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.