farewell, fair forum friends! 14 hours from now, (that’s 530am pst for anyone counting), i’ll be clipping in and pushing south. the first day takes us as far as santa cruz — 78 miles. that’s all i know for now. much, MUCH more when i return.

for now i can tell you that orientation day is over — safety video watched, tent assignment haz, gear bag packed, and bike dropped off. (they hold the bike overnight for you so it’s there when you arrive tomorrow.) now it’s email auto-notification assignment, food, nervous guts, and some sleep later.

i’m back to the city on monday the 9th, but probably not back on the forum till the next day.

so wish a lung big lucks, and more importantly, NO DEATHS!

rubber side down,
riding like i stole it,
southbound.

il.

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Eric’s is on the way, and Muadib’s is on backorder until July, because he looks like the [new]Hulk, but Lung and i are now equipped for old-timey action! See us in Critical Mass wearing these wool jerseys, please don’t run us overs!

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according to KRYPTONITE’S BLOG, these are the top 10 bike theft cities in the us.

01 . philadelphia, pa
02 . chicago, il
03 . new york, ny
04 . san francisco, ca (a credit i’d rather my city NOT have, frankly)
05 . tucson, az/portland, or (tie)
07 . denver, co
08 . new haven, ct (seriously?)
09 . cambridge, ma
10 . austin, tx (i blame whoever this "mellow johnny" character is!)

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Oh man, good stuff.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/27/ol … icycl.html

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WR and i had plans to ride home together today after work. he’s in mill valley, and i’m in the city. that’s roughly 15 miles distance, ferry building to his office. but i was on my fixed-gear, so i thought i’d just go as far as crossing the bridge and meet him at the parking lot on the other side. i’ve never crossed the bridge on my fixie, and i thought it would be good for me to venture outside my comfort zone. i knew i could do it, and i was actually looking forward to it. so that was the plan.

but then, at about 3:30, the ceo of my company sent out an email saying that we should all leave at 4 to get a start on our 3-day weekend. and when i saw that, i had a flurry of thoughts.

i’ve been very inspired by WRs recent rides to work on his fixie — hauling himself into mill valley in one ring, and more impressively, hauling he OUT. cause between here and there is the dreaded (to me) sausalito grade. it’s a LOOOONG, slow grade, and usually has a headwind that makes you feel like you’re riding in a blanket. then, there was his recent accomplishment of the marin headlands climb, also fixed. as i said in HIS POST thereabout, i’ve long admired people who fix as a way of life. life in one gear. so with an extra hour of time, i thought, "i can do this. i’m a super strong cyclist, and there’s no reason why i shouldn’t at least try it." so i did.

i had one moment of the fears, and that was when i was on approach to the bridge from my side. there’s a tiny little hop up out of crissy field right before the bridge, and that little hop is steep as fuck, and on my way up it, i was struggling. standing up and moving SLOW. but moving. anyway, i got through it, got to the bridge, got OVER the bridge, and stopped at the crest of the small hill after the parking lot on the other side. (also kind of a bear.) i had left myself the out to only go this far, and after i caught my breath and let my heart rate simmer down, about 30 seconds, i took stock of myself and realized that my legs were fine, my lungs were fine, and my heart was fine. i was fine! so i texted him, "i’m doing it," and bombed down the sausalito grade.

about midway down the grade it dawned on me that i was REALLY doing this, and that i might be making a serious mistake here. i’m rolling down into sausalito on 33 pounds of chicago steel that i have to haul up out of there in one ring, later. i got scared again, briefly, but it was too late, so i just motored on. the rest of the ride to his office is easy. sausalito and mill valley are pretty flat, at least the route that i took was, and so i arrived at his office no worse for wear. a little sweaty, but for the most part, pretty good for the halfway point.

we goofed off a while and then were out.

all the way back through mill valley and sausalito was, again, super easy. and then it was there. the grade. here i was at the bottom of a steady, 1-mile climb. and i had one speed and one choice — get up it.

the first, hardest part, was surprisingly … easy. i stayed seated through the whole thing, which was amazing to me, and hit about a 100-foot flat before the next grade. because i’d used a lot of energy on that first hop, i started to burn out towards the top of this part of the grade, and so i stood up. and it got HARDER. so i sat back down. and it got EASIER. that was the single wierdest part of the whole ride. it’s EASIER to climb, sitting down! i couldn’t believe it. anyway, after that part of the grade, there was a slight downhill before the final climb. i looked back to see WR still climbing, about 50 feet behind me. we threw each other the obligatory threes, and i muscled into the last part of the grade. and before i knew it, i was at the bridge.

SUCCESS.

of course, all the calories i burned off on this ride were promptly re-planted in the form of a fat burrito and a beer, but hey. it’s a celebration!

i’m totally re-invigorated. i can feel already that i’m going to grow beyond just the urban fixie rider. i hope now to be one of those old men that people disregard until he climbs on his 50-year-old fixie in jeans and battered red adidas and smokes em like a raspberry swisher. and i can’t wait. i feel, physically and mentally, like i really accomplished something. plus, all things added up, i threw down almost a 40-mile fixed ride today (add in some extra miles for distance to the ferry building from home, then back again), which is killer training.

this is so NOT the last time that i’ll be doing this. in fact, when my new fixie is finally built (a modern, ultralight track bike), i’m going to try and do some of the north bay road rides fixed. the paradise loop, the marin headlands, the whole nine. i don’t care, i’m gonna at least try.

27-inch wheels, seen.
36-year-old frame and fork, steel, seen.
fixed gear, 44-15, seen.

bring on the next challenge.

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according to HIS OWN BLOG, david byrne recently BUI’d hisself into two broken ribs. ouch!

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googlemaps is everyone’s friend. we’ve all used it before, and it works pretty damn good. and recently, they added a "take public transit" option, which adds not only good, sound alternate functionality, but also provides another means of easing people’s reliance upon one-car-per-person.

well, the good folks over at GOOGLEMAPSBIKETHERE.ORG have organized THIS ONLINE PETITION to ask google to add "bike there" functionality to their GIS functionality, and of course, this kid supports the hell out of that.

i hope you do too!

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back in the days, there was a man named bob haro. he’s a legend, not only for being one of the best BMX racers in the history of the sport, but also for going on, as so many do, to start one of the greatest bike companies ever — haro.

and with BMX making it’s debut as a medal-worthy sport in this year’s beijing olympics, nike is presenting an exhibit of recreations of bob haro’s famous lightning bolt numberplate, in the 798 arts district of beijing, celebrating 40 years of the greatest sport known to lung. in addition to the numberplate exhibit, there’s a BMX track, and various videos.

man, i wish i were an expatriate right about now.

i couldn’t find any sites for the exhibit itself, so HERE’S the coolhunting article where i found out about it.

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I haven’t been riding fixed that long, relative to die hards. As was illustrated in other threads, I feared them for a long time, based on what could happen to my already fragile knees, loathed some of the riders I saw around town, and was simply unfamiliar with how they worked, let alone WHY you’d want to ride one. Obviously all that’s changed. Lately, I’ve been pushing my personal limits on what I thought could, and should, be done with a fixed gear bike. Being a ‘tool for the job’ designer, it never made a lot of sense to me to haul ass or climb on a fixed any more than to noodle around the city on a racing bike. But I’ve done both.

A few days ago, I rode the fixed gear into work again, and this time, on the way home, decided to try and tackle a local climb called the Marin Headlands. It’s not the steepest, craziest climb around. But it’s virtues are that it is close to home, steep enough to give you a workout, and one of the most picturesque rides int he Bay Area. You start at the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, and work your way up Comzelman Road, a nice curvy paved noodle that carves up the side of the Headlands to Battery 129 and finally the Hawk Lookout. Like much of what you find on the South (SF) side of the entrance to the bay, it is surrounded by former protective battlements that long predate the bridge, back when we were worried about interlopers poking around in our little vista. The total climb is about 1000 feet from sea level, but you start arounf 200 at the bridge, so it’s just under 800 feet of climbing. It SEEMS longer, to me, but that’s because the profile of the grade is that it starts steep, which kind of beats you up, then levels off to an easier gradient, than pushes upwards, three sections. Before I was doing lots of year-round riding, when I first moved to SF, I remember blowing up on this climb, pushing myself wayyy too hard on the first section, letting my heart rate go too high for too long, and spewing my breakfast at a point I call One Vomit Hill (there’s a lone tree at this crest, vomiting has ensued, thus…) especially after mashing hard from the other end of the city or, say, Marin somewhere, before hitting that first section. I learned, over time, that if you pace it, it’s a much more manageable climb. But I’m not afraid to say, like most climbs I do regularly, they never get EASY, just less torturous. Also, again, the value add here is that Marin Headlands can be done before or after work easily for me being right by the bridge as it is. Normally, you taks a steep descent down from the battery and into the base, and take a windiong loop back to the bridge again, on a stretch of miserable modest gradient I call the Trail of Tears, because it looks flat, but wears you down because it’s juuuust enough grade, and there’s juuuuust enough wind, to keep you from pacing the way you think you are. But then you get to blast through a single lane tunnel under the freeway and you’re back at the bridge again…much speed to be gained in that pitch black tunnel…

Anyway, I rode up from Mill Valley on fix-e, after riding the Look in the day before and breaking in the new saddle, so I had the tender vittles. We have been in a record-breaking little heatwave, so this day was even hotter than the day before, and when I Ieft the office? 101 degrees. In Mill Valley, that’s not only uncommon, but a record. Fortunately, I prepared as if doing a desert ride, with lots of food and my hydropack reservoir full up, which normally wouldn’t be the case for a ride home OR the Headlands. Good thing though, because before I even got to the Sasualito Grade I was tuckered and overheated. Dragging a fixed gear up the grade is something I’ve only just started doing. Fixed-gear vets don’t care, they just plug along, but it’s new to me, to be turning over those cranks SO SLOWLY. It seems like you’re going to fall over at any second, and certainly that you’re going 1mph or whatever. In fact, I passed some road bike riders and made great time to the bridge, 45 minutes… not bad at all for 40/16!

I was supposed to meet Team Lope rider Eric for the Headlands, though I had been thinking about abandoning, based on that overheated fixed gear climb. He was escorting a bunch of people from work since it was Ride to Work Day. They were delayed, and after about 15 minutes of calming down, drinking and eating some dried lope, I decided to just go for it.

That first section was like molasseses. I started nice and smoothly since I had been at rest, and eased my way up to that eased-off section. In fact, though it was slow-going in that one gear, I did it seated and was euphoric to get the ‘hard’ part behind me. But then as I pushed through the easier patch and then up towards One Vomit Hill, I started to suffer. The back to back rides, the seat pain, and the climb in from Sausalito on the fixed gear had taken it’s toll on my legs. I was burning up in the quads, and my heart rate was high: all indications of another trip down Techincolor Yawn lane. Fortunately, I didn’t heave, and got about a third of the way past the tree before deciding, wisely, to slow up and take a one minute break to get my heart rate down. I’m glad I did. Becuase I saw some riders working their way towards me from below in their bottom gears, spinning away, and took off, only to find that about 20 revs later my legs were blown AGAIN. I basically tunnel-visioned my way up the rest of it, staring at the crest, hoping it was the top but not certain, in my addled state. Finally, I came around the curve and saw the benches and new I had made it, focusing on not laying the bike down in Lung style… and hopped off to recover in the wind, with that glorious bridge view before me. I doubt I could have ridden another 100 feet at that point.

Descending was just as hard, because in order to keep the speed manageable on the fixed gear, I had to push back constantly, lean on the brake, and basically work the grade at what seemed like the same speed with which I had ascended it. Tough on the legs, the hand, the arm, etc. Finally got down to the bridge, and noodled home, admittedly exhausted.

So pleased, though, because this was a personal best moment. Fixed climbing!

So there we are!

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so today on a morning ride with WR around the mission’s plentiful bike shops, in order to burn off some of that "economic stimulus check," i ate shit HARD. it was one of those out-of-the-blue perfect storm moments. i was riding along with only one hand on the handlebars, probably fucking about with my lock or my backpack or something, and as i was about 33 feet from our destination, i was also on the front brakes. (this is super dangerous and i know it, and i always do it anyway because i’m silly.) anyway, so when i hit the pothole, everything went pear-shaped. the front end started to wobble, i over compensated and sent myself into a death turn, which is where your body has momentum one way, but your wheel is headed the other. anyone with a basic understanding of inertia and physics can immediately see that this is bad. there was no saving it, and as the front wheel went totally perpendicular, the back end came up, and i went straight to the pavement. in traffic. in front of WR and a car. it was unexpected enough that i jello’d through it and wasn’t hurt, and also had the sense to take that final hand off the handlebars as they went out of my control, so that i could use my hands to save myself. laying in the middle of the street laughing my ass off, i realized — thank god WR talked me into wearing a helmet all those years ago. cause that coulda been a very different experience otherwise.

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