Cycle Commuting

I had been talking about it, and threatening to do it for a couple of years. Yesterday I did it. I got fixed. Or rather, I ‘fixed’ my commute bike, a late 80’s Trek 400. The bike has had an issue with chain suck this past year, leading to several broken spokes. I was getting tired of the problems, and wanted to spend more time on a fixie to smooth out the pedaling a bit.

The transformation while not complicated was not without its issues. First issue was the track hub; it was spaced for a 120mm OLN rear end, the Trek was 126mm. A couple of 3mm spacers solved that easily enough. The bigger issue was the crankset. I had planned to use the RPM crank that came on my Fuji track bike. I had replaced it on the Fuji when I was having issues with snapping the chain which seemed to be caused by an eccentric chainring, a problem I wrote about earlier. I put a new, nice TA chainring, but when I mounted the crankset on the Trek there was still significant eccentricity; apparently the problem was not the chainring but rather the crankset itself. Shyte! So I went back to the old Sakae crankset that came on the Trek and mounted the TA ring on that. All seems to be fine now. Tomorrow it gets its maiden commute run; I may shorten the chain 1 link, or I might go to a smaller rear cog and shorten the chain a bit more. But all those minor details that can be worked out over time. For now it is time to put some miles on the bike.

A few years ago I read an article, I forget where, which said something to the effect that there was no such thing as a road bike or a mountain bike, there was just bike. The point being, do not get hung up on having a specialized bike for each purpose, rather just use the bike you have at the moment to fill your needs. Of course there are limitations to this philosophy, e.g., I would hate to slog through a boulder strewn mudhole of a trail on a carbon fiber bike with 20mm wide tires, but to a degree any bike can fill a range of purposes.

A corollary to the statement above is that there is just cyclist, not road cyclist, not mountain cyclist, not commute cyclist, etc. I am a cyclist. I ride on roads, I ride on dirt (a little less, perhaps), I ride on the track, I ride for recreation, I tour on a bike, I commute on a bike, and I use a bike as a transport mechanism for cargo as well as myself. There are too many labels to apply, but just one will do: cyclist.

As a cyclist, I ride where I have to ride to accomplish whatever task is appropriate. Most of the time I want to get from point A to point D, and the route chosen is bound to a large extent by those two points, the origin and the destination. I do not choose points A and D because of the type of route that connects them; point A is where I am and point D is where I want to go, and the route is then chosen to connect the dots as effectivley as possible.

The current issue of Momentum has an article on riding in cities based upon a limited survey done by a researcher in Vancouver, BC. The article hints that city planners and cycling advocates should work towards implementing the preferences from this limited study, bike-only paths and multi-use paths (MUPs), rather than focusing on accommodations in the current road infrastructure. The problem with that type of focus, towards paths, is that until the path network is more or less as dense as the current road network the use of such paths becomes a route-centric view of cycling rather than an origin and destination centric view. In other words, my trip now goes from point B to point C because a path exists, even though I really want to get from A to D. How do I get from A to B and then from C to D? How much longer is the A-B, B-C, C-D combination then a more direct road-based trip from A-D? Factor into this discussion the fact that MUPs are among the most dangerous places to cycle, so if the objective is safe carriage then we are really talking of bicycle specific accommodations (paths) if the objective is to create a ’safe environment’ to foster cycling rather than the illusion of one. Creating an origin-destination centric network of such paths seems to be a rather daunting, and expensive, task. So I have to ask, can we afford to insist on separate accommodations, fighting for scarce resources to create a limited network of routes that do not get us from our origins to our destination just so we can be separated from other traffic? Or do we accommodate, learn the skills necessary to share the roads, teach others those skills, lobby to get better driver education and testing, and work to foster a better environment with the resources currently available? I am a cyclist, and my answer is I want to get from point A to point D and I will choose the path that accomplishes the goal today. See you on the road, trail, track, or path, whichever is close and available at the moment.

There seems to be a secret that some CalTrain bike commuters have figured out, but quite a few have not. I ride home on a bullet train, a train that is often quite full with regular threats that we might not be allowed on the one, standard bike car at the north of the train. Myself and a couple of others in the cognoscente usually place ourselves about 50-70 ft south of where the scheduled bike car, the one at the north end of the train, generally sits when the train comes to a stop. Occasionally another bike commuter will pass and ask why we are sitting so far away from everyone else. Occasionally one of these commuters will join us, and every once in a while one catches on to what we are doing and wants to know the ’secret’.

For those who ride CalTrain and have not figured out the secret formula, here it is (Note: this works for trains using Gallery cars, only, not those using Bombardier cars). About half the time the train has two bike cars, not just one, and if the second bike car is present it is usually the second car from the south end of the train. All of the Gallery equipment bike cars are cab cars, cars that can be used to operate the train. As such, they have side mirrors, and are the only cars on the train that do have side mirrors. Sometimes, as in the picture, they have been folded in. The knowledgeable commuter can scan an incoming train for cars that have side mirrors to see if there is a second, less crowded, bike car available. Our placement on the platform is a mid-point between the guaranteed north end bike car, and the potential mid-train second bike car. We scan, then move the appropriate direction on the platform depending on what we see as the train is approaching.

The Wife had to be to work early this morning for a conference call with co-workers in India, so after fixing her breakfast and cleaning up I was well ahead of schedule for my normal departure to CalTrain. So I decided to ride the entire commute and forego the train for today. The commute route is a Tour de Southern Peninsula; a bit of Sunnyvale, then I have to traverse

• Mountain View
• Palo Alto
• Menlo Park
• Atherton
• Redwood City
• San Carlos
• Belmont

before ending up in San Mateo. Lots of ‘burbs! Overall it is not too bad of a route, except for that section of Middlefield between 8th Ave and Jefferson in Redwood City. Far too narrow, way too many driveways and side-roads, more than too many parking spaces, all compounded by too many pot-holes.

This morning started off less than ideal. About two miles from home I realized I had left my water bottle on the kitchen counter. Shite! Easy to correct; I stopped at a gas station/mini-mart and purchased a bottle for the trip. At the intersection of Whipple and Arguello in Redwood City as I was taking a drink from the aforementioned bottle, with left foot clipped in and a 15 lb bag hanging off the left side of the rear rack, it became obvious that I had not sufficiently triangulated the body and the bike slowly dropped over to the left. Shite, shite, shite! I lifted the bike back up and proceeded. Then about a mile from the office, right in front of the San Mateo police station I heard a sound coming from my rear wheel. Was it another blowout? Nope, tire looks fine. Ahhh, the rubbing of the rim against the brake pad give a clue; it was a pling! Or more correctly, two plings! Guess I know what one task for this weekend will be; the spoke replacement weave.

It must have been four years ago or so, this time of year, I got a phone call while cooking dinner from my best friend (now The Wife for those following the trail here). She was stranded at the corner of Cuesta and Miramonte in Mountain View, the point to which she had ridden on her commute that night before the ‘bottle cage battery’ for her light had died completely. It was a call for the SAG wagon as she had no desire to traverse across Mountain View in the dark with no means of illumination. I put aside dinner for a while to go pick her up, and to start a conversation that went on for a couple of weeks regarding strategies for commute lights.

The solution we came up with was simple, if a bit spendy. I outfitted her commute bike with a new front wheel, one built around the Schmidt Original Nabendynamo (SON) generator hub. I added a pair of halogen lights, a Busch & Müller Lumotec Oval and a Schmidt E6. The Lumotec provides a nice general light with a lot of spillover while the Schmidt has a bright, focused beam. The Lumotec has an LED that is charged while riding to provide some light while stopped at stop signs and lights, but for good measure I added a small CatEye EL-400 battery light as an additional light source and emergency flashlight. The setup has worked fine, almost flawless minus a couple of burned bulbs in almost 4 years of use. With this setup installed, The Wife needs to flip one small switch when it gets dark and she has sufficient light to get her home without worrying if her batteries will die along the way.The setup I bought for my best friend worked so well that I outfitted my commuter with a similar setup. About two years ago I swapped that setup over to my touring bike and outfitted the commuter with a generator light rig built around the much less expensive Shimano hub. Both work great, and I find it useful to have lighting at the flip of a switch any time of the year. We used them two and half years ago when touring in France and Spain to provide light in the numerous tunnels we had to negotiate.

The generator hub seems to evoke a lot of interest. I probably field an average to at least two questions a week on CalTrain about the hub and lights. The most common follow-up question, after ‘is that a generator hub?’ is ‘how much drag does it produce?’ The answer is ’slight’ (Shimano hub) to ‘barely notice it’ (SON hub); as someone who used to commute with a sidewall generator I understand the concern but drag is not an issue. About the only thing that will improve on the generator hub setup for commuting, in my opinion, is having reliable LED based lights that can be powered off the generator. That would negate the relatively minor burned-out bulb issue and make the setup virtually maintenance free.

I did the dishonorable thing yesterday and drove to work.  My legs have been screaming for a few days, too little nutrition and too much pedaling.  So I gave them a break.  I hate to drive; too many incompetent, frustrated, and/or angry drivers on the road that I have to deal with, and that causes stress.

Last time I drove to work I noticed that the HOV (’carpool’) lane has really become the ‘Prius’ lane.  Somewhere between 30% and 50% of the cars in the HOV lane that morning were Prius’, most with a single occupant.  Today’s ‘RoadShow‘ column in the Mercury Spews is dominated with hybrid car/carpool lane questions.  Some folks complaining they cannot get Carpool lane stickers, others complaining that anyone can, etc.   Everyone knows that most folks are buying hybrids primarily to get the carpool lane stickers to try to speed up their commutes.

My commute is roughly 20 miles if I drive, almost exclusively on US 101.  I can almost hit 101 with a rock thrown from our backyard, and there are two interchanges within a mile of work.  My office sits in a building fronting 101, less than 1/2 mile from the nearest interchange.  Lots of freeway, and if I drive straight it still takes an average of 50-55 minutes each way to do the commute during the late commute hours.   Most days I ride my bike to CalTrain, CalTrain to one of the three stations within 2 miles of the office, then ride to the office.  Average commute time is right around 65-70 minutes if I get a limited/local train, down to 55-60 minutes if I get a ‘bullet’ train.  Occasionally I will ride the entire distance (22 miles) between home and office, or vice-versa.  Average time for those trips is around 90 minutes, mostly because of all the stop signs and stop lights.

Not much time saving for me if I get in a car instead of using the train and bicycle option.  Not even a compelling difference between driving and riding the entire distance.  If the MTC could get a good bike boulevard going south on the peninsula, cutting out a lot of the stop signs and signals, then riding the entire way would get close enough to the driving time to do it substantially more often.

My commuter bike is an 80’s era Trek; steel frame, takes punishment, carries the loads.  Been a good bike.  It does have horizontal dropouts and every once in a while I start verbally musing on converting it to a fixed gear.  The Wife, who had a healthy fear of fixes has been opposed.  I think too much of her fixie knowledge comes from when she lived in SF and watched that breed known as the Bicycle Messenger careen around on fixies sans brakes, weaving in and out of that traffic insanity.  She has suggested a single speed, but I would prefer fixed … though I would put on a flip/flop fixed/free hub just to keep the options open.

This morning, for the third time this year I suffered a major case of chain suck on the commuter.   Not sure what is happening.  In all cases I have been approaching a red light, start to coast, and have some serious chain suck that whips the chain around causing all sorts of mischief.  The first two incidents resulted in spokes getting smashed and cut.  Todays seems to have been more benign; only damage from a cursory look is one chain link that has been munged, causing some jumping between cogs on the rear as the munged link skips across.    But it happened at a nasty intersection (Mathilda and Moffett Park Drive in Sunnyvale), momentarily forcing me to stop in a lane during the heavy morning commute.   Once again I am dusting off the proposal; perhaps it is time to ‘get fixed’ for the commute.

In the not too distant past highway projects were initiated with the primary goal of moving motorized vehicular traffic from point A to point B as quickly as possible without much thought about the impacts on neighborhoods or other forms of transport. In some places that still happens today. Over the past thirty some odd years two such projects have created a triangle of isolation in northern Santa Clara county, a triangle some have called the ‘Golden Triangle’ while others have dubbed it the ‘Bermuda Triangle’.

It all started with the conversion of US Highway 101 in the area from a highway to a freeway. Some roads that had crossed the highway were blocked on both sides of the now freeway. In the late 80’s and early 90’s California Highway 237 was converted from a highway to a freeway. Again, some roads were blocked on both sides, a precious few got under/overpass connectivity, and even fewer still got access ramps to the freeways. The roads with access ramps to these freeways, all generally north-south roads, became de facto expressways, carrying volumes of motorized vehicles at usually high speeds to the freeways. Sidewalks and/or bicycle lanes along these corridors were afterthoughts at best, often left out or neglected as the goal of traffic engineers was to move maximum numbers of autos in the shortest period of time. Automobile LoS (Level of Service) was king. The upshot of this was that alternative modes of transport in this area became difficult to impossible. And the neighborhoods caught in this triangle became isolated to a degree; the only sane way out, or so most think, is in an automobile and even then it is often a harrowing experience trying to enter heavy traffic in a 45MPH zone when actual average speeds are often much, much higher. Forget about the poor guy in the wheelchair, like the one I saw trying to go south on Mathilda over the 101 overpass a while back. He risks his life to get to the south side of the freeway where all the services are located, then will have to do another ‘Frogger’ expedition to return home.

Some relief now looks to be in sight. Sunnyvale plans on building two bridges, one over California 237 and the other over US 101, both aligned with Borregas Ave.  Borregas was a major north-south corridor through the area in the pre-freeway era and now mostly a quiet neighborhood street south of 237 and a corridor of light industry north of 237. The bridges will be built to move pedestrians and cyclists and skaters and all sorts of non-motorized transport across the great dividing lines we call freeways. The grades will be gentle, all ADA compliant with nothing greater than 5%. Curves will be broad and wide so that tandems and trailers can use the bridges easily. And construction should start this fall, I hope. After a delay for federal review, a delay reportedly caused by heightened oversite in the wake of the “Big Dig” fiasco, the project went to bid last month, three bids were received, and while they exceeded engineer estimates they are within budget and after due diligence review the City Council will be asked to approve a contract sometime in the next few weeks. The only ‘negative’ news is that the desired ‘fancy fencing’ that had been planned would cost about $2.3M extra so plain old ‘projectile’ chain link will be used instead. I was thinking how nice the bridges would be as I crossed US 101 at Fair Oaks last night, with the shoulder disappearing near the top of the overpass then finding a constant line of cars exiting from the freeway into a new right-hand lane that I would have to ease into at the bottom.   It will be so much nicer when I can just cruise up Borregas and cross on a bridge without exhausted commuters in cars jockeying for space, without having to deal with 4 or 6 lanes of exhaust spewing traffic doing 40, 50, 60 MPH.   I plan on being one of the first over the bridges, and plan on pulling the trailer, just because it will be possible.

A new issue of Momentum, the ‘Magazine for Self-Propelled People’, was in yesterday’s mail stack. We had some fun during breakfast this morning reviewing the ‘Field Guide to Vancouver Cyclists’. We recognize quite a few and can identify with parts of some classifications. Only question is, should ‘Messengers’ be a subspecies of ‘Fixie Riders’?

It is 22 miles from home to the office, or vice-versa. The normal commute day is ride to the train station, CalTrain to San Mateo, ride to the office, then the reverse to get home. Once in a while I do the full 22 miles on the homeward end. I had not done the morning commute the full distance, mostly due to the fact that there are no shower facilities at the office and I have compassion for my co-workers. Since today was forecast to be cool and foggy I decided to do the front-end commute to the office this morning, taking it a bit easy so that in combination with the cool air I would not be too funky when I arrived for the work day. Things went more or less as planned, though the headwinds from Menlo Park north had me working a bit harder than scripted.

So I am ready for that easy commute home, using CalTrain for most of the garbage miles. The office is halfway between Hillsdale station and San Mateo, and which way I head is usually dependent on when I can get out relative to Baby Bullets on the schedule. If I can get out on time it is south to Hillsdale for the 5:38 bullet to Mountain View; later and it is north to San Mateo for the 5:57 bullet to Sunnyvale (we live more or less between the MV and Sunnyvale stations, so either works). Tonight I got out on time for the earlier train and did a fast ride over to Delaware, south across 25th and through the Bay Meadows parking lot to Hillsdale station. I crossed over to the west side of the station to wait the 8 minutes or so for the train. A couple of minutes before it was due I could hear its horn when the signals at the station started ringing, a sign that the northbound bullet is coming through. As the northbound train came through the station I could see the southbound train coming across 25th Ave … then both trains came to a halt just south of 25th. Not a good sign I thought to myself. Then I see someone moving along the east side of the northbound train, hear its horn blowing and it starts up and rolls north across 25th then comes to a stop again. Shyte! Then the sirens start blaring, from every direction it seems. Police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, all seen racing north towards the crossing. I knew it was bad, and that train traffic would be halted for a while. And the fact that the northbound train had moved told me that the southbound train was the one involved, so southbound trains would be held up much longer; much, much longer.

This is where as a cycle commuter I have an advantage. I felt sorry for those who had no other form of transport at hand and were to be left to wait until police allowed CalTrain to start moving the trains again. I put my helmet on and started for the ramp down on the east side of the station when a young lady approached and asked if I was riding home. Affirmative, I say. She asked which way I was going and I point south, which she took as a wise-ass response. A few more questions and it was obvious she too wanted to ride home rather than wait for what could be hours for the train. But she has lived in the area for less than a year and is not all that familiar or comfortable with the route to Mountain View where she lives. So I invite her to join me and we had a nice pleasant ride south. It turns out she did join the club to which The Wife belongs shortly after moving to the area, used to be an MTB racer but has converted to being a roadie, and is in the same job field as the wife. I had not planned on riding home tonight, but given the circumstances it worked out for the better. Glad I had my own ‘wheels’. Tomorrow I will commiserate with my co-worker Kurt who catches the 6:07 train from Hayward Park, has no other form of tranport, and has no family in the area. I suspect he had to sit at the train station for hours before he could get home tonight.

Update:  Yikes, my co-worker Kurt took a taxi home … from San Mateo to Sunnyvale.  Hate to think what that cost!  So glad I had the bike.