Bad Roads and Bad Cops
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: RANTING&RAVING
10-05-05: Riding home last night was another near death experience. The idiot PSE&G people have been tearing up the street with a criss-cross maze of patchwork, laying pipes and doing a crappy -- downright dangerous -- job of patching the road. But they usually didn't leave two foot trenches in the middle of the street.

Well, turns out they did.

Coming down the dark hill -- the streetlight doesn't work -- the rear tire of my Fuji Fix made a sound like a bomb going off somewhere under the rear axle. Pissed off and worried about damage, I kept control of the bike and slowed, preparing to stop when I got to the bottom and check for damage -- a broken rim, spoke, or flattened tire.

Just as I got done cursing the idiot that left a two-foot wide and nearly six inch deep trench across the road, unmarked with cones or anything, where there were no lights, the bike launched itself over the second tranch. It was all I could do to keep control of the bike.

For now, there's no damage. But the Mavic Open Pro rims, though sturdy, were not intended for dukes-of-hazzard style riding more suited to a BMX bike!
It is only a matter of time under these circumstances till something goes.

Here's the big joke: Someone suggested I report the unmarked bomb craters to the police who could issue tickets for not marking them with cones, etc. The joke is, there were two policemen there during the day when the construction was ongoing. Woulda' been nice if they did their job...

-- Elvis

Stung
Mood:  caffeinated
10-04-05: Riding yesterday was so much fun.. for the most part. My friend Patty and her geared Raleigh; me on my FujiFix. We only did about 10 miles, maybe, but it was so relaxing...

Riding through the next town over, we stopped at a park, and noticed a dirt trail. Following it, we walked, then rode. My Fuji Fix was built up as a fixed gear touring bike -- I built it specifically for the 5 Boro, which is why it originally had 2 brakes; 35,000 people on the Varizano Narrow's bridge gives one pause.

But I now realize that I didn't need the rear brake any more than I did on my other fixed conversions -- and that many of the same qualities that make the bike a good all rounder for the road make it good for slow-paced, liesurely offroad cruises, save for the narrow (23c) tires.

Emerging from the woods, we headed home, when it happened. I rode into a bug at about 15-20 mph. Not just any bug. A wasp of some sort. It stung the insdie of the lower left lip, and as I plucked it out and my face swelled up like elephant man, I tried to find the stinger. No dice.

Talking with Patty I rushed off ahead to get home, riding like a madman. Except for the suburban environment I felt like one of those mad rushing bike messengers, tearing through the streets to try and get home fast as the poison made half my face go numb and I started frothing at the mouth.

I was almost home when I came to a T intersection. A green van sat there in the middle of the street, no turn signal. I didn't know which way to pass him on, left or right, but I couldn't wait; my lip was beginning to burn so bad my eyes watered. "Jesus chris get outa the street!" I yelled as I blew past the van, which i saw was sitting idle even though there was no oncoming traffic. Mother f-er was probably lost. Or asleep.

Finally I made it home, and some ice and a few painkillers did the trick. Today it's almost normal; very little pain. But thinking back I think I set a new speed record for those last 2 miles.

Reflecting on the unpleasant end to an otherwise pleasant ride, I must thank years or riding, off and on, for my lack of a crash. When injured or in pain our conscious mind leaps away and we often go back to instinctive knowledge -- epsecially when moving at high speed. What I've picked up over the years about riding has, for the most part, become instinctive. i can slow my fixed gear via resistance braking without consciously resisting the urge to coast. I can ride one-handed if need be. I know how far to lean into turns without going over.

Thanks to this, I got home safely. So did my bike. And thanks to the wasp, that ride will always be a memorable one, especially those last tearing 2 miles of pain.

Some would say it isn't worth it to keep riding after such an episode. I got right back on my bike and rode to work.

-- Elvis

More anti-bike Madness: When will it end?!
More anti-bike nonsense: Will this madness never end?
Read something the other day -- scary how close it mirrors the run-in I had this morning with two pukin' SUV captains...

According to a fixed gear bicycle rider from out west, who was on the ride, a San Francisco (9-30-05)Critical Mass ride turned into a brawl. Rider was attacked in an altercation with two pedestrians in business suits. Word was the bicyclists were jokingly saying things as they passed. The Suit took the banter seriously and kicked the guy off his bike and started beating him, fleeing only after confronted by a crowd of other riders...

The moral? Some people just get "set off". Usually it's bad drivers who don't like you pointing out the errors of their dangerous ways. This is different because it's a pedestrian.

We don't know who began the banter... maybe the pedestrians were angry at waiting for the bikes to pass and said something? However, if the Crit Mass riders were taunting these folks..... Makes no diff. The pedestrian was a nut job, flipping a guy off a bike cause he says something in passing is not a normal reaction -- it's the mark of a potential psycho. This suit is the kinda person who will one day go berserk and just start offing people cause they gave him the wrong happy meal at MickeyD's.

However we can't usually tell these types by looking at them so I pretty much try to keep to myself on my bike beyond a few mild gestures. Now if a car actually hit me [read, I couldn't dodge it] i would be pissed, cause it's happened in the past.

Verdict: The guy in the suit needs to take a pill, be booked for assault and cool his jets in a cell next to a very large fellow -- maybe that scary-lookin' guy from Oregon who ran over the Granny?

Maybe the Crit Mass riders who were acting like cowboys come in from a trail drive need to cool their beligerance a mite, too.

But it's a funny world. Drivers in SUVs shout crap at em all the time. Some scream and try to startle me into crashing. I don't pull them outa their stopped vehicles when I catch up to them at the light and beat them into a pulp. Why should nonriders, be they drivers or pedestrians (as in this case) be any less tolerant of bicyclists?

If the idiot in the SUV can shout remarks at others on the street, why can't Critical Mass guys on bikes? I'm not saying it's nice to do, or even wise -- but please don't be all in a phoney rage over it. You do it all the time in your SUV, dude... come one! Let's have a little common sense, double standards are just so Animal Farm --- kind of like that guy in the suit's behavior.

Look, Cars may be the bulk of the vehicles but the roads ARE multi use [bikes, cars, pedestrians] and there will be idiots in every group. As cyclists we see quite a few bad or dangerous drivers, careless pedestrians and even other cyclists who are reckless (listen in descending order). Unless they get violent we don't get violent. It isn't worth it...

IF I can restrain myself from turning into Rambo because a driver yells at me on my bike, why should this Pedestrian Suit go into Berserker mode because some guy on a bike said something to him?

This goes beyond a double standard, the guy was a time bomb waiting to happen. Was the cyclist smart or polite? No. Maybe he was even asking for a fight... but guess what? This is a civilized country. We don't go around beating the snott out of people even if they are bein' rude.

But the double standard is there... To get an idea of how it would play in the media [assuming the local SF media covered the incident?], consider: Even here in the fixed gear bike world, most people here are looking at the incident as the cyclist's fault -- "he started it" syndrome. Maybe he did start it -- who knows? But....


....what I know is, if I went ballistic, and hauled some driver out of his window at a stoplight and brained him with a brick because he had said something unkind, I sure as heck know *I* would be labeled the bad guy -- not the driver with a fractured skull. How is it any different here? Because the rude guy who was attacked was on a bike?
What times we live in.

So all this is going through my head as I am going thru the light and the two SUV -- one up the other's @ss -- turn right into me. Fortunately my fixed gear allowed for enough control to avoid a crash... but it was close!
And one more reminder that: Our society takes people that could never pass the background check for a handgun and sets them loose on the streets in a 3,000 lb GUIDED BULLET! Jumping in front of the bullet isn't the solution, nor is smashing it (tho if it hit me I probably would), but... They need to realize there are other folks on the road beside for them.

People need to take a pill and chill. Cool your jets, sheesh, the light will still be there if you wait and don't run folks down.

I think the in-your-face attitude of some cyclists may be part of the problem -- but also I think for most of the careless or reckless drivers it makes no diff. Certainly the pedestrians or drivers who attack cyclists (or run them over) cannot in any way claim their actions are justified by the fact that they find bicyclists "rude". You don't kill people for being rude. And anyway, many of these psycho set-off non-riders are just as rude, if not more, to others as they perceive those on bikes are to them.

As to how to handle the psycho or careless drivers, the fact remains kindness is not the answer. Saying that reacting with anger or flipping off a driver that almost killed you will only cause said driver to be more anti-bike ignores the fact that he is already irrevocably anti-bike, either out of carelessness or malice -- else he would not have nearly hit you! Such drivers are not all drivers, but those who are, simply see bikes as a nuisance regardless of how well behaved the riders are. And guess what, they ain't gonna be all nice and Mr. Roger's-like if we just smile at them and wave as they tear towards us at warp speed looking for blood on their bumper -- or simply oblivious to the danger they cause.

Mind you, I'm not saying attack the cars. Attacking people isn't the solution. But niether is gettin' run over by pretending the psycho driver problem doesn't exist.

Perhaps better police enforcement, but seeing as my run-in with the two SUV pilots happened in front of the local town hall/police station complex (at a light WITH A CAMERA!) and there was no response I fail to see this happened. The ultimate answer may just be defensive riding, awareness of one's surroundings, and, as a last resort, a real heavy bikelock...

-- Elvis

fair weather riders -- don't be one
9-30-05: Woke up this morn to find the temp. hovering around 54 degrees, but it felt like the 40's. Two layers of warm shorts, and long sleeves should make all the difference. Remarkably, I saw my older neighbor, the one who's bike I fixed up, riding around in just a sweater and pants. Hope I am that cool when I'm her age.

For now, the temperature isn't so bad. But wait til winter. -15 degree wind chill, 20 degree highs, and blowing snow will pretty much force all bicyclists inside to indoor trainers and back issues of Bicycling. However, it doesn't have to be that way. Wider tires, an easier gear, and warm @ss clathes can make all but the harshest winter days tolerable. Don't be a fair weather rider. Keep it up thru the coming cold months.

-- Elvis

Dancing with traffic
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: RANTING&RAVING
9-29-05: As September screeches to a halt, the leaves start falling, and the tail end of a storm [shades of the Gulf?] makes it's way across NJ, I finished fine tuning my FujiFix and took it for a spin.

The ITM bars, properly tilted, allow both nice positioning on the slope by the hood of the brake, and good use of the drops. The vinyl griptape I reused is nice and also relatively indestructible in terms of deterioration from sweat and rain. The brake cable is run from a Rt. side lever mounted on the left, so I took it off the front of the bat and ran it around the backside, then fine tuned the new cantis [NOS, outa the parts bin] I put on the bike the other day, in addition to lubing the cable/housing and the aero lever pivot to stop an annoying squeek. The result? The perfect bike for riding on all day rides, short cruises across town, going to/from work, or just riding along.

Most fixed gears are either trackbikes [or track bike clones, a la the Messenger culture] or road fitness machines. This bike is a bit of both; the one brake, fast but not over the top gearing, and the plain frame stripped of all decals but the headbadge, may seem to echo somethign of the utilitarian urban fix culture. However, the sloping top tube, dual h20 bottle cages, and cantis scream "tourer".

The bike is to me a two wheeled swiss army knife, a multipurpose vehicle. I daresay if I used the other side of the fixed wheel, installing, say, a 19 or 18t cog, all I'd need to do is flip the wheel to have an offroad worthy fix, with the addition of 32 or 35c cross tires, of course.

So how is the ride? Good. Better. Great! Each bit of tweaking paid off in improve hand position, less bakc and neck strain, more power up the hills from better seat positioning, and just plain all around handling. In the drops it shoots past parked trailers and landscrapers' trucks, busses, et al, yet cruises along effortlessly on the slope of the bars. It's stable at mad fast RPM but comfy at a slow riding-along pace.

Heading up the hill to Summit, i used resistance brakign estensively, only using the handbrake a few times; shooting around the inevitable parked UPS van, jaywalkers, stroller jockeys and the broad in the not-so-mini van who "floated" the stopsign. I stopped for the red lights, but most of the time didn't put a foot down; the light turns, and I'm off, on a mornign time trial through the streets of Summit, keeping a block a head of the motorized traffic behind me, slowing with my feet -- and the occaisional tap of the handbrakes.

I stopped for a cup of coffee, my legs a little heavy from powering up the hill I hadn't ridden on anything but my geared bike in a while, as my fix had been used mostly of commuting in town except for the occaisional longer ride. Saw a few people look skeptically at my "roadkill cycling" t-shirt and my wierd @ss bike. As I finished my coffee it started to rain. People took out umbrella sand ducked under cover. I laughed and mounted up my bike, ready to go dance with traffic again. The wind was blowing the other way; I could probably outrun the storm.

-- Elvis

Back in the fixedgear groove
Mood:  caffeinated
9-28-05: Riding my Fuji fixed gear lately. 40x16 gearing and cantilever brakes in the front hooked to a Shimano 105 road lever. The other lever's clamp was stripped or broke so I took it and the rear brake off.

Unfortunately, before this happened -- back when it was still 2 brakes -- this bike had it's first crash. Going thru a 4-way intersection the front wheel buckled and folded like a fortune cookie. No harm to the bike -- apparently -- but the left side of the handlebar and my right elbow both appear slightly out of bent. Okay, okay -- it's 1 or 2 *centimenters* but that's not the point -- I know it's *there* (on the bike!). So the bike gets new handlebars, ITM 330's all black. Goes well witht he black stem I put on it. Other than that I left the bike as is... even reused the black vinyl griptape...

Verdict: Handles much better in traffic, not sure if it's the bars or the new hand position I adopted with only one brake, now that I don't have two hoods to use. And tho' only having one brake lever feels lopsided at first due to the missing hood, is actually preferable to me... it looks like a fixed gear. It feels like a fixed gear.
[below: The FujiFix in NYC for the 5boro. It still looks similar except for it now has only a front brake, a newer handlebar/stem, and a replaced front wheel. -- Elvis

More bikes on the road
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: RANTING&RAVING
9-19-05: "I am so psyched to try that bike," said one of my co-workers yesterday. After building up a single speed beach cruiser for the boss to tool around the neighborhood in, he had asked me to build him a road bike.

"With drop bars?" I asked, skeptically.
"Yeah," he said. "I want those."

So my trusted Univega roadie, with brazed on downtube shifters, is now fitted with a set of older sturdy wheels, 25c tires, basic pedals [the clipless were removed and ready to go. There is air in the tires and it will be going to a new home tonight.

Similarly, my friend's mother wants to get on a bike, and we had planned for me to go with her to a shp -- pick out a ride. She bought a bike in the interim, but he still wants me to come over and help her set it up, adjust the ride position, etc.

Across town, an acquaintence of mine who sold bikes out of his back yard, got fined $500 for leaving one lonely bike, with a "bikes for sale" sign, out front.

I don't go out of my way to convert people to the bicycle, but by george, they see how much fun I have riding and they want one. And then along comes the government and fines a guy for trying to sell people bikes. Stupid legalistic f&*ks.

Personally, I feel the world would be a better place if more people rode. Even just once a week around the block.

But the government has different ideas. In supposedly bike-friendly Chicago, there is that crackdown going on. Cars and trucks [SUV's] routinely risk death on the roads, discouraging many from riding. For every step forward we take as a society, we leap a yard back.

So am I pissing into the wind? Waiting at the bus stop while my ship comes in? Raging against a machine which won't die? Hard to say. Every ride is fun, a reminder that we are alive and breathing, thinking, feeling individuals, not government-run automotons to be easily catagorized, defined and compartamentalized.

Will more people riding really make a difference? Hard to say that, too. One of the bike magazines gave away 50 free bikes and the recipiants began riding in earnest, encouraged others to ride, and claimed both health and emotional benefit. But was that an anomoly? It's hard even to say that those who want to ride will stick with it, let alone what difference it'd make outside the world of cyclists.

But for now, I've built a bike for one more person. Maybe that's enough.

-- Elvis

The Bicycle Militia?
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: RANTING&RAVING
Recall all those stories in the 1990's about radical Americans moving out west and starting armed groups, which came to be dubbed "militia's"?

The thought occured to me today as the price of gas began to go down, and I had my car fixed, but still rode a bike today. And then it hit me. All of us who ride -- for whatever reason -- are like a militia, throwing some collossal wrench into the engine of organization, social planning, and restriction.

By not doing the expected, or traditional, or "normal" thing -- drive -- we unnerve people. We puzzle them. And we occaisionally piss them off. But the end resultis that, as a whole, American cyclists are a strongwilled group. There are probably more cyclists who honestyl ride regularly, then there are religious people who can truthfuly say they regularly attend sermons. And the truth is that it's fun.

But what we have long done for fun -- often independently of one another -- is now coming together. $3.59 a gallon gas, even if it recovers to like $3 a gallon, will forever change America. Recallt he gas hikes of the 1970's? The price never went down after that.

But becausde we ride more than drive, regular cyclists are not being hit -- financially or through frustration -- by this ten-pound sledge hammer every time they go somewhere.

Because we do what's considered dangerous, unusual, and maybe a little odd [f-ing nuts I've been told] out coworkers, noncycling friends, and family regard us as wierd. Those who overestimate the effort needed to ride think that something as simple as a 40 mile ride is a herculean effort. Hey, if they want to overglorify what we are and do with resperception, the errors to the advantage, eh?

But the result is we do not fit in, we are misfits, like the militia who removes themselves from society to go train in the woods. The difference is that unlike the militia we are waging our war every day, a war against waste, frustration, absurdly high gas prices and mind-killing "routine". To us a spin to the store can a be fun adventure; to the guy int he Hummer it simply costs ten bucks.

As we wage our war, maybe the social fabric will shift, the cylcists will be welcomed, and everyone would take up biking -- or at least stop treating those who bike as freaks. But I doubt it -- and somehow, if that were to happen, it would seem almost like the enemy of mediocrity won. Who wants to be mainstream an "normal" anyway?

I'd rather be a part of the "bicycle militia" of America -- doing my own thing, and at the same time holding back to curtain of cosmic insignifigance with each turn of the cransk, and frustrating the government catagorizers and rule makers with each click of my SPD cleats on pavement.

Why? Not sure. But tearing a hole through that curtain is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than letting it fall.
-- Elvis

Signs of the times
Mood:  caffeinated
It is amazing what goes through your head when you are looking to punch out. On my commute a car was turning, traffic backed up. As it was a main road and I normally ride to the side, I began passing the cars -- until I got to this one prick who had pulled all the way up to the curb. Unclipping the foot I normally don't use, I stopped and barely missed gettin' squashed. Naturally in the second before I hit the brakes, my mind wandered...

Thinking of that incident in Oregon where a cyclist who looked like ZZ Top ran a stop sign and hit a woman crossing in an "unmarked crosswalk", I couldn't help but notice on my way to work that there's this one stopsign I sometimes go through. Mind you, I slow first, but if no one is driving on the shoulder I'll go.

I thought about why this is . After all, I stop for red lights and signal when turning left or right. If riding with others I point out potholes, etc. So why do I sometimes go through the stopsign?

The answer is as obvious as it is a no-brainer; I'm riding on the shoulder, not in the middle of the lane. Ergo, even if there is a car coming, I am riding parallel to him, not in line with him, so it endangers neither him nor me to turn, provided he's not driving on the shoulder or the curb.

This is one of the paradoxes of cycling. Though bicycles are the only vehicles with a legal right to "share the road" aside from consenting motorbikers, the convention is for cyclists to keep to the side on main roads, if they are going slower than traffic -- the exception to be when coming up to a red light you go into the right lane, or when turning left you go in the left lane.

This occurs to me as I ponder the response of angry motorists who often shout at me to "get over" and stop "taking up space" - or the prick who nearly turned me into a chef salad:
First, if cyclists have to obey traffic laws -- and we do -- should we not be entitled to road space as much as cars?
Secondly, if cycling Americans are going to ride off the side to make way for faster moving cars -- i.e., not be entitled to "equal" road space -- than why should they then stop for cars that are no longer in their line of travel? If the cars want you to ride on the shoulder, then why should you wait for traffic backed up in the main lane if the shoulder is clear? The fact is this paradox is impossible to now resolve; the same people who demand you "keep right" as far as possible, will -- during a traffic jam -- block the "right" so you cannot go past. Ride in line with the cars, get b!tched at and maybe hit; ride on the shoulder, get squished or blocked in.

If cyclists ride erratically, it leads to condemnation of "dangerous" bikers. If cars drive erratically, the bicyclists are expected to accommodate them. That the cyclists may only be riding in this manner to avoid erratic drivers almost never occurs to the bike bashers who would like to yank us off the roads and confine us to useless bike paths in lifeless parks.

Look mack, either I ride in lane -- or not. And if you want me on the shoulder, don't f#$%ing block it.

Perhaps if the drivers were consistent this would not be a problem, but until they can learn to stick with one line of thought, it means cyclists will have to be vigilant.

But it wouldn't hurt for drivers to stop being erratic, either.

-- Elvis

Stupid News
Mood:  caffeinated
Word from a post on the fixed gear bike forum [www.fixedgeargallery.com] is that some dude out west (Oregon?) "struck and killed" a 70-odd year old woman and is being charged with manslaughter.

Apparently he ran a stopsign.

This relates to a similar announcement that authorities are cracking down on "lawless" cyclists in Chicago -- a trend that may spread elsewhere if angry columns in papers from New York to Tuscon are any indication.

Of course, what the authorities aren't stressing is that the cyclist hit her when she was in an "unmarked crosswalk".

A wha-?!

Apparently in Oregon, any intersection is a crosswalk, even where there isn't one. I'm no expert on driving codes beyond the basics but this strikes me as sadly amusing. Maybe in Oregon it's an "unmarked crosswalk"; here in NJ it's called "jaywalking".

She was jaywalking -- fact. He ran a stop sign -- allegedly. Two wrongs don't make a right, but jeez, even if it's legal to cross where there's no markings, that doesn't make it safe. Where did common sense go, into that supposed ozone hole?

That the incident coincides with a crackdown on cyclists is alarming. As is the newspaper's description. "Struck and killed?" Maybe with a car that'd be a given, but with a bicycle, especially as she was a senior citizen, it may have been "struck and fell and died". The seemingly harmless cliche employed in this instance buts the direct blame for her death on the cyclist. This isn't just semantics; if she died from hitting the ground then the cyclist just knocked her over; an elderly condition would be to blame for her death. But in their sloppy use of tired soundbytres the newscrapers effortlessly paint the cyclist as pr oven guilty.

Make no mistake, no one should run a stop sign. But pedestrians should look before crossing streets -- especially where there is no crosswalk. Jaywalking by any other name...

The same anti-bike people constantly demand bicyclists defer to cars even if we have the right of way. A car runs a stop sign -- we should have stopped. A car pulls out without signaling a turn -- it's our fault for being on the street. Why is it no surprise that the same people who denounce cyclists for not being careful enough to accommodate other's bad / illegal driving, are now painting this woman as a "victim", as if she had the "right" to plod across an unmarked intersection oblivious to danger?

Sure, he allegedly ran a stop sign. And she was jaywalking.

What part of this story is cut and dried? Only in the world of the media, who on one hand rip Americans for not being more "eco-friendly" and then defend the right of SUV drivers to squash law-abiding cyclists by claiming that it's justified by one or two "reckless" riders.

The Chicago crackdown -- like the Oregon case -- is one of many waiting to happen. Given the police harrassment of cyclists during the unofficially sanctioned rides like "critical mass", et al, one would hate to see what results if the same unfortunate incident happens in New York or New Jersey. Cyclists may soon find that they have rooms reserved for them in Guantanamo Bay next to Al Quaeda types with beards down to here. Priorities? 'But cyclists are dangerous!' scream the media types as they break motor vehicle laws in their massive Sporte Utility Vehicles ...as one irate SUV-driving columnist so clearly illustrated in an Arizona newspaper, in which he described an incident where he nearly ran over a cyclist, who he claimed didn't see his turn signal -- maybe another SUV was in the way or he put it on after the cyclist had passed? His take on things -- which typifies the official response in Chicago, and the one-sided reporting of the "struck and killed" story -- is that bikes are the offender in all runs ins, either with car or person, just because they are bikes. Even in "unmarked crosswalks".

As the writer of the editorial on the Chicago crackdown put it bikes are "the problem" -- and riders should "consider [themselves] to be unarmed Americans in Baghdad -- at dusk", as that happy fellow from Arizona wrote, stating that he was surpirsed (he seemed disapointed) that more dead cyclists haven't turned up hit by cars.

Yeah, sure. But jaywalking should be protected.
Hypocrisy is too tame a word for it.

-- Elvis