Orny's Cycling Journal

A little summary of my first month as a Pittsburgh cyclist.

I arrived in town fairly skeptical. I hadn’t heard many positive things about riding in the city, especially after a cyclist stopped at a red light was crushed between two cars and killed in my new neighborhood, which evoked all kinds of angst amongst the local cycling advocates.

One of the first things I ramped up on were the local bike shops. My my impression so far is that although there are several shops that carry a good selection of bikes and clothing, they offer extremely little in the way of tools, parts, or organized rides.

I’ve also looked up the big annual events in the area. There aren’t many centuries, but there is an active group of randonneurs. Hopefully they’ll let me tag along on their rides despite not being a member of Randonneurs USA, whom I chose to actively not support.

I looked for likely cycling routes on Strava’s Global Heatmap, but discovered that there are very few routes near me that are used by cyclists. Well, that’s not helpful!

There are a couple Pittsburgh cycling forums, and an inquiry about routes provided a pointer to an out-of-print book “Bikes Rides Out of Pittsburgh” by Oscar Swan, which I obtained from the library.

Sadly, it is 250 pages of bare, not-too-carefully written directions, without a single map in the entire volume. So I’ve been spending my non-riding winter time plotting all his routes in Google Maps. This engendered the opposite problem from Strava: his rides traverse nearly every road within an 180-mile diameter, with no clear guidance which are more desirable than the rest!

For more useful and interactive advice, both Inna and I have one friend each who are utility cyclists, which is at least a start at community. And I hope to make contact with a former Green Line Velo rider who moved out here from Boston in 2014.

I found him and a couple other neighborhood roadies on Strava through their “flyby” utility, which shows when two riders’ logged routes intersect or overlap. I’ve been able to find good local roads by looking at these riders’ current and past GPS logs and following the same routes. That’s been the most helpful thing so far, and hopefully it’ll allow me to make social connections, as well.

Although December is never a very good month for cycling, being unemployed allowed me to take whatever opportunities the weather provided this month. And it provided! In addition to usually being a tiny smidgin warmer than Boston, this December was Pittsburgh’s second warmest on record, with the second least snowfall: ten and a half inches less than average! We spent much of the month with temperatures in the 50s and 60s.

That allowed me to get out for six short rides from 9 to 26 miles, totaling 114 miles. That might not sound like much, but it’s the best December I’ve had in many years.

I learned that every street in Pittsburgh is steeper than Boston’s steepest hill, with their longest and steepest being harder than anything I’ve ridden before. I started braving Pittsburgh’s mostly-unfriendly tunnels and bridges. And I made a weekday trip to check out the otherwise unoccupied Bud Harris outdoor cycling track, with banked corners and everything! That was pretty cool… (GPS log)

I discovered that out here asphalt is often replaced by slab cement roadway, but to make things even more challenging, steeper roads are paved with uneven bricks or good old European-style cobblestones. Going uphill on cobbles is a very rough challenge, but descending a steep cobblestone downhill is cause for a visit to the dentist. Note to self: start checking all bolts for tightness after every ride.

That’s one of the things people forget. Because it’s so ludicrously hilly, Pittsburgh is a great place to train your legs to handle climbing; but every ascent is followed by an equally imposing white-knuckle descent, and I am a terrible descender. I guess I don’t have a choice but to improve at both.

Sadly, all the best riding seems to be northwest of the city, whereas I’m in the southeast corner. That means that—like Boston—I will spend an hour traversing the urban jungle before getting to the meat of my rides. Unlike Boston, I then have to get across one of the trafficky bridges over the Allegheny, then climb up an abominable embankment to get out of the river valley. Hopefully the terrain beyond will be worth the extra effort.

So that was December. Today being the first of January, there was a big organized New Years ride (Icycle Bicycle) which I attended (GPS log). Sadly, December’s record temperatures haven’t carried over into January, so we set out in 32° and light snow before the sun eventually broke out.

The ride was noteworthy for several reasons. It was the first ride of 2016, of course. It was also my first group ride in Pittsburgh, and I was impressed that an estimated 200 people showed up. One of them was my utility cycling friend Colleen, whom I saw for the first time in years.

It was also the first time I got to use the new Hydrotac stick-on bifocal lenses that I’d attached to my sunglasses. I’ve worn reading glasses for age-related presbyopia for several years, but I rarely needed to focus on anything close-up on the bike, so I stayed with regular old non-prescription sunglasses.

However, now that I’m riding in unfamiliar places, following a map and routes on a tiny 2.6-inch screen, my lack of visual acuity became problematic. I’m happy to report that the stick-on lenses really help my ability to read the GPS display, and they don’t interfere with my normal-distance road vision (after trimming the lenses down a bit).

The only part I haven’t tested is whether they will withstand cleaning the sunglasses lenses, since they get pretty grimy after a ride. But one ride indicates that they’re worth the extra effort.

Unless January and February get back to setting temperature records, you won’t see much from me in the next couple months. I’m not much of a cold-weather rider, and I haven’t yet replaced the old indoor trainer I had back in Boston. So there won’t be any indoor riding either, unless some money happens to materialize real soon.

The bottom line is that I’ve been doing my best to gain local knowledge and connect with the local cycling community. And I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to make a decent season out of 2016 in Pittsburgh once springtime temperatures return… Only 100 days until Paris-Roubaix!