tastewar.com

Category: Biking

  • Weekend Away

    Weekend Away

    We went away this weekend to spend time with two other couples, and log some good biking in Western Mass. We rented a house in Amherst that was near the Mass Central Rail Trail. Late on Saturday morning, we hopped on our bikes and rode 14 miles to the Williamsburg Snack Bar where we had a lovely lunch, after which we turned around and headed back.

    About halfway back, a large tree root that made a good sized bump in the trail caught me off guard, and I lost control of the bike, and fell. Thankfully, I fell in the dirt and weeds along the side and not on the pavement. The image above is of my shin, which is the most photogenic of my scars. Beyond that, my hip has a lovely bruise that is just starting to blossom a day later, and my shoulder, was pretty well wrenched from the incident. Nothing broken, but my ego probably suffered the most. (Shoulder is pretty painful, though). All my companions were very concerned and supportive, and helped pick up all the bits and pieces that came off the bike.

    Since nothing on the bike or me was actually broken, after a few minutes of calming down, I got back on the bike and rode the rest of the way home, knowing that at some point in the near future, everything would stiffen up and feel a lot worse. The rest of the ride was, happily, uneventful.

    At the encouragement of everyone, I let Susan take me to the clinic. We got in the car, and the directions told us it was 0.1 miles away. In the end, it probably would have been faster to walk, it was so close! They took some X-rays of the shoulder and saw nothing to be concerned about, and recommended ibuprofen, arnica gel, and icing.

    For dinner, we walked a little ways past the clinic and had beers and appetizers at the Hangar Pub and Grill, which is home to the Amherst Brewing Company, so we were able to get our passports stamped there. Then we had a lovely dinner at the Amherst Public House. When we were done with dinner, it was raining pretty hard, so the walk back was, um, refreshing?

    And then there were board games.

    The next day, the rest of the crew did another ~30 mile ride. Even without the accident, it’s doubtful that Susan or I would have felt up to another big ride. Instead, we went to visit the Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College,

    which had a very manageable collection of minerals, fossils, etc. We enjoyed about 2 hours there, and then headed to Tree House Brewing Company in Deerfield.

    So this is not their flagship location in Charlton, but a newer facility. I’d always heard great things about their beer, but not so great stories about the Charlton facility, which could be overcrowded, with long lines, long waits, etc. Having never been to their Charlton facility, I can’t compare them; I can only say that our experience was great. The facility is huge, and it took some time to walk from the ample parking lot to the sunny, air-conditioned atrium taproom. We arrived shortly after they opened (noon), and were able to walk right up to the bar and order a beer without waiting, and then order a pizza, which was ready in about 15 minutes. The beer was terrific, and the pizza was very good. And we were able to get our passports stamped as well!

    A truly enjoyable weekend, with but one blemish. If I had been more alert, or less tired, it probably wouldn’t have happened at all. I’m grateful that my body took this more or less in stride, and seems to be recovering. It won’t be as fast as it would have been in my twenties, but that’s life.

  • Keep the Rubber Side Down

    Keep the Rubber Side Down

    This autumn, I’ve had three good friends suffer falls and injuries from their bike slipping on ice. Probably a decade ago, I had a similar incident, on the Minuteman Bike Trail, where I was turning to go around the gates they had setup at the time, and my front wheel slipped right out from under me. My shoulder went directly into the bollard. I wasn’t going fast at the time, but it hurt like heck, and I could barely move my arm. I limped home on the bike from there, and wondered whether I’d broken anything, but nothing seemed broken. After a couple of days, I could move my arm again reasonably.

    Susan and I share one car, which generally means that if one person has the car, the other is left with a bike. (Or walking, or public transit, all of which are reasonable options around here, thankfully). Not wanting to relive my previous experience, with bones a decade more brittle, and after seeing so many other experienced cyclists go down, I decided to set myself up with a second set of wheels, with studded tires.

    I first spent some time researching what I had on my existing back wheel for sprockets, and started looking for used wheels on eBay and Craigslist, but it’s a little complicated and hard to be 100% certain that everything would work together. So in the end, I opted for new wheels. I was super excited when they came, but when I opened the boxes, I discovered that I had ordered wheels with nutted axles instead of quick release. Thankfully, even though it was my mistake, the shop allowed me to return them, and refunded me, and I ordered the proper wheels.

    So when the new order arrived, I thought I had everything I needed: wheels, tires, tubes, cassette. But I didn’t have rim tape. So I had to go to the local bike shop for that. The owner there was nice enough to install it on the one wheel that I brought, and sent me home with a second piece for the other wheel. And then the tubes. The tubes I bought had “normal” length stems, but the rims are slightly aero, so the stems are barely long enough — really hard to get the pump to grab on. Sigh. But now I have a set of winter wheels, and hopefully that greatly reduces the chance of slipping and tumbling.

    It would of course have been possible to just replace the tires on the existing rims, at much lower cost. The tires themselves are not particularly inexpensive, so this was a pretty costly endeavor — about $400 when you add it all up. I just doubted my ability to follow through and actually swap tires twice a year. Swapping wheels seems a lot more likely.

  • These Are a Few of my Favorite Things

    These Are a Few of my Favorite Things

    ok — one of my favorite things.

    It’s my old Garmin eTrex! A friend’s son is going to be working at Garmin for the summer, and I was reminiscing about my long history with their products. This was my first — the original eTrex. I can still remember going to a MacWorld exhibition back in 1989 or 1990 and seeing a Sony GPS unit (yes, Sony!). It must have been a Pyxis model, though my recollection was that the antenna unit was spherical rather than just round. Could be faulty memory, or might have been a prototype unit. More likely the former. Anyway, it was of course super expensive, and there was no way I would be able to afford such a thing, but the concept of a (semi) portable device that could tell you (fairly) precisely where you were anywhere on earth seemed pretty magical.

    In any case, GPS technology continued to evolve, and a newish company, Garmin, was producing some interesting devices. A lot of the early devices were aimed at the boating market, where LORAN had been the previous popular means of electronic navigation. There were some handheld units, but the eTrex was (I would say) the first reasonably priced, handheld GPS receiver, oriented towards hiking. And so, I bought one. I used it for hiking, and even toyed with connecting it up with a PocketPC via a cable purchased from a “pfranc” (Purple Open Project Franchisee). If you have a few minutes, the history of those 3rd-party connectors is really fascinating and fun, and Larry Berg is a great example of a hacker’s hacker. I remember being completely absorbed by the story back then, but eventually I lost track of him, and he apparently passed away in 2012. But the other thing the cable was useful for was powering the eTrex in the car. I could also connect it to a laptop via a serial port (and later, a USB-to-RS-232 converter). Because, of course, the eTrex had no built-in mapping capability. It could just tell you where you were. And via a “breadcrumb trail” function, where you’d been. And store waypoints. And point you in the precise direction of a waypoint and tell you how far it was. But it had no concept of roads, or trails, or anything other than location: current, previous, and preset waypoints. But this was enough! I recorded many hikes with my beautiful yellow eTrex that I could then save and post, and overlay the breadcrumb trail on top of topo maps, etc.

    The eTrex was a miracle of technology, but still showed some weaknesses that were common among early GPS receivers. It could take quite some time to get a signal, and it required quite a clear view of the sky in order to receive the signal reliably. For the many years that it was my hiking GPS, you would see me with the unit balanced on top of my hat. No doubt this helped improve my posture. Many times I thought about velcroing it there, but I never actually did.

    One of the great things about GPS was that, being a government designed technology, the standards were published, and while different companies might well choose to implement proprietary physical connectors to their device, the data coming from those devices was all standard, so if you wrote an app to interface with one GPS, with very minor exceptions, you could interface with all of them. A great example of the value of standards!

    After the eTrex, I eventually bought an Edge 705, which was oriented towards biking, and could interface with a cadence meter, a wheel tachometer to more accurately calculate speed, and a heart rate monitor. This had several advantages over the eTrex — it had USB connectivity (via a standard connector, even — way to evolve, Garmin!!), and a rechargeable battery. It had much quicker startup times, and had a much more sensitive receiver. So much so that it spent most of its time in my pocket, resulting in a screen that has suffered many scratches from other pocket paraphernalia. But most of all, it had a mapping capability! I could load street maps on it, and it could calculate routes. I could load topo maps on it, and see what the trail ahead looked like, etc. It even had a color screen! Even after I had a phone that could also do all these things, I still carried the Edge. It did much better with battery life, and it meant I could leave my phone in airplane mode to conserve its battery, and have it available for emergencies.

    But the beautiful thing is that, after 20+ years, the thing still works. Once I cleaned out the leaked battery acid from old alkalines (Duracell, even!), and popped in a fresh pair of AAs, the thing booted up and found the requisite “birds” and was able to give me a location. As always, it had to be outdoors to get a good enough view of the sky, but it still works! I Love It!

  • North Adams

    North Adams

    This past weekend, Susan and I drove to the northwest corner of Massachusetts, to a town named North Adams,

    as a last chance vacation before school begins. This year, only one of us is actually going back to school, Susan, to teach eighth grade science again. Even Clara, who is still in school at NU, is on co-op this semester. And Susan will in fact be teaching from home. But before things begin in earnest (classes don’t begin until 21 September!) there is all kinds of teacher training and stuff to prepare everyone for the most bizarre fall in living memory. So we wanted to get away, even if it was only for two days, and still in state (to follow quarantine guidelines!)

    We drove out late Saturday morning, stopping at Herrick’s Tavern for a nice, outdoor lunch. Herrick’s has been one of our favorite stops on the way home from frisbee tournaments, back when that was a thing.

    See? I told you it was Herrick’s

    When we arrived in North Adams, our AirBnB host greeted us warmly, and over the next half hour we learned most of his life story, some interesting tidbits about the town (where almost all his story took place), and precious little about the apartment. We unpacked the van, and then went walking around the center of town, and did a bit of grocery shopping. After putting away groceries, we headed out to the local brewery, Bright Ideas, for some beer and BBQ from A-OK Barbecue. Good beer and tasty food!

    On Sunday, after a home breakfast, we ventured out on our bikes! First, we headed back east, and rode out to Natural Bridge State Park, where we enjoyed learning about and seeing the after effects of marble mining. The marble from there is not terribly fine, and apparently much of it, especially in later years, was simply ground up into calcium carbonate powder for all kinds of uses. But the park was lovely, and the natural bridge was certainly something to see. Most importantly, Susan got to scratch her geological itch a bit, and hug a rock.

    I love you. You are my rock.

    We rode back home, and had a home lunch, and then got right back on our saddles and headed west to hike the Cascade Trail. It is a modest trail, mostly following alongside a brook, and leading up to a lovely waterfall. It being the dry season, the falls were hardly dramatic, but still picturesque:

    Not much water, but enough to cause falls

    After hiking back down to the elementary school where we parked our bikes, and riding back to our AirBnB, we cleaned up and headed out for dinner. We had planned to walk over to the nice Italian restaurant in town, but they are apparently only open Wednesday through Saturday, so we had to find an alternative. OpenTable suggested the Freight Yard Pub, and we called and made a quick reservation, as we were uncertain how crowded it might be. When we arrived (by car, and the only use of the car in town until then) about 15 minutes later, we were able to get a table on the patio right away (would have been fine even without a reservation). Susan’s steak tips were very good, and even the mixed vegetables accompanying the tips were notably flavorful. I enjoyed the fajitas I ordered, though something disagreed with my tummy later in the evening.

    The next morning, Monday, we went out for breakfast to Renee’s, which Scott had recommended. It was a lovely restaurant, with recently expanded outdoor seating, and we enjoyed a nice relaxed breakfast, before packing up and heading home. Really home.

    North Adams was a lovely, scenic little town in the Berkshires. We enjoyed the two days we spent there. The downtown area was rather depressed though. A non-scientific survey suggests about half the storefronts are closed. How much of that is due to the Covid-19 pandemic I don’t know. I only know it can’t have helped.

  • Bike Commuting Stats

    So I’ve been stationed in Waltham a little over six months now, and with prime biking season behind me, I thought it was time to check in on the statistics. Since 17 April 2015, I have had 34 days where I was in the Waltham office for the whole day — those are the days where commuting by bike is a viable option. Of those 34 days, I rode my bike to work 26 of them, or 76%. I feel pretty good about that. It’s exercise I wouldn’t likely have gotten otherwise, and it’s also days that I didn’t drive the NOx-imizer. Other mildly interesting (to me…) highlights of the data include the fact that in July I rode in all 6 of the possible days. August, on the other hand, complicated by vacation and work travel, saw only 1 possible bike commuting day, and I missed it for no good reason (failed to prepare the night before).

    While the best commuting days are behind me, I will still continue to try to find days to do so. It’s 4 November today, and I did ride in both today and yesterday. With the weather getting colder, and there being fewer available daylight hours, it is more challenging. Though to address the light, I do have both head and tail lights, and a new helmet with built in lights. And other amenities. For the cold, I have gloves, tights, and a long sleeved jersey. Definitely good into the upper 30’s, not sure how much lower. Would probably need thermal shoe covers next, which would imply clipless pedals, etc. While I have those on my road bike, I like being able to ride my commuter in whatever shoes I happen to be wearing. Time will tell…

  • Commuting Stats

    When we left off, I had commuted by bike 1/1 full days to Waltham. In the ensuing three weeks, I’ve had seven full days here, and have commuted by bike five of those. Pretty pleased so far. The trip to work ends with the final mile and a quarter incorporating three uphills. They are not long, but they are still challenging for me. The first, on Main St. in Waltham just before crossing I-95 is about a quarter mile long and climbs fifty feet. The second comes after turning onto Bear Hill Rd. and elevates me 54 feet over .14 miles — basically twice as steep. On the first, if I really push, I can almost maintain 8 mph up it (but not quite). That second hill, I am generally glad to just get up and over, although the past two days I have climbed it out of the saddle, which got my heart rate up to 161. The third hill is really not much of a hill. It’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t notice unless you’d just been up two other challenging hills — 38 feet over .13 miles. Well, that’s what the GPS reports anyway. Looking at the numbers, I’m surprised it’s as close to that second hill as it seems to be. But altitude is GPS’ least accurate dimension, so who knows for sure.

  • Last Full Day in Montreal

    Today’s forecast looked pretty good in the morning, with an increased chance of rain in the afternoon, so we decided to head over to the Botanical Gardens early, and make our way over to the BioSphere later, since we’d be mostly inside. The gardens were lovely

    20140805-232017-84017954.jpg

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    20140805-232017-84017391.jpg and we got to see many styles of garden, but still felt like we barely scratched the surface.

    The Gardens are also right across he street from the main stadium from the 1976 Olympics, so we got to see the outskirts of that as well

    After an unintentionally expensive lunch, we went to the BioSphere, which had interesting exhibits about the environment and our effect on it. We got to see a presentation on cyclones, which used Katrina and Hyaiyan to highlight their destructiveness. Emma had just lived through Rammasun while visiting there and saw some of the devastation that Haiyan wrought up close. Another exhibit showcased artistic ways of turning refuse into dresses. Here’s an example

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    Once we had finished at the BioSphere, we split into two groups. Susan and Tyler took the Metro back to the Old Port where they rented a bicycle car

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    and on the walk home from there, they came upon (but did not fall into) a Burning Ring of Fire

    20140806-083901-31141677.jpg. Meanwhile, the girls and I rented Bixi bikes and rode to the Old Port. Along the way, while we were riding across a bridge, the skies opened up on us like never before. Emma and Clara had puddles in their shoes. But we did get something out of it

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  • Brrrrrrrr!

    I planned to ride in to work today when the forecast called for overnight lows in the upper 30’s. I headed out at about 5:30 this morning, outfitted in tights, a semi-thermal jersey, wool socks, and hopefully warm gloves. Both the gloves and the jersey were new and untried. I was envisioning maybe it would even be low 40’s. Unfortunately, I forgot to actually check the temperature so I can’t say what it was for sure, but it was noticeably chillier than I expected. Susan thought the thermometer might have read 32; my mom thought perhaps 31; the official recorded temp at Bedford was 27. And I was headed west, into what is generally a colder area.

    I was more than halfway through before I started to be uncomfortable, though. Hands and feet got cold, and my thighs and belly began to take on that “cold meat” feeling. My the time I got in, my hands were close to numb, but I honestly think they did better with the new gloves than they did last week in another pair of gloves on a significantly warmer (low to mid 40’s) morning commute.

    Some signs that it was cold: when I went to squeeze out some shampoo in the shower, it wouldn’t come out because it was thick as sludge; while the water directly from the shower was nice and warm, any water that actually ran down my body was cold by the time it got to my feet! Putting on the clothes from my pannier was reminiscent of getting dressed on a winter camping trip if I forgot to sleep with tomorrow’s clothes in my sleeping bag.

    Anyway, the experience taught me that it is possible, though I wouldn’t want to do it in any colder weather.



  • I Want to Ride my Bicycle

    So I’ve been riding my new bicycle around town, but in the wimpy freewheel mode. Yesterday I got my courage up to flip the rear wheel around and give the fixed gear mode a try on the ride to Tyler’s soccer game. And today, I went for a longer ride — Arlington Center to Lexington Center on the Minuteman Trail. Including the short bit from home to the bike path and back, it’s just about exactly ten miles.

    It takes some getting used to, I’ll say that much. I stopped in Lexington Center at the water fountain, as the bike doesn’t yet have a water bottle cage. So essentially it’s five miles of continuous pedaling. So there are a few things that are tricky. First is getting started. I’m very accustomed to having the pedals stationary when getting my second foot in the clips. No such thing now. Must get the pedal oriented and the foot in while the pedals are moving. It’s challenging. Second is while biking: there are times when I’m used to coasting a bit. Usually, it’s when I get out of the saddle to go over a bump more gently. It’s very disconcerting to be mentally prepared to stop pedaling, and to have the pedals not cooperate. Also very jarring to say the least. Finally, stopping can be a bit tricky. When riding a “normal” bike, you have the ability to adjust your pedal position when stopping. Not so with a fixed gear — the pedals are where they are.

    But aside from starting, going, and stopping, it’s really easy. Sheldon says that “It takes a couple of weeks of regular riding to unlearn the impulse to coast, and become at ease on a fixed gear.” We’ll see.

  • My Bike

    Having largely completed Clara’s bike, I moved on to my bike. This is the bike I bought in High School, early 1980’s, from the bike shop that was at the edge of our neighborhood (The Bike Rack). It cost me about $300 at the time. I rode it all over during my High School year, or at least as far as I ranged back then. I wasn’t allowed to have a driver’s license until I was 18, so there wasn’t much driving for me in High School, though of course I did get rides from friends. Anyway, back to the bike. It got a lot of use in those years, and I brought it up to college with me, though with some trepidation given the reputation Cambridge had for bike theft. I didn’t use it a lot in those years, but when I needed to get off campus on my own, or even to the other end of campus, it was handy. One of my roommates borrowed it once, and the back wheel got stolen. He graciously replaced it, even before bringing the bike back, but that made me even more anxious about riding it. Or more precisely, parking it. I had a Citadel “u-lock” and the idea was you’d remove the front wheel and lock it up along with the back wheel and the frame to something sturdy. But what a pain, and you end up scratching up the fork ends.

    After college, the bike saw even less use. And after getting married (or maybe it was just before), Susan and I bought snazzy new Specialized mountain bikes, which meant that the old bike really languished after that, sitting in basements, attics, and other random storage areas. I had a $10 price tag on it at a yard sale once, as it had gotten a little rusty in some parts, and someone offered me $5 for it. I hate yard sales. As if $10 wasn’t enough of a bargain. I couldn’t let it go for that, so it sat in the basement some more, but its presence there began to bug me. So a few years ago, I stripped it of all its parts, and began to strip the paint from the frame. It sat for another year or two, and last summer I got “inspired” to turn it into a single speed/fixed gear bike, and did a lot of research. The trickiest bit was getting a special rear hub that would allow some front-back adjustment of the cog (to tension the chain properly) even though the rear dropout was essentially vertical. I eventually bought a set of wheels on eBay where the rear wheel had this special White Industries Eccentric ENO hub. The pair of wheels, all built up, cost about a third less than the hub alone would have, brand new. Seemed like a good deal. But then it sat some more. Oh, and the new wheels are size 700c, while the old ones were 27″ so the conversion necessitates a longer reach brake.

    This summer, we bought Clara an old road bike that she and I fixed up for her. Part of that job was having the frame painted (or more accurately, “powder coated”). I thought I could perhaps get a discount getting more than one frame done, so I got both frames ready. That didn’t turn out to be the case, and it turned out to be quite a bit more expensive than I’d hoped, but I’m very pleased with the end result. After essentially finishing her bike, I started on mine. I bought about half the parts via eBay, and others through a couple of online bike shops, and even some parts/tools from local shops. At this point, there remain but three original parts: the frame, the fork, and the seatpost binder bolt. After that, there are a few things I bought used: the wheels, the seatpost, and the saddle. Beyond that, everything on the bike is new. Which means the project cost more than it was worth, but it has been a fun and interesting project, and I learned a lot doing it. Plus, I still have my old bike and all the sentimental value that carries.

    I rode it for the first time last Friday. I had it set up in fixed gear mode, but felt a little freaked out in that mode, so I switched it to single speed (by simply flipping the rear wheel around!) until I could get comfortable with the bike as a whole. Hope to make the switch and get some practice riding “fixie” soon. I expect it will take some time to get used to it.

    Here’s a listing of most of the components:

    Frame: 1981 Panasonic DX2000
    Fork: original Tange
    Rims: Mavic Open Sport
    Rear Hub: White Industries Eccentric ENO
    Front Hub: some Nashbar sealed bearing hub
    Headset: Velo Orange Alloy Headset, in JIS size (not many choices in that size!)
    Stem: Nitto Pearl 120mm
    Handlebar: no-name Bullhorn style
    Bar Tape: Arundel cork
    Bottom Bracket: Tange sealed cartridge
    Crankset: Sugino XD
    Pedals: MKS Sylvan Prime Track Pedals
    Toe Clips: MKS (NJS Stamped :-))
    Brake: Tektro R536 Caliper
    Brake Level: Tektro RX 4.1
    Cross Lever: Cane Creek
    Seatpost: SR Laprade
    Saddle: Selle San Marco Island Ponza

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