love that speedy bike!

on the way to school with my littles yesterday, i got a flat. i had plenty of time to go home and patch it, but then managed to break off the presta valve-tip inside my pump. flat re-flattened.

so i had to leave my (spuose's) Rans Fusion* in the garage and ride my slow bike - a slightly upgraded/modified Electra Townie. the townie runs on wider lower-pressure tires and outweighs the fusion by almost 10lbs.

i'm often pleased with how quick the fusion feels, but it's been a while since i commuted on the townie. what is usually a 26-29 minute ride took me 36 minutes. dang. and the ride in today on the re-tubed fusion felt like flying. just wait 'til i get my Rans Zenetik Pro** (or come up with a design idea that isn't too ridiculous for Dave at Velvet to consider building).

and while i'm talking about speed, i have to confess that i've dropped closer to the middle of the pack. as the rain sets in and the more casual riders hang up the dubz for the season, i find i'm getting passed almost as often as i pass somene. maybe a ratio of two-to-three. humbling.


*27lbs
**19lbs

on craigslist - act now!

these bikes are freakin' RAD! they haven't been produced for years, so this is a rare opportunity that i thought i should share with my portland peeps. these are pretty heavy, but i have yet to ride a bike that felt more posture positive!

check 'em out.

kids and day6

here are some thoughts from the contact at day6:

"Day 6 bikes carry a high percentage of weight on the rear wheel. Adding more weight and in the case of a trail-a-bike , precious cargo, is asking for trouble in the way of a front wheel wash out. At slow speeds you probably won't notice the handling challenge but get the rig over 15 mph and try to stop or steer quickly and you may have a few troubles.

These are some of our thoughts. However, it has not yet been tested so we do not know how well it would handle.

Good luck with your blog and have a great day! If we come across other feedback I’ll pass it on"


maybe if you carry a front rack and/or front panniers, you might have enough front counterweight.

i was going to talk about feeling safe

i meant to write this post several weeks ago, but got sidetracked by the beautiful weather and ranting about track bikes.

i was going to talk about how riding upright makes me feel safer in traffic. i've already talked about how much upright riding improves your field of vision. you can look over your shoulders with ease. add a rear-view mirror and you have even more visual range than you do in your car (almost no blind spots).

and while we're on the topic of seeing cars, what about drivers seeing you? i don't have a scientific study to back this up, but i strongly suspect that a driver that can make eye contact with you is less likely to ignore or overlook you.

try standing in front your bathroom mirror. it's quite easy to make eye contact with your reflection. now, take a step or two back and put your hands on the counter. hoist your head up to a position where you have the same amount of eye contact. you can't really get the same level of direct visual contact. and even though you get close to it, how long can you hold your head at that angle before your neck protests?

finally, i feel safer when i'm upright because even if i do crash, i'm in a much better position to avoid serious injury. when your torso is laid low over your handle bars and you crash, the forward momentum takes you right over your bars and onto your face. when you're sitting upright, that's very unlikely. more likely, your feet will hit the ground and you'll skid. or you'll lay out to the side and take most of the impact on your hip or leg. and you're sitting lower to begin with, so you don't have as far to fall.

i don't know if it's just coincidence, but i was hit twice and crashed without any help several times before i started riding upright, but not once since.

can we please stop calling them fixies?

fixie. it makes them sound cute. charming. innocuous.

you've seen people riding them, right? barrelling through traffic, weaving in between cars, blowing stop lights. and you wonder, "why don't they stop?!"

it's because they can't. the lone gear on these bikes is fixed to the hub. so the wheel only goes forward or backward. this is not the single-speed coaster brake you remember from childhood. these bikes are literally constant motion. the only way to stop them is to slow very gradually or fight your own forward momentum by comically thrashing around while shredding your hips and knees.

this is how these riders willfully put their well-being and even lives in the hands of unwitting and unwilling drivers.

so, please join me in referring to them as track bikes. a closed race track is absolutely the only legitimate place to ride these things.

bring the kids along

one of this blog's myriad followers asked about the compatibility of these unusually-shaped bikes with trail-a-bikes. i emailed three companies and two responded within about an hour. try getting that turn-around time from a big company!

anyway, the contact from day6 is looking into it and will get back to me.

the contact from lightfoot had this to say:

"We have made adapters to pull trail-a-bikes behind our Lightfoot recumbents, using the 4-point attachment built into our cycles. One of our customers pulls her daughter behind a Lightfoot Smoothie bike, and has had good success and appears to have good control. It is my assumption (as yet unproven) that our taller Ranger bike would have even more control.
We have also pulled trail-a-bikes behind our trikes."

i can't believe i forgot this bike!

day 6 should have been in my links section from day 1. now it's there. this is clipped from their website:





"The most important feature on a Day 6 bicycle is not an Italian derailleur measured in ounces or a Swiss-engineered racing hub - it's YOU. That inspiration led to a bicycle frame where each angle and measurement was designed to complement the human frame."

actually santa, i want new handlebars too

try this: drop your arms to your sides and let them assume a fully relaxed position. now bend your elbows up about 90 degrees. look at your hands. are you looking at the top of your fists? no, you're looking mostly at your thumbs and forefingers. i want bars that allow me to control my bike like this - hands in a more-or-less neutral position. this is really the last thing i need to do to make my bike as posture positive and body-neutral as possible.

there are some under-the-seat steered recumbents that are set up this way. don't want a recumbent though. i thought about using bar ends but i've yet to find any tall enough to accommodate shifters and brakes. but, i think i may have found the answer in some adjustable bars that i found. it looks like they'll work, but are they long enough? will they clear my knees? just gotta buy 'em, install 'em and see.

all i want for christmas is a rear bike rack...

you know what's absurd? messenger bags. so, you're already supporting your torso and absorbing shock with your shoulders. you know what would make that even harder on your body? slinging a heavy pack over just one shoulder. and to top it off, every half block or so, you have to take one hand off the handlebars to push it back up onto your back. now you're unstable and distracted! yay!

i'm not really in the position to mock though. i do distribute that weight evenly onto both shoulders with a little gadget i like to call a "back pack". but it's still unnecessary weight to carry on my shoulders and it throws off the balanced working of my spine. so i need to get a rack.

rans makes them to fit their unusual geometry. gotta get me one.

autumn in the air

i would've loved to have the time to ride for hours this morning. this may have been the most perfect first day of october ever anywhere. just enough chill in the air to declare the end of summer, despite the expected high near 80. a little cloudy, but sun peeking through. leaves just starting to change...

i'm hopeful that the weekend will bring time for a family ride in this most splendrous moment of time. the sun is starting to come in sideways - even when it's warm you can feel the difference, like the sun just has to try harder.

my girls are completely off their training wheels. soon they'll ride circles around me. but as i've said before, my bike is my insurance policy. so i plan to be going on family rides for as long as they'll put up with me. i expect to be riding as long as i can walk.

new from rans

my favorite bike company has unveiled their new 2011 models. among them are one of the cutest and one of the dumbest bikes i've ever seen.

first, the cute one. 20" wheels. it's a bmx-sized upright. if only it was cheap and pink, i'd buy two of them now for my girls to grow into.

now, dumb. i see what they're trying to do. like me, they're trying to get riders onto their bikes that would otherwise be uninterested. but look at the thing. you get all the damage to your back, shoulders, wrists, etc, but with an added bonus - your innards get squished.

to see what i mean, pull your chair back a few feet from your computer. feel the way you're sitting on your sitting bones - just the way you would be in your rans saddle. now lean forward to grab those drop bars. your hips can't rock you forward to extend your torso. all you can do is fold right in the middle. feel how your stomach presses into your lap. try to take a deep breath. no room for your diaphragm to expand. dang.

obviously, i've never ridden one. i'm just commenting on a photo. i hope i'm wrong about this one. it's hard to accept that my favorite company could make such a mess. but then i look at some of their nearly-flat-on-your-back ultra-recumbents and think it's not that unlikely after all...

stacking the deck

this is really part two of "okay, why?" i'm going to talk a bit more about why i'm dedicated to getting more people out of their cars and onto safe, comfortable, body-sustaining bikes.

i'll start here: portland, OR has a robust and dedicated cycling community already. in fact you'll find us at or near the top of any list of bike-able cities. a quick websearch even turned this up: #2 for the whole dang world. there are already tons of programs and organizations and things like bike lanes and bus/bike options to make it easy for you to step out of your car.

what i'm adding to the wealth that's already there is information about how upright riding can get you over some barriers to cycling. i guess i should talk about that in another post because i've already gone way off topic.

what i meant to talk about is what i perceive to be the dark side of our flourishing cycling culture. an anecdote: once i was asked to participate in an email interview that was to be published in some online journal. one question posed was: "what’s the one thing Portland drivers should know about bike commuters?" my answer: "don't trust them!" i went on to talk about how portland cyclists often fail to follow traffic rules and more or less dare cars not to hit them. pretty sure the interview was not published...

first, a guess: because cycling is so easy here, many people are only (or at least primarily) cyclists. they may never have passed a driving test and may not know the rules. second, many cyclists i've talked to believe that they are above the law and owed the road. because they're, like, saving the world or whatever.

so, my selfish reason for getting you out of your car and into the bike lane is that i'm trying to stack the deck with riders who know and respect the rules. it's sad and ridiculous that i feel more nervous surrounded by bikes than by cars.

something to prove

i do have something in common with those spandex-clad bike jockeys and even those "fixie" hipsters bent on shredding their hips and knees: we ride fast because we have something to prove.

i have guesses about what they have to prove. the road bikers go fast to prove to themselves that those $2000 rims were a good investment. the track bike hipsters are proving that despite the fact that they don't wear helmets or have brakes they are still faster than death.

and i have this to prove: comfortable doesn't mean slow. i'm rolling a 27lb bike on 26" 100psi wheels with a not-particularly-aerodynamic upright torso. and i still pass at the very least 4 (but probably more like 6 or 7) commuters for every one that passes me. just wait 'til i get that Zenetik pro!

testimonial

it should be obvious that i'm preaching here. so when i read something like amy jo's comment to the "okay, why?" post: "inspiring me to get a new bike.... ", i have to shout "hallelujah!"

anyway, this reminded me of another moment a year or so ago. i was on my way up to coventry cycles to test ride what was to become just about my favorite bike ever. joyfully, on the way, i ran into a good friend i don't see nearly enough of. she agreed to go with me and ended up test riding a RANS Fusion ST alongside my RANS Zenetik. just a few pedals into the test she exclaimed "i think i'm in love!"

look ma, no training wheels!

this has little to do with upright, but everything to do with cycling: i'm excited to report that my two four-and-a-half-year-old daughters are competent training wheel-less riders! i'm almost confident enough to let them try the morning commute to pre-school on just two wheels.


we already scored a second-hand hot pink electra crank-forward bike for my older daughter to grow into. if you see another out there in used bike land, let me know! we need a matched set.

(it looks like this, only much pinker.)

okay, why?

the easy answer would be "i'm prone to proselytize". but that's way too easy (and way too obvious to anyone who knows me). so here're the real answers:

why the bikes? the bike is my insurance policy. my theory is that if i use my body the way it was designed i will never succumb to all the usual cycling wear-and-tear/repetitive injuries. i'll be riding as comfortably when i'm 90 as i am today. i'll just be a little less speedy...

why the blog? that's the real question, yeah? i mean, why should anyone else care about this? well, first i hope to inspire current riders to think about their bodies. i hope that the people that are already dedicated to going by bike will continue to do so into their twilight years.

but even more than that, i hope this blog is read and enjoyed by people who don't believe cycling is for them. i want people to see that this isn't only the pursuit of kamikaze bike messengers and spandex-clad tour de france emulators. a few "what ifs" for these folks to consider: what if sitting in the saddle of your bike was as comfortable as sitting in your office chair? what if you never had to go to the gym again because commuting was your workout? what if you could ride with your head held high, in a position to see all that traffic moving around you? what if you didn't have to be an athlete already to consider cycle commuting?

that's really the deal. if i get one person out of her car and into the bike lane, this blog is successful.

things i think i know, part 2

things i think i know about bicycles (and how those things relate to human bodies)

most bicycles put the human body in a position it was not evolved for. the body is moved out of a neutral, at-rest position and muscles and joints are engaged in ways contrarary to their design. in addition to the ways this affects the body posture and parts (detailed in part 1), most bikes provide some other disservices. i'll list some of the differences in the way a body makes use of upright bikes vs more common bike designs.

• sitting on the sitting bones with an upright spine allows a greater range of motion in the neck and therefore better ability to see what's going on around you. a standard diamond-frame necessitates lifting the head up toward the back. a recumbent bike forces a tucking of the head toward the chest. both actions limit the neck's mobility.
• placing the pedals too directly below or too far away from the pelvis forces a rocking off of the sitting bones. i'll split this up into two seperate bullets:
• standard diamond frames, "cruiser" frames, and most all frames on "comfort" bikes place the pedals close to below the pelvis. this forces the body into two potential positions, both of which rest the weight of the body on the perineum. either (on a road or mountain bike) the spine is pitched forward toward the handlebars resulting in weight bearing and shock absorbing via the hands, wrists, arms and shoulders. the neck is also forced to hold the head aloft. or (on a cruiser or comfort bike) the handlebars are higher and closer to the saddle. the body cannot lean forward, so instead the lower back arches to compensate.
• many recumbents have the opposite effect. the pedals are often very far forward and much higher in relation to the pelvis. this causes the pelvis to rock back onto the tailbone. it also forces the neck to tuck the head in toward the chest.

things i think i know, part 1

things i think i know about human bodies (and how those things relate to bicycles)

• humans are upright bipeds.  our spines point our skulls right up at the sky.  we are not stooped-over knuckle-walkers like other apes.  our bikes should allow our bodies to work the way they are built: upright with spines and skulls pointed to the sky.
• the delicate bones in the hands and wrists are designed to grasp and manipulate objects.  they are not designed to bear the weight of our torsos nor act as shock absorbers.  our bikes should not put our bodies in a position that places weight on the hands and wrists and forces the shock of every bump we encounter to be absorbed by our hands, wrists, arms and shoulders.
• there is a part of the human body that is designed to be sat on.  it is not the perineum.  our bikes should not pitch our bodies forward off our sitting bones.
• our heads weigh as much as a bowling ball.  our necks are desinged to balance that weight up on top of our spinal column.  our bikes should not pitch our bodies forward and force our necks into the position of hoisting upward that bowling ball.