Orny's Cycling Journal

I’ve been in Austin for six months – although only cycling for four – so it’s time to share my initial impression of cycling in Austin. I’ll cover the bike shops, clubs, group rides, organized events, routes, road conditions, drivers, online community, and weather.

These are my limited observations, so they may not accurately reflect anyone else’s experience. Ready?

Downtown Austin from Town Lake boardwalk

Mellow Johnny's Friday Truancy ride

The Fire Ant Tour

The Veloway

Bike night at the Circuit of the Americas

Looking back from the top of Ladera Norte

Bike Shops

Austin is still dealing with the fallout from everyone’s favorite independent bike shop being bought out by Trek in 2020, in an effort to force Specialized out. The friendly Austin Trek staff are trying their best, but they’re hampered by being brand-tied and the bad blood the company earned in that buyout. In a city preoccupied with losing “the old Austin”, it was a prime example.

Specialized is recovering, but slowly. They’re now based in a cramped showroom in an inconvenient mall north of town, but much of their operation is run from a sketchy, anonymous warehouse in South Austin, while presumably looking for more functional retail space.

Of course, you can’t talk about bike shops without mentioning Mellow Johnny’s, still owned and operated by Austin’s disgraced former pro cyclist. I found the shop unfriendly, but their support of the local cycling community robust.

There’s also a Rapha store, which – in addition to hawking their overpriced wares with a pretentious attitude – coordinate some popular group rides. And there’s also REI and several small neighborhood shops of unknown quality.

Clubs & Group Rides

There are lots of opportunities to ride, although surprisingly few of them are run by the local bike shops. Here are some highlights.

Mellow Johnny’s has a popular Friday Truancy ride of their own, but many of their rides are led by the Violet Crown Cycling Club, which I naturally refer to as the “Violent Crowd”. Due to time conflicts, I haven’t been able to ride with them yet.

The Phenom Cycling Club runs a couple challenging hilly group rides. That’s fine I guess if you want a hard workout, but they predominantly cater to young racers, and don’t spare much attention for laggards.

Long-distance riders are served by the Hill Country Randonneurs. However, they require membership in Randonneurs USA, whose policies I take exception to, so I really can’t ride with them.

There’s an exceptionally popular monthly Breakfast Club ride which again I haven’t made because of timing. I’ve heard mixed opinions about it.

There’s also an overnight Full Moon Ride every four weeks. I enjoy night rides, but it’s a pedestrian ride. Although they’re around, I’m really not interested in the casual populist rides like Critical Mass, Social Cycling Austin, and some of the Meetup groups.

Aside from many group rides happening at difficult times (i.e. early mornings and Saturdays), I haven’t found anything that suits my level: non-competitive but serious enthusiast. There’s lots of rides for young, fast, elitist racers; and plenty for slow, pot-smoking townies and commuters; but nothing for us devoted middle-of-the-road riders that I’ve found.

Organized Events

Here’s another area where I’m struggling to find my place. Perhaps it’s because of the Texas heat, but despite scouring the online ride calendars, I’ve found shockingly few organized events around Austin to suit my preferred ride distance of 100 to 200 KM.

One option is the infamous Hotter’n Hell 100 (August), although that’s a solid 5-hour drive away!

And there’s the Texas MS 150 (April), whose century route starts in Houston. I passed on it this year, having lost too much fitness over our move.

Austin is also home to the Livestrong Challenge, which several New England friends take part in, so hopefully there’ll be reunion opportunities when that rolls around in September.

And there are occasional smaller, less-familiar rides. Rather than enumerate them here, I’ll point you to my work-in-progress Austin Cycling Calendar webpage.

For my Pittsburgh friends, there’s a local semi-organized hill ride in the spirit of the Dirty Dozen. The Tour das Hugel takes place in November and incurs a whopping 175 KM with 3,200 M of climbing.

But so far I’ve only managed one 100 km ride, the Fire Ant Tour up in Gatesville, which I wrote about here. It was fine, but I’m still searching for my first century even as we enter the forbidding heat of summer in Texas.

Routes

There are a couple unique cycling facilities that are especially noteworthy. One is the Veloway, a winding 5 KM circuit that is limited to cyclists and skaters. It’s a delightful wooded loop on the south side of town. However, it’s a bit far to ride to, and I imagine it gets busy on the weekends.

And in the spring and fall, the Circuit of the Americas racetrack – which normally hosts Formula 1, NASCAR, and MotoGP races – regularly opens their 5 KM track to cyclists from 6PM to dark. It’s a memorable experience, but again it’s a bit far away to make it a regular event.

For racers, there are criteriums at the Driveway: a private track designed to instruct auto racers. Not being a racer, those are of limited interest to me, save perhaps as a spectator.

In terms of bike paths, there are a couple around town. The most noteworthy is the Southern Walnut Creek Trail, which is pretty long, quite rideable, and one viable way to get out of the city and into the outskirts.

Shoal Creek is partially an on-street bike lane, but there are off-street segments. While it looks like a straight route into downtown, part of it is shut down long-term, and it’s more suited to leisure rides than getting somewhere in good time.

And there’s an extensive network of jogging paths around Town Lake. While scenic and featuring an amazing investment in elevated boardwalks over the river, these gravel paths are crowded with oblivious tourists and locals, so they’re of limited value for road cyclists.

I’ve spent a lot of time exploring Austin’s roads, but I’ve still only just scratched the surface. As when I moved to Pittsburgh in 2015, I’ve had excellent luck identifying fellow roadies through Strava’s Flyby utility and then following some of the routes they frequent. That’s given me insights into popular local routes as well as further afield (such as over toward Manor, or out Spicewood Springs and the Volente loop).

And I’ve found several methods of getting from my base in the Northwest Hills across town or into downtown, including Balcones Drive to Scenic Drive or Pecos Street or Exposition; or Winstead to Atlanta; Jefferson or Bull Creek or Shoal Creek; 51st Street for heading east; and Mesa and Jollyville heading north.

As for hills, we’ve got hills. I’m on the border between the flatter terrain to the east and the hilly terrain of the Hill Country’s Balcones Escarpment to the west. In fact, I have to climb a short but vicious hill just to escape my little cul-de-sac. But I’ve explored some local hills that would be right at home in Pittsburgh, including the infamous Ladera Norte, which is now part of my regular workout. If you wanna climb, there’s no shortage of it; but (unlike Pittsburgh) there’s plenty of nice flat riding, as well.

Road Conditions & Drivers

My memories of Austin from before I moved were of narrow roads with no shoulder and high-speed traffic, and that’s proved out. But those are the urban roads and suburban highways that are popular for cars; there are other roads that are calmer and quieter, and in town there are a number of side-roads that are adequate for cyclists getting around town.

And there’s a fair amount of bike infrastructure, including my first experience with parking-protected bike lanes, which are about as appealing to me as licking an electrical outlet. God save us all from well-intentioned bike advocates!

Road surfaces vary a lot, but they’re generally rougher (and thus slower) than I’m used to up north. The rural roads bake in the sun and can develop dangerous cracks. I managed a quadruple snakebite puncture by hitting one of those on a descent! And down here they use the term “sealcoat” for their variant on the universally hated oil-and-chips road surface treatment, which Texas uses more than any other state.

Drivers… For the most part Austin drivers have been surprisingly conscientious, although there are hundreds of online tales of absolutely insane driving. Of course, there’s self-important drivers going too fast for the conditions everywhere, and streets that pit all road users against one another, but in 200 hours of outdoor riding over four months, I’ve only experienced one legit instance of harassment on the bike.

Connecting Online

Another surprise: I have yet to find any useful Austin cycling forums online. There’s the Reddit group /r/BikingATX, but it’s not especially active or useful. If there’s a forum that’s commonly used – say, hosted by one of the bike clubs or something – I haven’t found it. Honestly, Strava has been the most useful online resource for finding other riders, clubs, and routes.

The best events calendar I’ve found has been the state-wide WheelBrothers Texas Bike Rides page.

Weather

From February through May, the weather was absolutely stellar. Of course, we had temperatures below freezing for short periods (including a devastating ice storm), but most of our days were between 10 to 25° C. That was delightful.

Then the heat came. We’ve had four straight weeks with high temps around or above 37°C, which limits outdoor riding to either mornings or short daytime rides. Save for a couple major events, summer is the off-season for riding.

Which brings up the question of when and where to use the indoor trainer. Over the winter, I could get away with riding it in the unheated and un-insulted garage, so long as it wasn’t too cold outdoors; but I wonder whether it makes more sense to bring it inside. Over the summer, it’s too hot to ride in the garage, but I’m not convinced it’d be much better if I set it up inside. Still needs some figuring out, so we’ll see!

Conclusion

The bottom line is that I’m getting settled and finding my way around both the cycling community and the city, but with a lot more still to learn. I can’t quite say that Austin is a cycling utopia, but I think it’s quite workable.

Specific things that I still need to look at are:

• Check out the group rides I’ve missed, including: Violet Crown, Taking Care of Business, Breakfast Club, Major Taylor, and Rapha
• Find more organized 100 to 200 KM and imperial century rides
• Find the subset of roadies around town that aren’t hardcore racers
• Build up an inventory of routes and rest stops for longer solo rides outside of town

But for only having been on the roads for a few months, I’m pretty happy with Austin’s cycling scene. And delighted by the weather, even at its hottest!

As a conspicuous cyclist, I get this question so often that it’s well worth a permanent blogpost. You want my advice on buying your first bike? Here it is.

If you walk into any bike shop, they’re going to ask you questions like these:

What kind of riding are you going to do: bike paths, road, off-road, urban, commuting, racing, triathlons, grocery shopping, rainy or snowy wintertime rides?

How often and how far will you ride: trips around the neighborhood twice a year, errands around town a couple times per month, lengthy fitness rides every week, or day-long expeditions of 80 or 100 or 150 miles at a time?

What’s your budget: a hundred dollars; a thousand dollars; ten thousand dollars?

But if you’re brand new to cycling, you probably don’t have answers for those questions. You haven’t formulated a ten-year incremental self-improvement plan, you just wanna ride a bike!

There’s nothing wrong with that. But understand: that it makes it hard for anyone to help you pick out a bike.

So here’s what I suggest you do.

It doesn’t make sense to put a lot of money into a bike until you are certain that you’re actually going to use it. If you buy something inexpensive, you won’t feel guilty if it sits unused in the basement for a year or ten. That means either a very cheap new bike or an inexpensive used bike.

Buying a cheap brand-new bike (not used) gets you a shiny toy, but not a good one. At the entry-level, the brand doesn’t matter much, but you want to stay away from department stores. A bike shop will be a little more expensive, but you’ll get a better and more reliable bike, they’ll know how to properly assemble and adjust it to your size, and they offer service and knowledge that department stores can’t.

You might get an even better quality bike for cheap if you buy used, but you need to be extremely careful. You don’t want to buy a stolen bike, or a broken bike that needs major repairs. It’s okay if inexpensive, replaceable parts are worn (tires, tubes, saddle, bar tape, lubrication), but the major parts (frame, wheels, steering, brakes) should be in good working order. You can find great deals on Craigslist, but caveat emptor big time. It can be better to ask cyclist friends or bike shops if they know of anyone who has a bike they want to unload on a new rider.

Another way to get a deal is to ask a bike shop to direct you to any previous year’s bikes they have on hand. In the fall, they’re looking to clear out old inventory to make room for new, in the winter they’re desperate to sell anything, and any old bikes leftover in the spring will be marked down even further.

Whether you buy new or used, always take a test ride; preferably test a number of bikes so you can compare them. Remember to adjust the saddle height and handlebar reach before your ride, so that the bike fits you as naturally as possible, because proper fit is the most important determinant of your comfort on the bike. Remember that you’re not testing the replaceable bits like the tires, but the permanent bits like the frame and wheels.

When buying, remember that you’ll also spend money on accessories like helmet, lock, lights, flat tire repair kit, multi-tool, saddle bag, water bottles, gloves…

If you’ve read this far, then you probably have enough initiative to actually do some online research. There’s plenty of articles and videos offering advice about how to buy your first bike. The local advocacy group, BikePGH, offers this page describing How to Buy a Used Bike. Or watch this video by Global Cycling Network, which is also entitled How to Buy a Used Bike. Although mostly oriented toward road bikes, GCN offers their Bike Buyer’s Guide: an entire playlist of more than a dozen videos on the topic.

Once you’ve got your inexpensive first bike, ride the living hell out of it! Take a year or two to discover how much riding you’re actually gonna do. If you don’t ride it much or give up on cycling, that’s okay: you haven’t wasted much money!

But if you ride very much, you will figure out what kind of riding you enjoy. Keep track of what you like about your bike and the things that you wish were different.

If you start out with a small investment and a little patience, you will learn more about what you want, what to look for, and whether it’s worth spending more money to get a really nice, new bike. And you’ll be able to answer those important questions the bike shop are going to ask about how much and what kind of riding you do.

Only at that point should you think about reaching into your savings and splurging to buy your amazing ideal dream bike. And because you’ll know what you want and that you’ll make use of it, you shiny new bike will serve you well and loyally for many years and hundreds—or even thousands—of miles together.

That’s pretty much how I got started. In 1998 I spent about $500 on a very basic utility bike that got stolen. But I had used it enough to justify spending $900 on a slightly more upscale hybrid, which carried me 15 thousand miles over the next five years. When it came time to buy my next bike, I knew that spending a lot more money on a high-end road bike would be worthwhile. I got another eight years and 22 thousand miles out of that road bike before upgrading again to my current steed four years ago.

The overall lesson is to keep your purchases modest at first, and grow them in proportion to your skill and level of commitment to cycling.

So if you’re just starting out, get a cheap all-purpose bike, either new or used. If you don’t ride it, you won’t be out much money. But if you do ride it, you’ll quickly learn everything you need to know in order to purchase a much better dream bike a couple years down the line.

Makes sense, doanit?

When I bought my new bike, I also wanted to finally have a full premium fitting done.

Judging by the people I talk to, unless you’re a cyclist, you probably have no idea that there’s anything more to fitting a bike than making sure you can reach the pedals and the brakes, and that’s it. Well, it gets a whole lot more complex than that…

Still, it’s fair to ask why I would get my first professional fitting now. After all, I’ve ridden over 40,000 miles with no apparent issues, right?

Well, you can always improve, and there are a few minor annoyances that might be alleviated by a proper scientific fitting. For one thing, I tend to ride with my shoulders hunched up around my ears, which over long distances turns into a severe burning pain my traps. And I spend nearly all my riding time with my hands on the brake hoods, rather than down in the dropped section of the handlebars, which is much more efficient, but has been a lot less comfortable for me.

And my friend Jay’s experience was educational. Everyone who rode with him knew his setup was wacked, but he insisted it was correct for his mutant torso… until he came out of a professional fitting with a more reasonable looking setup, more power, fully functional genitalia (reportedly), and a much happier demeanor.

So it made sense to me to get a level-set to see if there were any tweaks that might improve my bike setup and my cycling form.

The problem was that my two-hour fitting was scheduled toward the end of Patriots Day: the day the Boston Marathon was bombed. That kinda blew a hole in our agenda…

I went in the next day and was told the fitter could work with me at 4pm. However, she only had an hour free, so we had to split the fitting up into two parts over separate days. The first part concentrated on basic bike fit, so that I could start riding, and I’d return a couple weeks later to do a followup and all the in-depth biomechanical stuff.

Fortunately, I’d ridden the new bike a few hours before the first fitting, so I had a good idea what I wanted changed. And I also had my old bike on hand, so that we could directly compare and measure differences between my old and new setups.

That first session mostly consisted of me talking about what kind of riding I do and how the bike currently felt, the fitter adjusting the bike toward what she thought would work best, and then me convincing her to tweak that so that it was closer to what I had grown used to on my old bike.

We pretty much agreed on saddle height, although I did learn that I tend to ride with my heel up and toes pointed down, rather than level or “ankling”. Our biggest compromise was over reach to the handlebars. My old bike had a lengthy 130mm stem and my seat was slammed back as far as it could go, and she gave me a 120mm stem and moderated my setback a little, because she thought I was too stretched out. Between that and the shallower handlebar drop on the new bike, we hoped I might feel a bit more comfortable riding in the drops, which eventually proved true.

The other main thing I brought up was my hunching my shoulders and back, which is a habit that I have real difficulty breaking. Basically, I know it’s bad, but I feel I need to pull on the bars to generate power, and that causes me to tense my shoulders. She had no real mechanical ways to correct that, so her only advice was to just stop doing it.

We combined the second half of the fitting with my normal 30-day post-purchase tune-up. That second fitting session basically consisted of the fitter asking me what I needed changed, and me saying “Nothing”. I’d expected us to do a bunch of in-depth biometrics work, but the only measurements we took were the same basic ones we had taken the first time: knee angle and knee-to-pedal. And that was pretty much all she did.

So contrary to my friends’ experiences with premium fittings, I don’t think I got much value from it: certainly very little beyond what one would get from a standard, free post-sale ride-ready fitting.

As for the 30-day tune-up, my results there were mixed, too. On the plus side, I had the shop enable multi-shift on my electronic shifters. Translation: instead of hitting the button several times to shift up or down multiple gears, I can simply hold the button down longer, and it’ll jump two or three cogs at a time. That’s a massive usability improvement for someone who rides in the city and is constantly jumping up and down the cassette while stopping and accelerating at traffic controls.

On the minus side, they charged me to attach my frame pump mount to the frame, but neglected to actually do the work! So I made them do it when I picked up the bike. (Aside: the only reason I had the shop attach it is because my bike has nonstandard-sized bottle cage bolts that wouldn’t work with the pump’s plastic mount.)

Overall this new bike shop seems informed and well-intentioned, but extremely forgetful and a little careless. I guess that means that I’ll just have to keep an eye on anything they do for me.

This week I also had my first massage appointment. This year, I’m planning on having full massages done after most of my big rides, to gauge its effectiveness in recovery and keeping my muscles from tightening up so severely over the course of the summer. We’ll see how that goes.

My first session was relatively benign. My only disappointment was that I’ve been off the bike for two and a half weeks, so I wasn’t in a position where I could judge the therapeutic and recovery value of the body work. But that’ll come shortly, and I’m looking forward to it.

The one thing the masseur did mention was that I showed symptoms of what is called “upper cross syndrome”, which basically means my body shows the hunched shoulders and other effects of spending too much time leaning forward at a desk or on the bike. And the prospect of looking like a hunched-over old lady is enough to get me looking at appropriate corrective exercises.

And in other news, I have to say I’m blown away (again!) by my PMC supporters’ amazing generosity. When my water heater blowed up (sic) on Monday, canceling a century ride I’d planned, I spent the day sending out my first 50 fundraising emails. A mere 48 hours later, they had already donated over $2,700 to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute! I have some ridiculously awesome friends!

And a lot more fundraising to do, of course…

Follow this link for my full 2011 Pan-Mass Challenge ride report, including writeup, photos, and GPS logs.

The Fourth of July weekend is usually a big milestone on the way to August’s Pan-Mass Challenge, and this year was no different. I led into the weekend with a 50-mile solo ride on Thursday and a 12-mile kayak trip up the Charles River on Friday; both perfect, gorgeous days just before a massive heat wave hit Boston.

Saturday saw me joining a group of six other Quaddies for an extended ride out to Littleton, Harvard, and Sudbury. We did a nearly-identical ride last year, which was my second century of 2009, while this would be my third century of 2010.

Last year’s Fourth of July ride is also particularly memorable as the ride where the Plastic Bullet first developed the ticking noises that would doom it to ridiculous a three-month stay in the bike shop, as documented here.

Ironically, I was 70 miles into this year’s edition when my bike suddenly shifted into its hardest gear and wouldn’t shift out again. I’d broken the rear derailleur cable, which I knew in an instant because I’d broken the exact same cable last May.

I nursed the bike back to Quad Cycles, where I hoped I could get it fixed. Given that it was a sunny Saturday on Fourth of July weekend, I expected the shop to be too busy to help, but the store was completely empty except for two service guys watching television. However, when I told them what the problem was, they told me it was a very involved repair requiring them to disassemble the whole shift lever, and they couldn’t fit such a lengthy job in at the moment. When I asked whether I should wait for them to fit me in, they told me they had to fix two bikes that were ahead of me, and that would take them more than the two hours and eight minutes before the shop closed. It was obvious they had no intention of helping me, so I thanked them and left. Yes, I verbally thanked them; I didn’t “storm out” as they later told another friend who came into the shop later.

I was eager to get the bike repaired because I had major rides planned for both Sunday and Monday, so on the way home I tried my local bike shop, Back Bay Bikes. They’re usually way too busy to accommodate walk-ins, but this time they surprised me by putting the bike right up on the repair stand, despite being considerably more busy than Quad Cycles had been. After I took fifteen minutes to rest, drink a Coke, and eat a Klondike bar, that “really involved” repair was complete, the derailleur was shifting as good as new, and my whole holiday weekend was salvaged. Back Bay Bikes: 1, Quad Cycles: 0.

Sunday Jay, Paul, and I went out to Sterling to do a very hilly ride around Mount Wachusett. Since the park’s access road was closed, we couldn’t get to the mountaintop. Although the ride was only 35 miles, I did convince the guys to do the ludicrous Mile Hill approach road, which was particularly debilitating after doing a century the day before. We rounded out a fine day by getting ice cream at Meola’s, canoeing and swimming at Comet Pond, then fulfilling my Fourth of July tradition of Indian food with an amazing meal at Surya in Worcester, which is right near the always infamous Liscomb Street.

Then on Monday Jay, Kelly, and I did a very easy, short 32-mile ride around Cape Ann, which included wading at Wingaersheek Beach and swimming at Singing Beach in Manchester, followed by steak tips and ice cream. Another great day, closing a really superlative Fourth of July weekend.

Despite my aspirations, Saturday’s century took an awful lot out of me, and I wound up only doing 170 miles over those three days, when I’ll need to be able to do about 285 miles in three days for my Pan-Mass Challenge ride four weeks from now…

On the fundraising side, I think I’m doing well. I’m on the verge of having 50 donations, with a large number of donations still outstanding from people who said that they would help. That still won’t get me all the way to my goal of 100 sponsors, but it’ll put me in the neighborhood, from which I can make a last-minute push toward the target. Please visit ornoth.PMCrider.com to donate.

Next big event is the Climb to the Clouds century up Mount Wachusett, a traditional warm-up for the Pan-Mass Challenge. I am skeptical that they will open the access road, because the road resurfacing project is supposed to last until next summer! So this may be the second year in a row where the Climb to the Clouds doesn’t actually go to the summit, with maybe a third year happening in 2011! Very disappointing!

However, that can’t change how much I enjoyed the rides we took on this year’s baking-hot Fourth of July weekend.

I don’t even know where to start with this tale.

In June I stepped into my LBS (local bike shop), looking for a cycling cap and dry lube. They were out.

A week or two later, I went back to see if they’d happened to restock those items. A girl I’d never seen before immediately jumped on me and asked what I wanted. When I told her I was looking for cycling caps, she said they were out. When I asked for dry lube, she said “Right here!” and handed me a bottle. I didn’t look at it until I got home, when I realized she didn’t know the first thing about bikes and had sold me wet lube: precisely the thing I didn’t want. Newb.

That wasn’t a big deal, and I just shrugged it off as a one-time thing. I only mention it here because it was the prelude to the four month demonstration of astronomical incompetence that comprises the rest of this lengthy posting.

Fourth of July weekend my bike started making ticking/clicking noises whenever I pedaled hard. Since it was coming from the bottom bracket area—the drive train—I figured it needed to be looked at, since I was in the intense final month of training for this year’s Pan-Mass Challenge.

On Monday, July 6, I brought the bike in to the shop. After a quick examination, they had me make a service appointment for later that week.

When I brought the bike in, the first thing they did was ignore my report that the ticking was coming from the bottom bracket, and opined that it was coming from the steering area. So they clamped my headset down so tight that the handlebars barely turned. Uh, yeah. When that didn’t fix anything, they put a new Shimano bottom bracket in the bike and called it done.

But for some reason, that wasn’t the right bottom bracket, and they had to order a different one, which wouldn’t be in for a week. When they asked, I requested that they put my old bottom bracket back in, so that I could at least ride the bike in the interim. The mechanic said he’d do that, and that I could pick the bike up in 45 minutes.

90 minutes later, when I showed up for my bike, the mechanic had gone to lunch without swapping the bottom brackets. Another mechanic said it was okay to take the bike, even with the new (temporary) bottom bracket, which I didn’t pay for. Fine, whatever; if you want to loan me a new part, that’s your problem.

When I went to ride the bike home, I was rudely surprised. The seatpost hadn’t been tightened, so it slid down into the seat tube as soon as I sat on it. I tightened it up myself and rode the bike home, wondering why they would have touched the seatpost at all while working on the bottom bracket. Idiots.

Oh, and over that next week I discovered that even though they thought the new bottom bracket had fixed the problem, it hadn’t. The bike continued to make the same rhythmic ticking noises as before. Morons.

On Thursday, July 16 I brought the bike into the shop for the new, correct bottom bracket, and to replace the middle chainring, which I had noticed was worn. I didn’t hear anything by end of day. Or the next day. On Saturday, July 18 I went in and learned they’d forgotten my bike, but that they’d have it ready by end of day.

When I went to pick it up, I brought gift certificates to the corner ice cream shop for the two mechanics who had worked on the bike, to show that I appreciated their effort. When I picked up the bike and handed the mechanic the gift certificates, he told me that while working on the bike, he’d broken the mount for my cyclocomputer’s detector, so I’d have to figure out some other way of attaching it to the fork, since the mount was completely broken. Thanks, guy.

Before I took the bike, I mentioned to the mechanic that I was doing the Climb to the Clouds century the next day, and asked whether he was absolutely sure that the bike was solid and ready to ride. He said it was. I paid for the chainring and rode homeward. But I only got about three blocks before the entire left crankarm assembly and pedal simply fell off the bike. This fucking moron gave his word that the bike was fit for a century, and I couldn’t even get three blocks before it fell apart! When I brought it back to the shop, he said, “Oh yeah. I thought I heard a crunching sound when I tightened everything up.” Brilliant!

As he ran the bike through the gears on the work stand, I noticed what looked like a hop in the rear tire. Indeed, when I stopped the mechanic, we confirmed that part of the tire’s bead wasn’t even seated inside the rim. It would have been an absolute danger to ride. And, again, I have no idea why they would have had to touch the tire in order to replace the bottom bracket and chainring. Mushy nipple-lick.

I also learned that our adventure wasn’t done yet. Since the new bottom bracket didn’t solve the ticking problem either, they declared that the real issue was the cranks. So they were going to talk to the manufacturer (FSA) and see if they could get a replacement. Joy!

On Tuesday, July 21 the mechanics were still trying to reach the manufacturer, whom they said was singularly hard to reach. I was told to sit tight and wait. With just ten days until the Pan-Mass Challenge, I was wary of bringing the bike in for more work, and although it continued to tick at me, it had survived the Climb to the Clouds. So I decided to leave things alone until after the PMC. I’d ride it as it was, and hope it held together for the most important event of the year.

The PMC went well for me, but poorly for the bike. The cranks were no longer just ticking, but chunking and skipping as I pedaled. As if the crank issue wasn’t enough, just 25 miles into the 190-mile ride I discovered that I’d broken a spoke on my supposedly bulletproof $900 Mavic wheelset. Thankfully, I had blown the additional $200 for their product protection program, so I was hopeful they’d just replace the wheel. I gingerly rode all of PMC day one and part of day two on a broken wheel, hoping it didn’t collapse underneath me. Thankfully, both it and the cranks held together long enough to get me to the finish. But after the PMC, I had some work to do.

Which, unfortunately, was delayed. Sixty hours after I got home from the PMC, I had to leave for a week on Vancouver Island, so I couldn’t get the bike to the shop until I got home.

I finally brought it in on Monday, August 17. The wheel didn’t just have a broken spoke; it had a hop that wasn’t reparable, so they were definitely going to have to send the whole wheel back to Mavic. But the imbeciles couldn’t find their copy of my protection program paperwork, so I had to run home and turn the house inside out to find my copy. We discovered that they’d given me both copies of the paperwork when I’d bought the wheels. No wonder they couldn’t find it!

Fortunately, back when I put those wheels on the bike, I’d saved my old ones, so I had a spare rear wheel that I could use, so that I could continue to ride while the new one went to Mavic. But when I brought it in, the shop discovered that the cassette I was using on the Mavics wasn’t compatible with the old rear wheel, so it couldn’t be used, after all. Suckage.

In the end, it didn’t matter anyways, since there was also the crankset to deal with. The mechanic claimed to have called FSA 15 times before finally getting a response and convincing them to take them back and look at them. So both the cranks and the rear wheel were off to their respective manufacturers, and the 60 percent of my bike that was left was completely unrideable. Fortunately, I still had my folding Bike Friday, which saw a thousand miles of use over the next couple months.

Seventeen days later, on September 3, having no word from the shop, I checked in. Although they’d sent the parts off, they’d heard nothing from the manufacturers at that time.

Another week later, on September 9th, they called to let me know that FSA had replaced the left crank arm, and would be shipping the assembly back in one or two days.

On 9/11, 25 days after they’d dissected my bike, the bike shop called to notify me that Mavic had replaced my wheel and it had arrived. We both agreed that since the cranks were already on their way (lies!), it made sense to wait until they arrived before putting everything back together again.

But a week later, having heard nothing, on September 18th I checked in, and the store had yet to receive anything from FSA.

On September 21, I called again. The mechanic had talked to FSA, whose entire staff was apparently in Las Vegas at the Interbike trade show except one grumpy person. The FSA guy said that although they’d promised to ship the cranks by the 11th, they actually hadn’t bothered to ship them until the 15th. The shop had still not received them, so there was nothing to do but continue to wait. That’s okay, it’s only been five weeks so far…

On the next day, Tuesday the 22nd, the cranks arrived. But the shop’s first open repair appointment wasn’t until Friday. Of course!

That was September 25th. The good news was that Mavic respected their protection plan, so I got a brand new rear wheel and was only charged $15 for labor to install it. Yay!

But the cranks… The half-new-half-old FSA cranks still had the same problem. Surprise! The mechanic naturally couldn’t raise FSA on a Friday, so it would be the next week before we even knew what the next step was, but his plan was to send them back to FSA and demand a completely new replacement crankset. So I had my new wheel, but no way of testing it, and the bike was going to continue to sit in drydock.

On October 1, the mechanic called to let me know that FSA had agreed to ship a whole new crankset, and that I should be really, really thankful, since “They never do that”. They’d let me know when they arrived. It did seem odd to me to get a warranty replacement on a crankset that was four years old and had over 10,000 miles on it, but I wasn’t going to argue with one of the few bits of good news I’d had in three months!

Unlike the previous mailing cycle, which had taken 36 days, the new crankset only took 14 days to arrive, appearing at the shop on Friday, October 9. But, of course, the first repair appointment wasn’t until the following Tuesday. That’s okay, I’m not expecting this repair to work, either.

Tuesday, October 13. I brought the bike back to the shop to have the new cranks installed. And oh my gawd they installed ’em! Brand new, FSA SL-K Light hollow carbon fiber cranks, complete with a brandy-new FSA bottom bracket and three new chainrings (disregard the fact that I had replaced and paid for the middle ring on my old cranks on July 18). And after all that hassle, the mechanic said that all he would charge me was $45 labor.

Of course, you can’t blame me for being skeptical on my first ride in 10 weeks. I rode 46 miles out through Waltham, Lincoln, Concord, and back via the Minuteman, without a single glitch or hiccup. In fact, it was really, really awesome.

While I hadn’t detected a huge difference when I went from riding the Roubaix to the Bike Friday (other than the fact that I couldn’t climb as well on the latter), transitioning back from the folder to the road bike really surprised me. Let’s see if I can capture it…

The first thing that struck me was how light the Plastic Bullet felt in my hands. That shouldn’t be a surprise, since (despite being a much bigger bicycle) it’s actually a good ten pounds lighter. That makes an immense difference on the road, and especially on the hills. I zipped up hills much faster, and without breaking a sweat. Neat!

And overall, propelling the Roubaix just felt effortless, even against a stiff autumn wind. My legs did feel the results of the effort after I got home, but during the ride, it felt like I soft-pedaled the whole day. And despite that, I maintained a better speed overall, and in particular had easy access to top speeds that would have been difficult on the folder.

The machine also felt incredibly smooth; the larger wheels glided down the road like butter. And I was struck by how whisper-silent the Roubaix was: no fidgety gears, no creaks, no chain noise, and of course no more ticking coming out of the bottom bracket. Solid!

After getting used to the folder, it feels like I’ve got a brand new bike. While all those repairs were going on, I bought a nice new air pump (Topeak Road Morph with gauge), and added that to the bike. I also swapped the old saddle with the newer version of the same model that I’d bought for my Bike Friday. The bottom line is that the Roubaix now has a new rear wheel, new bottom bracket, new cranks, new chainrings, new saddle, and a new pump, and all that cost me a measly $140.

So the shakedown cruise really was an inspiring ride, and I’m looking forward to many more, even though it’s only 37 degrees outside as I write this.

All this leaves me perplexed about how I should feel about my bike shop. They repeatedly demonstrated their incompetence, took over three months to fix a simple ticking noise, and kept me off my primary bike for no less than 10 weeks at the height of the season. On the other hand, they are within easy walking distance of my house, the eventual fix appears to work very nicely, and they only charged me a total of $60 for a brand new bottom bracket, chainrings, and crankset, and the warranty replacement of my rear wheel, plus all the time they put in over those months.

But more important than any of that is that finally, after a month of jerry-rigged patches and two full months in drydock, the Plastic Bullet is back on the open road and performing optimally! Even if it’s freezing outside and practically November, you can’t imagine how happy that makes me.

We’re now into that time of year when you get about one day per week where the temperature breaks 50 degrees, so I’ve done that 36-mile Blueberry Hill loop I mentioned in the last post two or three times. I like it; it’s a nice ride, not too long, but a good workout. The roads are a bit rough in places, though.

Saturday Jay dragged me out for a ride, which wound up being a 60-mile exploratorium. There were two sections of road that were new to me. From Waltham, we went down South Street past Brandeis, then back up to Route 20 via scenic Summer Street. That really didn’t accomplish much, but then we went out 20 to Weston, where we took Concord/Tower/Lincoln roads to the Lincoln 5-way. From there, instead of doing Baker Bridge, we took Bedford Road to Hanscom.

The familiar bit was taking Virginia Road to Concord Center, then Strawberry Hill and both Cross and Curve streets and back to Ferns in Carlisle. There we met up with Paul D., who tagged along as we followed the Quad ride route down Lowell Road, Virginia Road, and Mill Street, where we forked off for the day’s second divergence.

To get back to Waltham, we cut across Shade and Spring to get to Wyman Street, which brought us back to Totten Pond and home.

It was a good day out, and at 60 miles nearly doubled my longest ride so far this year. I had good legs for most of the ride, as noted by Jay, who said I didn’t have “little Ethiopian girl legs this year”. And since it was Paul’s first ride of the year, he lagged us a bit, which made me feel better about my winter training, since last year I found myself lagging more often than I’d like.

I’m really hoping for good weather next Saturday, which is the grand opening of Quad Cycles’ new location, and also a ride celebrating Bobby Mac’s 60th birthday, so I’d hate to miss that. After that comes the annual tune-up, I think.

I checked out a couple cycling movies this winter. “The Flying Scotsman” is the story of Graeme Obree’s hour record, and was pretty decent. “The Triplets of Belleville” was a fairly amusing animated film, though cycling wasn’t the focus of the movie. And I tried watching “Breaking Away”, which is presumably the classic cycling movie, but I just couldn’t stand it and only lasted about 15 minutes; the whole redneck teen angst thing just irks the hell outta me.

I’ve also been working on putting together a short video for this year’s PMC appeal. I think I’ve got the script set, and I’m just putting finishing touches on it before I sit down and record it. Hopefully it’ll turn out well. It’s nice to have the time to devote to something like that.

And I should mention that I’ve moved just about all of my PMC fundraising database onto php and MySQL, and hotwired it to the Excel spreadsheet that does all my data visualization. That was rather a lot of effort, but hopefully worthwhile.

So things are starting to pick up, and in two days it’ll be April, when my average monthly mileage nearly doubles from March’s 125 up to 230. So begins the ramp-up for my ninth Pan-Mass Challenge!

After 25 days in the shop, my LBS finally called me to say my bike was ready. Shimano made me a loyal customer by agreeing to a warrantee replace for the cracked rear wheel I brought in.

When I got there, the guy in charge picked out “my wheel” and gave it to me. I asked where my bike was. He was completely surprised that the bike was in the shop, and a bit annoyed that he now had to mount the tube and tire and actually install the wheel.

Then, as he finished up the install, I mentioned that it was nice that they’d upgraded my Ultegra wheel to Dura-Ace, Shimano’s top of the line. He looked twice at it, and figured out that he’d accidentally given me, then installed, someone else’s wheel. I’d thought it was the right wheel because when he called me, he’d mentioned Shimano had provided a replacement that was an upgrade from my old wheel, but apparently he’d only meant a newer Ultegra model, not the Dura-Ace. Bone. The only thing these guys have going for them is that they’re only a few blocks from my house.

So he swapped wheels, giving me a newer Ultegra model, which seems to be a nice piece of work. No more ticking and creaking from my bike, and the only adjustment I had to make after the bike shop was done was to re-center the brake pads.

Today I took it out for a 60-mile shakedown ride with the Quad crew. The wheel is great, and even the flywheel is quiet. Let’s hope this one doesn’t shred itself out from under me like the last one.

The odd thing about today’s ride is that I was all used up after just 30 miles, and it was a hard, slow, painful slog home from there. I’ve been off the bike three weeks, but I wouldn’t expect to lose so much conditioning that fast. But this has been a pretty bad cycling year for me overall, so I guess it’s par for the course.

But at least now, after nearly a month in the shop, during which we’ve had unblemished perfect weather, I’ve got a bike I can ride again. Now I just need to put in some miles and maybe get back some of that conditioning before winter sets in again.

So just before I left for Oregon, I brought my bike into my local bike shop (LBS) for a tune-up. I figured that although it was running just fine, it could use it, since it had been more than a year since my last tune-up, and in that time I'd crashed the bike twice. So I dropped it off, saying that I particularly wanted new cables run, a broken spoke replaced, and new salmon brake pads.

While I was in Oregon, I got a call from the shop, asking whether I wanted the brake pads replaced. Uh, hello? It's written right there on the work order, stupid! Then the guy asked if I wanted my rear cassette and chain replaced, and I told him no, I would replace them after the PMC ride. End of conversation.

After returning to Boston, I went to pick up my bike. The first thing I noticed was that they didn't use the salmon brake pads I requested, and the brakes were poorly adjusted. I broke my multitool out and started working on my bike there on the shop floor, which got the attention of the staff. Then I discovered that the rear tire was essentially flat and needed to be filled. What kind of shop is too stupid to put air in the tires? I also noticed that they'd changed the cap on my stem with someone else's; nothing to complain about, but definitely another sign of carelessness.

But then I went about putting my cyclocomputer onto the bike, only to discover that the cadence kit I'd recently bought was no longer attached to the bike! At this point, the mechanic on duty knew I had issues, and I demanded my cadence kit back. He called downstairs and asked them to look for it. While we waited, he explained to me that the guy who had worked on my bike was deaf, so it might take a couple minutes to get the information out of him. Eventually my cadence kit returned, with the explanation that "It looked like it was trash, so he took it off the bike and threw it out". I explained that I hadn't come to the shop and paid $110 to have my bike stripped, thank you.

So then I ride the bike home, and it's barely rideable. The chain keeps skipping any time I put any torque on the pedals. Apparently they decided that they really wanted me to buy a new cassette and chain, and had "fixed" it so that it wouldn't work anymore, despite it working perfectly fine when I brought it in. In fact, it's the second time they've done that to me. But I'd be damned if I was going back to that shop to pay them to replace my chain and cassette (and accidentally remove whatever spare parts they wanted to take from it).

So I took the bike to another LBS, closer to home. The guy there was pretty nice, and swapped my cassette and chain out that day. He said he'd tested it, and it rode fine over the half-mile ride home. Still, that ran me another $90.

In a couple days, I took the bike on one of the usual long Quad Cycles rides. Indeed, it worked fine for the first 50-odd miles, but the chain started skipping again during the last 30 miles, and by the time I got home it was just as unrideable as before. By now I was especially overjoyed.

I took the bike back to LBS #2 and had another mechanic look at it, and he suggested replacing the (front) chainrings, which meant a whole new crankset, since they were integrated. And, in fact, he'd have to order the parts, so I'd have to wait four days before he could do anything. So I waited.

Thursday came and I brought the bike in. He swapped the cranket out quickly enough, but then asked "You don't ever use the small ring, do you?" Apparently the small ring (the easy gears) were a problem because my derailleur just wouldn't move far enough over to get the chain to switch. Then he tried swapping out my derailleur, which didn't help. Finally he had to swap out my bottom bracket in order to accommodate the new crankset. Call that another $120.

The good news is that the bike is now working just as well as when I brought it in for a tune-up. The bad news is that in order to keep the bike running as well as before, I was forced to swap out the chain, the rear cassette, the front crankset and chainrings, and the bottom bracket, to the tune of $330, at a time when I can't afford that kind of expense.

And people wonder why I hate bike shops.