re: Cycling

For Sale in Chicago

 
 What got my attention as I stood on the corner of Howard and Western in the 17-degree cold: The list of accessories. Specifically the AM-FM radio. Some people know how to roll in style. Bike was posted in August, though, so it's probably sold. 

'Veni, vidi, velo'

I think Julius Caesar said the above after winning Milan-San Remo in a bunch sprint. It came to me while I was thinking of descending Arlington Avenue (a.k.a, The Arlington) in Berkeley.

From north to south, the street climbs precipitously from the Richmond flats into the El Cerrito hills. It has a nice, looping descent into Kensington. Once past the Kensington village shopping area (and the only stop sign below Moeser Avenue, I think), the road begins a nicely engineered descent to The Circle in North Berkeley.

This last stretch has several things going for it: It's short. The pavement is pristine. Traffic is light. And it features some nice, plunging curves on what is for the most part a gentle grade. It's not an extraordinary piece of work to get my out-of-shape 55-year-old body moving fast enough to keep a little ahead of car traffic; or sometimes fast enough to pass a car or two.

So yesterday: I could see I was gaining steadily on a couple of cars. The lead vehicle was poking along downhill at or just above the 25 mph speed limit, the rear vehicle was tailgating. I could see I was going to catch them about the same time we hit a semi-dramatic right-left S-turn, a place where the street rises just enough to soak up some of your momentum and make you pedal hard for 15 or 20 strokes to keep things going.

The day was dry and clear and the pavement was clean. Both cars slowed a little going into the right-hand bend; both went across the fog line a little as they cut the turn, but they left plenty of room for me to dive into the bottom of the turn and go inside them. I flew by the rear car so quickly that I realized the only issue was whether I'd be able to keep up enough speed to go by the front car, too. As I drew alongside, I hesitated a beat to see if the driver would accelerate. By then I was back on the descent and accelerated as fast as I could (i.e., sluggishly), pulled clear, and within another 10 or 12 pedal strokes had enough of a gap that I could pull back into the lane ahead of the cars.

And that's where I stayed until we all got to The Circle. I had an opening to fly through the yield sign and down Marin. An exciting short blast that I know could also be filed under "stupid bike tricks." Pretty irresistible on that piece of pavement, though.

Berkeley Hills: The Reward

A basic Berkeley bike ride: Start at my house, 120 feet above sea level. Take your favorite route up through the neighborhoods towards Spruce Street, one of the main roads into the hills (I ride up the north, purely residential end of Shattuck Avenue to Indian Rock, then to Santa Barbara, then the short, sharp climb up Northampton to Spruce). At the top of Spruce, roughly 2.2 meandering miles from home and at an elevation of about 800 feet, turn right on Grizzly Peak. The direction you're conscious of going is up; you may not perceive until looking at a map later that you've been riding mostly north on Spruce and that as you climb the ridge on Grizzly Peak you've doubled back south. After the first quarter-mile on Grizzly Peak you get to a long stretch where the climb is pretty gentle. You plunge down past the intersection with Shasta Road, then climb again to the city limits and cross Centennial Drive where it tops out on its ascent from the UC-Berkeley campus, elevation about 1250 and about 5 miles from my front door. The road then climbs more twistily, steadily and steeply--though far from punishingly steep--for another 1.7 miles or so to the top of the road--a shade under 1700 feet.

So if you're keeping track of all that, that's a climb of something like 1550 vertical feet in 6.7 miles right outside the front door. Again, the way it unfolds with its long, gradual stretches is not a killer. But it's not a bad workout, either.

When I first went up Grizzly Peak, in 1980, I think, I was stunned by the views. The road clings to the western slope of a very steep ridge, so you have a pretty much wide open view across Berkeley to the Bay and beyond. About a quarter-mile or so before the top of the road, where the pops over a last little rise before leveling out and pitching down toward toward the Claremont/Fish Ranch saddle, there's a nice turnout with a stone wall. I used to stop there every time I went up the road to take in the view. I thought of it as my reward for working to get there. It was also a good place to take a breather. Then at some point I became more focused on getting up across the top as quickly as I could, and I didn't stop there much anymore.

Today I did. For a minute. To see the view. To drink in the warmth of this amazing October day. To take a couple of pictures. It was a good reward.

Short Sunday Ride: Quotes from the Road

Three things people said to me while I was out riding yesterday (a 1.5-hour loop from North Berkeley, up Tunnel Road, down Grizzly Peak):

*"Hi." (One of four cyclist who passed while I was dropping off something at a friend's house).

*Be careful!" (Another cyclist on Tunnel Road warning me about a car approaching from behind. I was in an awkward spot on a curve, trying to turn left. Everything turned out fine.)

*F--- you! You punk!" (A driver on Euclid Avenue in Berkeley. He had pulled his aged white Mazda in front of me when I was doing about 30 down the hill. It was an oblivious move, but didn't result in too close a call. Within a block or two, he put on his turn signal to go right, and was staring at me as I passed him (I knew because I looked over at him). I said, "Honest to God ..." in a sort of resigned way, and he responded with the above. It came out in an enraged scream that made me realize 1) he probably didn't hear what I said and 2) he had worse problems than careless driving. I was relieved he didn't follow me.)

Oasis

Not a great picture, but this is a drinking fountain up along Skyline Drive, just above Tunnel Road, in the Oakland Hills. Here's what's unique about the fountain: It's set up on the shoulder of the road in a place that seems meant to be of maximum use for cyclists. The road is one of the most popular climbs in the East Bay Hills, an almost leisurely ascent that invites you to spin your way up and then gets a little more serious about halfway up the roughly four-mile climb. I'd guess that hundreds of cyclists ride past this fountain on their way up every day; a few locals may stroll here, too, but the road and shoulders are narrow and you certainly don't see many of them as you pedal through here.  

I went up here about 2 p.m. or so. A nearby weather station recorded the temperature as 95 degrees. I've ridden so little of late that even a relatively relaxed climb like this one has become an index of my lack of fitness. Didn't hurt too much, though, and the reward came on the fun descent from the top of Grizzly Peak Boulevard back into Berkeley.

Anyway, the fountain: I passed it, then remembered a nice little New York Times feature from a month or so back that talked about public drinking fountains and what they represent. I turned around to use this one, and noticed many sets of bike-tire tracks in the dirt at its base. An oasis on a hot day.

Bikes on BART: An Inconvenient Truth

Once upon a time, the Bay Area Rapid Transit district required bicyclists to obtain a permit to ride its trains. You could get the permit by schlepping down to BART's Lake Merritt station, or you could obtain it by mail. Our recollection is that you had to sign some paperwork stating you understood BART's bike rules--most notably, to our mind, NO BIKES ON STATION ESCALATORS OR ON THE FIRST CAR OF TRAINS--and agreed to abide by them. Those were the days before the still-unfolding Cycling Enlightenment. Some years ago, BART dropped the permit requirement and pretty much welcomed all two-wheeled comers as long as they STAY OFF THE ESCALATORS AND PLEASE SIR WITH THE BIKE IN THE FIRST CAR MOVE TO ANY OTHER CAR ON THE TRAIN.

In theory, it's swell to be able to travel with one's velocipede on the BART system. Many's the time we've ended rides at the far-off Dublin/Pleasanton and Fremont stations and taken the train back home. BART also provides a way of getting across the watery impediment known to locals as The San Francisco Bay. It's not the only way of course--you can get a bike shuttle (a trailer service that hauls bikes across the Bay Bridge), take AC Transit (which has front-mounted bike racks), or, best of all, take the ferry. But BART is the most available option.

In practice, we've found the trains to be less than ideal for traveling from the East Bay to the city or back. The main reason is that the cars just aren't designed to accommodate full-sized two-wheeled machines. If one sits, one almost by necessity takes up two seats. Not a big deal if it's not a busy time of day; if it is, then taking the extra seat seems a little inconsiderate (this is a sermon delivered from the perspective of an offender).

The bigger problem with bikes on BART is that so many of the cyclists who bring their two-wheelers on the trains appear so lacking in care or respect for other passengers. For instance: If you've ridden the system at all, you can anticipate which door on the cars will open at which stations. But it's common to see cyclists crowd their bikes into the exit door and block it when they have no intention of exiting (oh, sure, we see other passengers doing this too; we just expect cyclists to exhibit a little less lameness than the dopiest rapid-transit rider). It's also typical to see riders station their machines in the aisles without regard to how it affects other passengers.

Take the specimen above (at left), photographed on a recent Sunday. He parked his bike in the exit door and for bonus points positioned it most of the way across the aisle. When someone sat opposite him, it was just possible for other passengers to squeeze by. He situated himself thus even though several other seats were available that would have allowed him to stay out of the way. After planting his rear end in his seat, he either affected obliviousness (or actually was oblivious) to all around him.

Part of the problem is that BART cars aren't designed to accommodate bikes in the first place. A few have been refurbished with a sign that says "bike space." But if more than a couple passengers bring their bicycles on board, the usual awkwardness ensues. Seeing that the physical space isn't quite fit for bikes and passengers to co-exist, something's got to give. The change has got to happen in the social space. Cyclists on BART need to be attentive to how their presence affects other passengers; just as attentive as they want the rest of the world to be to them and their needs.

San Francisco Tweed

We have just been introduced, sometime in the last two minutes, to San Francisco Tweed. What is that? From the site: "We at SF Tweed constitute a rare breed of cyclist — ladies and gents who refuse to endure anymore spandex! For us there is nothing better than a spin through our fair streets in the finest most dapper attire. ..."

Well, everyone from Grant Petersen to us to the entire nation of Burma is down with refusing to endure Spandex any longer. We've taken to sporting an L.L. Bean black-watch-plaid flannel shirt as our riding habit with heavily discounted Royal Robbins canvas cargo shorts for our lower-down clothing. Aung San Suu Kyi has often said that if she were ever permitted to ride, she wouldn't be caught dead in anything made of black, stretchy material assembled by sweatshop labor in her native land. Grant & Co. say of their own miracle ride-shirt cloth, "No longer only the fabric of the wealthy for ice cream socials on the estate, seersucker has proven to be the best fabric for hot weather cycling, too." ("No longer only the utensils of the spoiled and effete, silver spoons have proven to be the finest dispensers of our favorite cycling food, blackstrap molasses, too." We think the tweed and seersucker crowd might spend a little time making their prose as dapper as their cycling costumes, but we have always been stuffy that way.)

Did we have a point here. Oh, yes: S.F. Tweed sounds worth checking out, for all our linguo-quibbles. We may go out and observe from afar at the group's next event.

  

Flying Pigeon, Manhattan Style

Flying Pigeon, at the East 35th Street ferry pier in Manhattan. The bike's got classic good looks, and the locking strategy--using the cable lock as the bike version of The Club, preventing the front wheel from turning--I haven't seen before. We came back to this spot several hours later, but I didn't notice whether this machine was still there or not.

Tour de France Aftermath: Shut Up and Ride

Before the Tour has vanishes entirely from memory, I just want to set down an impression or two. But not before a detour to take notice of the "war of words" between the winner, Alberto Contador, and his teammate, Lance Armstrong. To boil the thing down, Contador said he respects Armstrong the champion and the racer, but doesn't like or admire Armstrong as a person and never has. Armstrong responded Tweet-wise, unloading pearls like "there's no 'I' in team." Pretty mild stuff, really, but it must delight the organizers of the Tour, who now have a grudge match to promote as next year's premier attraction.

But back to this year's race. Yeah, there was a little drama on the road, what with Contador unable to rein in his urge to show he's the best and Armstrong and Team Astana clinging to the flimsy public fiction that leadership of the team was unsettled. That was always bull, and here's why: Johan Bruyneel, like his riders, lives to win. For him, that meant an Astana rider in yellow on the Champs-Elysees as the Tour rolled across the finish line. He had one horse, and only one horse, who would get him there: Contador. Bruyneel was never coy about who he thought his strongest rider was, and Armstrong, after Contador's decisive attack on the Verbier in Stage 15, conceded the point.

Yeah, you can talk about Contador's ill-timed attack on Stage 17 that dropped teammate Andreas Klöden, a move that later prompted Phil "Pot Calls Kettle Black" Liggett to question whether Contador was intelligent enough to win on another team. But look again at what happened. Contador sat up as soon as he realized he and Andy and Frank Schleck had gapped Klöden. By then, though, the Schlecks had seen Klöden fall off and taken the initiative, and Contador had no choice but to follow them. There was a lot of talk that Contador's move had cost Astana a one-two-three overall placing. Maybe. But that argument assumes the Schlecks would never have attacked themselves or would have done it too late to create the time gaps that relegated Klöden to a lower placing. They certainly showed they had the ability to attack in that moment: their pace finished Klöden, and their descent to the finish, with Contador as passenger, gained them even more time on all the chasers. The favor Contador did the Schlecks was to remove the need to decide for themselves when to jump. How much damage they would have done to Astana without Contador's move--and, presuming they weren't content to let Astana dictate pace all the way to the finish, they would have done some--we'll never know.

But back to that impression.

It comes from Stage 16, a mountain stage on which Armstrong had become separated from the leaders' group. He made a long solo attack from a trailing group to rejoin the leaders. And for several minutes, there he was, the Lance we remembered from all those years of dominating the race. Standing, accelerating, holding a high pace forever. It was thrilling, it was beautiful, as he passed one rider after another and gained on the official cars convoying the leaders to the top of the climb. On the team radio, Bruyneel sounded almost as surprised and excited as the people in the cafe where I was watching the race: "Lance is coming! Lance is coming alone!"

Not a race-winning move, to be sure, but a flash of strength that reminded you of how stirring this race and this racer have been.

The Tour on TV

I know plenty of people who have seen a stage or two of the Tour de France or, better, who have gone over and ridden Tour stages -- some just hours before the race came up the road. Me--I've never gotten closer than what I can see on cable television. Not to complain: the view is pretty darned good most of the time. Of course, there are commercials. For whatever reason, Versus sported lots and lots and lots of ads for Extenze--a "natural" "male enhancement" substance *and* lots and lots of ads for guys who have an unconquerable urge to take a leak right now (those are the symptoms above). I find the juxtaposition a little odd. I mean, the sweet spot for Versus is the young guy demographic, 18 to 30-some year olds that a) don't need much male enhancement and b) still have a pretty healthy urinary life. Maybe the network knows something we don't: that the audience watching pro cycling on TV needs help in the bedroom and bathroom. Could be because of prolonged bike-seat use.