bottom bracket, slapped on the Sugino XD2’s that have been sitting in a box since the C. Xavier Hilsen project, and either swapped the 48T ring from the Ritchey or dropped the front derailleur down for the 46T on the Sugino, and I would’ve been good to go.
And I’m hoping to get free for a couple hours this week to head across the bay, drop in on the folks in Walnut Creek and pick up the bits I need to get the Quickbeam out again. That bike deserves to be on the roads and trails, and I’m missing the steady silent rhythm of riding fixed.
Even writing about getting those bikes going has perked me up a bit. (And I do think I’ve been fighting something this last week, which generally doesn’t help one’s outlook.) No telling what a little bit of time and energy can do.
Any month that starts off with a Century should have a good leg up on garnering a couple miles. I think this is actually my first 400+ mile month so far this year. Starting to feel “lankier” on the bike, which my internal term for feeling like there’s more room to move around a little bit better power here and there. It’s a good thing. It ended with a nice string of 13 rides in the last 16 days of the month.
Garnered 446 miles on 18 riding days. Had a really, really low energy weekend the week after riding the Marin Century with Gino, and had two high priority projects the following week, so I kinda pulled in my horns and schlumpfed around the house to make sure I was 100% for those things, then only got one ride in the following week. Mostly Hilsen miles, though I was using the Zeus and all its 650B goodness for some commutes this month. Haven’t got the Quickbeam back together, but I’m definitely wanting to have it up and running soon.
The ‘Cross itch has kinda started, and you can hear the stirrings in the hills as the practitioners of this Dark Art awaken. The plodding must commence this coming month, for McLaren lies in wait in early October… Actually did manage some light singletrack miles here and there, which is the first since the accident.
Yoga’d 8 times this month. Have been chipping away at the Marin Century writeup a paragraph or two at a time, which strikes me as a bit ridiculous, as it was now exactly a month ago. But, I’m also trying to sleep more consistently, which is why I’m cutting this post off here.
2009 Bikey Miles So Far - 2733
Well, of course, the month began pretty sparsely and ended the same. Took a couple weeks after getting doored before I got on the bike, and a couple more before things began to feel less uncomfortable. Then I took it easy this week. Which is about a month, eh?
Got a couple good rides in though, and spent this final week using the Carlos D training model of not riding before a longer event. In this case, that’s the Marin Century, which I’ll be riding tomorrow along with a true Northern California rider to be named later. Hopefully, photos and writeup will follow, along with a decent start to August mileage.
Garnered 330 miles on 12 rides. This month was exclusively geared/coastable miles on the Hilsen, as the Quickbeam has been getting some evaluation and R&R.
I did end up doing more yoga class sessions (9) in a month than ever before - first because it was the only thing that I could do and then because it seemed to help restore movement and range of motion. No running, but I would’ve if I hadn’t bounced off the roadway last month.
2009 Bikey Miles So Far - 2285
Not much update yet on things - still haven’t really felt like pulling the bits off my bike to check things. Mostly this is because I’m trying to catch up on a less-than-productive work week last week, combined with the start of a couple of classes this week.
This “time” you speak of, she is an elusive creature, no?
But, there are some good things to report on the meat-bits front, I reckon. Last night, I could actually see folds at my knuckle when I straighten the finger out, so it seems like the swelling is going down a bit. I’ll spare you images this time around, as now it really just looks like a sewing project gone horribly awry. The doc is pretty sure that I sprained my Teres Minor, as I have some strength and motion in certain directions and pain in other specific angles. My neck is clicking and popping a bit, but in a good way so far - more dropping into better alignment as swelling reduces. Will probably get to see my chiropractor pretty soon since he won’t be working against the tissuue quite so much. Ice has continued to be my friend.
I’m really happy that the general antibiotic course is over with. That stuff was making me a bit dopey, which didn’t assist in the whole trying-to-work efforts of last week. Actually have had a few moments of sharpness this week, which never should be taken for granted.
Hopefully, the grumpy/funky mood of not riding will not infect me. The yoga (still very light and careful) is helping, certainly, but the “Not-Riding-Jim” is potentially a Kilkenny cat and so I’m watching him very carefully…
In nothing else, it would be nice to get a light ride in so I can change the beeriffic photo that has remained my most recent on Flickr since last week. Not quite sure what angle will be comfortable… Zeus with the moustache bars? Singlespeed mtb? Get the cables rigged on the Hilsen? Sounds like Saturday’s project.
Meanwhile, a pretty cool bicycle model (or two) has been announced by GP over at Rivendell Bicycle Works: The Roadeo. Announced first over on the RBW “Knothole” journal, he clarified and elaborated on some points after it kicked up two vigorous threads on the iBob list and over on the RBW Owners’ Bunch list. (While I’m thinking about it, do kids grow up reading about Bronco Nagurski anymore? Of course, I read a lot more about football players back then.)
The announcement is pretty exciting - having refined the larger clearance for bigger tire models with the Saluki/A. Homer Hilsen/Sam Hillborne, they created a model at the other end of the spectrum. The Rambouillet had previously been their “lighter” road model, but if you read through the description, it was always thought of as a versatile road bike that wanted to see trails and trickier topography. The limit really was brake reach, which got solved first through the use of a 650B tire size (Saluki/584) and then with the advent of the Silver Long Reach brakes (A. Homer Hilsen).
This meant that while the Rambouillet had a lot of attractive features and fans, it was in reality pretty close to the Hilsen - perhaps more change of emphasis than of the basic design.
But, a lot of folks have continued to ask for the Rambouillet and openly lament its disappearance from the Rivendell line. However, the Roadeo seems to offer a lot of the Rambouillet’s zippiness in a lighter framed model. It freakin’ sounds fast… (and you should just read through GP’s description, if you hadn’t by now.)
The other thing which gets mentioned in that post is a newer, leaner, meaner version of the Quickbeam. Which, if you haven’t figured out by now, is pretty much the bike I use for every type of riding. There’s something about that aesthetic of using a limited system to find a certain richness of experience.
Which, quite honestly, I’m looking forward to getting back to.
Well, the month of June certainly ended with a bang - literally.
Thought I’d be able to nudge the year over the 2K mark before the month ended, but Monday’s homebound commute got cut short, and I don’t count ambulance miles. Good thing I decided not to be a hand model. (Of course, there’s probably some specific sub-genre that my newly detailed hand would be good for, but maybe I’m better off not knowing about such things…)
Saw a variety of scenery this month (here, here and here) and managed to get some decent rides in despite a little travelling.
Notched 384 miles on 17 and a half rides. Had felt pretty good for most of last Saturday’s hottin’ up ride, which was a 50 mile fixed loop. Only 3 yoga class sessions, but more walking and hiking. I guess I’m working up my nerve to start running (pre-cross-time!)
Again, all Quickbeam-fixed miles, except for one loop on the MB1.2009 Bikey Miles So Far - 1955
Posted by: The Cyclofiend @ 10:05 am
Didn’t mean for this to become an appendage-focused theme or anything, but I spent last evening getting my neck, shoulder and hand x-rayed and finger sewn up.
Seems it’s never a good idea to let someone suddenly open up their truck door into you and try to use your finger as the padding. Especially when you are underway in your lane, heading for home at the end of day. Go figure.
As I mentioned on the Flickr page,
you do get a nifty bracelet. And tie-job.
Other salient facts:
About a dozen stitches to sew up a pretty good laceration. Caught it
all on the paw and then tumbled. Got to ride in an ambulance on a back board with
neck brace until the xray’s convinced ‘em no bone breakage. Shoulder,
neck and hand were concern. The police have the quickbeam so I won’t
know until I pick it up today. Feel like I’m typing with mittons. Pretty stiff and sore today.
More later, got some errands to do, obviously.
…and other random thoughts.
A week ago Sunday, I stepped upon a bee whilst trying to quickly coil up a hose in the backyard. Hurrying, focused on where I was trying to go rather than where I was, supremely noncognizant of the fact that whenever the yard gets watered, bees come out in force enjoying the micro-humidity. So, there I was, one clearly articulated anglo-saxon construction later, watching the arch of my foot swell up. Since I was fishing rather than riding, it was annoying. But, I did learn that whatever other skills Long John Silver had, staying upright on one foot while on a rocking boat was a mad skill he owned.
So then the following evening, while trying to let in the neighbor’s cat (which we were tending to) after dark, while again barefoot, the tips of my toes found the odd lumpy bit of rough concrete in which must have held up a deck many years ago. It, of course, hadn’t moved in the entire time we’ve lived here, but it had dropped out of my mental map of the yard. In my defense, it was 2 am, and the lights were (cleverly) not on.
Luckily for my personal relations, I managed to wonder why water had gotten all over my foot and toes before I climbed back into bed, turned on the bathroom light and observed, “hmmm, that’s a fair amount of blood…”
The end result of these clever actions was a truly awkward pedaling style for half of last week. It did get me out of the habit of generally using the tip of my left foot when I stop. The discomfort reminded me that if the feet aren’t happy, cycling is not terribly comfortable.
But, by Thursday, the swelling had morphed into the fun itchy-itchy feeling, and the toes didn’t leak while switching from downward dog to plank during yoga.
The tail end of the week brought some actual summer-type heat with it. I tried to loop down to the bridge and back without pausing too much, but finally had to get out of the 98-degree heat briefly at about two and a half hours. Still, it was the first hot day I can recall in a long time. The blast of sea breeze at the GG Bridge felt great.
Athough, I do think it set up a bit of a shock when I headed back north to the warmer conditions.
Sunday evening I headed up to China Camp for a trail loop on the MB-1Singlespeed. Spent the first 15 minutes of the ride feeling like there was something seriously wrong with the back end of the bike. Then realized that for the past 20 or so rides, I’ve been on the fixed-gear rigged Quickbeam. Although I did end up adding a bit of pressure to the rear tire, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the 26″ wheeled (559) rig felt entirely like a scooty little monkey bike.
It’s nice when you feel undergeared and unable to disconnect your tires from the trail.
Anyway - gotta get to work. Just been in a habit of not writing and wanted to amend that behavior.