January 2007

I think a train is a great way to transport oneself some distance from home for a ride. I am all for it. But I think those who do so need to be sensitive to those who use the train as a way to get to and from work. This morning I got on a train, just after 8:30AM and the bike car was almost full … and this was one of the first stops. Six of the 32 bike slots were taken up by gentlemen riding north to do a social ride. A couple  stops after I boarded the bike car was past capacity and it was standing room only. Fortunately the conductor was lax; they can refuse to allow more bikes to board if the bike car is at stated capacity. If the conductor had clamped down I would hope that the six recreational riders would have given up their spaces, deboarded, and waited for a later train, but that is just a wish. I think groups need to be aware that folks need the facilities to get to work and would schedule their rides accordingly.

I rarely have nutritional issues when riding, and I can count the number of times I have bonked on one hand over my several decades of life.  I was therefore a bit surprised when I bonked, seriously bonked, today.  I should have seen it coming; the events of the past few days were the perfect setup, and I overlooked them and went on the ride anyway.

Friday night we attended a dinner party, a late holiday celebration for the department in which my wife works.  Her cohort planned the event, a tasting menu affair at a French restaurant; the selected tasting menu had 5 meat courses and dessert.  A couple of window dressing vegetables, and about two tablespoons of mashed potatoes represented the non-protein part of the meal.  Due to the super-saturation of protein, my wife wanted a meat free and light day of eating on Saturday.  So going into this morning I had eaten very little in the way of usable calories over the previous 36 hours.  I did not worry too much as I was told today’s ride was going to be a four hour ‘light intensity’ ride.  Yea, right.

We started out heading for Page Mill Road.  I like climbing Page Mill, a bit over 8 miles with around 2000 ft. of net elevation gain though there is more climbing than that due to several descents.  At the top my wife told me we were heading south towards Highway 9, several more miles with a lot of rolling ups and downs and about 400 ft of net elevation gain.  The weather was nice enough for January, temperatures in the mid-50’s Fahrenheit, but I was still feeling the depletion of my energy stores.  We descended Highway 9, with temperatures in the high-40’s, with a great deal of caution; with all the cold weather and ice of the past couple of weeks the roads have been sanded on a number of occasions and there was quite a bit of sand in spots along the way.  About halfway down Highway 9 my wife tells me we are turning on Pierce Rd., which meant we would be going over Mt. Eden.  That equated into another two climbs, short but too much for my low blood sugar.  By the time I topped at Mt. Eden I was having trouble staying upright and knew that the best course of action was to head home, a journey of over 10 miles through the suburbs.  At home I rushed to ingest some calories: a cup of Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper soup followed by a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  It is now a couple of hours later and I am finally feeling my blood sugar level move back towards normal.  My new rule:  know the route two days in advance, and communicate the actual intensity level so I can modify nutrition appropriately.   Final stat: 46.2 miles and around 4000 ft of climbing.

The period from the end of daylight savings time until a month or so past the winter equinox is my least favorite part of the year. Getting up when it is dark, getting off work when it is dark all takes a mental toll. While I enjoy riding at night sometimes, it is more of a challenge so doing it daily gets to be somewhat of a physical and mental grind. For the past week it has been relatively light as I leave work at about 5:30PM, not bright but light enough that my headlight with autosensing switch has not been turning on during my ride to the train station 2 miles away. It buoys the spirit to know that the days are lengthening and I can soon look forward to getting home before it is fully dark. Hail to the daylight!

A month into my new commute I now have a more or less regular route from the train station to my office. It is direct but not straight as I have found that some sections of road are better than others and I try to optimize the amount of good pavement (not much) and minimize the amount of bad pavement with large cracks or potholes (all too much in this city). At one point I cross a one-way street that leads directly to the freeway a couple of blocks to the east. My sense of self-preservation has me stopping at this intersection to make sure that none of the commuters barreling to the freeway is within striking distance. Every day this week there has been a police car, with an actual officer sitting behind the wheel, parked at this intersection as I make my way to the office. I have the feeling he is waiting to stop me and lecture me on the dangers of not coming to a complete stop if I dare to cross the intersection without putting a foot down first. I have had the last laugh, so far.

Living in a temperate, mediterannean climate it is rare to see ice up close near sea-level. Almost every winter there are one or more times that the local hills, climbing to just over the 4200 ft elevation, are white-capped. But it is rare for the cold to be severe enough for ice to form at elevations less than 100 ft. The past week has not been normal; an arctic cold mass has been entrenched, with night-time temperatures several degrees below the freezing mark even in the most moderate microclimes. I have pulled our orchids into the garage for the duration to keep them from freezing. This morning as I left home I had to be cautious as there was a huge ice patch on the road a couple hundred feet east of our driveway. At work I enter through a back fire entrance, no cars allowed. Since no vehicles have been through the entrance I was faced with crossing several small puddles covered with a layer of ice this morning. After I passed I looked back to see mounds of slush on either side of my tire tracks. A strange weather pattern, one I hope will end soon.

I had a BOB Yak trailer at one point in the not too distant past. I bought it for touring, but used it mostly for around town cargo trips. The BOB has its strengths, and some serious drawbacks. With a single wheel it needs some help at all times the bike is not moving and users soon learn how to jacknife the bike to create a stable self-standing configuration. Another drawback is the design puts weight on the tongue, i.e., the rear axle, which causes a number of ancillary issues. I sold the BOB two years ago to make room for some renovations to my condo, and then for my wife. Since moving to a house 15 months ago I have wanted to get a trailer to make my shopping expeditions more efficient, i.e., be able to carry more on one loop trip.

Friday I took delivery of a Burley Nomad trailer. It is a two wheel design meant to put more weight on the wheels and less on the tongue, so it should not have the same set of problems as the Yak. The first problem was a quality control issue at Burley; the roll-bar that connects the two sides at the top is supposed to be threaded; mine was not. Burley is sending a replacement due to arrive this week. Other than needing to work around the lack of threads on the roll bar it was easy to setup the Nomad; I had it road ready in less than 30 minutes. On the road a second problem became apparent; the hitch, which attaches to the chainstay and seatstay of the left side, is a bit wide leading to a tendency for my left heel to clip the hitch on each pedal stroke. I quickly adopted a modified pedal stroke and was able to continue without further issues. I took the trailer for a 20 mile loop. First stop was Sports Basement for some long sleeve shirts. I then headed southwest to Trader Joes and Peets; not the closer one in Sunnyvale, but the further ones at Homestead and Foothill in Los Altos. From Trader Joes I collected two large bags of groceries for the trailer, and a pound of ‘New Guinea’ coffee from Peets. From there I headed to Grant Rd for the return home. I found the Nomad easy to manuever, much easier than the Yak. The Yak tended to pull on the rear axle when starting; the unloaded Nomad is virtually undectable when starting, and even with about 30 pounds of cargo there was much less ‘pull’ than with the unloaded Yak. It will take some experience to get used to backing up the trailer, and I have to make sure to take the slow speed corners wide enough so that I do not scrape the wheel skewer. The only other negatives noted during this maiden voyage was that one reflector worked its way loose, and there was excessive rattling noise, perhaps caused by the loose reflector. More comments after I get out and give it a bit more time on the road, especially a hill or two.

As a side note, both trailers mentioned are made in the US by small companies.

Part of the new job I started last month is carrying a laptop between work and home. I may need the transportable aspect at some point, hence the choice of a laptop, though not at the present. I could leave the laptop in the office, but there have been recent thefts of laptops from offices in that business park. The upshot is that I transport the rather large and heavy laptop to and from work every day. At first I tried to carry it encased in a neoprene case, for protection, within one of my Ortlieb Back Roller Classic panniers. The bottom third of the pannier was, alas, not as wide as the laptop so the computer ended up supported by the sidewalls of the bag and I feared for the longevity of both. So for the past three weeks I have been carrying the laptop, and my rain gear, etc., in an old REI backpack. That solution worked, but my shoulders have been complaining.

Arkel is a French Canadian manufacturer of quality panniers and handlebar bags. I have cycle toured with their panniers front and rear, and with an Arkel large handlebar bag. I had known that they had commuter bags but did not think they had something that would fit my laptop. A couple of weeks back I met a guy with an Arkel Briefcase Bag. We talked, compared laptops, and I came away convinved one would work for me. I now have it in hand and have three days of experience with it. It has performed admirably so far. In the cycle touring community there are generally two knocks on Arkel bags. The first is that the use Cordura fabric, which while it can be made water resistant it is never as waterproof as the dry-bag technology Ortlieb panniers. One can resolve much of the issue with the optional rain cover from Arkel; I have them for my Arkel panniers and handlebar bag, and will have one for the briefcase in a few days. The second knock on Arkel has been the hook system. Arkel hooks have traditionally been made from aluminum and the edges tend to scrape the finish from the tubing of the racks. Arkel has a new, modified clamp system; the aluminum hooks are covered with nylon to alleviate scrapes, and the aluminum lock has been replaced with nylon cams. Very clever, and efficient clamping system, something I appreciate as trying to attach the bag while the train is pulling into the station.

I love riding at night, especially on quiet streets or paths away from the traffic. Tonight was such a night; the air was cool but not cold, the winds were still, and I was able to take some relatively quiet streets for most of the ride from the train station to home. I rode along in the quiet, just the sound of my tires whirring against the pavement, with not much to look at except the small strip of pavement lit by my lights. Perhaps it is the lack of stimuli for the senses after a day of too many stimuli that I like. Whatever it is, there is an inner peace during these times.

Today is the start of the local Early Bird race series, which are a number of short races preceded by skills clinics. My wife and some of her teammates were committed to going over for today’s crit clinic and then going on a training ride into the nearby hills. Most of the participants decided to ride to the clinic even though it was on the opposite side of the bay, meaning either a trip around the southern horn then north or a bridge crossing. My wife had never crossed the Dumbarton bridge, the southernmost non-railroad bridge across San Francisco Bay, on a bicycle so I was enlisted as a riding partner. We left early this morning and made our way north through Mountain View, part of Palo Alto, then through the center of East Palo Alto to the bridge access trail. At this point, well ahead of schedule, we decided to wait for her coach who was supposed to be riding in from a bit further north. After a few minutes wait we saw another rider approaching; as the rider passed us my wife and her recognized each other as teammates and that rider informed us that the coach would not be coming. So we headed over the bridge, through the San Francisco Wildlife refuge and turned north and rode the final mile to the business park where the clinic and races were being held.

After meeting with a few of her teammates and socializing for a brief period, my wife headed to the clinic and I rode off through the edge of the town of Fremont. I rode for about 6-7 miles before returning to the business park. I arrived back a few minutes before the end of the clinic so I leaned the bike against a curb and walked around the area. I came back to find a rider who introduced himself as Richard admiring my bike. It turns out he has a racing bike made by the same builder, Jon Tallerico. We chatted for a few minutes before he had to leave, which coincided with the return of the women from the clinic. My wife and two of her teammates made a quick decision to ride the race which almost immediately followed the clinic, so I had another 40 minutes of waiting and talking to the members of the team who chose not to race today. We watched the pack come by lap after lap, with the three members of my wife’s team holding the lead of the 15 rider field most of the time. When they came around the last corner it was obvious that one of her teammates, Jen, was going to win as she had a substantial lead; it turned out she was pulled out (’slingshot’) by my wife. I have now given them the nicknames of Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton, Jr. (for those who do not understand, it refers to two characters in the movie ‘Talladega Nights’, one a perpetual winner, the other his friend who sets him up).

The husband of one team member had joined the group while the race was in progress. With the race completed we all decided to do an en masse bridge crossing to the Three Brothers Taqueria in East Palo Alto for a post-race recovery lunch. During the ride across the bridge it dawned on me that the other husband, Dick, and his wife were the couple that got married on Mt. Hamilton on New Years day last year, which they confirmed. The story made for some good lunch time conversation. After lunch we all prepared to head our separate ways. My wife and I headed south, along with the other couple, one team member headed north, and the rest headed back to the bridge as they had left cars at the race location. We arrived back home having ridden 48 miles (me) and 65 miles (my wife), all on a clear, beautiful day

My wife has a fierce competitive spirit. In the past she fed this ‘need’ a steady diet of basketball, then triathlons. A back problem has sidelined her from those activities, so her new ‘fix’ is cycle racing. In 2006 she raced three races, two road races and then a crit. She has now joined a team, will soon have a closet full of team kit wear, goes on training rides with her teammates regularly, and has planned much of our schedule for the next eight months around the Northern California-Nevada racing schedule. As a cyclist her strength is speed on the flats, her biggest weakness is hill climbing (which is my strength); in the past she was so averse to hills that she complained about recreational rides with too much verticality. So it was a surprise when she announced that she wanted to race the first event on the 2007 NCNCA schedule, the San Bruno Hill Climb, a 3.5 mile jaunt to the top of San Bruno Mountain which is just south of San Francisco. My role in this was as support team and cheerleader. We awoke early on New Years morning, packed the car, and drove to the start line on the eastern base of the hill. Here she registered for the race, then met up with a couple of teammates for a warm-up session on the trainers. I put on the iPod and walked around scoping out the bikes; most were modern carbon-fiber, titanium, or lightweight aluminum so I was pleasantly surprised to find a member of the AMD Masters team riding a fillet brazed ‘Steve Rex’ custom made steel bike. I asked the owner about it and he admitted to being a bit of ’steel luddite’. The race got off on time, at 10 AM, which left me sitting in the parking lot with my iPod and thoughts. I was not alone for that long, as the first riders were returning within a half-hour and my wife and her teammates returned about 35 minutes or so after the start. One of the teammates had kicked butt and won their category, leading to a happy crew. I was coerced into a promise to race the event in 2008, so I may have to find a new light bike and do some more hill climbing ….. or hope they forget the promise.