Smiling down on us from tube heaven

I installed this tube on my front wheel 2012 and during its 18,000 mile life, I invested an entire patch kit in it.  It was hard to say goodbye to it this morning when the valve stem tore open.

Bike Lock Fail

And with luck there will still be some for my kids to inherit

Phil Wood grease, purchased from Ann Arbor Cyclery in about 1978.

I couldn't have imagined then that this mundane purchase, one of a thousand or so similarly forgettable items I must've also bought that year, would follow me around for 35 years and that in 2013 I'd still be using it to lube pedal threads.  (A bit less remarkably, I still have the Campagnolo Nuovo Record low-flange front hub that I got that same day, but it hasn't been ridden in years.  Lots more use out of the grease.)

I don't rebuild many hubs or headsets nowadays, so I don't pull this out of the tool bag very often and there's a good chance it will last me the rest of my life.

The King is dead! Long live the King!

Top photo:  Brooks B-17 Special saddle.  Installed March 1999, retired July 2013 (terminal tear in the metal nose).  36,500+ miles over 14 years of near-daily use.

Bottom photo:  Brooks B-17 Special saddle, installed July 2013.  (It's a good 3/4" shorter than the older saddle, which had stretched out over the years.)  Check back in 2027 for a performance comparison.

(I may yet try to have the original repaired.  The leather was still supple and strong.)

Stanley 1913 One-Hand Vacuum Insulation Bike Mug – first impressions of a thermos (finally!) made for bicycle water cages

Sometimes I find myself on ride that is only one cup of hot coffee short of perfection – maybe a sunny, cold, dry winter commute, or a fall neighborhood tour with the kids.  In pursuit of the elusive Perfect Ride I’ve been casting about on and off for years for a thermos that fits a standard water bottle cage.  It’s not an easy thing!  Most everything I encountered required either a custom cage, a handlebar mount, a lot of duct tape, or some other ugly jury-rigged compromise.  But recently I stumbled across the Stanley 1913 One-hand Vacuum Insulation Bike Mug.  I bought one and got my hands on it yesterday.  Here are my first impressions:

First off, it’s indented at just the right spot, and snaps into the bottle cage easily and firmly – no adjustments necessary.  The thermos body is all metal and quite durable, and looks as though it will be easy to clean.   (Which apparently you have to do by hand – “not dishwasher safe”.)  I expect that the smooth metal exterior will quickly become scratched and discolored by the cage, but I don’t mind a well-used look on a well-used thing.

The lid isn’t quite as finely tailored to a cyclist’s needs, though in fairness Stanley did seem to try, and I’m not sure they could have done better.  My favorite travel mugs have a little a reservoir in the lid that holds a bit of the hot coffee and lets you sip from it as it cools.  This lid has only a narrow opening that’s triggered by a pushbutton in the rear.  It’s – well, okay having to push the button.  The problem is that the narrow spout concentrates the hot liquid on one small spot on your lips and, if the coffee’s still hot from brewing, it’s painful. I don’t much care for this design but I get why Stanley did it this way – these thermoses are made to be used by moving cyclists, and a “dead-man’s lid” with no reservoir makes a certain sense.  When the bottle’s in the cage, it won’t leak at all.  And hot liquid won’t get spattered all about if a cyclist hits a bump or loses his grip on the thermos while drinking from it.

After 20 minutes the coffee’s probably cool enough to drink easily anyhow.

Finally, Stanley included a little “mud guard” on the lid, a little piece of plastic that covers the opening and keeps grit away.  To drink, you rotate it over to one side.  I’ll probably just leave this piece at home –  I’m not going to be taking the thermos off-road as it is, plus the piece is held to the lid by its own tension and it’s much too easy to imagine trying to twist it and instead causing it to pop off and spring away in an unknowable direction.

The thermos comes in three colors – black, silver and a weird bright blue they call “cobalt”.  You can find it on Amazon for $25-30.  I’ll report more on it after I’ve used it a bit.

The Joy of Leather

I took a leap of faith in 1999 when I installed a new Brooks B-17 Special (available from Rivendell Bicycles, here) onto my mountain bike for my commuting experiment. I’d gotten several thousand miles of comfortable use out of the same model on long-distance tours but I wasn’t sure how the material would hold up to the rigors and extremes of daily, year-round commuting, particularly rain and freezing temperatures. But things turned out really well! It was soon clear that the saddle was not going to disintegrate or stiffen into some kind of unrideable mass. It was comfortable, just like my original leather saddle; and as time went on, showed no unusual wear or fatigue. Indeed to the contrary, constant use seems to preserve the material rather than degrade it, and after 12 years and some 28,000 miles of all-weather use the leather looks no more worn than simply “broken-in”. Have a look:


Apparently the best thing you can do for a leather saddle is to ride it all the time. What I figure is, sure, the saddle is outdoors a couple hundred days every year, in scorching sun, drenching rain and temperatures ranging from 12 to 103 degrees – but I’m always sitting on it. And while that’s not a place I’d care to occupy for a couple hundred of hours every year, the constant 98 degree temperature, shade, shelter and gentle buffing provided by my – well, netherlands – seems to suit the saddle perfectly.

Otherwise the saddle is undemanding. I store the bike indoors out of the sun and the rain. When the saddle gets wet I let it dry on its own schedule (usually just overnight). Maybe once a year I’ll slather it with Brooks Proofride and let it sit for a few hours before buffing it with a cloth. The only problem I’ve ever had is breaking the tensioning bolt at the nose end a couple of times; but it’s a cheap part and the folks at College Park Bicycles know how to reinstall it.

So. I love this saddle, and recommend it highly. Its comfortable, durable, and easy to maintain. At this point I will probably be disappointed if I don’t wring 25 years and 50,000 miles from this $145 purchase.

Secrets of winter riding, Part 1 – Clothing

There are only two things to sort out about winter riding: Clothing and control. First I’ll talk about clothing. If you dress right, it’s easy to stay warm, even comfortable, in temperatures down into the teens.

Most people overdress for winter riding, outfitting themselves like Admiral Peary embarking on a North Pole expedition. The main difference between you and Peary is that he spent his day standing stock still on the hind end of a dogsled, whereas you are exercising, and generating heat. (Another difference is that you can’t simply claim to have actually made it to the office and expect people believe you for the better part of a century.) Your pedalling can add 20 to 30 degrees to the perceived temperature, and if you’ve dressed according only to the thermometer, you’ll quickly overheat. So on your torso and legs, you need to underdress a bit. My default outfit for temperatures between about 23 and 35 degrees is two long sleeve woolen layers (at least one a turtleneck), topped by a medium weight (sort of “heavy windbreaker”), lightly water-repellent cycling jacket. On my legs I wear, over standard cycling shorts, a set of winter stretch cycling tights. Set up in that fashion I may be chilly for the first five or eight minutes but by the 10th I’m usually sweating.

(I swear by a Devold woolen zippered base layer I bought from Rivendell Bicycles a few years back. Rivendell no longer sells that brand and the closest thing I can find nowadays on the Devold website are its “Multisport” zip undershirts. Rivendell is now selling a similar high-neck zippered undershirt from New Zealand, which I’m sure is superb.)

The principle of underdressing does not apply to your hands, feet or face. They benefit little from your exertions and it’s important to make sure they’re well covered - don't skimp. Experiment with different weights of gloves and socks for different temperatures – you want your hands to be warm, but arctic gloves that are good at 15 degrees can feel really confining and uncomfortable at 40. A balaclava will keep your face and ears comfortable, and you can carry it scrunched up in a jersey pocket on days when you’re not sure you’ll need it or not.

Oh, finally. All of this assumes that you’re riding straight through to your destination, where within a minute or two after arriving, you’ll be moving indoors. Once you stop pedalling you will begin to lose heat very quickly – and thanks to your sweat, even more quickly at the end of the ride than at the outset.

Other People's Content, redux

Someone in the CityBike.com forums linked to this video, which is well worth reposting here. It's local to the region, and, while it's largely preaching to the choir, captures the pros and cons pretty well.

(What I really want is to figure out how to mount a camera on my bike frame like these folks did!)

Pedal Power Final Cut from Mike Kurec on Vimeo.

Helmets

I’ve never had much patience for helmet scolds – those self-appointed stewards of safety who, e.g., write into newspapers or magazines chastizing them for running a photograph of someone on (or nearby) a bicycle without a helmet; or who fix you with a condemnatory glare if you should venture out for a ride around the neighborhood with a cloth Campagnolo hat on your head. Yes, helmets reduce the risk of head injuries in an accident. A helmet might even save your life. By all means, wear one. I do, (almost) invariably. But spare me the self-righteousness and disapprobation if I choose not to. Bike riding isn’t significantly more dangerous than any number of things we undertake every day without special protection; going without a helmet on a bike is simply not the foolhardy, unthinking act that some would make it out to be. It’s just a choice.

(Seven hundred cycling deaths each year in the U.S. compared to 33,000+ in autos and 4,500+ for pedestrians. Injuries similarly skewed, away from cyclists. I wonder how many lives would be saved every year, or how many closed head injuries mitigated, by helmet use by everyone at all times? As they say - "if it saves one life, it's worth it".)

Helmets may help, but your best insurance against serious injury is unwavering attentiveness, the constant awareness of your surroundings and everything that moves in and out of them. The great majority of bicycle injuries and deaths result from auto collisions, and avoiding those one-sided encounters altogether is a more effective way to stay safe than relying on some thin piece of styrofoam once you’re headed toward the ground. (Which is why I direct my scorn toward cyclists with iPods, who, unlike bareheaded riders, are actually increasing their odds of a crash.)

iPods

. . . are great. But people who listen to them while riding their bikes are idiots.