Halloween Ride

Who'd have thought such opportunities would present themselves? No jacket on Halloween with dry roads and dramatic skies. Wind speeds were around 15 mph up in Lansing. Intense tailwind on the climb all the way to Searles Rd. had me sailing up Triphammer and than POW! What a brutal headwind for the return trip.

As a data-obsessed cyclist just starting my heart rate monitoring adventure, I was quite amazed at how much a headwind adds to the heartrate, even when I was struggling to go faster than 14 mph on a relatively flat road. Having this data is most helpful, and lessens the frustration of pedaling hard and not going very far. At least I have concrete proof that I'm working hard.

Data for today's ride: 19.6 miles, 147 avg. BPM, 19.2 mph. Odometer for the year: 2670 mi.

Reality is sinking in that this is probably the last week of road riding for the year, but at this point I feel very fortunate that the season has lasted so long. Some lingering questions: When will next season begin? What kind of pedals will I buy? Ultegra/105s or Look Keo? I have all winter to figure that one out.

The picture is from the Library of Congress' American Memory Project:

Bike racer, Carl Stockholm Stockholm sitting on a bicycle in front of a light-colored backdrop in a room. 1929. Photograph. Chicago History Museum, Chicago. Http://memory.loc.gov. Library of Congress. Web. 31 Oct. 2009.

Slipping Away

Sadly it's true. The outdoor road biking season is indeed slipping away. I'm starting to get skittish about riding on wet roads with slippery leaves glued to them. I'm studying the weather forecast like tea leaves, looking for that one last chance to get out there before it's too late. Very sad indeed, but now I am motivated to make riding the trainer more fun. Music or video? Morning Edition is kind of a lame-o accompaniment, especially if it's a downbeat story about the economy. Perhaps a Jacques Tati movie instead?

The Season That Never Ends

It was a bit too chilly for my before-work circuitous commute/workout, a 10-mile climb up through Cornell and Community Corners to the airport and back down again. The weather forecast was promising, however. It was 35 degrees when I headed off to school, but it was 60 degrees when I left work! Indian summer days like this are magical, and it the gloomiest of late winter days, it's really hard to imagine that days like this even exist.

I managed to get a 15 mile ride in, my favorite quick loop up to Terpening Corners via Remington, Oakcrest and Triphammer and down Rt. 34, the best descent close to downtown. What a gift! It was also my first ride with my Polar heartrate cyclocomputer. I don't know yet where I really should be, but I averaged 150 bpm for a 42 minute ride.

Forever Young

As an adult cyclist, every now and then I feel a bit self-conscious, riding with my tight-fitting fancypants gear on roads with drivers tucked in nicely in their cars. What are they thinking about these encounters? Are they mildly annoyed that they have to slow down for a little while and cautiously pass at the first opportunity, or are they simply amused at our peculiar costumes and mucus clearing methodology (don't ask)? I wonder, if they aren't adult cyclists, do these encounters stir some deep-rooted childhood memories of terrorizing the neighborhood on their chopper and performing dangerous stunts like standing on the banana seat as if it were a skateboard?

I can usually tell who's a cyclist (or cyclist sympathizer) and who isn't by how they pass me. Sympathizers usually go the extreme giving lots of room while passing, often crossing the meridian, and waiting very patiently. The alternative can be pretty damn scary. I've had too many close calls over the years with the oblivious, the angry, the distracted, and the purposefully indifferent, those who don't want to give more leeway than the law allows as a matter of principal.

As a young cyclist, I was pretty oblivious to my surroundings, but now I ride with a finely tuned sense of all potential hazards, including deer. (I've had an increasing number of encounters with deer of late, particularly on one section of Oakcrest and on Remington and Sunset.) As a child, I felt impervious to danger; as an adult, I feel on guard at all times, which is why I really like my Remington escape route [Remington must be the subject of a future entry].

Today I've been musing about why cycling is so appealing to me, and I think it's all about savoring and holding on to my childhood. So much of life gets complicated and conflicted, as we start swimming upstream, having kids, see our parents turn elderly, and started contemplating our own mortality. Maybe I'm just in denial, looking for ways to keep my young in body and in spirit, but I really don't think it's that self-conscious a decision. I just bike because it's more fun than just about anything. But maybe what makes cycling that much more joyful is the flood of positive childhood memories that it prompts. With all of the endorphins flowing, I tend to concentrate on the happier memories, and I often puzzle through what I did wrong in past encounters and life situations. I wonder if it's a coincidence that my best bicycle year in the late '80s is also the year that I've reconnected with so many childhood (and young adult) friends and acquaintances?

Great Archive of Ithaca Maps

I just discovered a treasure trove of historic maps of Ithaca and surrounds by a guy named Bill Hecht. Check it out. We're talking HUNDREDS of maps here! There's a great topo map from 1909, and here's just a portion of it. Given how tiny Tinytown was in 1909, it sure makes it easier to study the contour lines.

Also, there's a Cyclist's Road Map from 1893! I had no idea that such things even existed. Here's a detail from the Central NY map:

It must have been quite a challenge for cyclists back then to climb these hills with those heavy bikes and mostly gravel roads. I'm mystified, and will have to learn more about the early days of cycling in our area.

Bill Hecht did an incredible service with this site.

Data driven cycling with GPS and Google Earth

In the spring of '09 when I finally bought my new road bike, I also budgeted for some cool accessories. The coolest one by far was a Garmin Edge 205. This handy little unit has fundamentally changed the way I ride and where I ride. It has also become the catalyst for reflecting on my rides with friends and total strangers via online social networking tools (Facebook and Twitter) and online route sharing sites such as Everytrail.com and Mapmyride.com. I also import all of my rides into Google Earth, which lets me do a virtual flyover or tour of my ride.

The Garmin Edge 205 is the entry level bike GPS unit. While its capabilities are limited in comparison with to pricier models, it was more than sufficient for my needs. While the main function for car GPS units is to keep from getting lost and find the fastest way to a specific locale, I use my Garmin to monitor my speed, distance, average speed, calories burned, and most importantly, my altitude, percentage of grade on my climbs, and my cumulative vertical feet climbed.

My Garmin accompanied me on most of my rides this year, and really gave each ride a life of its own. Sometimes I would bring a small camera along as well. My typical post-ride routine is to download my GPS data, then use an online converter tool provided linked off of Everytrail.com to convert the file into KMZ format. Then I upload my ride to Everytrail, write up a description, add pictures if available (sometimes I add screen shots from Google Earth), then share the ride with my Facebook and Twitter friends. After that, I upload the KMZ file to Google Earth and view the flyover (tour). I have also started posting videos of my Google Earth tours with narration to YouTube.



Why do all of this? I actually love it, and it allows me to connect riding with other activites that I'm interested, such as blogging, mapping and video editing. I get a chance to reflect on the ride, study my data, try to beat my best average speed on a given ride, and study the maps to look at new possibilities for routes. This has all made me a better cyclist, without a doubt.

This summer I participated in the Le Tour Challenge, an event sponsored by MapMyRide and others. I rode every day that I could that coincided with a Tour de France stage, then uploaded my ride data to MapMyRide. I could see how my data compared with other participating cyclists as well as the Tour cyclists. I ended up with some pretty satisfying results, which drove me to ride even harder. I also won a really nice Polar cyclocomputer with heartrate monitor, which brings me to thoughts about what I'll do with this in the future.

While I like the Polar cyclocomputer's heartrate monitoring function, and really see the value of assessing heartrate data, it seems silly for me to ride with two separate devices (GPS and Polar). It would be hard to justify this, but an upgrade to an Edge 305 (or better) would allow me to capture heartrate data and eliminate the need for the Polar unit. Also, the heartrate data could automatically be added to the Everytrail posts.

I loved watching all of my rides accumulate in Google Earth—it provided very tangible evidence of my progress, and prompted me to explore areas less traveled. In the spring I'll hide all of my rides in Google Earth and repopulate the map all over again.

Four Days Off and Feeling Good

It's a good day. I've been sick for over a week, and off the bike (including indoor rides on the trainer) for four days now. This time of year you have to sneak the rides in whenever you can since you never know when the season will be over, and in spite of the fact that I'm not 100% recovered from an annoying, lingering cold, I decided to do my roundabout commute to work today.

My workplace is less than 1 mile away on completely flat roads, but since last spring I have been exploring increasingly long and convoluted ways of getting to work. My latest and favorite route has me heading up Cascadilla Park Rd. (see picture—this is my favorite Ithaca street, and it makes me think of the Italian Alps), a short, steep and absolutely beautiful road alongside the Cascadilla gorge, then through the Cornell campus, across the campus Fall Creek bridge, then up to Triphammer, past Community Corners to Warren Rd., and then over to the airport, down Dart, past the mall, down Oakcrest to Cayuga Heights Rd., and finally down Sunset and Remington to Lake Ave. and finally the high school. Phew! It's a 10 mile ride with over 800 ft. of vertical climbing, most of it in the first 2 miles. It's a great way to start the work day, and I was already reconciled to the notion that I had already taken this route for the last time of the season.

This morning I discovered that four days out of the saddle can really refresh you and make you somehow feel stronger. I have know idea how this works, but it certainly did in this case. My body is still in recovery mode and I only got 5 hours of sleep last night, yet I felt so good on this ride. I'm puzzled but very grateful for this phenomena.

Since February I have lost 33 pounds without having weight loss as a primary goal. I'm pretty happy about this, since I never thought I could lose this much weight over a number of years, let alone 9 months. I have used Wii Fit almost every day since February, and I think that the weigh-in is a critical factor contributing to this weight loss, as is some changes in my diet and (of course) lots of cycling up steep hills from March until now. At this point, I don't have strong feelings about losing more weight. My primary goals are becoming an even stronger rider and not gaining back any significant weight over the winter months. More than anything, I want to end the outdoor cycling season strong and keep the momentum going for the much less fun indoor cycling season.

The Southern Tier Bicycle Club, my intro to cycle touring and a buffer from bad times

It was either '76 or '77 when I first started riding with the Southern Tier Bicycle Club. I have so many fond memories of my experiences with this friendly bunch. This summer I cleaned out a bunch of stuff from my mom's house, and it wasn't surprising to me that one of the few objects that I didn't toss over the years was this patch. I think I need to frame it.

I don't know how I found out about the club, but one day I joined them on one of their shorter group rides, and I was hooked. According to their website, the group was formed in 1969. It's probably what motivated me to buy a helmet, as helmets were required equipment, and I haven't cycled without a helmet since, no exceptions. [I have very strong feelings about bike helmets—everyone should wear one at all times, unless you have a death wish. There is no good argument not to. If you ever wonder why so many kids don't wear helmets and continue on helmet-less as adults, just look at all of the adults around modeling poor behavior.]

The STBC members were incredibly kind and welcoming to this geeky and needy high school kid. They accepted me and my crappy bike with no reservations and soon I was going on rides every weekend. This is when I really started to learn how to ride with a group and pace myself over long stretches. I learned about how to shift in anticipation of hills, manage my cadence and keep hydrated. I also learned that riding with others could be so much fun. I recall lots of great conversations and joking around, and so many of the group rides were centered around fun activities like ice cream sampling and bar hopping (sadly I was excluded from the latter.) This was before performance clothing was regularly used, though some had bike shorts with real chamois. Cotton was the norm for me and most of the others.

Much of what I learned from club members came through observation and inquiry. I learned about a wide range of gear including racks and panniers, as well as the difference between frame materials and geometry. It was helpful to learn about what tools and supplies to haul, and how to quickly fix a flat roadside on a bike without quick release skewers. (Imagine having to carry wrenches with you and having to remove your wheel from the frame, fix the flat, then tighten up. This adds time, weight and frustration.) Some bike clubs are fairly ruthless if you break down, with most, if not all, riders continuing on while you take care of things. The STBC was the opposite. While there may have been a few fancypants racerboys who kept going, the vast majority of the group would patiently wait and help out.

The day I discovered that I suffered from hayfever and also got my first taste of rabbit was a memorable ride from Vestal to the Montrose PA area. As was often the case with club rides, the destination was someone's house. I really liked how members welcomed relative strangers to their homes. We ended up at someone's home with significant acreage. I can't remember if it was a family farm or not, but we were treated to a hay ride and a huge meal. Moments after the hay ride began, I started sneezing and it quickly became out of control. Everyone asked me if I had allergies and I had not idea that this was the case. I was miserable for the rest of the week, but the consolation was that I learned that grilled rabbit is actually quite tasty, rather like chicken!

In an earlier post, I noted how my bike was a mule for newspapers. Sunday papers were huge, and I routinely strapped 50+ pounds of paper around my shoulders and gingerly made my way to my route. One day I really payed the price for this long-term bicycle abuse. I was on a long-ish (50-mile) ride and on my way back home in downtown Binghamton, I hit a small pothole, heard a big, nasty clunking sound, and suddenly my rear wheel started grinding. It didn't take long to discover that I snapped my axle in half! My dad had to come to pick me up, and while that was the only time I needed to be rescued, my dad was none too pleased.

My most profound memory of STBC rides was my first century ('78 or '79), a trip from Vestal to Ithaca and back. The ride was significant for two reasons, the distance and the destination. I've been on lots of shorter rides that were more challenging, but your first century is usually a significant milestone. I had real doubts about being able to make that kind of distance, and I certainly wouldn't have taken on that challenge without the company of a supportive group. The ride went well, and I was completely blown away by Ithaca, a small city that I had never visited before that trip. I think we ate at Moosewood, and that experience got me started with vegetarianism. (I've been a vegetarian for 27 years now.) I fell in love with the town that I have called home for the last twelve years, and I can clearly trace my desire to want to live in Ithaca to that trip. I loved how Ithaca felt like a cohesive, vibrant locale, and the progressive politics on display was very appealing to me. (I was a fairly strident lefty, even as a teenager.) Also, in addition to the natural beauty of the city and surrounding area, I liked the compact footprint of the downtown area and the fact that the housing stock was older, well-maintained, and relatively free of vinyl and aluminum siding. When I finally got my first car, I would often take the long way home to Binghamton via Ithaca, just to visit my favorite small city. Yes, Ithaca certainly has its own issues (intolerance, piousness, too many people leave town), but it has been a wonderful place to call home.

If you are (or were) a member of the Southern Tier Bicycle Club and you happen across this blog, I want to publicly thank you for making my teenage years better! I was a pretty miserable kid for a number of reasons, and your kindness will never be forgotten. Feel free to comment.

My first ten speed, a crappy department store bike

It must have been 1976 when I bought my first ten speed. It was pretty crappy, but then again, I bought it with my newspaper money and was very proud. It was bright yellow and looked a bit like this machine. It was heavy and didn't shift that well, but it was my ticket to personal liberation. That bike allowed me to go on many long adventures with the Southern Tier Bicycle Club, which I will elaborate on in later posts, and I didn't buy a new bike until around '84.

I had a pretty big newspaper route with about 76 customers, and every day except for the snowiest of days, I biked to the garage where the newspapers were stored, stuffed my bags across both shoulders and pedaled off to the first house along my route. I perfected this really cool stunt where I ditched my bike on the yard and jumped off the bike. The poor bike endured all sorts of abuse, but I also taught myself rudimentary bike mechanics, thanks to a fantastic book called Anybody's Bike Book.

With this bike I started going on longer adventures, often with my friend Ted. My favorite destination was the Broome County Airport (now called Greater Binghamton Airport) and the Tri-Cities airport. Cars and airplanes were two of my biggest obsessions, and I loved to go to the airport and watch planes take off and land. I particularly liked hanging out at Tri-Cities, since there were exclusively small private propeller planes like Cessnas, and I could often get really close to the planes. The trip to Broome County Airport was longer, hillier and more challenging, and it was my introduction to hill climbing on a larger scale. The rolling hills in the Southern Tier and the Finger Lakes makes for some really challenging cycling and this is when I first started developing my cycling legs.

The most dramatic ride with Ted was a trip to the Broome County Airport happened on a day when my mother was scheduled for minor surgery. On the return trip from the airport, Ted was just ahead of me when he was suddenly chased by a dog. In his panic, he ended up kicking the dog, which resulted in the dog chasing after me instead and biting me in the ankle! I ended up in the same hospital as my mom with stitches and a tetanus shot. This was the second of my third (to date) cycling accidents, but it did little to dissuade me from biking. After that incident, I always carried a can of Halt with me and successfully used it to ward off dog challenges a number of times until I learned about the swinging bike pump technique.

Crummy photos of my Miyata 1000 touring bike, purchased in '86

Yeah, the photos do stink, but these are for just for reference purposes. This blog won't be chronological, so let's jump ahead to 1986. I just had a great touring bike stolen from my apartment. This is the machine I bought back then to replace that bike, and it was my main ride up until the spring of '09. Mostly original parts, including Shimano biopace chainrings.

Look at how tall the stem is! The frame was too small for me, but I was stubborn and decided to just make adjustments to accommodate the frame size, including the stem and the seatpost. That was a pretty bad idea in retrospect. I thought that I'd save weight by doing that, but what did it matter on those long tours hauling 70+ pounds.

History of carbon fiber bikes

Kestrel was the first company to mass-produce carbon fiber bike frames back in the late '80s.

Becoming aware of adult cycling

At a certain point in my early teen years I became aware that adults rode bikes competitively and for fitness and adventure, not just for a casual ride to the store. This was long before cycle racing was a known element in most parts of the U.S. This awareness came to me around 1974 or 1975, thanks to my neighbor John's dad. John's dad (also named John) had a Peugeot road bike which was one of the coolest things I ever saw. Hopefully the picture is an accurate representation of this bike...I'm sure the younger John can weigh in on this. Seeing John head out and return from his cycling adventures really made an impression on me, and made me want to do something similar. This was years before the movie Breaking Away was released (1979), a motion picture that really raised the profile of cycle racing in the U.S.

While most kids were content to ride around the neighborhood, I always wanted to explore beyond these artificial boundaries. When I lived in Kobe, Japan (1972-73 when I was between 10 and 11 years old), I adventured all over the city, exploring nooks and crannies without my folks worrying about me. They started worrying after one particularly wreckless adventure. I neglected to stop at a stop sign and rode right into traffic. It was a tiny car that hit me, and more damage was done to the car than to my bike. I went flying and sprained my ankle, while the poor driver had a big ol' dent in the front of his machine. I was overwhelmed with guilt for years to come after the man came to visit me with a giant fruit basket and many bows of apology.

That incident clearly made me more aware that I had to be responsible in traffic and follow rules of the road like everyone else. I honestly have no recollection if John's dad wore a helmet, but I was riding with a helmet by around '76, for sure.

John's dad make quite the impression. I must have peppered him with questions about his cycling adventures, but my childhood memories are unfortunately very spotty. See John's comments below about his dad.

Ten years old

When I was ten, I was back in the U.S., living in Endwell, NY, a sleepy suburb of Endicott, birthplace of IBM. I have such vivid memories of setting up races up and down our hilly streets. Helmets weren't even considered at this time, and I probably terrorized many drivers as we zoomed around. Mostly my friends Ron and Ted raced around the block and then did stunts in the Catholic church parking lot. We were really into skidding out and popping wheelies, but I remember that I was always most interest in going as fast as I could.

I have no recollection about what kind of bike I had. I do remember that Ron had the coolest bike, and that I was very jealous. It looked something like the photo.

I grew up without religion, and recall one time that Ted and Ron dared me to go in to the church and go to confessional. I was very reluctant, but I confessed to ten years of bad deeds, as well as never having gone to confessional. The priest must have been a bit confused.

Why start this blog in the first place?

Cycling has been a critical part of my identity since I was at least seven, some fourty years ago. Every few years I am reminded of this, particularly when I have a watershed cycling season like this one, 2009, the year I got my first road bike. (Why did I wait so long?) [upcoming posts: watershed cycling experiences]

I've thought so much about what cycling means to me for so long that now I decided that it is finally time to write about some of my most treasured road biking experiences, as well as reflect on my attempt to be a year-round cyclist with the help of my new trainer. Since I'm terrible at keeping journals, I thought that maybe the discipline of maintaining a blog would be somehow more attractive and easier.

This picture is from 1971. We lived in Japan for three years, while my dad took a job with IBM to help to develop a new plant. This was my first serious bike and I was so proud. This photo was taken at our apartment complex in Osaka. It was a 5-speed with some pretty awesome headlights and tail lights, as well as a generator. I was king of all the world.