The Race Warmup

Most American road races have to find out of the way places where they can shut down traffic on a weekend morning. That means - rural roads, farm communities, office parks. Here's a rider warming up in the shadow of a wine vat in the Central California country side at that very very hot road race from last weekend.

Bike to Work Day 2009

The local train station was a great place for cyclists to meat up.

The local cyclists coalition staffed a table handing out free bagels and taking down email addresses for propaganda. Too bad Kaiser Hospital promised but failed to deliver a station at their facility between the train station and my office. Not that I needed more freebies.

The coolest thing was that all the way from the train station to my office park, I rode with a huge group from a local biotech company. They were very organized and had hard core roadies and some beginner riders. They even had their own jerseys.

See you at Bike to Work Day 2010!

Magazine for Commuters

I recently picked up a copy of Bicycle Times, put out by the people behind Dirt Rag mountain biking magazine. One of their tag lines - "We are living in bicycle times". Very true, and given the way the winds are blowing, it's becoming more true every day. Although, rabid cycling commuters are a pretty niche market, I wish them well. I wonder if there's a way to reach out to the casual cycling commuter. The kind of rider that only goes out on nice days and brings their work clothes to the office in their car the day before?

There were some great little tips of the trade in this edition. One I've already implemented - wrapping your spare inner tube in cellophane to prevent disintegrated inner tube boxes and nicked tubes.

Near Miss

Microsoft Paint as a CAD software

Today's Giro d' Italia stage featured a hilly time trial along the Cinque Terre coast.  So hilly that all the racers rode standard road frames for the tricky climbs and descents, some with and some without clip on aero bars.  Time trialling on a non-aero bike with drop bars is sometimes referred to as Merckx Style because Eddie Merckx benefitted from neither of those things during his racing career and as cycling hagiography goes, was better than every racer born before or after him.  What caught my eye was some of the interesting clip on aero bars like this tuning fork model under Damiano Cunego and this wild carbon creation under David Millar.  Turns out that's the brand new 3T Zefiro.  The Zefiro is a cool product that places silicone pads on the top of a drop bar for armrests and integrates carbon aero tubes.  The tubes look like they do not extend very far, making them legal for mass start events where you may end up soloing in the wind.  This would also be a good solution for amateur triathletes who own one road bike and need something more versatile and ergonomic than a set of aero bars for their century rides.  I went to check it out on their web site and it's so new that the pictures they're posting are basically mock ups.  The models sold to the general public will have either gray or red accents.  The bar, so far, has probably only been made for Garmin/Slipstream pro cycling team, and therefore has sweet blue and orange argyle accents.  So, the rushed and enterprising marketing team at 3T has used the equivalent of Microsoft Paint to spruce things up:

Kind of reminds me of something BikesnobNYC would do.

Photos from http://www.thenew3t.com/

Custom Cycling Prosthetic Leg

I went racing last weekend at a very hot but very scenic road race. When I pulled up to the line, I found myself next to a guy with an interesting right leg. Actually, it wasn't a leg, it was a custom cycling prosthesis. The Airborne patches on the stump sock gave away the cause of the amputation and when I asked the guy about it, he told me a little more. The VA, he said, was really cheap when it came to prosthetics and wouldn't spring for a high tech peg leg. So, knowing a couple of machinists, he designed it and worked with some guys to build it himself. He wanted a peg style leg because a prosthetic with an ankle/foot saps pedalling energy in the ankle joint and flexibility of the foot. The socket terminated in a machined cylinder which joined it to a carbon fiber tubular peg. At the end of the peg was a Speedplay Frog cleat. This was his cycling only prosthetic. He said that he had lost a screw during warm up so he was hoping the leg would last him through the race! I wish I had got a picture of it but didn't run into the guy after the race.

It gave a whole new dimension to guys who race on what they make!

BTWD and Micro Moped

Bike to work day was a smashing success. Pictures and story to come. In the mean time, enjoy this sweet micro moped.