Who Goes Out in the Midday Sun?

Mad dogs, and Englishmen.

Note: I've got to go to Iowa this Memorial Day weekend, and won't have time to fully illustrate the Lake Pepin Three Speed Tour, so am posting a smattering of the photos here. I'll come back and fill in later and, when done, announce it for the breathlessly waiting world, but for the moment, here was my experience of the Tour.

Paul and I got up early Saturday and drove down to Red Wing, arriving right at 7:30 and mingling with the gathering crowd. This was really good; I'd met a few of these guys at the regular monthly Monday Booze-Ups at Barley John's, I knew others from the blogosphere or from our former church, and met others for the first time. It doesn't take much to get a conversation going when you are nattily dressed and have a cool bike. I'll do a separate entry later with lots of bike details for the equipment-inclined, this will be mostly about the ride.

The Tour eventually set off at about 9:00. Paul and I immediately fell behind the rest of the tour when we, in what we consider the proper spirit of the tour, went directly to a bakery. This is a photo using the tail camera we threw together last night.

Paul seeking kolaches in Red Wing.

After this delay, we crossed the Mississippi River (and the passing Amtrak train, late as usual) after everyone else, catching up at the first historical marker. The whole Tour would be like this, the bikes like a flock of swallows moving in a disorganized yet somehow coherent mass from roost to roost.

Once we set off from the Bow and Arrow stop, I tried out the tail camera again. Here's Karl and Paul behind me. Note Karl's thin tyres.


...and Terry Osell:


This is the tail camera in position:

I used a Canon A530 with the self-timer programmed for a six-second delay, after which it would take two pictures. I had to lean back to trigger it, then stabilize the bike while the camera counted down. Saturday was the day to do this, as the cyclists were front-lit by the sun (they'd be backlit Sunday morning). Experience showed that I needed to have people closer to me and that mounting the camera vertically would be a good idea for many pictures. I'd still like to have a remote release I could trigger from the handlebars, something I'll probably fiddle with this summer.

The big ordeal of the ride was to be the Bay City Hill, just south of Bay City Wisconsin on Highway 35. This is a long climb out the river valley up to the heights. I took this photo of the riders strung out along the road.


I made it all the way without walking, though I did stop in the rarefied air of the upper elevations to remove my blue wool blazer and roll up my sleeves. I think most people rode all the way, much more of an achievement if you had the original gearing and not the larger cogs/lower gears Paul and I had gone to. Everyone gathered at the top to await the whole Tour, then did what they call the Bay City Plummet, down the other side. I prudently removed my Panama hat and Paul took it down in his basket. Without computers, it's hard to know precisely how fast we went, but it was probably a solid 30+ mph. You roll out nicely into a Lake Pepin overlook. Here Joanne rolls in; she's a Resident at the Mayo Clinic and rode the whole Tour in a skirt and heels. I like how the motorcyclists in the upper right hand corner can't keep their eyes off the fetching young lass.



I've been doing photography for more than 30 years, and from time to time you get a photograph you've taken and look at it later and think, what the hell was that? This is one of those photos:

Apparently, unbeknownst to me, after the exuberance of the fast descent down the Bay City Plummet, a dance routine broke out. Jon Sharratt is doing The Robot on the left, Carrie is doing the little-known Washington-Crossing-the-Delaware in the background, Paul is stylin' up front and Casey is doing the always-challenging Riverdance-while-straddling-the-bike in the right background.

Having calmed down, we rode down to the Lake Pepin marker. I waited until a Lycra-clad racing cyclist got done taking a leak behind the sign before taking Paul's photo. As with virtually all the photos in my blog, if you click on the picture, you'll get a bigger image and, in this case, you'll be able to read the sign's text.



After bustling about for a bit, we rode on into Maiden Rock and parked the bikes. The Smiling Pelican Bakery was somewhat overwhelmed by all of us but fortunately we're not in a hurry. Here are some of the bikes out front:


I had a sandwich and a piece of pie in the garden, Paul snoozed, the whole Tour lay about in disorder. After a while I heard a group getting ready to do the Maiden Rock climb, which a local rider said was more direct if we went up County AA. I thought this sounded good, but then couldn't find this group. I assumed they'd left already (never a safe assumption on this tour) so Paul and I decided to just head out on our own and off we went. We turned off onto AA, which then turns to County E and climbs this total bugger of a hill. Even with the low gearing it was a complete slog and I had to tack my way up the hill. I stopped once to rest but eventually dragged myself over the top. Paul, a stronger rider, was already up there. The county roads in Wisconsin are brilliant, and one chap later said it was because it's a dairy state and the roads have to support the weight of milk trucks out to all these farms. We rode merrily along and realized we had no idea where the Maiden Rock turnoff was. We could tell there was a wedding reception up ahead, though, and thought about stopping in, dressed in white shirts and ties (and Paul in knickers, me in trousers). We could be the crazy uncles! A chap driving by asked what we were doing, and told us where to turn to the Maiden Rock overlook. We rode down the gravel road to a little information stand. We were the first there, no other tracks in the road. The map in the stand showed a trail loop of maybe 1.5 miles. We decided to go and thought we'd just ride our bikes. We headed off to the trail to the left.

This turned out to be something of a tactical error. We rode about 100 feet of increasingly technical descending singletrack before dismounting and walking. We rode a couple of other bits, but mostly walked the bikes down and then back up a series of steep ravines. Paul's chain snagged on a log or something and came off. We eventually emerged into a flat spot where a bunch of trees had been cut down. Here he fixed his chain. We remounted and rode another 50 yards before the trail once again plunged down a ravine, the brook at the bottom of which we had to cross on a log. Finally we came up into a nice meadow with a good view and took some photos.


Paul atop the Maiden Rock overlook.


Me atop the Maiden Rock overlook. An Indian princess flung herself off here. She had taken an inappropriate lover from another tribe or something, and her father wanted to marry an older warrior from her own tribe, so she pitched a fit and leapt off the cliff. After the slog up the hill and then our jungle trek I had the same thought, but in modern times there's a bar in Stockholm and a cold beer sounded better than a death plunge, so we carried on. The trail meandered off through a field of dandelions. Paul rode ahead and I got this photo of him.


Later, others in the Tour would refer to the dandelion field trail as the 'rough stuff', but it was as nothing compared to the rest of the loop.

We emerged out of the field and found about 25 Tour members gathered at the kiosk, having just arrived. We warned them off going to the left. Dribbles of them began riding out to the right, through the field to the overlook. Paul and I were thirsty and decided to go on into Stockholm, and rode back out the gravel road to County E and then down the Plunge off Maiden Rock at probably 40+ mph into Stockholm. As I rolled through town I saw other Three Speed Tourists and rang my bell at them. We went to a bar and sat on the deck where Paul had lunch and I drank a pint while other Tourists trickled in, fresh off careening headlong down the Plunge off Maiden Rock the bluff's South Face or having cruised in on the flats from Maiden Rock the town. An occasional raindrop fell on us. A couple from Illinois, Scott and Carrie, joined us at our table. They'd done the Tour last year as well, when it was quite damp, yet were here again and apparently about to get married next week. Gotta hang on to a woman who'll put up with this stuff!

By now it was about 2:00 and we'd gone, oh, maybe 25 miles. The pace of the Tour takes some getting used to if you're usually a serious rider.

We seemed to be done with our food and drink at a different time than the others. Some had already ridden out ahead of us, nobody else was ready just yet, so Paul and I set off again. It is these stretches, when we rode by ourselves, that we looked most like Mormon missionaries out to convert the heathen Badgers. We toddled along to Pepin. Cor blimey, 7 miles of flat terrain with a tailwind, that was brutal, time for a beer, mate! Anyone who thought we might have been Mormons was soon disavowed of that notion as we sat on the sidewalk having a pint and, for me anyway, smoking a pipe.


While sitting there the fetching Joanne came riding through with some accompaniment. They shared a pint and left some in their bottle, which I added to my glass. Cheers! Smoking the pipe took a lot of attention; I don't do this normally, it's just for effect. One chap borrowed my multi-tool to adjust his saddle; every time you needed a tool or part, many individuals would proffer their stuff, some of it probably vintage. The others drifted off to walk down by the docks and check out a restaurant called The Pickle Factory; some Tourists were victualling there, it turned out.

After a while, we decided to go. Crowds were assembling to get seats at the Harborview Cafe, a terrific but tiny restaurant that doesn't take reservations, and one guy asked me if we were riding for charity. Nope, I said, just for fun, on English three speed bikes. His wife volunteered that she'd loved her three-speed. They are pretty unintimidating, and they get you away from the expectation of speed and the anxieties of gear choice and bring a pure enjoyment to riding. It's not that you can't get it on modern bikes, but it's different somehow on these.

We set off southbound for Nelson. A couple of others caught up with us as we rode in, a bit of rain causing a weird, low rainbow. We stopped at the Nelson Cheese Factory, already well-staffed with Tourists, and had an ice cream. People drifted off in small groups. The whole day was like that. Several of us set off together and rode towards Wabasha across the causeway and bridge. I stopped to put my hat in Paul's Toto Basket, anxious that it shouldn't blow off into the Mississippi. We had to wait for an ambulance to pass by, then over the humpy bridge and into Wabasha. We went down to the Wabasha Hotel and RV Park and checked in, right about 6:00, 9 hours and about 44 miles after setting out. What a great time.

That evening we rode over to the Eagle's Nest Coffee House where a terrific potluck dinner was put on by the Wabasha Cycling Club. We drank beer, we ate food, we listened to music and chatted up the charming Danaca. Eventually Paul and I rode off, to buy combs (we'd both forgotten them) and the ingredients for gin and tonics, for the morrow.

Sunday morning we rode back to the Eagle's Nest for a delicious breakfast. Breakfast went from about 7 until 9:30 at which point someone rode off dinging their bell. Like lost sheep the whole Tour mounted up and rode along after them. We were off!

It was chilly, a high of only 58 in Saint Paul that day, and we had a light but persistent headwind. Jon Sharratt led a handful of us through Read's Landing as others plugged along above and to the left on Highway 61 itself. Here Jon points out some attraction as we cycle by.


There was a protracted stop at a Geological Marker and then again at the rest area at the south end of Lake City. By this time I had the drill down, and when I decided it was time to move on to the Chickadee Cottage Tearoom for tea, just mounted up and rode off, tinkling my bell. Sure enough, a heap of people roused themselves, hopped on their bikes, and followed.

The Chickadee Tearoom was a dead loss. We were hoping for a cream tea; pots of tea, scones, lashings of clotted cream and perhaps strawberries. I love these things. Well, we couldn't be served on the porch; after some delay, eight of us managed to get seated by a hostess langourous even by the standards of the Three Speed Tour; we wanted cream teas; they don't do tea and scones on Sundays; surely you have scones for sale in the bakery case? Yes, but that's just for takeout. We can do tea and a cinammon roll. So, wait, we can buy a scone and take it with us, but we can't be served a scone in this (overheated and stuffy) room? Yes. So we settled for tea and a cinammon roll like you hurriedly buy a box of at Cub Foods on the way to work when you've forgotten it's Food Day. Next year, make note, get your scone to go, then get seated and just order tea. Or better yet, maybe I'll bring along a stove and we can brew up our own bloody tea. Paul did buy a scone and some shortbread on the way out. The actual tea, the beverage, was pretty good (though we had to request milk rather than half and half). The Chickadee has done a good job of replicating indifferent English service and baffling English rules.

The Tour was scattered again; some riders were going to try a low-along-the-bluff-base alternative to Highway 61; some were eating down at the lake front. A small group of us decided we would ride 61 down to the optional Old Frontenac turnoff. So, with a tinkling of bells, we set off.

Paul and Joanne and I rode together for a while. She was a strong rider even in heels and a skirt. At one point I was riding sort of alongside her with my head down to keep the hat on my head and rode right into a set of rumble strips. They're subtle in a car, eight on the Richter scale on a bike! Less than a mile from the turnoff I briefly looked up and the wind caught my Panama hat and blew it off! Clothing Malfunction!! Red Alert!!

I slowed and turned around as Joanne and Paul rode on. My hat had landed on the verge and was sitting there. I hoped like the dickens it wouldn't blow into the highway, where a line of cars was coming and I hastened back to get it. If those cars hit it it would only be good for was making birds' nests! Luckily, it didn't move and I got to it. Whew! I wedged it back on my head as another cluster of Tourists approached. I rode with them towards the turnoff. Joanne rode right on in, not stopping to read the signs (perhaps chasing after Kevin from Hiawatha and a group he was with who had been ahead of us half a mile or so) and I never saw her, or Kevin and his group, again. Several of us stopped to read the markers and then wandered into Old Frontenac. Here is Andy, whose last name I don't know:


This is Andy's Dad.

I gather that Andy's Dad isn't a cyclist, normally, but was doing this with Andy.

We rode into the very quiet little village, a world apart from the noise of the Highway. A nice house was for sale; $775,000. That's the cost of solitude. It was extremely quiet, with just us Three Speed Tourists in evidence, and one resident on a front porch. We dawdled for a couple of minutes, then our little group began heading out of town. Paul wanted to use a Port-a-Loo so I waited while the others carried on. When he was done, I stopped again to take a picture of the Episcopal church, then we set off.

There was an alternate route we could take rather than go right back to 61, we'd seen it at the map at the turnoff. We found what looked to be the road, Hill Avenue, a gravel road, and took it. Some distance ahead we could see the other Tourists who'd been with us.

We eventually caught up to them at the Hill Avenue hill. This steep section towards the top got most of us off our bikes, including me. After my display of mountain climbing up the Maiden Rock hill yesterday my left knee hurt and I didn't want to push it. Paul, though, plowed right on up on the Handjob.


Several of us set off down the hill together. It was steep turning gravel. What better thing to do that take a picture with the tail camera?


Or maybe not.

Ironic that I almost always wear a helmet when I ride, except these two days, and now I've done two fast descents on paved roads, taken on difficult single track on a top-heavy bike and was heretrying a fast curving descent on gravel. Karl, his bike loaded with gear (he had camped) rolled past me. I got cautious and dragged my rear brake a bit. Up ahead, Karl pulled up lame. I slowed down. He had a flat on his front tire. Would you like me to stay? Yeah, if you wouldn't mind. OK, let me pass the message on down.

Andy had seen that something was wrong and had stopped. I rode down to him and said why don't you carry on but take the message down that we have a flat up here and it'll be a while. OK, he said, and rode off down the hill. I wouldn't see him or his father again. I rode back up to Karl. He was looking for something to lean the bike against. There's a little bridge down there, I said, so he walked the bike down and leaned it against the railing and began working on the tire.

I parked my bike and offered helpful suggestions ("You ought to ride heavier tires"). I think Karl had just thrown his bike together at the last minute, like me, and he had on 700C X 25s, kind of light for loaded descents on gravel. Still what's the rush.

Then I heard it.

A low, repetitive noise that got faster and faster, and then stopped. It was very deep. There was a huge old tree leaning over the bridge. Did you hear that? No, says Karl, what? He was too busy fixing his tire to notice. Oh well.

Then I heard it again. Karl heard it this time too. We both looked around. I looked at the huge tree. This bridge would be toast if that tree fell on it. I moved my bike to the downhill side. The noise repeated again, and then again, every minute or two.

Paul showed up. Andy and his Dad had left for Red Wing and he got bored with waiting so rode back up the hill. We described the weird noise to him. Yeah yeah, whateve...hey, what's that?

Paul suggested it might be a Troll. The bridge looked like it might be Troll-Haunted, though so far nobody had made any demands. Karl was getting his wheel back on. It had been a pinch flat, and he'd put in a new tube. Now he bravely decided to go after one of the tire irons he'd dropped off the bridge. He clambered down and began looking for it. Hey, he called up, there's a dead animal down here. Probably the Troll's doing. A rabbit? No, more like dog-sized. It's mostly bones. Maybe a coyote. He threw a legbone up onto the the bridge, spinning like the opening to 2001: A Space Odyssey. He climbed back up through, it turned out, some nettles, and inadvertently dropped the tire iron back. As he as standing there rubbing his nettle-y skin, a cyclist came down the hill. It was one of us, Chris, from California, who has his own excellent photos posted here.

We all stood around chatting. We described the noise to Chris and sure enough, it happened again. It was really low-frequency. Wow, that's weird he said, and looked at the huge tree, and prudently moved his bike out of the way. Karl was repacking everything, including the bone. After a few minutes and a couple of more noise incidents, probably 45 minutes after having flatted, we set off down the hill. More fast gravel rolling out to Highway 61. Surely the Tour must have passed us by now, either on Highway 61 or on the Highways 2/5 inland loop. We were standing around in the manner that every intersection seems to require on this ride when I looked up the hill and saw about 10 more Tourists barreling down the hill. More appeared, in twos and threes, over the next few minutes until about 25 of us were gathered at Highway 61. On this Tour, you should never assume there's nobody behind you!


Larry and his natty outfit.

Jon Sharratt, one of the founders of this Tour, was among them:


We all stood around happily chatting and comparing notes about where we'd been. Jon had never ridden that road before though a couple of other Tourists had, including Carrie who's getting married next week.

Lila was there. At this point, I didn't know her, but Paul and I would have dinner with her later. She had a straw hat on as well, but she cleverly had done a scarf arrangement to keep it on so hers wouldn't blow off like mine had.

The chattering went on for about 10 minutes and I thought, time to go, so mounted up, dinged my bell, and set off. Sure enough, pretty much the whole pack mounted up as well and followed. My plan was to drift back through the Tour shooting away with the tail camera, but Larry called out that it was aimed too low. I pulled over to look; he was right, but nearly the whole Tour paraded by as I fiddled with it until a break opened up and I could ride back in. I got a picture of Terry from Sibley Bike Depot but missed the rest of the pack.


I wasn't about to try and overtake the group on Highway 61, so rode along behind with Becki Persons. It seemed to me that her gearing was awkward, third (which she was riding) a little too high, second a little too spinny. Still, what's the rush, and we pottered along behind the main group into the southern outskirts of Red Wing.

The first riders in turned left across the highway onto a city street that was quieter and, like a flock of swallows, almost the whole group broke after them. Here is one of the Tour co-founders, Noel Robinson, cruising into Red Wing:



Another rider, whose name I don't know, powering into the turn.

We rolled down the street, through downtown and along the riverfront past the marina. A couple of kids called out, asking if this was some sort of marathon; Paul laughed; no, he said to me, a marathon would cover the distance faster. We rode up into the parking lot where a couple of riders had already arrived but not left yet. Our whole group came rolling in. We dismounted and Paul and I got out our flasks of whiskey, had a toast, and passed them around to others to have a celebratory snort.

Reluctantly, things seemed to be coming to an end. Some people, especially those driving some distance, began to pack up right away, taking apart their bikes and stowing them in their cars. A couple of more riders came in. There was talk of food; I was interested in this, being very peckish at this point, the Chickadee's cinammon roll having long since worn off. Jon mentioned Hors'd'Oeuvres on Main Street. What the heck, we're on bikes, so Paul and I rode up there. Closed. Maybe the Blue Moon Coffeehouse. It was small and didn't have a real food menu. At this point, Lila (spelling?) rode up in her blue dress. She'd just mooched a three-speed yesterday and ridden today. We all rode over to the excellent Stag's Head Bar; closed. What's with this town? I bike toured in England in 1980 and in those days lots of stuff was closed on Sundays. I think I had two Mars Bars for dinner one wet day. Maybe Red Wing's restaurants are participating in making the Three Speed Tour feel authentic. Finally, we went to Liberty Pizza, which was open. We got a table for eight, parked the bikes outside, and went in and ordered.

Nobody joined us. That's ok, the three of us had dinner and a couple of beers and a good chat. Lila rang someone from Wabasha to come and pick her up. Her borrowed bike badly needed some work. We settled up, bid farewell to Lila, and rode back through town. There were some Three Speed Tourist vehicles in front of the Blue Moon. Oh well. Back to the parking lot, which was down to three cars, one with the Sibley guys mounting their bikes on it. They'd been to the Blue Moon as well.

We said farewell, put our bikes in the truck, climbed in and left. Our Three Speed Tour was over.

At this point, I have to say thank you to Noel and Jon. On one hand, they don't provide much (no hotel bookings, sag wagons, tech support, sponsors, police escorts. parade permits) but on the other hand, it's a brilliantly conceived event. They scouted the route, did the great guidebooks, arranged for the dinner and breakfast and luggage van and set exactly the right spirit. It is a tour unlike any other I've been on, no Important Cause, no big cycling egos, no Gruppo one-upmanship, no real agenda, just a free-flowing, easy-going ride with a bunch of fun people. It was a great couple of days. I'll be back next year! I'm sure many others will, too, and that this will get larger, which is nice in a way if people take it in the right spirit but not important either.

If this type of good-natured langour, stately pace, chatty companionship and excellent scenery appeal to you, you might want to consider coming along next year. If it sounds too excruciatingly slow and disorganized, well, we'll ding our bells and wave as you pass us by and drink to your health in the next town.

Matt

PS I later did a Google Map Pedometer on the route and figured we rode 44 miles, including the Maiden Rock loop, on Saturday, and about 33 miles, including the Old Frontenac loop, on Sunday. This took 9 hours and about about 7 hours.

PPS The Ruffed Grouse Society says "The male grouse proclaims his property rights by engaging in a 'drumming' display. This sound is made by beating his wings against the air to create a vacuum, as lightning does when it makes thunder." I don't know, I still think it was a Troll. Grouse don't kill coyotes.

Three Speed Dreams

In a kickoff to a bikey summer, the highly anticipated Lake Pepin Three Speed Tour was drawing near. It occurred this past weekend, but I'm going to post these blog entries with the appropriate dates.

In outline, I first read about this tour last winter and immediately recognized what a brilliant idea it was. As the motto goes, 'Three Speeds, Two Days, One More Reason for your spouse to ask, What Now?' You take old English three-speed bicycles and ride around Lake Pepin, Red Wing to Wabasha and back, at a gentlemanly pace, preferably dressed in 1930s English touring style.

My problem, as anticipated ahead of time, was to find a three-speed big enough. I'm a tall bugger, and ride a big bike. My main bike is a delicious Rivendell Atlantis in their biggest size, 27" (68cm). My winter bike is a mountain bike, too small for long term comfort. Neither bike was by any stretch of the imagination a three-speed. However, I happen to have this 27" Schwinn World Sport, an enormous red 12-speed I got at the Sibley Bike Depot last summer. I decided to make it a three speed.

I bought a 3-speed Sturmey Archer AW hub, a 1967 model, for $10 from the Sibley Bike Depot and sent it off to my buddy Paul in Cedar Rapids to build me some wheels (I also sent him a Shimano DN70 Dynamo Hub to make into a front wheel and a Shimano Nexus 8-Speed Red Band hub to build into another rear wheel, all with matched 700C rims). Paul's an old friend, dating back to grade school, and longtime biking buddy, and he also has an impressive collection of bike parts lying around, including a shitload of spokes he bought off eBay. These are in a variety of lengths not of his choosing, so when you have Paul build you a wheel you are prone to getting odd cross combinations, so that his own Rudge came with a radial-spoked front wheel and one of my rear hubs ended up 2 cross on one side and 3 cross on the other.

Friday I took off work and Paul arrived in the morning from Iowa bearing my completed wheels. Here's the Sturmey Archer AW:

Purists will note that this isn't a Sturmey-Archer cog on here and in fact it's kind of big. I had wanted a big cog to drop the gear range so I could grind up the promised big hills. Paul had fixed a 23-tooth Shimano cassette sprocket by grinding off three of the teeth but it wasn't working to get the right chain tension within the limits of my dropouts. The Nexus 8-speed came with a couple of sprockets, and I pulled out this 21-tooth. Not only did it work with the chain tension, it dropped directly onto the S-A hub with no modifications needed and is even dished to allow flipping it to get your chainline correct. You S-A fans out there might want to keep this in mind.

The bike, by the way, has a 42 tooth chainring, so this gave me my three gears of 40.5, 54 and 72 inches. Paul was riding a 44/24 combination, so he was riding gears of 37.4, 49.8 and 66.4 inches, sort of the Mountain Three Speed. The standard teething on a Raleigh would often be on the order of 46/18, giving a pretty brutal set of 52.1, 69.5 and 92.6 inches. Even when I was younger and fitter and riding a lightweight ten-speed, I rarely used gears over 90 inches, so those on the tour sticking with authentic gearing were in for some suffering.

I had other authentic details:

I love the little pulley for the cable. My old 1967 Columbia Tourist three-speed, my tenth birthday present!, had one of these. I bought mine new from Harris Cyclery along with the genuine Sturmey-Archer cable and housing.


The shift mechanism on the AW hub (and most of these, I'd wager) involves a rod threaded into the interal mechanism. With no tension, the hub defaults to high gear. By pulling out the rod, done with the cable and this little chain, it pulls it into 2nd (middle gear, and direct drive) and 1st. You can adjust the tension on this with the threaded barrel and set it in place with the locknut. It's pretty straightforward. Fortunately, these hubs are dead reliable; we didn't know for sure it was going to work until we mounted it on the bike.


I wasn't all authentic. This is the dynamo front hub, which I've since ridden and which works fine. Funny thing is, when you buy it, especially as just a hub, it feels wretched and you can hardly resist taking it apart to 'fix' the bearings. I managed to resist.


Here's the Schwinn at rollout. Haven't got a great name for it yet, wavering between the Circus Bike due to its size or The Big Red One, after a movie I like.

The Rudge
Paul had immediately understood the potential for a good time with this Three Speed Tour when I ran it by him last winter. I'd checked the Sibley Bike Depot and Express Cyclery at the time and not found much for him in the way of three speeds, and he saw this Rudge come up on eBay and bought it, as it happened to be his size. It looked a bit rugged when he got it, but he cleaned it up. He had to relace the wheels which had broken spokes, straighten the front axle and resew the saddlebag. He got the basket, the Toto Basket, from Nashbar, and the envy of the Three Speed Tour it was, too.

Here's the Rudge:

The hub is stamped 65 and Paul has no reason to believe it's not original, so this would be a 1965 model.

Rudge's claim to fame was their handmade frames. So proud of this were they that they cut a hand outline in the crankset:

Paul and I have known each other since grade school and my wife (and probably his) would tell you our sense of humour is still stuck in eighth grade, so it may not be a surprise to them to know that we immediately crowned the bike The Handjob.


The used the same symbol on the headbadge.


Paul's shifter gave him more problems than mine, which worked quite well once I got used to it again. In my old three-speed days, the Tourist had a twist-grip shifter, not these classic thumb-levers.


Britain's Best Bicycle.


A bit of pinstriping that had been covered up by the cable clamp shows how lovely this bike must have looked when new.


Not your traditional British Roadster spoke lacing.


Also not traditional, a carbon fibre spacer on the headset.


One downtube badge, then another:

A comment left about this post noted that Ace Wheelworks is still in business though Rudge is not longer one of their brands.



The bike has the original Brooks B-72. I gave Paul one of my tins of Proofhide; I buy one every time Brooks goes out of business, so I have a modest collection.

After screwing around with my bike all day long (the Handjob was all ready), we had the wheels installed, gears shifting and, in the biggest challenge of all, fenders installed. I had bought some luscious red Soma Fabrications fenders which tragically didn't fit. We ended up going down to Hub Bike Coop, from whence I'd got them, and exchanging for these boring black Planet Bike fenders. OK, I guess, but not as cool as those red ones. I also got a bell for the bike, one of the big brass Incredi-bells which made a delightful jing-jinggg noise. Paul had brought a black aluminum one but I mocked him so badly for it he didn't use it. If you get a bell, make it brass. There's a reason you never see aluminum handbells.

Late in the evening I mentioned how I wanted to do a camera mount to mount on the rear rack. I had a spare Topeak Super Tourist rack sitting around. I had seen this idea originally on the website of a guy named Josh Putnam. I happen to have a motorized Nikon FE/MD-12 film camera I thought would be appropriate. After a quick bit of discussion, Paul talked me out of the idea of carving a custom piece of wood and instead just mounting my tripod head on the rear rack. The Super Tourist rack has a pretty hefty center plate, so we just took it into the basement, chucked up a bit in the drill press, and cut a 1/4" hole. I have a number of 1/4-20 bolts lying around, he carved up a flat tube for a bit of padding, and we bolted the tripod directly to the rack and then the rack to the bike.

We decided to test it out with my digital, a Minolta G500 (no longer made). There is no remote release cable (a big advantage of the Nikon) so we tried self-timer. This worked, sort of. The Minolta could do 3 or 10 seconds. I had to lean back and press the release, then stabilize the bike in three seconds, which is a remarkably short time. We tried 10 seconds, but on that setting, my Minolta would do one self-timer shot and then you'd have to click through all these menus to do another.


You get some goofy results trying to sort this out.


That was more the idea.

Still, this Minolta had its frustrations. I know, time for me to buy a camera, said Paul, and we headed off to National Camera Exchange. It turned out that what we wanted, a point and shoot with a remote release cable, didn't exist. Some had infrared remotes, but the camera would be aiming the wrong way for the rider to trigger it. With some more time, I could build a servo release like I do for my kite aerial photography, but it was past 8:00 and the ride was in the morning. We finally struck on the solution, a Canon A530 with a programmable self-timer. We programmed it to do a 6-second delay, then take two photos in quick succession. This should allow me to trigger the camera, stabilise the bike and then get two cracks at the shot. Cool.

At the last minute, about 10PM, we moved the Ortlieb front bag mount to the Big Red One from my winter Marin Pine Mountain and then we were ready to pursue our Three Speed Dreams.

Now where did I leave that thing?

During my transit'n'bike trip last night I got a copy of TAKEOUT, the newsletter for regular transit riders. I liked this bit:

Don’t forget to take your bike with you.

Each day, Metro Transit's Lost & Found department reunites transit customers with things they have left on buses and trains--purses, laptop computers, books, etc.

As strange as it seems, Metro Transit also ends up with at least a dozen bicycles a week that have been left in racks on the front of buses. With our rushed lifestyles, we're too busy to remember that we rode a bike to the bus stop!

If you're busy multi-tasking and forget your bike on a bus, call Lost & Found at 612-373-3333 weekdays between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. Due to storage limitations, most items are kept for two weeks. Bikes are kept for only one week.

Hmmm, I wonder what they do with them after that?

Wall Street Journal and Cycling

As a lifelong capitalist, I subscribe to the online Wall Street Journal. I think the reporting's pretty good even if the editorial writers are a horde of mouth-breathing wingnuts. Thursday's Journal has the following article on Cycle Commuting. Normally, I'm pretty respectful of copyright (my wife's a church musician, music copyright issues are a part of life) but let's just call this fair use, since the WSJ is subscription-only and I don't figure every blog reader is going to pony up $79 a year to subscribe.

The Cycling Commute Gets Chic
To Encourage Biking, Cities
Add Paths, Racks and Lockers;
To Shower or Not to Shower?
By KEVIN HELLIKER
May 11, 2006

Commuting to work by bike has renewed appeal right now. On top of health benefits -- like offering a chance to exercise without taking extra time -- it saves on the growing cost of fuel and even carries a certain cachet at the office.

A growing number of cities are making it easier to ride your bike to work -- erasing hurdles big and small, from securing bikes safely downtown, to taking bikes on public transit, to finding a discreet place to shower.

Eager to reduce traffic jams and pollution, cities including Chicago; Louisville, Ky.; and Portland, Ore. are adding biking-policy departments at city hall, constructing bike lanes or building bike stations where riders can park and shower. A 2004 survey of American cities found that more than 80% planned to build new bikeways. A new contest over which American cities are friendliest to cyclists has attracted 160 municipal contestants, each bragging about its bike lanes and lock-up racks.

Nationally, a bill introduced in the Senate last month would give employers a tax incentive to offer employees $40 to $100 a month to cycle to work, and a similar bill is pending in the House.

Buses and trains are allowing bikes to come on board in cities including Albuquerque; Washington, D.C.; and Boulder, Colo. In Chicago, Allison Krueger, a 26-year-old botanist, now can ride three miles to Union Station, catch a train to the suburbs, then cycle three more miles to her office. "The best part of cycling is the sheer joy of riding past people stuck in traffic," she says. Plus, she adds, "Biking is definitely fashionable in Chicago."

There are other signs that the cities' efforts are working. New York City opened a 17-mile bike trail on the west side of Manhattan, along with bike paths on the bridges connecting the island to Brooklyn, in 2003 -- and has seen a 50% increase in cyclists since 2000, to 120,000 cyclists a day, according to advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. A three-year-old bike station in Chicago is poised to sell out 500 memberships for the third year in a row. And the percentage of commuters using bikes rises a percentage point for every mile of bike lane added per square mile of American cities, said a 2003 study on bike lanes in the journal Transportation Research Record. The name of the study: "If You Build Them, Commuters Will Use Them."

One of the newest urban innovations: bike stations, which an increasing number of downtowns from various California cities to Washington, D.C., have added or are considering adding. Bike stations offer a safe place to park, along with lockers, showers and repair shops. The Chicago bike station, built and owned by the city, is run by a private company, which charges members $99 a year for showers, towel service and a personal locker. Denver, Seattle and Berkeley, Long Beach and Palo Alto, Calif., all have similar bike stations.

The rising price of gas is adding to the appeal of cycling. Shipments of bicycles in the last year have been extraordinarily strong -- one of the two best years in the past two decades, says Tim Blumenthal, director of an industry coalition called Bikes Belong. "There's a lot of buzz right now about high gas prices," he says.

"The 5,000 miles I'll cycle this year are 5,000 miles I'm not putting on my car's odometer and fueling with high-priced gas," says Eric Carter, an attorney in Portland whose two-wheeled commute has helped him knock off 30 pounds.

In a trend reminiscent of previous public-health fashions, affluent professionals seem to be leading the charge of commuters on bikes, just as they were among the first groups to embrace organic food, to stop smoking and to return to feeding babies healthier breast milk rather than formula. "So far, it's a white-collar movement," says Dave Growacz, a Chicago biking official and author of the book "The Urban Bikers' Tricks & Tips."

Cycling has some serious disadvantages. A cyclist may arrive at work dripping sweat and with helmet-mashed hair -- and that's in good weather. J.P. Morgan Chase Vice President Luz Byrne no longer cycles on rainy days. "I got tired of washing the mud out of my hair in a sink," she says.

Managing the logistics of work-out clothes and office apparel is difficult. Jerry Roscoe, a cycling attorney in Washington, D.C., arrives each morning in biking clothes, grabs a shirt and suit from his office, goes to a nearby gym to shower, then returns to the office ready to work. "It's complicated," he says.

Of course, many bikers don't shower upon arriving at the office. Mr. Growacz's book offers tips on how to wear a helmet without messing up your hair.

The biggest downside of cycling is wrecks, particularly with cars. Per kilometer traveled, a cyclist in America is 12 times likelier than a car occupant to be killed, according to a 2003 American Journal of Public Health article. Three cars have slammed Mr. Roscoe, including one that hit him intentionally. "She said I was going too slow," he says. In motorists, cyclists can trigger rage. And because cycling trails often double as walking trails, cyclists can be a pest and even a hazard to pedestrians.

Yet the number of cyclists killed in America fell nearly 10% to 724 during the decade that ended in 2004, according to federal statistics. And studies show that as the number of cyclists increase, collisions with automobiles decline because motorists become more alert to bikers' presence.

The danger of cycling is far outweighed by the benefits, says Rutgers University's John Pucher, a professor of urban planning specializing in cycling issues. Cycling builds muscle, deepens lung capacity, lowers heart rate and burns calories. "The health benefits of cycling outweigh the health risks by two to one, if not something like five to one," says Dr. Pucher, whose voice mail describes him as "car-free John."
Write to Kevin Helliker at kevin.helliker@wsj.com

I tried by own bit of multi-modal transport Wednesday night. I need a set of Albatross bars and thought I'd stop in at Hiawatha Cyclery before church choir practice and get 'em. Given the time constrains, my laziness and a stiff west wind, I decided to take the bus, throwing the Atlantis on the front of the number 61 and going downtown, then transferring to the Light Rail and taking it to the Veterans Administration Hospial stop, a short ride from Hiawatha.

This went pretty well. I'd forgotten how the bike rack thing worked but a transit enthusiast on the bus leapt off and showed me. The bike seemed a bit shaky on there and I watched it nervously all the way downtown. A block from the LRT station (Hennepin & 5th), the bike suddenly started leaning waaaay forward. Yikes! I could just imagine my lovely Atlantis pretzelled up underneath the bus! The driver stopped and said, hey man, your bike's falling off. I got off and removed it, it was just a block away from my stop anyway, and took it off. The hook that goes over the front wheel had come off. I folded the rack up (very important) and strolled down to the station and onto the train.

The LRT runs off sort of an honor system. I haven't ridden it since it opened, when Henry and I took it that free weekend with our bikes. I had a valid transfer, but there's nobody to check it. I got on, hung the bike up on the hooks on the wall of the rail car and sat down. Off we went, down to the VA Hospital. I guess the transit police do spot checks for valid tickets and not having one is a pretty hefty ($180) fine. I got out, saddled up, and rode the quarter mile or so to Hiawatha, which...

...was closed. Closed Wednesdays. Damn. Sunday, heading home from church in downtown Minneapolis (the ladies were singing the Offertory at our church, so I took the opportunity for a rare in-choir-season visit to another church, Gethsemane Episcopal, where I parked the Atlantis in the church basement gym where, weirdly, the Minneapolis (now Los Angeles) Lakers used to hold their basketball practices) I stopped at the Hub Bike Co-op on Riverside at 12:15PM and stood looking at the sign that said Open 12-4 Sundays on the front door of the darkened store. Maybe being an employee-owned store means every employee is an owner and can decide to open late. Hiawatha was posted as being closed Wednesdays, a pity, since that's my only regular day in south Minneapolis. Oh well. I'll have to stop in this weekend.

I rode off to church for choir practice and afterwards rode home, a fast trip with a steady tailwind helping my much of the way. I decided to look at my usual sites before heading to bed and discovered from this article how cool I was.

Cars and Speed Limits

A recurring episode in newspaper editorials and commentaries is a motorist complaining about scofflaw cyclists. Last summer it was a couple of Saint Paul Pioneer-Press columnists (and I wrote about them last July in Middle Ground, an entry in this blog. A few weeks ago it was a student columnist in South Dakota whining about bikes and fantasizing about giving them a nudge with her car when they irritated her. As summer arrives and more bikes once again take the roads we're bound to see another outbreak of the same columns scattered around the country.

My attitude is that as cyclists we need to obey the laws in much the same way motorists do. I also get annoyed when bikes sail blithely through Stop signs and red lights without even a look. I console myself that eventually probabilities will assert themselves and the herd will be thinned. However, I also get annoyed at the high-handed attitude of the writers of these columns and letters, who insist that cyclists obey all the traffic laws when motorists disobey the law all the time.

The most blatant of these is the same Stop signs that are so often a complaint against cyclists. You hear this a lot; bikes never stop at Stop signs. Well, guess what, cars don't either. If there's no opposing traffic, cars almost never come to a complete stop. Just watch their wheels, they don't stop turning. When people who drive through Stop signs at 6 mph get mad at those who ride through at 9 it comes off as a bit hypocritical.

Related to this is right turns on red. You're supposed to come to a complete stop before executing the turn. Watch an intersection sometime. Cars will come up, peer left to make sure there's nobody coming, and go right on around without coming to a complete stop. Guess what? That's breaking the law, and something of a hazard to pedestrians, too.

And then there's speeding. Last summer, also in July, I posted the text to a letter I wrote in reply to a column by Bob Sansevere of the Pioneer-Press in which he whined about scofflaw cyclists and referred to law-abiding motorist, where I said:

Law-Abiding Motorists? Just for a day, just once, try driving the posted speed limit on all the roads you drive all day long. I predict that many people will enthusiastically communicate with you!

Well, apparently KARE-11, our local NBC affiliate, did this. They run long segments called "Extras" and Tuesday's Extra involves mounting cameras on a car and driving the speed limit and showing the enraged reactions they get. I've just seen the teaser for it, but it promises to be good. Those of you who are local might want to watch it, it should make interesting material next time some motorist gets all high and mighty about anarchic cyclists. (For those of you who aren't from the Twin Cities or the KARE-11 viewing area, I think you'll be able to see it online after it's broadcast).

Free Range Cyclist

This was a good weekend to test raingear. It rained so much we had a couple of ducks in the backyard for a while despite us not having any bodies of water on the estate. I had a new Camp-mor yellow rain cape that I got for $30 and I thought I should try it out. I was thinking about doing this when Henry, my 14-year-old son, said he wanted to ride up to a local mall and get some hamster food for Cooshball and Diablo, the latter perhaps the most personable dwarf hamster ever. OK, he can try it out. I snapped the raincover from my Large Bell Metro helmet on Henry's Medium and sent him off.

He returned about 45 minutes later soaking wet and filthy. One thing rain capes need to work properly is fenders so that you don't get soaked by the water thrown up by the tires. Henry doesn't have fenders. Henry got wet. Henry also got gritty.

No worries, I have fenders, so we hung the cape up to dry on the back porch and let some time go by. I have a Blue Sky Guide, sort of a tree-hugger coupon book, and there's a coupon for $5 off a $40 purchase at Mississippi Market, so I thought I'd ride there. I got the Atlantis out but the back wheel was rubbing against a brake block. Hmmm, must have bashed it out of true. I hung the bike up to look at it and found two broken spokes. That's weird, I hardly ever break spokes, and I haven't ridden the Atlantis that much this year. OK, I'll just take the Marin. I mounted a grocery pannier and my large Topeak rear basket, put the rain cover back on my helmet, and rode off.

My feet got wet. Partly this was due to my misjudging the depth of a surprisingly capacious mudhole on the informal Chatsworth crossing of the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe railway tracks, partly it's because the front wheel kicks up and out water the fenders don't catch. Not that I was trying to avoid water; the Marin is what I rode through the winter and I still haven't thoroughly cleaned it, so I figured a good dousing of fresh rainwater was just the ticket, and made for the puddles and streams all along the way.

The Metro's helmet cover has a slight defect, as well. You have to take off the visor to snap it on, then can re-mount the visor. Trouble is, the water that does run down the front of the helmet goes behind the Visor and drips on my glasses. Oh well.

I arrived at Mississippi Market, about five miles away, and went in to buy my groceries. All the other tree-huggers were driving cars. My feet were wet, and the right one all brown from the mudpit, and the very bottom of my trousers were damp, but other than that, the rain cape worked pretty nicely. I shook the water out of my beard and cleaned off my glasses and made sure everything I bought was impervious to water.

I checked out and rode home. One other guy rode by on a bike, but he looked like a crazed homeless cyclist rather than an alternative transportation cyclist. The rain continued steadily and the wind at one point snapped the cape up and down, giving me a face-shower from underneath. I crossed the train tracks at Chatsworth again; the next day, some kids playing in the Calvary Cemetery next to this would find a body, which doesn't sound all that unusual for a cemetery, except this one wasn't buried and looks to be Saint Paul's sixth homicide of the year.

Home, I hung the cape and gloves up to dry again. My soaking cycling shoes (I'd put on my SPD shoes for the Atlantis and left them on for the Marin, forgetting that I still have my Power-Grip rat traps on there) were left to dry as well. A pair of dry socks and I was all set. I'd say the cape worked very well. It also packs smaller than the Carradice cape (and smells better) and I think it's more waterproof as well. I'll probably buy a couple more.

Sunday I strapped the Atlantis back wheel onto the Marin and rode it over to The Bicycle Chain, my most local LBS, to have them replace the spokes for me, then rode home, in what turned out to be the least-wet 20 minutes of the day.

On the whole, it wasn't a brilliant weekend for riding, but we did get a lot done in the house and I don't think that after today I'm going to have any difficulty convincing Henry to put fenders on his bike!

Flip Flop Flip Flop Whattya do when your numbers drop?

(Sung to the old Alka-Selzer plop plop fizz fizz tune)

Here's our steadfast great leader George W. Bush in 2000 when the Clinton-Gore administration released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve:

George W. Bush, trying to slow Al Gore’s momentum and overcome discourag-ing polls, accused his rival on Saturday of engaging in “a disturbing pattern of embellishments and sudden reversals.

He then referred to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve:

"The strategic reserve should not be used as an attempt to drive down oil prices right before an election," Bush said. "It should not be used for short-term political gain at the cost of long-term national security. It was created for cases of war or a sudden disruption of America's energy supply," Bush said. "That's why it's called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, not the Strategic Political Reserve."

Remember all the digs at Kerry about being a flip-flopper? Here's our Great Leader yesterday:

Tuesday, Bush, facing an outcry from his own party leaders, called high gas prices "a hidden tax on the working people" and said he would stop purchases and deposits to the reserve in order to increase supplies for consumer use. "By deferring deposits until the fall, we’ll leave a little more oil on the market," Bush said. "Every little bit helps."

What happened to that steadfast, clear-eyed leadership? Of course, it's not that we haven't had an energy plan:

"Laurence Lindsey – President Bush’s senior economic advisor at the time — argued in 2002 that the Iraq war would increase oil supplies and lower prices. From the Washington Times, 9/19/02:

As for the impact of a war with Iraq, “It depends how the war goes.” But he quickly adds that that “Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits that would come from a successful prosecution of the war.”

“The key issue is oil, and a regime change in Iraq would facilitate an increase in world oil,” which would drive down oil prices, giving the U.S. economy an added boost.

Yeah, that worked well.

The New Republic has an article by John Judis just out today that finally notices. The article starts off:

It's not fashionable to say this, but the Iraq war was about oil. Not entirely, but certainly more than it was about weapons of mass destruction or a link to Al Qaeda. The 1991 war with Iraq was also about oil, and if the United States goes to war in the future with Iran or with China, it will likely be about oil.

Not fashionable to say it? Jesus. Isn't it, wasn't it, blindingly obvious? Good to know our intellectual elite are catching on! Speaking of finally catching on, the article has some interesting quotes from Condaleeza Rice, who has just popped into Baghdad for a surprise visit.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice summed up the challenge from China, Iran, and Venezuela in testimony in April before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We do have to do something about the energy problem," she said. "I can tell you that nothing has really taken me aback more, as secretary of state, than the way that the politics of energy is--I will use the word 'warping'--diplomacy around the world. It has given extraordinary power to some states that are using that power in not very good ways for the international system, states that would otherwise have very little power. It is sending some states that are growing very rapidly in an all-out search for energy states like China, states like India that is really sending them into parts of the world where they've not been seen before, and challenging, I think, for our diplomacy."

What to do? The Democrats seem to be using this opportunity to bash Bush, which is all good fun and richly deserved, too, but in reality Bush can't do much about this and neither can they. The sooner that we all grasp this, the better, because until it becomes clear to everyone that one day we will long for the day when gas was just $3.00 a gallon we are likely to think of this as just one more temporary price hiccup, to be endured for a short time until gas prices return to "normal". It may be that demand for gasoline is mostly inelastic at $2 and $3 a gallon, but at some point, that elasticity starts to give and at $4 or $5 or $6 people start changing their behavior in more ways that just driving away from gas stations without paying more often. I've paid $6 a gallon before (in the UK, not the US) and it blows. It'd sure have me thinking hard about what I drove, when, where and how often.

Whatever pain folks are enduring at the pumps, it could be worse. Midas, the muffler and brake people, ran a contest to find the longest commute. The North Country Times has an article about Dave Givens, who drives 186 miles each way to his engineering job at Cisco Systems in San Jose. He does it in a 2005 Honda Accord he bought new in June and which now has 74,500 miles on it. It takes him about 12 gallons of gasoline a day to make this round-trip. I guess he's not a candidate for bike commuting!

Er, I'm getting ready to publish and Slate comes out with an article entitled I Smell Gas: A subject that makes Congressmen stupid that makes many of the same points and even uses some of the same quotes. It's really good, it explores more of the political dimension of this, how free-market Republicans suddenly want to investigate price-gouging and how environmentalist Democrats suddenly decry the high price of gas. If you're a Democrat, high gas prices are good, they'll cut consumption and therefore pollution and they'll send the price signals that finally institute some change; if you're Republican, they are good too, a part of the workings of a free market where prices work towards the supply and demand balances. Nobody dares speak the hideous truth, though, posturing and maintaining access to power and its privileges is a higher priority than levelling with us. They think we can't handle the truth.

We deserve better.

The Butcher's Bill

The butcher's bill is in for last year: 43,200 highway fatalities in 2005, up from 42,636 in 2004. That's a rate of 1.46 deaths for every 100 million vehicle miles travelled, up from 2004's 1.44. About 55% of the passenger vehicle occupants who died were not wearing seat belts compared to an overall seatbelt usage of 82%. Of course, not everyone gets killed; there were 2.68 million injuries in 2005, down a bit from the 2.79 million in 2004. It gets expensive; the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that these highway crashes cost the nation $230 billion, or $820 a person.

These are from a preliminary NHTSA report; the final report later this summer will contain additional information. It is notable that our two-wheeled compatriots on motorcycles died in larger numbers, too, 4,315 last year, up from 4,008 in 2004 and the eighth straight year's increase. It looks like bicyclists are holding about steady, at 720 dead in 2005 compared to 725 in 2004. However, we got injured more, 45,000 injuries versus about 40,000 in 2004.

I'd love to see how many people have died in highway crashes since I started driving, in 1974. There is an excellent data set at FARS (Fatality Analysis Reporting System) which I supplemented with some InfoPlease stats going back to 1983. From 1983 to 005, there have been 987,764 people killed in highway crashes. The figures from 1974 through 1982 would take that up another 400,000 dead, I expect (there were more than 50,000 killed in 1975 alone), for a total in the 1.4 million dead range since I first took to the roads in a car.

At some level we accept these brutal and random deaths as part of the cost of convenient transportation, but it's still worth contemplating the full extent of the slaughter, about 5 people an hour (if the deaths were evenly distributed throughout the day, which they're not) day in, day out, all year long. As a useful comparison, the roughly 2,900 dead on 9/11/2001 shocked us as a nation and has led to huge consequences in foreign policy, domestic freedoms and our nation's direction. Part of the shock of that morning was the random nature of the deaths, window washers, waiters, secretaries, titans of Wall Street, all caught up and suddenly killed in the midst of their daily routine. Given the 118 people a day, on average, killed on our nation's roads, about as many people have died since April 1 with much the same sudden randomness but with little attention unless the victims are famous, particularly cute or if they died in a particulary harsh way.

The NHTSA press release came out, appeared briefly on the news tickers and was pushed down by later stories, discontinuing oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Brett Favre's staying with the Packers, rumours of a new White House Press Secretary and all the other daily white noise. Forty three thousand dead hardly merits any attention.

Be careful out there.

Three Articles

Haven't had much time to blog and am down in Iowa on Dad duties again this weekend, but there were three articles I thought were interesing today.

First, in Newsweek, there is a My Turn article on neighborhoods and sidewalks at Sidewalks Can Make a Town a Neighborhood in which the author notes how we've evolved to be dependent on cars and how un-neighborly that is. Quoting: "For kids today, geography is understood from the back seat of a car, rather than through the scents and textures of heart-beating, muscle-flexing, self-motivated expeditions that connect one place to another, one person to another. The destination has displaced the journey."

Also in Newsweek, Jane Bryant Quinn notices our addiction to oil in The Price of Our Addiction. She rumbles through some of the Peak Oil arguments, points out that our military is becoming an Oil Protection Force and concludes "We're running a faith-based energy policy—still addicted to oil. If something goes wrong, it will go wrong big." It hasn't gone wrong yet, but I bought gas tonight and it was $2.85 a gallon for the cheap stuff. We're bound to hear more about this.

Finally, in Slate the Shopping article is entitled Avoiding The Bicycle Thief which rates, of all things, locks. It's an interesting read, and it you just want to cut to the chase, get the Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboudit U-lock for $90. Nothing's perfect, of course, but this is the best of the ones he tested.

I have been out riding a bit, the Atlantis on high-pressure tires a revelation after the Marin with it's knobbies and studs, my main mount for the winter. It felt good to click into the SPDs again, quick shifting, fast cruising. I'm looking forward to getting out some more.

Lost Month

March draws to a close and I have hardly ridden my bikes. Events have intervened. The summary version is that my father, who lives alone in Des Moines, hurt his back in early March which, when added to the unsteadiness he already has from his Parkinson's disease, left him largely unable to look after himself. A sister of mine from Kentucky happened to be there for a week but was concerned about leaving him alone and asked me to come down and see him, so I did the weekend starting Friday 3/10. It became apparent by Sunday morning that I couldn't just leave him alone and I called an old friend (and cyclist!) of mine who's a psychiatrist (and therefore also an MD) and he came over. He said this isn't getting resolved until his back's looked after, let's take him to the ER and get it evaluated. Dad was in hospital until Thursday and had to go to assisted living, at least until his back improves, and chose a place in Bellevue, Iowa, near Dubuque and another sister, where he hopes to move into a senior apartment. I took him home Thursday morning, threw a party for him in his house of 39 years, and on Friday took him to Bellevue, returning to Saint Paul late Saturday.

In the meantime, the same afternoon I was hosting an Open House and having all his friends over to say Hi before he left, my mother in law, who also lives alone in Des Moines, was found in her house, having collapsed and lay for 30 hours before being found. She was rushed to hospital and I managed a couple of quick visits while neighbors tended to Dad before I left to take him to Bellevue. So, Sunday, after playing the morning services, Karla headed to Des Moines and left me a single parent for the week, a large amount of work even when you don't come down with a nasty cold, which I did.

There are side stories to all this. I'd previously whined about having to drop $1,600 to fix my Ford Ranger's differential. Well, while in Des Moines tending to my Dad, the truck acted up again, shaking badly. I won't go into all the gory details, but I ended up leaving it to get fixed under Ford's parts warranty and taking Dad's Mercury Sable to Bellevue and Saint Paul. So, last weekend, with my truck and wife in Des Moines, I found someone to take the kids and took Greyhound to Des Moines Friday to get the truck Saturday. I got it, no charge, and spent several hours at Dad's packing up things. I wouldn't say Dad's an extraordinary man, but he's certainly an interesting one, and old photo albums in particular are cool, photos from his service in the Royal Navy in World War II aboard the HMS Vengeance (aircraft carrier) and in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and photos from a month-long trip around Spain in 1953 with three others in a 1927 Humber (car) with sleeping bags lashed to the running boards. Anyway, Sunday the truck acted up again, shaking badly in back. With the original repair the guys had said I needed new tires, so I dropped $400 and got that done, but it still shook, so I left it at the dealer again and came home with Karla.

The dealer managed to replicate the shaking, which was intermittent, and it's a bad carrier bearing, something in the middle of the two-piece driveshaft, $250 to repair, so I authorized it and expect tomorrow to head out on Greyhound to Des Moines again to collect my truck, visit my mother in law and bring back all the stuff I packed up last weekend.

There are other wrinkles in this; you know that snow you guys got on Monday 3/13 and Thursday 3/16? I was in Des Moines for those and missed them and poor Karla, when she tried to start the snowblower, found it spewing gasoline on the floor and had to hire in a snowplow guy who, with our serpentine driveway, managed to rip up some grass, for which he didn't charge any extra. Then Karla goes to Des Moines and gets caught in their snow and her Mom's shower won't turn off and she has to run dripping around the basement to find the main water shutoff and then hire in a plumber to fix that. While I was at Dad's and he was in hospital, and electrical fault knocked out half his house's electricity, then when I came home to Saint Paul, one morning when I flushed the toilet, filthy water rose in the bathtub. Not content to spend all this money fixing my damn truck, I also laid out over $300 to put two new tires on Dad's car, get it aligned and have the headlights reaimed.

Not that I'm whining. There is a certain refreshing clarity to decision making and priorities when all this kind of stuff happens and it has forced some major decisions that had to be made anyway. It's annoying to have to layer in plumbing, electrical, snowblower and car problems all on top of the health issues of the surviving parents (I forgot to mention that my sister's mother in law suffered from ill-health the week I was in Des Moines and had to be rushed to hospital Tuesday evening and then got a pacemaker installed Wednesday, which didn't directly affect me of course but did make for the trifecta among the surviving parents) and of course the routine of the kids' lives continues apace while at church, Karla's job, Holy Week and Easter loom, but you cope with a certain ruthless intensity with the problems as they arise.

With all this, I've hardly ridden. Coming into March I was still in long-undies and studded tires mode; now, as soon as I am able, Sunday, probably, I'll switch out the knobby studded Nokians on my Marin for the usual burly smooth tires. I also haven't had the Atlantis out in months, preferring not to ride it in the salty slop of a Minnesota winter, but shortly I'll be back on that bike with cleated shoes and high-pressure tires. Whatever low level of fitness I managed to maintain with my meagre miles in January and February has probably been squandered in the last month of fast food on the run, single parenthood, driving and sickness. Still, spring is upon us, it was actually raining this morning which corrodes away the remaining snow very quickly and makes a start on cleaning the streets, and the regular cycling season is about to commence. It is likely I'll end up in Des Moines and Bellevue pretty frequently the next few months, that my weekends in particular won't be fully my own until later in the summer, but I'll grab what cycling opportunities I can.

In the near term, I have some wheels to build. I have a Shimano dynamo front hub and a 1967 Sturmey-Archer 3 speed rear and a Shimano Nexus 8-speed rear that all need to turn into wheels. The 3-speed I intend to use on the Lake Pepin Three Speed Tour in May. One minor benefit of the running around is that on the way back from Bellevue on 3/18 I managed to pick up a $20 Lands End 46 Tall blazer at one of the Bargain Nooks, perfect wear for the 3ST, and then stopped at Wabasha to check out the Hotel & RV Park where I have a reservation. I've been unable to find an actual English 3-speed in anything approaching a large-enough bike so am instead going to 3-speed the 68cm Schwinn World Sport I bought on a whim last summer and ride that although I am likely to get a lot of crap from the actual English-bike riders. Once the 3ST is over, I'll pop in the Nexus 8-speed hub instead.

Anyway, for all those multitudes clamouring for more blog entries from me (hi Bob!), this is why I've been so quiet most of March. Choir rehearsal was last night but I didn't go, the residual effects of my cold making my throat very tender, so didn't get in that ride, which has been a common one for me through the winter. I haven't commuted to work yet this season, but that ought to start soon. I have some thrilling news about a rear basket for my bike which I'm sure will enchant all (you can take votes to decide whether my basket or my kickstand is dorkier) but it'll have to wait a few days. Once this next weekend is over, life ought to become more normal once again. We'll see.

More Handmade Bikes

The Cycling News has posted its photos from Day 3 of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show which was held in San Jose last weekend. The text of the article discusses how steel is making something of a resurgence fueled in part by the tubing manufacturers' innovations. Reynolds has their air-hardened 853 tube set and the new 953 tube set which is a stainless steel alloy, light and strong, rustproof and not even requiring painting. True Temper has a new light, strong S3 steel tube set available and Columbus has theirs, called Spirit. There are other materials in evidence, of course, including my favorite of the day, a titanium single-speed road bike with (if I read this right) titanium S and S Machine torque couplings, apparently designed for the heretofore underserved wealthy weight-conscious world-travelling bike messenger market. There are carbon/titanium and carbon/steel frame mixes, more cool lugs, nifty brazing jobs and innovative disc brake mounts. No more titanium streamlined bike baskets, sadly. In a lot of ways, these bikes are like the Ferraris and Lamborghinis of the bike world, flashy and sexy (although no matter how flashy your bicycle, it's unlikely to attract bimbos like a Ferrari, if that's your goal) but I don't know if I'd ride one to work and leave it in the bike rack all day. Still, it's fun to see what's happening on the outer edges of materials, techniques and craftsmanship.

Eat Your Veggies. Lots of 'em!

I took another crack at Sunrise Cyclery this weekend. Karla and I were down at church crawling around the organ room, which oddly enough is up in our tower. This church's pipe organ is a tempermental thing and has taken to randomly ceasing to function. Karla, an accomplished classical pianist, just switches over to the piano, but it's still annoying, and we were poking around trying unsuccessfully to figure out why the thing just stops. Anyway, when we got done, we drove by Sunrise Cyclery and...they were closed! Down at the Bike Expo! Oh well.

I had no interest in the Bike Expo, but there was a show on in San Jose this past weekend called the North American Handmade Bicycle Show and it looked really fun. Many custom frame builders were there showing off their wares and they're showing not just boring old nicely done frames but ones done with fetishistic details, exoticully cut lugs, fabulously detailed paint jobs and some wacky ideas. I like the stainless steel bike (Reynolds is now doing a stainless steel tube set) and the Bruce Gordon streamlined titanium basket, which is silly on many levels (e.g., the streamlining is pointless since the mesh doesn't offer much air resistance to start with and it serves the additional function of wildly limiting the basket's utility, but here I am debating the utilitarian merits of a titanium bicycle basket involving 500 separate welds but apparently unable to hold a gallon of milk, so it's at least attention-getting!). None of these guys look like those bloated bearded bellowing buffoons who do the American Chopper motorcycle shows, but I think otherwise this is the bicycle equivalent, where skilled craftsmen (are there any female framebuilders? perhaps, but none spring to mind) show off their skill. You can read the reports from Day One and Day Two. Click on the photos, you'll get a bigger version, then just keep going "Next" and work your way through the show. Then you can go out to the garage and look at that shabby piece of crap you ride and feel cheap and ashamed.

In somewhat less-exciting news, it appears that the nutrient quality of our mass-produced fruits and vegetables has declined since the mid 20th century. There's less calcium, riboflavins, protein, Vitamin C, phosphorus and iron than there used to be. Here's the abstract for a report called "Trends in the Nutrient and Antioxidant Content of Common Foods" by Donald R. Davis of the Universityof Texas at Austin & Bio-Communicaions Research Institute of Wichita, Kansas.

For over 25 years agronomists have known that yield-enhancing methods such as fertilization and irrigation may decrease the concentration of some nutrients in food crops. They call the phenomenon “the dilution effect.” Emerging evidence shows that genetic enhancements of yield also can dilute nutrient concentrations. High-yield crops grow bigger or faster, but are not necessarily able to make or uptake sufficient nutrients to maintain their nutritional value. Recent studies of vegetables, fruits and wheat find median declines since the mid-20th century of about 5% to 35% in concentrations of some vitamins, minerals and protein. Possible reversal of dilution effects, while maintaining yield levels, is an important research goal that would have great benefits to both consumers and farmers.

Other changes in agriculture during the last half-century include widespread use of pesticides, plant growth regulators, and highly soluble sources of plant nutrients, along with decreased use of humus-containing fertilizers. Recent studies have tested the effects on antioxidant levels of reversing these changes. They show that several organic growing methods can increase the broad antioxidant content of produce, as measured by ORAC scores and other measures. These practices include avoiding synthetic pesticides and using compost, cover crops and slow-release nitrogen sources. On average, antioxidant levels increased by about 30% in carefully designed comparative trials. Thus, organically grown produce offers significantly enhanced health-promoting qualities, contributing to the achievement of important national public health goals.

Here's the UT Press Release. Note that they didn't opine on a number of trace elements and nutrients because they weren't tested for in 1950. Anyway, you'd better eat up to 40% more fruits and veggies to make up for the nutritional deficiencies of our modern wonder-foods! Me, I think I may plant a vegetable garden this spring.

Late February

Sunday I tried something different, taking the bike to church on the car and then leaving after the early service. This worked out very nicely, with me changing into warm clothing and heading out. I overdressed; it had been 16 out when we'd left for church and I dressed for it, but in the interim it had warmed up, so that when I got home by 2:30 it was 34 outside. I eventually stopped and took off my sweater and admired the view.

The Minnehaha Falls, shortly before the Minnehaha Creek enters the Mississippi in Minneapolis, are an attractive feature nicely set in a lovely park. I hadn't been by this winter, having taken more direct routes home, but I was trying something different this time. The ice of the falls looked very dramatic, and there were some visitors down on the frozen creek surface taking photos. You can see one of the guys in the photo, giving you a sense of the scale.

Having removed my commando sweater, I rode on, crossing the river on the Ford Street bridge. The Mississippi is largely open; one week it looked well-frozen over, the next it was clear. I think the ice must float off downstream. Within a month the river will be open for navigation again, but for the moment there are still areas with lots of ice.

Here you can see a navigation buoy in the ice on the river just above Lock and Dam Number 1.

Here's the Marin parked on the Bridge. There's nothing remarkable here, I just liked the pattern of the shadows.

I rode on across and worked my way up to Raymond Street. There was a Swap Meet going on but, in my typical fashion, I had only a vague idea of where it was. I got on Raymond and rode by a parking lot full of cars with bike racks. Aha! This must be it! I parked the bike, paid my five bucks, and went in.

Almost immediately I ran into Jim and Kevin from Hiawatha Cyclery who recognized me from a couple of brief encounters last summer. I admired their stuff, took one of the excellent Atlantis brochures, and took a look at a 68cm Eisentraut frame Kevin had bought. A friend of mine in Saint Louis rides an Eisentraut he got in about 1978 I think.

The meet was probably great for the total equipment freaks. Here's what I wrote a friend of mine:

There was a Mavic crankset which looked very sleek but where the large chainring was a part of the crank forging, so it could never be changed. This seems an odd design decision although on the other hand I hardly ever ride the big chainrings and have never ever worn one out. There was a Bridgestone XO-1 there, not a pretty bike, but I thought maybe they should have a kneeling cushion and some prayer candles and incense in front of it so we could all worship ("Our Grant, who art in Walnut Creek, Moustache be thy bars"). The Hiawatha Cycle guys were there and had a really nice Atlantis brochure, one of which I took. It's so nice I want to buy another one! There was a photo on back of the 47cm (I think, the smallest one anyway) and the 68cm frames side by side, aligned at the bottom bracket. They had a normal-sized built-out Atlantis there (and a Ramboooeelay) and the measured the downtube diameter which was 1.25". I used a tape on mine, not calipers, too lazy to go inside, but am pretty sure it is 1.625". Jim (Oil is for Sissies, one of the Hiawatha guys) said they thought about carrying Pashleys but figured it might be too expensive and take a lot of explanation to sell them. He thought they'd be $1,300 but this seems high to me, they go for 460 pounds in the UK, maybe $825, and I figured it would run a couple of hundred to ship here, but maybe you'd get VAT back, so just assumed a Roadster Sovereign would cost me $1,000 delivered, maybe a bit more if I bought a spare tube and tire or two. There were a bunch of bikes and components that I'm pretty sure are extremely lustworthy to small subsets of the cycling community but of which I know nothing. There was a framebuilder (Chris Kvale, who is well thought of) selling framebuildng jigs. He has a little store I ride past on the way to/from church on my normal route and is closing the store; maybe he's stopping making frames too. And there were many way cool people, old Steel Framers like ourselves (not cool), tattooed singlespeeders, in-the-know racers, etc. Also some cute babes. I impressed this lot by, as I left, riding off the curb and having my pannier fall off.

I didn't buy anything. I did get something off eBay in the mail today, a 46-tooth Biopace chainring I want to try on my Schwinn World Sport with a Nexus 8-speed hub. I'm gathering the parts to do this, the Biopace is just the next item. It is kind of hilarious, it looks like a manufacturing mistake or maybe the detritus of some hideous accident.

I did ride home and my pannier fell off twice more. This is truly annoying. It is a pretty nice pannier, a very useful model no longer made, but it has the traditional U hooks (think an upside-down U) and an elastic bit that hooks on the rack bottoms. When you go fast, or over curbs in front of cute 21-year-olds, it bounces off. It ought not to be that hard to make hooks that lock on the rack, that hang on no matter what, and I may try and chase down an Ortlieb or Carradice set of clamps and graft onto this pannier to stop this.

Riding home was pretty fast. I thought maybe this was the awesome power of my magnificent legs but eventually noticed that the flags were snapping pretty well and I had a good tailwind. Still, it felt nice.

In other news, further details have come out about President George Bush's bicycle crash last summer at the G8 summit in Scotland. Apparently he came riding quickly by a group of policemen and tried to wave as he rode by and crashed, sliding for 5 metres and hitting a policeman hard enough that he was off work for 14 weeks. You can read about it in the New Zealand Herald. Sadly, the remarkably restrained Al Jazeera article seems to have gone. Oh well. As you may recall, the seriousness of this accident was minimized at the time. President Bush is going to end up clumsier than President Ford; he chokes into unconsciousness on a pretzel, falls off a Segway, crashs his bike in Texas and again in Scotland. With his lawyer-shootin' Vice President, it's like Laurel and Hardy leading us.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a report about actual charges being filed against a bus driver who attempted (er, allegedly attempted) to run a cyclist off the road, then ran over his $5,000 bicycle. The charges are for assault with a deadly weapon, vandalism and reckless driving. Man, wouldn't it be gratifying it that happened a little more often!

Speaking of bikes'n'crime, the Washington Post is reporting that a punk bank sticker on a bike cause a big bomb scare in Ohio:

ATHENS, Ohio -- A sticker on a bicycle that said "this bike is a pipe bomb" caused a scare Thursday at Ohio University that shut down four buildings before authorities learned the message was the name of a punk rock band, a university spokesman said.

The sticker on the bike chained outside the university-owned Oasis restaurant near the center of campus attracted the attention of a police officer about 5:30 a.m., spokesman Jack Jeffery said.

Police blocked streets around the restaurant and the Columbus police bomb squad came from about 65 miles away.

The bomb experts hit the bike with a high-pressure spray of water, then pried it apart with a hydraulic device normally used to rescue accident victims trapped in cars, acting Athens Fire Chief Ken Gilbraith said. Once they had it open, they saw there was no bomb.

The article goes on a bit; the area was declared safe, the bike owner was questioned and released, the punk band's label has no phone number. No mention if he gets paid for the bike.

Can you imagine coming out to get your bike and there is a pack of cops ripping it apart with a hydraulic device? Maybe he'd better stick with I Wish My Girlfriend Was As Dirty As My Bike stickers.