Orny's Cycling Journal

Geez, two weeks into the 2010 cycling season and there’s already so much to tell…

After a long spell of rain that brought flooding to the area, Tuesday March 16th was a beautifully sunny day, with even better weather predicted for the rest of the week, so I figured it was time to take the bike out of its stationary trainer for some pre-season maintenance.

The first thing I did was replace the chain: a fairly simple repair that I’d never done before. Previously, I’d waited until the chain had worn so much that both the chain and the rear cassette had to be changed at the same time, but this time I wanted to change the chain before it got to that point, hopefully saving myself the additional cost of a new cassette. It was an easy, if messy, swap. I’m looking forward to running my drive train dry again this year, after last year’s successful experiment.

Next I replaced my handlebar tape, which was another first. It sounds easy, but actually there’s some skill involved, and I wanted to be extra careful, since my old bar tape (put on by the bike shop) had unraveled on me. And what a messy surprise of gel, masking tape, and scotch tape I found underneath the surface of the old black bar tape! I replaced it with bright blue cork tape and finished it off with blue electrical tape, hoping it would look good with my blue tires, which it does. So far, I think I did a pretty good job with it, although I’m wondering how long it’ll stay so tight and neat.

Speaking of those blue tires, I also removed the heavy-duty rear tire that I use for the trainer, and replaced it with my regular lightweight blue road tire. But that was a familiar and routine swap. After that, the bike was ready for the open road!

I did all this in anticipation of my first outdoor ride of the season on Thursday, when the temperatures would be in the upper 60s. On Wednesday, after letting the bike sit overnight, I decided that I didn’t want to go on a long ride without first making sure my chain would hold together, so I took the Plastic Bullet out for a very short 8-mile test ride.

I rode out to Brookline and over Summit Ave., then turned home by picking up the Charles River bike path at Cambridge Street. As I rode along, I approached a group of two or three people coming from the opposite direction, either walking or jogging or skating. Just as I got even with them, from behind them another person on a bike veered around them to pass, swerving across the center line and directly into my path. Since she blocked my entire lane and there was a light pole on my right, there was no way to avoid her as this woman slammed her bike straight into me head-on, and I went flying over the bars in a classic Superman pose and crashed hard onto the ground beyond.

On initial inspection, I was bruised all over and in a lot of pain, and bleeding liberally from a deep gouge my left hand. I had to re-center my brakes and straighten my handlebars, but the bike otherwise looked okay.

She was an Asian-American student on a rusty commuter beater that was probably older than both of us put together. While I’d been in no position to see what happened to her in the crash, she appeared uninjured afterward. Several other people stopped and helped me recover, which took about five minutes. After I got her contact info, she went to leave and discovered her chain had fallen off, and that her rear wheel wouldn’t turn because the fender was rubbing. I fixed those for her before heading homeward myself.

That’s when I discovered that her impact had also broken my left shift lever. The bike is rideable, and I can still shift and brake using that lever, although with a broken pivot I have to really fiddle and force it to make it happen, and it’s likely to come apart in my hands one of these times.

Physically, I’d landed very hard on my left knee and upper back, and both were heavily bruised and had some road rash. I have pain that feels like cracked ribs in both the front and back of my chest. The injuries to my left hand featured a deep, inch and a half long laceration in my index finger. I didn’t think it was quite bad enough to get stitches, so at home I took a scrub brush and painfully cleaned the gravel out of it before bandaging it myself.

Looking back on it, it was a stupid idea to go anywhere near the bike path. This time of year, the joggers are all out training for the impending Boston Marathon, which makes the paths more crowded and a lot more dangerous. On top of that, it was the first warm day of spring, so everyone was out enjoying the sun, oblivious to the fact that there are other users on the path than themselves. Having spent the winter forgetting everything they might have known about safety, it is, in a word, Amateur Day. And with so many self-absorbed idiots on the bike path, it is the most dangerous place a cyclist could be. Although my unwise decision to take the bike path certainly doesn’t excuse this woman’s stupid and dangerous actions at all.

The next day was Thursday: the day I’d planned to take a big ride. It was just as beautiful as predicted, and I still wanted to take my first real ride of the season. Aside from a lot of pain in that left knee, my legs were mostly uninjured, so I decided to take it real slow and easy, and see how far I could go.

I didn’t know if I would make it two blocks, but once my legs loosened up, I found I could manage. The only problem was that my knee would tighten right up again if I stopped for very long, so I had to limit my rest stops to a couple minutes each. The spring winds were very strong, and once I was out of town my route was repeatedly blocked by floods of the Sudbury and Concord rivers. I even stopped and chatted with one of the DPW crews who were erecting barriers across Sherman’s Bridge Road, where the wooden bridge was at least eight feet underwater!

By the end of the day I’d actually racked up 71 miles, which is about twice what I’d normally do on the first ride of the year. Naturally, my average speed was way down, but that also kept me at an aerobic pace, rather than pushing and working myself too hard. Surprisingly, it didn’t feel too bad, at least while I was in the saddle. See the ride map.

On the way home, I stopped at the LBS and had the bike checked out. The lever definitely needs to be replaced, and the part alone is going to cost me $290. I decided I’d hold off on that for the time being, until I’d at least talked to the girl who hit me to see if she was going to do the responsible thing and compensate me for the mechanical damage she caused. Since I was in the shop already, I made an appointment to have my simple annual tune-up performed on Monday.

When the weekend came, Saturday was a gorgeous day, and I would have liked to have rode with my buddies at Quad, but by then I was just too achey to endure another long ride, so I reluctantly gave it a pass.

However, it was also the vernal equinox, which is a big deal for me. So I decided to ride a few miles down to Castle Island and back, simply to observe the return of the sun to the northern hemisphere. But just as I wheeled the bike out of my apartment, my old inner tube gave way at the valve stem, giving me a flat tire; then I popped (literally) the replacement tube while levering it onto the rim. Finally I got a patched tube onto the rim and completed my little equinox ride.

Monday’s tune-up was quick and painless, with the only surprise being a needed tightening of my front hub. I’d hand-trued my rear wheel after the accident, but apparently I did a good enough job that the mechanics didn’t feel it needed any further attention.

Wednesday, a week after our collision, I finally emailed the girl who hit me. I was especially calm and nonconfrontational about it, but told her about the $290 cost of a replacement lever and suggested that “as the responsible party I hope you will offer to foot a decent portion of that expense” and that “I am relying on your sense of fairness”.

It took her only half an hour to reply with her refusal. Despite admitting that she had crossed the center line, she maintained “that doesn’t make me completely guilty”, and the preposterous assertion that “I would consider myself to have been a fairly safe person in this situation”. Besides, she said, as a student, she doesn’t have any money at all. Yup. It’s all about her, and how could anyone expect her to take responsibility for the damages and injuries that her dangerously oblivious riding caused? Thanks, Nikki, you’re all heart, and I’m screwed out of $300 I can’t afford.

The next day, Thursday the 25th, I did my second long ride of the year, doing a few more random roads around Concord (ride map). I also stopped at Quad Cycles to see if Rustem could repair my bike for less money, which he could not. By the end of that 61-mile expedition, my legs were cramping from too many hills, but it still felt good to be back out on the bike again.

Today is Monday the 29th, and this morning I trudged into my bike shop and reluctantly ordered a new brake lever. While it’s the same style (Shimano Ultegra), the newer model is going to look and feel quite a bit different from the older, undamaged lever on the right, but that’s the breaks, right?

Now that it’s been twelve days since the accident, my hand has begun healing, although it’s unclear yet whether it will bear a permanent scar or not. My knee is mostly good, but I still have weakness and twinges of pain whenever I climb stairs. My ribs remain a constant pain, especially at night. I’m more convinced than ever that I might have broken one or more ribs, rather than cracked them, but it’s mostly an academic point. As with all rib injuries, they’ll heal at their own slow pace as long as I don’t re-injure them.

But my injuries and the cost of fixing the damage to my bike are ultimately temporary issues. Beyond those problems, what will stay with me long after this incident is a lingering mistrust of bike paths and other path users, and a reinforced belief in the selfishness and self-centered callousness of the younger generation. And I think that’s a horrible thing to take away from something as ennobling as a simple springtime bike ride.

I know it’s been a while since I posted here. Truthfully, there’s been absolutely nothing to say, because I haven’t touched a bike since the first week in January. Yeah, I haven’t rode a mile in over four months; that’s the longest I’ve been off the bike since I started keeping records eight years ago.

Why? Work assigned me to a project in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. What’s that you ask? I spent most of the winter on a tropical island and didn’t do any biking? Nope. The roads are too busy, too narrow, and the drivers are insane. Yeah. It’s bad enough that even I won’t ride, and I’ve ridden in traffic through the Interstate 93 tunnel into Boston!

But this week I’ve got three items to tell you about: me, my city, and my bike.

First, me. While in Boston this past weekend, I managed an 8-mile ride, in the rain. I’ll get to the “why” of that in a second, but the first thing I need to say is: Ouch! I rode Beacon Street out to Coolidge, then up and over Summit Ave, across to Western Ave, and back via the Charles River bike path, and I’ve lost any pretense that I’ve retained any of my fitness. After the big hill on Summit Ave, both right and left calves cramped up pretty fierce. So once I get home from St. Thomas, I’m going to have a lot of stratching to do and base miles to ride to regain my prior fitness level, while simultaneously being extra careful to ramp up gradually. Ugh.

Next: my city. The DCR closed the Paul Dudley White (aka Charles River) bike path from the BU Bridge to Western Avenue for resurfacing back in October, and I rode the new surface for the first time this weekend. Basically, it looks like little more than a quick paving job. The surface is nice, but the narrow areas remain narrow, and the enhancements to the path were mostly just the addition of root barriers. I’m grateful for the paving, because it was desperately needed, but I think more could have been done. Still, it’s one of my main routes out of town, so I’m pleased.

Finally, and most importantly: the bike. Back in March I ordered a third bike for my stable: a Bike Friday Pocket Rocket. That’s a custom-built folding bike for travel that’s designed to mimick a traditional road bike. It finally arrived, and that’s why I rode this weekend, despite the rain, the cramps, and the fact that I was only home for a precious couple days.

The Friday came packed in its own suitcase, which turns into a trailer once you’ve got the bike out. I didn’t test the trailer, but it looks like it should work nicely. The only real complaint I have about the whole package is that they shipped me a black suitcase, rather than the blue one I ordered, but it looks like they’re going to rectify that post-haste.

Unpacking the bike was something of an adventure. It wasn’t difficult, but it took a bit of time to get the three-dimensional puzzle assembled and properly adjusted. It’s not designed for quick folding, like you would need for a daily multi-modal commuting bike; instead, it’s intended primarily for airline trips and long vacations, where you can take fifteen minutes to put together a bike that you’ll use on a week-long trip to, say, St. Thomas or Grand Cayman or Las Vegas or Seaside, Oregon.

I managed to get the thing put together in reasonably sort order. Not that there weren’t a couple glitches along the way. The rear wheel seems a little bit out of true, which I’ll have to look at more closely next time I’m home. The brakes needed a bit of adjustment, both the barrel adjuster as well as the left/right balance. And I’m a little annoyed that the seatpost isn’t one that remembers the front/rear angle of the seat, so that’ll require adjustment each time I unpack the bike. But overall, I was able to get the thing out of the suitcase—and, equally importantly, back into it—successfully in a reasonable amount of time.

The ride? I think it’s a little better than one might expect of a bike with 20-inch tires. It did a pretty admirable job of being rideable. The compact crankset has a good gear range, with sufficient granny to get me up Summit Ave with no complaints.

The steering isn’t quite as stable as a road bike, but that’s to be expected, since the 20-inch wheels generate less gyroscopic stability. Similarly, since the back wheel is lighter than the usual 700C, it was pretty easy for me to unload the rear and slip the wheel while climbing on a steep, wet roadway. The smaller wheels are, as you’d expect, more easily diverted by parallel-angled grates and expansion joints, and transmit more road chatter than larger wheels, but the latter effect is dampened by a lot of flex in the stem and seatpost.

I’m not much of a fan of the (split) handlebars. They don’t feel real secure in the stem mount, and the drops don’t feel very natural at all. I’ll have to experiment some more with the angle to find the right compromise between comfort in the drops versus on the hoods.

Oh, and one final thing that’s patently obvious but you might not think about. With no top tube, you can’t lean the bike against your thigh when standing at stops, nor can you grab the top tube to carry the bike down stairs or through doors. Bit awkward, that.

Naturally, I’m also curious about how the bike will feel during longer rides of 50k, 100k, or 200k, but time will have to provide the answer to that question.

But all of that is nit-picking. My overall impression is that the Friday’s a fine bike, and will play the role of a packable travel bike quite well. And I’m only eight miles into what will hopefully be a long and memorable partnership with this bike that will accompany me to all kinds of distant places, and keep me riding and fit on assignments like this recent five-month stint in St. Thomas, where I would never be able to ride if I didn’t bring along the Bike Friday.

In case you haven’t been reading my main journal, the past six weeks have been an absolute trial: an incredible litany of crises coming one upon another, from trivial to life-changing.

In the bike realm, this period has included my saddle problems, bee stings, my travesty dealing with Back Bay Bicycles over my headset, and the training and fundraising time lost to graphic design class, Inna’s hospitalization, and my new job.

And now this:

Last night I was riding home from work along the Esplanade bike path. As I went to overtake an inline skater, I called out the usual “On your left!” warning. Of course, it was at that exact moment that the idiot—who was listening to music in his earphones, of course—decided to swerve all the way to the left side of the path. There were benches lining the path, so there was only one thing I could do: I slammed on the brakes and hit the fucker.

Fortunately for his his stupid ass, I’d bled off enough speed so that I only rode up on his left foot, and although he stumbled, he didn’t fall. I managed to keep the bike upright, but I heard a loud bang and felt the hundred pounds of air in my rear tire come out in a rush.

The skater was fine and—to his credit—apologetic. I told him it was just the tire and that as long as he was okay, I could deal. He skated off.

At first I figured I’d just swap my inner tube out and continue home, but I quickly realized that I didn’t have anything with me: no tire levers, no spare tube, no patch kit, and no pump. That stuff usually sits on my bike, but I didn’t want anyone to steal it while it sat in the bike rack at work, so I’d stripped it all off. There was nothing for it but to walk the mile back to my condo and affect repairs there.

An isolated incident? Bad luck? The curse of Ornoth 2005? Call it whatever you want; all I can say is that I’m getting very tired of it, and I’m really hoping it doesn’t bite me in the (still tender) ass during the PMC ride two weeks from now.

Yesterday was quite an interesting day for me, so I thought I’d share.

Having already put 125 miles in this weekend, I decided that my goals for the day would be some hill climbing and a bit of exploring new routes.

After riding out to Alewife, I began my first exploration. Instead of taking the exceedingly popular Minuteman Bikeway, I turned off and took the less well-known Fitchburg Cutoff, a short stone dust path that runs parallel to the commuter rail line, from Alewife to Belmont Center. The path has been narrowed by encroaching vegetation, but it’s quite passable if you’re not focused on speed.

As I approached the end of the path, up ahead where it intersects with Brighton Street I saw three cyclists go by: one with a red, white, and blue helmet, and two others in blue and green Quad Cycles jerseys. I caught up with them and verified that the leader was indeed Bobby Mac, the guy who leads the Quad Cycles weekend training rides that I often take part in. That was really surprising, because I‘ve never known Bobby to ride in Belmont, and being there at just the right time—midday on a Wednesday—is just ludicrously improbable. We chatted for a bit, and I followed them back to the store, where I peeled off.

That was convenient for my interest in hill climbing, because Quad Cycles is right at the foot of one of the best climbs in the area: a 380-foot hill with an MWRA water tower on top. So I rode my usual route up Park Ave. to the top.

But I wasn’t through exploring. There are many roads that ascend that hill, but I’d only ever done two of them. So the next thing I did was try coming up the other side of Park Ave., from Belmont. Unfortunately, that side of the hill wasn’t much of a challenge, and the road was busy and in poor condition, so that’s been permanently taken out of consideration.

Then I went down Eastern Ave., which turns into Spring Street. My friend Jeremy had said that was a better challenge than Park Ave., and he was indeed right. At just shy of a mile, it’s the longest side of the hill, and because it starts at a lower elevation than the other roads—just 85 feet above sea level—it also sports the most altitude gain.

I was timing myself on each ascent I did, but I’d gotten no more than a quarter of the way up Spring Street when my cell phone rang. I pulled aside, turned off the stopwatch, and talked to my friend iniren for about 15 minutes. As I did, I saw a woman cyclist ride down the hill, and climb back up past me. She was wearing last year’s Pan-Mass Challenge jersey, the one with the Boston Red Sox motif; amusingly, it was the same one I had on at the time, and I waved and gave her a thumbs-up as she passed me.

After iniren hung up, I went back down Spring Street (seeing that PMC rider climbing the hill a second time), reset my stopwatch, and began a second ascent. But only six minutes after I hung up with iniren, as I was about a third of the way up Spring Street, my cell phone rang again! This time it was a consulting company I’d been interviewing at, calling to let me know that they were turning me down. That certainly didn’t help my mood any.

Then it was back down once more, for a third attempt to climb Spring Street. This time I made it to the top. It’s quite a climb, a great discovery, and is now one of my two preferred routes up that hill. If you’re familiar with Route 2, Spring Street parallels the long hill that climbs through Arlington and Belmont.

From there, I decided to explore yet another route. I’d recently seen an article about a Boston bike courier who used Oakland Ave. to train on. As Oakland goes over the hill, I first tried the west approach, but that, like the south approach of Park Ave., is barely a hill at all. Then I went down Oakland’s east approach, which is a bit of a hill, but it’s neither as long as Spring Street’s ascent, nor as steep as School Street.

Oakland did, however, dump me off near the foot of School Street, which is my other favorite approach. While Spring Street may be the longest climb and have the most elevation gain, School Street (which turns into Kenilworth Road) is by far the steepest and most monotonic grade. It’s death on a stick; that’s why I like it so well. So I timed myself going up School Street, as well.

After that, I made two more trips down and up Spring Street again. As I climbed one time, I again saw that woman cyclist. Judging by the number of times I saw her going up and down Spring Street, I became convinced that she’s a machine—probably one of those Fembots used by the villains in the Austin Powers movies. Though on one trip up, I did pass her as she stood at the side of the road, fuming at her chain which she said unshipped every time at that point on the hill.

By then I’d put in about six trips up that hill, and added about 20 miles to my weekly total, so I decided to head home. I took the Fitchburg Cutoff again on the way home, but had some difficulty approaching it via Channing Road, because the commercial landowners had fenced off the connecting property.

Once home, I had a couple surprises in the mail. One was a PMC donation from one of my aunts, and every donation is worth celebrating these days! The other was the pack of ten “LiveStrong” bracelets that I’d ordered from the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I figure that, as a symbol of support for cancer victims, it’d be a good thing to wear during my PMC ride, but I can also wear one every day in the hopes that someone might either recognize it or ask about it, giving me an opening for talking about my PMC ride and potentially gaining another sponsor for my ride.

Oh, and in writing this article, I also discovered that John Hirtle has put his most recent shots up on the Quad Cycles photo page. He takes snapshots during the weekend rides, and he got a pretty good solo photo of me on June 20th at Concord’s historic Old North Bridge, which is one of our rest stops. A cropped version of the photo illustrates this journal entry, and the original can be seen as picture #9 on this page.

Today I rode the Burma Road again and came across a turtle on the swamp path, and also flushed a big whitetail doe on one of the on-ramps to the Bridge to Nowhere. I also explored some of the paths in the Stony Brook Reservation, which was a first. In other wildlife notes, I also chased a rabbit down the Charles River bike path out in Waltham a few days ago. And Sunday's Quad Cycles ride ended with trips up three of the four sides of of Arlington's Park Ave hill, including the wall-like ascent of School Street!

Rode out the Minuteman to Bedford, then around Carlisle and Concord for my first 50-mile day in maybe six months. All I can say is that the last 15 miles back home were brutal. The weather's been horrible, too; it has snowed six out of the first nine days in April so far...

More excuses. Despite having my bike in the shop for three whole days, all the idiots at International Bike did was replace one spoke, rather than rebuild the wheel as I asked them to do. If I break spokes in the next three weeks I'm going to be pissed. Between their incompetence and being too busy to ride, I only got one solid ride in, today's ride out to Malden, down to Castle Island, out the Neponset River trail, and back via the Arboretum. I'm way behind in my training, which has to take top priority next week. But I did spend my time off chasing down sponsors, so this week my fundraising has nearly doubled, to $1455; just $545 to go! Thanks, folks! In another interesting development, I discovered today that I wasn't signed up for a room at Mass Maritime Academy for Saturday night, so I've had to book a nearby hotel room for that night; we'll see how that works out...

The last Bike Week ride was Doug Mink's East Coast Greenway ride, which began at Sullivan Square in Charlestown, went by Old Ironsides, across the locks of the new Charles River Dam, up the Esplanade to Ruggles, down the South Bay Harbor Trail to Castle Island, around the JFK Library to the Neponset Greenway, up that all the way to Hyde Park, back via the Southwest Corridor and Muddy River paths, and back to Charlestown along the Cambridge side of the Charles. I think I figured out what was causing my knee problems, but not early enough to prevent it from flaring up again. Glad to have gotten the miles in before my trip, tho!

Big week. Changed my commute to go through Southwest Corridor Park, Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Pond, the Riverway, and the Charles River Esplanade, which helped bring me back up to 105 miles this week. After last week's bike repair class on fixing flats, this week's was on bearings and repacking hubs. Plus sent out my first requests for donations and got my first one from DargonZine writer Jim Owens!

During our week on Cape Cod, I rented a bike and Inna and I did a 22 mile ride on the Cape Cod Rail Trail.