phi

Want to come on a bike ride with me to celebrate my birthday? The morning of May 14, we'll leave my house in Somerville around 10am, and ride 41 miles, to Lincoln, Concord, and Carlisle. We'll take it easy, and also stop for lunch in Concord Center (really this time). Total ride time will probably be 5 hours or so.

Also, I'm considering a range of insane bike rides for June. Do you live in North America but more than 50 miles from Boston? Would you put up a crazy cyclist for a night? Do you know anyone else who fits that description? Let me know. This username at gmail works fine.

A while ago I set myself a bicycling goal for the season -- one which would be a little bit of a stretch, but not so much as to make it a chore. This has helped me get out for lots of lovely rides this year, and I've been having a lot of fun with it.

Right this minute, I am 90% of the way there.

I have one more week of Daylight Savings, and what looks like at least a little bit more good weather. And sometimes riding in bad weather is fun, too. I'm sure I'll have to HTFU a few times to make it. But I'm just as sure I'll be glad I did.

A woman whose age I'd estimate at around 70, cranking along at 15 or 16 miles an hour on a titanium bicycle.

Awesome.

A friend who volunteers at Bikes Not Bombs tells stories of conversations there and says that a popular one is to answer the question "If you could only have six bicycles, what would they be"? I'm relatively new to having more than bike, and thinking it might soon be time to replace one of the two I have. But with what? The Cannondale is capable of so many things, and there are so many bikes that are better than it is at any one of them. I'd love to have a real touring bike, perhaps with integrated racks and/or a generator hub. I'd love a winter/rainy-day bike with long fenders, hub gearing and disc brakes. I'd love a modern lightweight bike for fast club rides. I'd love a cargo bike or long bike, something that would be up to grocery shopping without a trailer. I'd love a folding bike that I could bring on buses and trains without having to worry about what time of day it was or whether my particular bus had a rack. Add those to the Ciocc (which is such a joy to ride) and suddenly I'm at six, without really trying. And not all of these ideas are compatible. In the meantime, I'm keeping my eye on Craigslist.

miss_chance and I took cameras on our trip, of course, since it was going to be so scenic. But we went a little overboard. We each took a point-and-shoot, and we also each had cameras in our phones, and there was at least one other device with a camera in it along for the ride for a total of I think five. Taking both point and shoots was silly, especially since mine isn't waterproof.

But what made bringing all of these cameras really silly was that none of them had any wide enough angle lenses available. The vistas, especially in Vermont, just don't fit in what you can have on a cell phone -- and the widest angle on the point and shoots was about the same. To really take art shots, we'd have needed much more serious equipment than we were carrying.

I haven't gone and looked at the phone shots to see if, exposure-wise, I'd have been happy with just that. The camera on the Droid is pretty decent for a cell phone camera, and I'm not going to be showing or probably even printing out any of my shots. As a reminder of the beauty we saw I imagine it will more than suffice. Even if I have to look at several shots next to each other on my screen.

As many of you are probably aware, miss_chance and I have just returned from bicycling from our home in Somerville to Montreal and back. This was a longer trip by days (12, plus 3 in Montreal) and miles (a little over 700) than anything either of us had ever done before, and I've got a lot to talk about, but rather than tell a narrative, I'm going to break my posts up by topic, starting with ( what might be the craziest thing about this trip. )

This current round of work on the Cannondale is pretty extensive, and it's leading up to quite a long trip. So one shakedown ride is not enough. So far I've put in 75 miles in four rides, and found problems with the fender positioning, the rear derailleur adjustment, the front brake lever, the rack-top bag, the rear water-bottle bracket, and I don't even remember what else. And there are still things undone from the original list.

Aided by nice weather, light traffic, and a stiff tailwind I set a personal record for my commute home this evening: 45 minutes and 36 seconds. At an average speed of 21.23 miles per hour, that's going to be hard to beat.

Punxutawney Phil was wrong: the 6 weeks since February 2 have had a lot more spring in them than winter, and the only reason I hadn't taken the Ciocc out before now was the wet. It was still wet on secondary roads, particularly in Bedford, so I skipped the bike path entirely, but boy am I glad to be biking to work again. Last year it was April 25 before I got on the bike, and not much of that was waiting for parts either: I like to wait until the second good rain after the last time the salt trucks go out. But we've had plenty of rain to wash the salt off the roads lately, and it has been quite a long time since there was enough snow to salt for.

It has been gorgeous weather all this week, which is making it easier to get out of bed and onto the bike -- and once I'm riding it's something to savor, coming as it does with the feeling that it won't be this nice again until spring. Over the winter one is supposed to back off from possible over-training, spin a high cadence, and not try to work on intensity. I've mostly been good about this recently but this week has been too nice for that and I've had a series of nice brisk rides to and especially home from work, making it home in under 50 minutes each time so far. Turns out the slow from riding at night and the slow from wearing a backpack aren't cumulative; if anything the one made the other less frustrating.

This is the temperature at which the difference between my metabolism and everyone else's is most apparent. It's almost but not quite cold enough for me to start thinking about cold-weather gear. But most other serious cyclists broke out the tights, long sleeved jerseys, and full finger gloves when it got below 60. I saw one guy who was going fast enough that it'd keep me plenty warm, but who was nonetheless wearing his winter hat. Meanwhile I'm out there in shorts, coolmax jersey, sweatband (and needing it too), high-airflow helmet, fingerless gloves, and no socks.