Today I said another goodbye, dropping the Plastic Bullet off at Free Ride Pittsburgh, the local bicycle repurposing charity, in much the same way as when I donated my first bike, a Devinci hybrid, eight years ago.

The Plastic Bullet at the Provincetown finish line after a 3-day trek across Massachusetts in 2010 to celebrate my 10th Pan-Mass Challenge

The Plastic Bullet at the Provincetown finish line after a 3-day trek across Massachusetts in 2010 to celebrate my 10th Pan-Mass Challenge

The Plastic Bullet appears in a hundred regional newspapers in a thank-you ad from Dana-Farber following the 2011 Pan-Mass Challenge

The Plastic Bullet appears in a hundred regional newspapers in a thank-you ad from Dana-Farber following the 2011 Pan-Mass Challenge

Like that Devinci, the Plastic Bullet had been relegated to a backup bike, and then left to a lonely retirement, forgotten in a closet. And like the Devinci, an inter-state move is prompting its final fate. Hopefully it will find some new life beyond my custodianship.

And like the Devinci, the P.B. served me very well. It was my first road bike, a Specialized Roubaix Expert that arrived in October 2005. Being a carbon-fiber frame it was immediately nicknamed the Plastic Bullet, derived from the lyrics to the Shriekback song “Go Bang!”, which also provides this blogpo’s title.

It was my primary bike for the next seven years, seeing me through 30 century+ rides, including seven Pan-Mass Challenges, my first 200 KM brevet, and my 2010 three-day 10th anniversary PMC ride all the way across Massachusetts.

It also featured in my most treasured cycling photo ever: a shot of me leading a paceline in the 2011 Pan-Mass Challenge that was used in a quarter-page thank-you ad from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute that appeared in over a hundred regional newspapers.

The Plastic Bullet was demoted to backup in early 2013, when I splurged on my current steed, nicknamed R2-Di2. It came out of storage whenever the R2 was in the shop, and was brought along when I moved to Pittsburgh seven years ago. But it has seen virtually no use since then, and retired with a final odometer reading of 36,711 KM (22,811 miles).

Before the Plastic Bullet, I had always been a bit of an outlier as a road-riding enthusiast riding a flat-bar hybrid bike. But the Plastic Bullet allowed me to fit into my niche and complete my transition into the roadie that I am today.

It’s hard to say goodbye to something that was such an important part of one’s life for so long, but it’s a good opportunity for me to practice with the laws of impermanence and non-attachment.

And it also opens a bit of space for someday welcoming a new resident in my stable of bicycles, which is a distinct possibility once I get a better idea what the riding is going to be like in Austin. After all, no cyclist should have to live with owning n-1 bikes!

Unlike other rides which appear here, I post all my Pan-Mass Challenge ride reports as pages on the cycling section of my personal website.

So if you're interested in reading about my 15th PMC — my first as a virtual rider due to the Covid-19 pandemic causing the real-world ride's cancellation — you'll find my writeup, photos, videos, screenshots, charts, maps, and stats at the following link:

Ornoth's 2020 Virtual PMC Ride Report

Last month, BikePGH—Pittsburgh’s main cycling advocacy group—conducted a survey of cyclists’ attitudes toward self-driving autonomous vehicles (AVs).

That action wasn’t arbitrary. Carnegie-Mellon University has developed their own AVs and tested them locally on the open roads. Ford’s AV unit employs a couple hundred people locally, mostly software engineers. And two years ago Uber deployed a score of robotic vehicles, using Pittsburgh as a development center and testbed for their own fleet. On any given trip through the city, you’re more likely to see an AV than not.

Bikers prefer AVs

With so many of them on the road, BikePGH wanted to know how cyclists felt about sharing the public streets with two-ton robots driving around at speed, and whether they, as an advocacy group, should oppose AV deployment or support it. So they conducted a survey.

You can read the survey results here. Although the survey questions were formulated with an obvious bias toward opposing autonomous vehicles, both BikePGH members and the general public responded that they overwhelmingly support the idea.

Naturally, I provided my own experiences. I’ve had many interactions with AVs while cycling; as I said, I’ve been seeing them all over town since moving here 18 months ago. All those interactions have been positive, with no issues whatsoever.

I suppose it’s human nature to mistrust automation. We find it difficult to believe that a machine can be put into a complex environment and make decisions that are better than—or even equal to—those made by a human.

The shibboleth that machines cannot handle the complexity of real-world situations has been addressed by recent advances in sensors, big data, and machine learning.

In fact, given proper programming and training, a robot will process more sensory data and consider more decisionmaking criteria than humanly possible in order to arrive at an optimal response, and do it in a fraction the time it would take you or I.

Does that mean I trust them enough to put my life in their hands? As with GPS navigation and routing, there are bound to be bugs and other challenges which will only be discovered with mass deployment. So far, all those AVs have had attentive “Safety Engineers” in the front seat, supervising their decisions and ready to intervene if anything goes amiss.

I do think it’s important that the government get involved to establish standard behavior and decisionmaking protocols and verify compliance with rigorous testing. I wouldn’t trust private enterprise to willingly bear the expense of testing and putting out a truly safe product. And someone needs to figure out liability concerns and how to insure them.

So I might not fully trust them, but I don’t fully trust any human operator on the road, either. While AVs might suffer from shortsighted programming, I know they won’t be intoxicated, fatigued, distracted, or aggressive. Taking those factors into account, I trust them more than I trust human operators, and I said as much in my survey response.

Amusingly, BikePGH chose to (anonymously) quote one of my comments in their survey’s summary. Here’s their writeup:

In general, people’s disdain for rude and aggressive human drivers overshadowed any negative perception, if not even welcomed autonomous vehicles. “Their novelty should not obscure the fact that they are neither distracted, intoxicated, nor aggressive, unlike the far more numerous human operators I encounter on the roads.” This commenter followed with “if [BikePGH] truly cares about cyclists’ safety, you would work to minimize the latter, rather than the former.”

That quote also got picked up as the closing kicker in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s article that covered the survey:

The general attitude toward self-driving cars in the survey could be summed up in one respondent’s comment: “Their novelty should not obscure the fact that they are neither distracted, intoxicated, nor aggressive, unlike the far more numerous human operators I encounter on the roads.”

Although I’m amused that I was quoted, I very much stand by those words. In my years of experience on the road, humans have conclusively proven themselves unable to operate motor vehicles without killing one another. Although autonomous vehicles might not be perfect, they’re unquestionably better than the self-important, homicidal monkeys I see on the roads every day.

Here’s the PMC video I appeared in, as shown and broadcast at last weekend’s Opening Ceremony for the 2015 ride.

The footage is, of course, from the Saturday portion of last year’s cold, rainy ride. At 2:20 I ride by, clapping, the blue plastic lei I got at the first water stop trailing in the wind.

Amusingly, eight seconds later my riding buddy Tony also appears, wearing his green and blue Quad Cycles jersey in honor of the club and our hero and mentor, Bobby Mac.

Despite those brief appearances, I encourage you to watch the whole three and a half minute video. Entitled “Because of You”, it captures a lot of the emotion and the things that mattered about the PMC.

I couldn’t possibly think of a better video to appear in. It’s truly an honor to be included in it, even for just a brief second.

And I actually appeared in a second video shown at the Opening Ceremony! The second video, “Why I PMC”, closes at 2:15 with a still photograph of the riders leaving the Sturbridge start, with me placed dead center beneath the starting banner: the most prominent, in-focus person in a vast sea of riders.

Although I didn’t ride this year, my ghostly presence making this appearance during this year’s Opening Ceremony was a nice, unexpected farewell to an event I deeply love.

Follow this link for my full 2013 Pan-Mass Challenge ride report, including writeup, photos, and GPS logs.

Not really. But over the past couple years, a strange thing has happened: people have come up to me and introduced themselves while saying that they read my cycling blog.

In both the 2011 and 2012 Pan-Mass Challenge rides, a fellow rider looked over at my name tag and announced that he’d read my stuff.

Then last week I was boarding a flight from San Francisco to Boston, and one of the passengers looked at my PMC backpack (which also has an old name tag) and said the same thing: that he read my stuff. Given that I was in San Francisco, that really took me by surprise.

I suppose it’s not surprising that other PMC riders would come across my blog. I’ve posted a dozen long ride reports, lots of photos, and several videos, and I maintain a page full of hints and tips for new riders. I’ve probably got more PMC-related content on the web than anyone.

But if I read someone’s blog, I usually don’t remember their name or keep an eye out in case I run across them on the street. It’s kind of humbling that anyone would wade through my voluminous ramblings and still think enough of it to remember my name… and say hello!

Mind you, it’s flattering; but it’s really unexpected. I usually write mostly for myself, but if anyone has a better cycling experience as a result of my observations, then I’m very happy to have helped.

So if you’re one of those strangers whose curiosity brought you here, I’d like to take a second to say thank-you; I’m delighted to share this road with you. And if there’s anything you’ve particularly enjoyed or want to hear more of, don’t hesitate to comment.

Thank you for reading!

It’s been a while, but I thought I’d do a quick writeup of the ride I did the day after Thanksgiving, since it was kind of memorable in its own way.

One of the things I wanted to do was test my Garmin Edge 800 GPS cyclocomputer, since it had been acting up since my last big ride, six weeks earlier. I’d given it a complete hard reset, but frustratingly, it wasn’t any better. It’s great when it works, but that’s only about 80 percent of the time. And for $700, I think it’s reasonable to expect better reliability.

Still, with the temperature in the mid-50s, I moseyed out Mass Ave. all the way to Lexington, because I wanted to pick up a Lexington Minuteman newspaper. Johnny H, one of my longtime riding buddies, had posted that he’d seen my photo in it, so I had to check that out firsthand.

After wandering around town a bit, I spotted a handful of cyclists pulling up to a coffee shop, and discovered that one of them was another old friend, Joy. I spoke to her briefly, then stepped inside a CVS and picked up a paper.

Newspaper photo

I came back out and parked myself on a bench with Joy and her friends while I leafed through the paper until I found the photo of me; the same picture that had graced the Pan-Mass Challenge home page for three months filled a quarter of the second page of the sports section. It was the focus of a thank-you message to PMC riders, although I’m still not sure whether it was from the paper, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Jimmy Fund, or the PMC itself!

And if that ad appeared in a local paper in Lexington, it might well have also been placed in other town papers, although I haven’t gotten any information from the inquiries I’ve sent.

I said goodbye to Joy and rode down Waltham Street to Waltham (my first time down that road), and pulled into my riding buddy Jay’s driveway. I called him on my cell to ask whether he was home, and to open his back door for me. Since I hadn’t seen Jay in months, I figured this would be a good time to deliver something I’d been saving for him: a pair of size 12 PMC-branded flip-flops that I’d grabbed for him at PMC headquarters when I was there to pick up this year’s Heavy Hitter premium (a backpack). He was properly surprised and pleased, which was gratifying, and we chatted briefly.

From Waltham I took Linden Street and Waverly Oaks (another road I traveled for the first time) into Belmont, where I stopped at Belmont Wheelworks, arguably the best-stocked bike shop in eastern Mass. I was surprised to find it very quiet on the infamous “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving. I hadn’t brought a shopping list, but I did wind up walking out with two new tires, since my old ones were wearing out, and my preferred tires (Michelin Lithion IIs with blue sidewalls) are hard to find. So that was good, too.

As I approached Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge, I had a brainstorm. I was only a couple blocks from Fastachi, a local nut roastery. Normally I wouldn’t stop, but since I was running errands I’d brought my bike locks, and it was Thanksgiving, so why not? I walked away with a mess of freshly-roasted cashews, hazelnuts, roasted corn, and some New Zealish licorice. Oh yeah, and some chocolate-covered caramels, too!

I hopped back on the bike, but hadn’t gone a quarter mile when I felt the tell-tale squidginess of a flat rear tire. Perfect! I popped the wheel off and removed the inner tube. Out of habit, I did what you’re supposed to do, which is run your hands around the inner surface of the tire to see if you can feel what might have caused the puncture, although usually there’s nothing to find, since I typically get pinch-flats. But this time I discovered an inch-long nail that had gone straight through the tire and into the tube. Glad I bothered to inspect the tire!

I installed my backup tube with the speed that comes from practice, and used my wonderful frame pump to fill it up to 100 PSI before mounting up and lumbering home, my bag filled to bursting with two bike locks, two new tires, a newspaper, a huge bag of roasted nut goodies, and a punctured inner tube.

It hadn’t been a particularly long or fast ride, but even despite the flat it was just a nice day on the bike, which was doubly good after a very discouraging Quad ride the week before.

Last year’s summary concluded with the assertion that 2010 was probably my best year on the bike, and that it would be all downhill from there.

Well, so far I’ve been right. After riding 5,000 miles last year, this year I could only muster 3,000. Much of that reduction was due to my rejoining the work force.

On the other hand, 925 of this year’s miles came from 40 22-mile round trip commutes to Quincy. The unfortunate part is that I really can’t do my commute safely in the dark, so it’s only a five-month affair from April to September.

Despite doing 40 percent fewer miles, I still did seven centuries this summer (only one less than last year’s eight), and brought my total 11-year mileage up to 36,500. I especially enjoyed my second Outriders and Hub on Wheels rides, and sort of enjoyed riding Jay Peak (despite the rain), but was discouraged by both the CRW’s Climb to the Clouds and the Flattest Century.

This was the year that my road bike—the Plastic Bullet—finally passed my old hybrid in terms of mileage. That’s a nice accomplishment, but it also means the Bullet’s getting old. It has a bunch of dings from careless mechanics and car racks, and a worrisome crack we discovered near the bottom bracket. She may not have much more than a year or two left in her.

One benefit of wage slavery is that I had the disposable income to replace and upgrade a whole bunch of equipment this year, including a new helmet, new SPD cycling sandals, a body composition bathroom scale, and a major overhaul of the entire bike. I replaced my rear wheel (again) after discovering large cracks in the rim. But most noteworthy was my purchase of a Garmin Edge 800 GPS/cyclocomputer, which I’ve enjoyed immensely (when it works properly).

This was a year of superlative highs and lows for my Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride. The Dana-Farber’s new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care opened, and I attended the dedication of the PMC Plaza that comprises the building’s main entrance, and also went to the Heavy Hitter banquet for the first time. But several of my riding buddies—Paul and Lynda and Noah—didn’t ride this year. My buddy Jay rode for the first time, but I only got to ride with him for 6 out of 192 miles. One first-time rider thought enough of my web posts to express his thanks while we rode through the hills of Truro; but when I got to Provincetown, I discovered that a spiteful volunteer had stripped ten years of souvenir PMC luggage tags from my bag. I rode in record form, but had to dodge sprinkles most of the weekend. I came close to raising $10,000 this year, but was unable to convince people to pony up the last $295 I needed. As I said, highs and lows.

It’s also worth noting a few things that happened online in 2011. I had a health and fitness question answered in RoadBikeRider magazine; I completely revised my cycling charts and statistics page; and I published a 10-part series of hints and tips for PMC riders.

But most noteworthy was that a photo of me leading a paceline was the largest picture on the PMC’s home page for months after the ride. It was an excellent shot, and I was deeply honored and delighted to be featured on the same page as Lance Armstrong, Senator John Kerry, and PMC founder Billy Starr. Truly something I’ll remember for the rest of my life, and a good way to cap a mixed year.

Now, at the end of the 2011 season, I find myself tired and frustrated. My performance has declined a lot this year, and some of my favorite rides were difficult slogs. I tried to keep up with my younger riding buddies, but pretty much rode all alone through every organized ride this year. Maybe my frustration will go away over the off-season, and I’ll wake up next spring with renewed desire, but right now it feels like I just need some time off the bike. I can’t say yet whether that’s four months off the bike or fourteen; we’ll just have to see when we get there.

I do know that I’m not likely to do Climb to the Clouds or Flattest Century next year. I’m more interested in riding for fun again. Perhaps doing some different events will renew my interest, although that means selling my buddies on the idea or somehow finding my own transportation to those events.

If I do ride, I’ve got three significant milestones coming up. Assuming it holds together, I should pass 20,000 miles on the Plastic Bullet, which is quite a nice accomplishment. And if I somehow put 3,500 miles down next year, I will break 40,000 miles since I took cycling up again back in 2000. That would be nice, but right now hitting stretch mileage goals is at the absolute bottom of my priority list. And of course there’s my 12th Pan-Mass Challenge, where I’ll surpass $75,000 in lifetime fundraising for cancer research.

But now that the season’s over, I’m done pushing myself. I’ll ride a few miles if and when I feel like it, and spend the next four months thinking about next spring, coming up with new rides and new ways to enjoy time in the saddle.

Some interesting stuff that shouldn’t wait for the release of my 2011 PMC ride report.

First and most importantly is that the PMC home page features a photo of me putting the hammer down during last weekend’s Pan-Mass Challenge. I was absolutely floored, because in a field of 5,200 riders it’s rare enough to have one’s picture taken, much less selected for inclusion in the post-ride photo montage!

On top of that, there are so many things about that photo that blow me away. It’s actually a good picture of me, wearing this year’s event jersey. And the jersey’s properly zipped up, a pro move that I teased my buddy Noah about a couple weeks ago. It’s a picture of intensity, with a pained grimace on the guy behind me. I’m down in the drops, leading a paceline, both of which are somewhat rare events. I didn’t even think I’d seen any event photographers on the course! If you look carefully, you’ll notice that it’s the biggest photo in the whole collage, and I’m given more prominent placement and a larger picture than Lance Armstrong and Senator John Kerry! And damn if I don’t have nice legs, too!

So yeah, when my buddy Dave Long pointed that out, I pretty much flipped my shit. Huge moment of pride, excitement, and amusement. Hopefully I’ll be able to obtain the original.

Next items are a couple of new purchases.

The first is a replacement rim for my rear wheel. Two days before the PMC, I found cracks in the rim of the Ksyrium SL that I run. So at the last second, I went to Back Bay Bikes and one of the mechanics let me borrow one of his (personal) wheels to ride the PMC with. I guess that deserves a paragraph in and of itself.

But a few days ago I got my rebuilt Ksyrium back. You might remember that I had a warranty replacement of that wheel two years ago. While they would have done a second replacement, the wheel was two months out of warranty, so I had to foot the bill to repair it. But now she’s back and hopefully will last. I wish I knew why I’m so tough on rear wheels, tho; I’ve destroyed two Ultegra and two Ksyrium SL rear wheels.

I also received the new Shimano cycling sandals I’d ordered. I’ve used two identical pairs of sandals since I started riding back in 2000, and I wore them into the ground because they don’t make that model anymore. However, one of them literally fell apart after this year’s Climb to the Clouds, so I ordered a pair of Shimano’s current model: SH-SD66.

Any time you change anything related to the contact points between you and the bike—hands, shoes, or seat—you risk screwing things up. I’ve only taken a couple rides, but so far they feel good. The most noticeable change is that the soles are stiffer, which is good, since I could feel exactly where the cleat was on my old sandals. Of course, it remains to be seen whether that stiffness is permanent or just a factor of the shoes being new, but I’m hopeful enough to retire the old ones and order a second pair to keep in rotation.

Final item is an interesting article about what it takes to be a pro cyclist, and how integral suffering is to cycling, whether one be a pro or just a neighborhood speedster. You might be interested in the whole article, but here are a couple choice citations that resonated with me:

Everything about cycling is contained in that gesture, including its reigning truism: to race bicycles is to drink greedily from a bottomless chalice of agony. The sport and its heroes are only knowable, and then just barely, once you come to understand that suffering is cycling’s currency. And what that currency buys is the occasional—the very, very occasional—moment of exquisite glory.

The first thing you notice about professional cyclists is that, with few exceptions, they appear to live their internal lives in a heavily padlocked tomb of mental anguish. They are at once astonishingly young and improbably ancient, a result of the fact that they are paid for their agony. They are modern-day ascetics, working in the open-air monastery of the mountains of Europe, with helmets as tonsures, spandex as robes.

There is thus a detachment in their manner that suggests the real world—our world—exists to them only as storybook legend, trapped as they are in another realm, with no corollaries, no points of contact, no common ground. They experience their lives through the tiny aperture of cycling; the aperture is so small because the light is so fierce. They have felt and done things on the farthest shore of the possible.

The reward for being the best isn’t that one takes *less* pain; rather that one is able to absorb *more*. The nature of this process is revealed at the precise instant that we come to know ourselves completely: we learn how far we can push ourselves, and the true mettle of our character. But that knowledge isn’t properly intelligible, nor is it transferable. To mangle Laurie Anderson’s aphorism, writing about cycling’s meta-state is like dancing about architecture. It is a private knowledge, forged in pain’s stables, and belongs to men who are not served by articulating it.

There’s no outward sign that [the cyclist] is one of the best athletes on earth. If you came across him shopping for a Billy bookcase at IKEA, you’d assume he had just returned from an island survival challenge, which he lost. Badly.

Jujuly

Jul. 23rd, 2011 02:07 pm

Right now my life consists of work, cycling, fundraising, and occasional sleep, so my periodic updates this time of year tend to cover a lot of ground… like this one, which covers the past month.

July was a memorable month, but not for good reasons. Although I usually spend most of the Fourth of July holiday on the bike, with one of those days comprising a century ride, this year a terrible cold hit me Friday afternoon and kept me housebound the entire holiday weekend. Pure suckage!

The next weekend I had to go up to Maine, and convinced myself that I could get some training in by riding the 70 miles from Portland to Augusta. That ride wound up being really difficult, thanks to my lingering illness, a 25-35 mph headwind that hadn’t been forecast, and a mile-long section of muddy dirt road up and over a big hill in Sabbatus. But at least I managed to get some time in the saddle…

Ornoth's CttC

Which I needed, because the weekend after that was the CRW’s Climb to the Clouds, a very hilly century that goes up Mt. Wachusett, and is a traditional warmup for the Pan-Mass Challenge.

So CttC was just brutal. Combine my reduced training this year with oppressively humid 96-degree blazing sun and the CRW’s extremely limited idea of what constitutes a supported ride, and you can begin to imagine how difficult it was. Thankfully, I can say that my age wasn’t a factor, as my three buddies (all 17+ years younger) also concluded that they never wanted to do that ride again.

The ironic thing is that I spent half the day hammering, thinking I was chasing them, when actually I was ahead of them. Although I let them go ahead after the first 10 miles, they stopped at a water stop I skipped. I was surprised to see them ride past me in Princeton, where I stopped but they did not. So I got back on the bike and chased, unknowingly passing them *again* when they stopped at a convenience store. So I beat them over the mountain, and they only caught up with me after I’d spent 20 minutes at the next water stop, 53 miles in.

And as I predicted last year, the summit road was closed to us for the third year in a row, which was disappointing.

Toward the end of the ride, I was nauseous and unsafely overheated, and kept pouring water over my head to cool off. I stopped at the little Chinese grocery in West Concord and picked up their last two bottles of water, only to discover on gulping it down that it was seltzer! I sipped what my stomach could tolerate and poured the rest over my head and limped to the finish, where I pretty much just collapsed. But not before getting shit from the ride organizers for asking if I could have some ice. I was too destroyed to muster any argument when the guys decided to go home early rather than take the traditional postride dip in Walden Pond.

Ornoth's CttC

Definitely one of my worst days on the bike. There damned well better be some training benefit, after all that suffering!

And to make matters worse, my brand new $700 bike computer / GPS failed to record the quarter of the ride that included Mt. Wachusett and the following descent (GPS data). I had already left its heart rate monitor at home, because it had been malfunctioning. At least Garmin is replacing the HRM strap; hopefully the new one will last longer than the first one.

And then yesterday Boston tied the second hottest temperature ever recorded in the city’s 140 years of keeping records. Thinking I couldn’t get into much trouble in just one hour, I biked home from work in 103°F / 40°C heat. Against a convection oven-like 25 mph headwind, over three sections of stripped/grooved pavement along one of Boston’s biggest and fastest 6-lane arterials, and then stupidly up and over Dorchester Heights, just for fun.

That kind of heat will raise your heart rate 10 bpm no matter what you’re doing, and by the time I was done my heart was pounding and I was feeling very lightheaded. Kinda scary! Hopefully this stretch of intense heat will break and the weather will be more forgiving for the upcoming PMC ride!

And that brings me around to the tiny list of positive things that happened this month. First, Garmin did replace my problem HRM strap, and the new one seems to be functioning well; tho I probably will use it sparingly until PMC weekend.

Second, a question I’d sent in to the RoadBikeRider online magazine was published this week. The question was about how to fit a cooldown, stretching, shower, and recovery meal all into the half hour after stopping that is the optimal window for those activities. You can see the full question and RBR’s response here.

And, finally, the news that really matters: PMC fundraising. Once I finally started getting fundraising letters out, the money came in quite readily. I’ve surpassed the minimum and made the Heavy Hitter level for the sixth year in a row, and have settled at $7,200 for the moment, which is quite satisfactory, although there’ll be additional donations coming in over the next month or two.

Naturally, if you haven’t made your donation yet, please do so here.

And PMC weekend is only two weeks away. I’d normally be excited, but after the difficulties of the Maine ride and CttC and this brutal heat, I’m a little gun-shy about looking forward to riding. It hasn’t been a great year for any of my cycling buddies; just ask Lynda, who canceled her plans to do the epic 745-mile PBP ride; or Paul, who bought a pricey new bike only to have Jay destroy it by driving his truck over it on the way to the 150-mile Harpoon B2B ride that was supposed to be the highlight of his season.

The bad juju is in full force this year.

So we’ll see. There’s two more weekends before the PMC, and I don’t have anything special planned for them. Hopefully there’ll be a couple Quad rides and some hill repeats in there, and then a relaxing, rewarding PMC ride once the calendar turns to August.

Hopefully…

Yesterday I rode the Boston Marathon route for the first time, first from Boston out to the Hopkinton start, and then back the same way the runners do it.

While it wasn’t the most scenic ride, I did get to visit two former residences of mine in Natick. Although I’d never thought about it, I’ve lived within a block of the marathon route for the past 20 years. I also threw in an over-and-back of Summit Ave in Brookline, just to further work my legs.

I timed my return trip, which took 92 minutes, a little more than half an hour faster than the record pace set by Monday’s winner. In the end, it was a decent ride, and I definitely stressed the legs.

Then last night I attended a hastily-organized Boston Bike Safety Summit, which was held in response to three recent accidents involving cyclists.

In attendance were top-level brass from several city and state departments, who all echoed the same message: that cyclists are going to be heard and taken into account. While we’ve heard such messages before, I was encouraged to see the heads of the MBTA, MassDOT, and BPD all making some firm, on-the-spot commitments to improving conditions for cyclists.

After the obligatory feel-good political speeches, the majority of the evening was devoted to hearing the opinions and suggestions of the cyclists in the audience. Although there was some chaff, I was very impressed with the diversity and thoughtfulness of the suggestions.

For myself, I spent my one minute of allocated microphone time as follows:

To increase safety on Boston’s roads, you need to do two things: identify risky behaviors and then control them. Identifying them is easy: for drivers, it’s aggressive driving and distracted driving; for cyclists, it’s running stops, going the wrong way on one-way streets, and not being visible at night; for pedestrians it’s crossing against the light.

There are actually laws currently on the books to control all of these behaviors, but they historically have never been enforced. People will continue to die on the streets of Boston—particularly cyclists and pedestrians—until those regulations are taken at least as seriously as writing a ticket for someone parking on Comm Ave without a resident sticker. Thank you.

And after the session ended, I cornered MBTA GM Rich Davey and told him about a cool idea I saw in the May issue of Bicycling magazine. One reason why Minneapolis won their award for best cycling city in the nation is that they provide a standalone replica of the rack found on city buses, so that cyclists can practice putting their bikes onto them. To support my point, another cyclist standing beside me commented that it was very nerve-wracking the first time he had to put his bike on a bus rack, while the driver and other passengers all waited for him. So if you see or hear about these coming to the MBTA, remember: you heard it here first!

Here’s hoping, anyways.

UPDATED: I’m (mis)quoted in this article.

Ornoth @ Bike Week

Finally found the photo of me that I'd mentioned in this post. It appeared in the Boston Metro newspaper on 5/12/2009. It was taken at Christopher Columbus Park, where I was attending the kickoff speech given by Mayor Menino at the 2009 Bay State Bike Week celebration.

You can see the full image here (or by clicking on the thumbnail), or you can see it in the context of the newspaper here.

Being May

May. 17th, 2009 09:47 am

It’s May, so things have started happening.

A week ago Sunday I did the full/long Quad Cycles ride for the first time this year, rather than bailing at Northside (Gammy’s) in Bedford. It only added 10 miles to my day, but it was my first 75-mile day of the year. It being May, I returned home with eyes that were absolutely encrusted with pollen.

Bike Week press conference

While standing at our lunch stop at Ferns in Carlisle, we ran into Billy Starr, the founder of the Pan-Mass Challenge. We exchanged a few words, and he encouraged us to see if we could flush out any more riders for this year’s event. So if you’re on the fence this year, please sign up. There’s many options as far as length and fundraising commitment, and the classic Sturbridge to Provincetown route is still open!

Last Monday I went to the official Bay State Bike Week kickoff ride and press conference. The ride was a bit silly—just from City Hall to Columbus Park, about as far as you could throw a baseball—but the press conference was a bit interesting.

In the photo at right you get to see Mayor Menino (speaking), Mass Highway Commissioner Luisa Paiewonsky behind his shoulder, next to Boston Bike Program Director and former racer Nicole Freedman, lifelong bike advocate Doug Mink in the back, and MassBike director David Watson at right.

Apparently the Metro newspaper also carried a photo of the event that included me! I haven’t seen it yet (I hope to get a copy), but it must be a prominent and recognizable likeness, because both a former coworker and a fellow Quad Cycles rider both commented on it to me.

2009 PMC Zipcar

Amazingly, as I biked back from the press conference, I stopped in a line of traffic at a red light at Commercial/Causeway/No Washington. What’s that on my left? A spuddy-van Zipcar all painted up in 2009 Pan-Mass jersey colors! Last year Zipcar Saran-Wrapped a van in PMC colors, and apparently they did so again this year. Quick like bull I whipped out the camera and took the accompanying snap.

The amusing bit is that about fifteen minutes after I got home, David Hellman, the PMC’s Director of Operations, tweeted the following: http://twitpic.com/4ziqi Zip Car is doing it again in 2009 for the PMC http://twitpic.com/4zish zipcar.com/pmc

Then Wednesday was such a beautiful day that I decided to go even longer, making it my first (100 mile) century ride of the year, something I’m not usually ready for until June or July. And I cranked through it, too, finishing in seven hours clock time, which includes a 30-minute ice cream stop at Kimball’s. I got through it with relatively few complaints, although both my knees and leg muscles required some time to recover.

Bobby and Buff Jr.

And yesterday I did the Quad ride, which did 62 miles, giving me a day’s total of 77 miles, although I took it very easy after Wednesday’s stressor. The ride featured a return to stopping at Kimball’s for ice cream. Although a group of over 50 riders began the ride, by Kimball’s it was down to four: Bobby, Paul, Michael, and I. Bobby wanted a reprise of his photo feeding Buff the Powerbar-Eating Goat, so I took care of that for him. Another good day in the saddle.

As I indicated, this is also Bay State Bike Week. They have a mileage challenge this year, and I pledged 150 miles and rode 184, between the kickoff “ride”, the solo century, and yesterday’s Quad ride.

And I’ve just completed editing my first video fundraising appeal for my Pan-Mass Challenge ride. It’ll be up and announced shortly, as I kick off this year’s fundraising drive. I hope it goes over well!

I’m always at a loss about whether to post Pan-Mass Challenge articles to [livejournal.com profile] ornoth_cycling or [livejournal.com profile] ornoth. Here’s a couple that I posted over there that might be of interest to you if you haven’t seen them already.

2008 PMC Fundraising Letter
Condo Newsletter Cover Story on Ornoth

Limetime

Jan. 20th, 2007 04:21 pm

Each year, the PMC sends out a “yearbook”, really a glossy annual report sort of affair. Last night I received my 2006 PMC yearbook.

The yearbook’s usually good reading. It’s the one place where you can get a high-level overview of how the year went: the number of riders, the fundraising, the organization’s goals and achievements, and, of course, the inspirational stories that motivate us all to keep riding and raising money to make the world a better place for everyone who follows us.

But the 2006 yearbook will always be a special treasure for me, because for the first time, my name appeared within its pages. It’s nothing major: just “Ornoth Liscomb” and the number “6”, to indicate how many years I’ve participated. Even though it appears on page three of a four page list along with 1350 other “Heavy Hitters”, it appears under the heading “$6,000”, for those who broke that fundraising plateau, which is something I’m deeply proud of.

Other than that, there hasn’t been much riding happening lately, other than the 2-mile commute to work, but I expect that to change soon. I have a trip to Vegas in March, and I plan on doing a hilly 30-50 mile ride out to Red Rock Canyon and back, possibly via Blue Diamond. And I hope to get a 300k randonnée under my belt this year, although I suspect that’ll be either the 6/4 or 7/21 rides, rather than the guaranteed to be chilly, early season 4/28 ride!

Sadly, I have to say this is going to be my first bikeless week in over three years. I’ve ridden every week for the past 166 weeks.

The last time I didn’t ride was November 2002. In that instance I was off the bike for over five weeks thanks to major knee problems.

This week’s absence isn’t quite as drastic, but it’s still going to make it impossible to ride: I’ve been in Korea all week, and won’t be back until Saturday. I guess it’s as good an excuse as any, but it’s a bit of a bummer to have my consecutive riding streak end.

Ah well, at least I can take solace in another event that happened today: a coworker in Australia led off an AIM conversation with “you’re a big biker right?”. I think it’s really cool that this guy on the far side of the planet, whom I’ve never met or talked to before, knows that I’m a dedicated cyclist. I guess I now have a world-wide reputation as a cyclist! Not bad, eh?

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