$40 For what?

A chain. Bicycle chain. Specifically a 10 speed Wipperman nickel-plated chain which frankly could double as jewelry. I'm incapable of spending that much, I just had my friendly LBS owner build up a two year old Interloc with Ultegra-9 for racing. I picked up an SRAM chain for $17 on sale and was quite proud of myself, but in the days of Buycycling Magazine our thinking has shifted until two cents a mile for the chain wear seems OK. The really interesting thing is that even with $5000 bikes, $50 tires and so on it's still way cheaper than operating a car.

Which is weird. Regular guys would never layout big bucks on a two-wheeler with no engine, but not blink at $2500 annually for depreciation on a pretty ordinary automobile. Then there's the small matter of gasoline.

Quick, before all the cars show up!

The rumor mill has it that GMR will reopen to automobile traffic soon. It's scheduled to happen this weekend but with any luck LA county public works will run behind. We've enjoyed a couple years on this one without automotive traffic, and that's a great ride. Even with cars, it's nice. In Glendora just west of the intersection of Sierra Madre and Valley Center you find GMR. Just head north. You climb steadily about 2500' in ten miles to a fork. This is the ride you get if you go left (north, remaining on GMR) at the fork. At the bottom you make a left onto East Fork Road and then another left on the 39 gets you down the mountain. The whole loop is around forty miles and almost all of it is in the mountains. The only gnarly part is along the 39, where traffic can be problematic.

Lose Weight Now!

My wife has pointed out something interesting and possibly useful. Diets don't work, but everyone we know who has switched to bicycle commuting has lost weight and kept it off. In some cases people can eat more and stay slim when biking even ten miles daily. So what we really need is "the Bicycle Commuter's Diet" a fad diet which has more info on finding passable routes to work than it does on specious endocrinology. In fact, given the failure rate of other dieting regimens chances are this would really catch on since it would generally succeed.

The day after the riotously successful "Bike to Work Day" an NPR reviewer told us all about her harrowing 4 mile journey (each way!) to work and dutifully recorded traffic noise and her reactions along with an interview with a very experienced, as well as tolerant, bike commuter. My reaction was, of course, "four miles! finally you figured out that's prime biking distance!" You wouldn't even need to break a sweat and it should take 20-25 minutes at the most leisurely pace. Less time than it takes to park.

Regarding commuting, I have something to recommend. My wife and I both have Carradice SQR seat bags (available at Harris and others, made in England). These critters are huge. One evening I had to bring home dinner for me and my son and found that two Yoshinoya Beef/Chicken combos fit inside. I never have that moment any more prior to a long ride when I have to decide whether to be cold or have to stuff warmers and a windbreaker into my jersey pockets. Need to carry extra water? Throw in a couple bottles. One warning, the side netting on the cordura model can disgorge its contents on bumpy roads. I still like the ruggedness of the material, but my wife prefers the classic cotton duck with side pockets which close securely.

Power to the Pedaler

Power meters are expensive things and your average Joe may not want to go through the fiddly setup procedures, especially for things like the Polar unit. But getting an idea about power output is a useful tool, so here's one way. Find a standard climb which takes about twenty minutes (about the amount of time a reasonably fit person can sustain effort at the lactate limit (well, one who's my age)) and keep track of your progress. Around here we have such a climb, from Sierra Madre up to a campground called Chantry Flat. From the gate at the north end of Santa Anita Avenue to the gore point at the parking lot is 5km and gains 366m of elevation, and it is a very consistent grade which only flattens a little at the top.

I've compiled a table for estimating average power for the course. The estimate is crude and based on the fact the most people don't go very fast up a 7.5% grade. Time in minutes is across the top, and mass (including bike) in kg down the left side. The supplied .kmz actually starts below the gate at the intersection of Sierra Madre Blvd. Have fun!

Chantry Power Table
Chantry Google Earth file

Verdugo Hills

This is mainly an experiment. I've started using Google's Webpage Creator because it's the only free webhosting I trust. If this works out I can record more rides using my GPS and publish them for download. This will be incentive to organize the ones I have. So heres the link:

http://allaroundcycler.googlepages.com/Verdugo.kmz

You'll notice my wrong turn that went to a water tower, steepest paved road I've ever seen.

Bike to Work Week Will Not Be Televised!

I work at a university (Institute of Technology, actually) and you'd think that Bike to Work Week would be a big deal. The person organizing things did a good job of conveying all the info about city, county and state level activities, but there was a surprisingly high level of apathy around the campus. The Institute did it's part this year, they started charging for parking. Unfortunately, they picked a year when the raise pool for staff workers was particularly small. This was in turn due, in part, to construction which costed more than expected. The biggest project - a parking lot!

Things do go in circles.

Not For Off Road Use

We all know people who can't imagine spending lots of cash on a bike when you can just go to the Mega-Mart and get a dual suspension 21-speed mountain bike for $200. Tell them to check the fine print. Specifically look for a tag that states "Not for off-road use". This should discourage them. All too often it doesn't.

Above Sierra Madre there's a place called Chantry Flats which is a starting point for a number of hiking and biking trails that branch out all over the San Gabriels. I was scoping out the singletrack to Hoegee Camp (nice, another story however) and on my way back I was watching the Sheriff's rescue helicopter flying low near Chantry. It ducked into a canyon and disappeared from my view and when I came around the next bend, there it was, hovering right at eye-level. This was an impressive sight. The heli was no chintzy two-person bubble job, but rather it was a Winnebago with rotors. Two stories high it was, with three crew members I could see from my vantage point.


I rode on in spite of the brisk wind this monster created up the canyon walls and came upon a young guy minding three department store mountain bikes. One of his friends was at the bottom of the gulch with a broken leg and the others were helping extricate her. The local volunteer search and rescue guys were having the time of their lives putting things right. Perhaps the crash wasn't the fault of the bike, but I'd rather have quality brakes and shocks which actually improve my control ove rwhich way the bike would be going next.

Going Bowling

In Pasadena the Rose Bowl is an institution dating back to 1922 (the game is older, we're talking about the stadium). In the heyday of six day racing there was a wooden track which could be temporarily installed and the races drew huge crowds. Off and on over the years circuit races of various lengths have been run around and near the stadium which sits in an arroyo at the western end of the city. On Tuesdays and Thursdays during daylight savings local racers and other weirdos gather at 6pm to go ten 5km laps around the golf course.

In the 70's the ride used to be downright renegade. Two stop signs were blown per lap, and there was a nasty right turn into traffic on the south end of the course. Although the ride is still not sanctioned by anyone, it is now at least quasi-legal. If you ride around the golf course clockwise there are no stop signs and, of course, only right turns. The old right turn at the bottom is now a "Y" merge that maintains the right lane, although both rights at the south end have yield signs in the cyclist's lane. A lane for joggers is clearly marked. This doesn't keep them from running outside the rather spacious area, or running opposite the indicated (counterclockwise) direction. It seems to me that if a hundred or so guys were bearing down on me on bikes at 50kph I'd like to (a) see them and (b) stay the hell out of the way, but there's no accounting for taste.

So whatever happens is your own lookout. Potential liabilities abound. Crashes, when they occur, are of epic proportions. People still do it in large numbers. To give you an idea, one of the laps Thursday (typically easier than Tuesday) went off in 6:45, so everyone's getting a pretty fierce lactate threshold workout. At various times in the past I've sworn this off, opting for Eldo (a sanctioned weeknight event, deserving its own blog entry) but I keep coming back. My policy is to ride four laps, staying near the outer edge of the pack (yeah, it's harder that way) for safety's sake. Some things:

• If you are new to this sort of thing then hang at the back.
• Don't cross the double yellow and stay well wide of the jogger's lane.
  
• Don't get stuck at the front on the uphill unless you are a very strong rider. Gaps open spontaneously and if you can't hammer a kilo or so at 45kph up a 1% grade you're toast.
• Forget about elbowing back into the group.
• Don't go alone.
• Don't take it personally if someone yells at you. You're probably just doing something wrong or dangerous.

Deeply Anaerobic

Any pro racer will tell you that the only real training is done at racing pace. For myself, when I got back into serious riding four years ago I followed the advice in a terrific book on bike training to the letter and got into very good shape. I determined what my HR zones were, did intervals based on all the research and got my ass handed to me in races until I began participating in various group rides and club races. After only a few weeks of racing and race simulation my resting HR plunged and my ability to work through pain exploded. The effort you generate to avoid getting dropped by the pack is way different than that which is prodded by a beeping heart rate monitor. My advice is that HRMs are better at diagnostics than they are at coaching.

No, but I was a mite bewildered

Someone once asked Davy Crockett if he'd ever been lost and he supposedly replied, "No, but I was a mite bewildered a few times." A few months ago I scoped out a ride which would take me from Monrovia Canyon to Red Box. This would involve many miles of fireroading far from civilization. I prepped by going to Topozone.com and also I have a good mountain bike specific map of the local area. After riding up to a gate at about 4600' and heading west for a while two things struck me. First, it was getting colder and rainier and second, I hadn't seen a soul for about two hours. That's when I turned around and went home to order a GPS unit.

Understand, this is not a plug. I ordered a Garmin ETrex Vista CX and a RAM mount and your research may lead elsewhere - I just support the concept generally. My wife reads all the newsgroups related to long-distance cycling and this combo seemed to be a good way to go if you're not too concerned about weight and/or appearing geeky. The mount is huge, made for motorcycle rallying, and sticks up about 4-5 inches from the bars. The unit is bulky compared to the bike-specific ones. I don't recall what I paid, the important thing is that now I've managed to make the ride I wanted to go on without leaving skeletal remains in the San Gabriel mountains.

I was able to scope out a route and enter it as waypoints in the unit. It then guided from waypoint to waypoint. This is common behavior for these things, but be aware I've heard that some of the bike specific units don't support this kind of navigation. Also, GPS units seem to have something in common with musical instruments, practice is necessary. In addition the Garmin add-on maps are, IMO, pricey and their installation is complicated. I now have a MyGarmin account. How did ever live without it? There ought to be a law against requiring an internet connection that must finction flawlessly during a lengthy installation. Frankly, you can live without the online maps and use resources like Google Earth and Topozone to find waypoints.

Anyway, this entry is mainly to provide context for ride descriptions which will follow. I'm still struggling a little with GPX files, and my plan is to convert ride tracks, both road and mountain, into KML (Google Earth) format. I still need a place to post them, but that shouldn't be too hard to get.

Might as well try this....

I'm taking the plunge into blogging about the hobby I've enjoyed with my wife for so many years. I admit to not knowing everything about cycling, but I can usually get the answers I need from my her. She doesn't blog on the subject because she's too busy training. Seriously. Also she's only into road riding (something about that time I came home bloody and with a giant dent in my Gary Fisher). To give you an idea I have been a Cat II racer (from 1978 to 1981), bicycle commuter, mountain biker and century rider. The wife wants me to do a double with her sometime (she's done a few dozen) but I find 7-8 hours of riding is quite satisfying, thanks very much.

Coming Soon:
- Monrovia to Redbox, the Hard Way
- Oh Garmin, My Garmin
- Stuff We Actually Use