You may recall Bicycle Coffee, locally prepared and delivered by bike. I was given a bag by my sister in law for my birthday, and ground it up this morning. Guess what: it’s delicious. There’s a surprise…
Jon Howell is one of those folks I ‘met’ through a social netoworking site (not fecesbook) through shared interests of technology, illustration and bikes. He is preparing to do Aids Lifecycle this summer, and in the process, decided to get his rear in gear by becoming a Training Ride Leader.
Now, I’ve hosted a ton of rides over the years, and I’ve hosted them fast, slow and in between. But what struck me, reading his ride journals, is that a TRL has a unique challenge: they have to account for the fast AND the slow in the same ride. It’s part of what I love about ALC: riders of all skill levels and experience find their way down to LA. So, in a recent post about being sweep on one of these rides, he pointed out a frustrating setback: he spent all this energy and motivation to build up his endurance and expectations for faster, longer rides… and now, as TRL, has to find a a way to UNWIND that potential energy, because he’s waiting for much slower riders to catch up.
It’s an intriguing detail but one that I think offers him good practice for ALC as a whole: while on a symbolic level the mix of fast and slow riders is a good thing, in literal application, I think coming to the ride trained and ready to blast off like a rocket, but still being able to cool your jets as it were, is a very sound thing. Because we saw many riders on ALC 9 that bombed at every opportunity, creating pacelines, riding two deep, breaking traffic laws, all much like they would on a fast group ride competing for time. And those riders put other, inexperienced, overwhelmed riders at risk. That pissed me off. Now, B and I rode ALC on fixed gears, so you’d think we would be in the slow camp but in actuality, we were among the faster riders on any given day. However, we didn’t NEED to be, and we frequently slowed for traffic conditions, to talk and support other riders, and to experience the event more fully. It’s not a race.
So, I think Jon inadvertently learned something critical to more fully realizing the experience of ALC: take it at different paces, have confidence in your endurance, and enjoy it moment by moment. Because for every awesome cluster of roadside supporters waving flags and bells and throwing cookies at you, there’s 20 miles of overcooked Salinas heatwave highway. If you treat that ride like a time trial, you not only ruin it for others, but you suck the joy out of it for yourself.
Good on Jon for being a TRL and for doing ALC!
You can read more here:
http://jonathan-howell.tumblr.com/post/ … /ride-3-18
Within this article on ‘Outdoorsia’, in which other interesting concepts mentioned included the kangaroo bike and the retrodirect bike… I was struck by the simplicity and facility of hanging bike hooks in tree trunks. That’s pretty interesting.
http://grist.org/biking/2011-09-29-kang … utdoorsia/
As we posted about last week, Friend of Lope Krys Blakemore, Shop Employee 001 at 718 Cyclery, was creamed by a card (but helpfully hammerheaded an ambulance) and is now laid up at the hospital undergoing surgery and therapy from the leg injury that resulted. She’s very lucky to be alive. And now, without the ability to work, she is in dire straights. You can donate to her fund here:
And take note, you can enter for a chance to win a free wheelset from eighthinch in the process!
http://eighthinch.wordpress.com/2012/03 … very-fund/
Let’s help her out!
So yesterday started as a light rain day. Enough that I could do some fun skids, have a good time getting to work, but not enough to warrant a helmet cover.
By early afternoon, my coffee run, by which I mean coffee ride, by which I mean a ride around town culminating in the coffee for which I claimed I went, was wet. The rain was coming at 45 degree angles and a bit harder.
By evening, however, as I prepared to leave the office and get home to my birthday action, the rain was dumping. I mean DUMPING. Sheets of rain at angles, flooding on the street, the whole deal. I suited up and took off, and had arguably the hardest rain ride ever for me. (hardest rain, not hardest ride).
It was coconuts: I rode through flooded sections deep enough that my feet were submerged, though not quite my BB; I was getting sprayed by cars flying past me but didn’t care of course; I could barely see, even with the sunglasses protecting my eyes; the rain was coming down hard enough to feel like light hail, you know? Stinging the face and hands, that sort of thing. I DRANK rainwater. And My skids were ridiculous to the point of near calamity. I can’t claim a no-brake ride because as I dropped this short hill and pulled a out-of-the-seat whip I just stopped precisely ZERO amount so I had to jump ont he brake before blowing the intersection, ha. The rest of the time was all seat skids and did fine in the wet. And the wind? huge gusts blowing me around, the trees swaying, etc. COCONUTS.
When I got to the house, it looked like I had been swimming in my clothes. My torso was warm and dry, thanks to my pancho, but the bottom half of me was comical. Anyway, what a fun ride on my birthday! I loved it!
Drunkcyclist, which I once thought was one surly, sassy individual but now know to be several, created a cool Occupy Bike Seat sticker, which I hope to soon acquire.
On the heels of that discovery, I noted the quite savvy use of a very aesthetically pleasing, in other words FIT, model to showcase a recent 29er review.
Here she is, displaying an Occupy Bike Seat sticker, making this relevant to the post.
Here she is displaying 29er riding fitment.
I love it! This is what we’ve been missing in Team lope Tyre Clubbe reviews. I mean, sure sometimes we have a soon-to-be-three wee lass modeling the latest baby bike fixie builds, but we need more hotness!
My practicing of ambi skids is still slow going. However, my other tasks continue to improve. I’ve been practicing skidding on different bars (and by extension, different geometries)… certainly Crook is the easiest to skid with, being a pursuit frame, and the bulls letting you get way forward. But I’ve now been able to skid on Rapscallion (the baby cargo bike, currently now only a cargo bike), Wrongbike and Carpetbagger. That’s in the drops (Wrongbike), on risers (Rapscallion) and on rising arcs (Carpetbagger)… but the Wrongbike situation leads to the next task: sit skids.
Being able to skid from the tops of the pista bars on wrongbike led to my cracking the sit skid. Before this, I could sort of accomplish it by getting into the drops or bulls or whatever, and I could get a bit of sit skid, but not much. Once I could skid from the bartops (granted, not long skids) I was able to focus on the lift and skid necessary to skid seated. I love it.
More arrows, you see! Now I can, for the first time, ride without my finger resting out of habit on the lever. If I see something happening, I can initiate a sit skid while getting to the brake.
Next up, more ambi skid practice, and I’m in the early stages of working on one hand sit skid. Which, of course, means coffee carriage.
We’re enjoying our last rain-free day here in the SF Bay area, prior to another full week of showers. Now, the fact that I had to drive in today would normally have given me the frustrations. However, in this instance, it does not. A week of rain means a week of rain riding. Which means SHENANIGANS. Skidding capability really changes everything.
Hopefully that isn’t going on my gravestone in a week’s time…
I mean, I wear it every day, but they keep buzzing me…
well, maybe it IS working, come to think of it. So say my intact femurs.
http://trdl.tumblr.com/post/18555463604 … u-know-get
