Starting over
It’s amazing how the seemingly minor changes we made to my bike on Wednesday (and the new saddle I bought last week) have transformed it so completely.
When I ride in the upright position the bike was designed for, everything is just perfect. The bike seems to disappear completely from beneath me. Even the stupid brakes are just right there in front of my fingers, without having to reach for them.
The added weight of the bar-ends, and perhaps more importantly, the position of that weight, has calmed-down the front-end tremendously.
The entire purpose of a bicycle is to amplify the body’s movement. You pedal a little and the bike moves a lot. My problem, when mounted on a body movement amplfier, is this: I have always had herky, jerky, over-reactive arm and hand movements. As a result, I’ve had a problem maintaining a straight line. I weave a bit.
The bar-ends, being situated outboard of the grips, attenuate that excess motion. Just having the extra few ounces out there on either side has smoothed-out my steering. It’s amazing. They were worth several times the $20 just for that.
The intended purpose of the bar-ends, though, is to provide me with a road bike-like lowered position in the wind. My forearms rest on the grips and the curved-in part of the bar-ends fall right into my hands.
I was afraid that the extra leverage afforded by the bar-ends would make steering even more of a problem. What I found was that with my forearms on the grips, my hands can’t move the bars to steer. I can steer from the shoulders, which works but feels awkward, or I can press down with my hand on the side I want to go towards.
If I want to go right, I press down with my right hand, which causes the bike to lean to the right and then go to the right. To come straight again, I don’t have to steer back, I just stop pressing down.
Learning all this has not been without its moments. Thursday evening I was cranking along the Canalway, a little too fast. Rounding a left turn, I saw a roadie coming at me. The apex of my turn was in his lane. Ooops!
I both steered and pushed-down on the right and drove off the side of the path, getting clobbered about the head and shoulders by some overhanging tree branches. I’m sure the guy had a good laugh at that. I know I did. And I have a few new scratches in my helmet.
Anyway, moving down out of the wind also requires sliding my butt back and rotating more at the pelvis. I come pretty close to the flat-back position you see the time-trial riders in when they lean out on their aerobars.
That changes my leg postion too, and I’ve found I can easily get more power and higher cadence out of the same old engine. In this position, which is strangely relaxed and comfortable, my cruising speed leaped from the 16–18 MPH range at 85–90 RPM cadence to the 20–22 MPH range at around 100 RPM cadence, with seemingly no additional effort.
The problem is that the lowered, aero position uses different muscles. My legs for the past few days have felt an awful lot like they did back in the beginning. Only this time, instead of my quads aching, it’s the backs of my thighs and calves.
Until I get adjusted to this, while my speeds are way up, my distances are way down. I rode around 12 miles today in the aero position before I got tuckered-out. Unfortunately, I was seven miles from home at the time. And downwind.
The ride home from there was slow, upright, and into the wind, dropping my overall average speed for the ride to 13.85 MPH. And, shades of the early weeks of riding, I required a three-hour nap to recover.
Still, I’m really digging it. And I know it’ll be two or three weeks at the outside before I’m back to my old distances.
Suddenly, a full road bike doesn’t seem nearly as intimidating. I’ve looked at them in four bike shops this week.
Yes, I am looking at things I need for this bike—a touring-size rear rack and proper headlight systems—and I bought a cargo net today.
Heh. One of the shops I stopped in was in Pittsford, the highest income suburb in the county. It was somehow satisfying to find the guy there used the correct, French pronounciation of pannier rather than the Americanized “pan-NEAR”. Yet, even in Pittsford, there was nary a touring rack to be found on the shelves. However, that guy knew exactly what I wanted and why, and even offered to ride his touring bike to work one day so I could see the one he suggested.
They’re also a Giant dealer and have several bikes like mine on the floor. I’ll probably just phone him to be sure he thinks it will work on my bike’s frame, and have him order it in. Eighty-five dollars, but it will keep my grocery panniers out of my spokes and off my heels.
Headlight systems are another story. My little AA battery LED headlight was $30. It’s okay for occassional use under streetlights. I’ve found though that I can’t see shit on dark roads and trails, and that in certain cases, it can blend in with background light sources, and drivers just don’t register it as being on a moving vehicle in the foreground.
I need to get into halogen or HID territory. But when coupled with a NiMH battery with decent run-time and recharge time, I’m looking at $400, which is more than my bike cost originally.
Of course, the question that runs through my mind is, How much is your life worth? In that context, $400 is cheap. But I don’t have, nor do I anticipate having, $400 for a headlight. The alternative becomes the bus. Hell, I could buy a beater car for $400.
Halogen lights with lead-acid batteries are a cheaper alternative. I’ve looked at them this week at $80 and $150.
I found the $150 one in the ritzy district bike shop. It was a two-hour run time and 12-hour recharge time. The battery was the size of water bottle, and mounts in a water bottle cage. Being filled with lead, it’s plenty heavy too.
Towner’s actually had the $80 one. It has a 2½ hour run-time with a 9-hour recharge time. The battery was smaller and lighter, and mounts on the top tube with velcro straps. The problem is that my top tube slopes. I’m afraid the battery would slide all the way back and unplug itself from the light.
Even in the dead of winter, my commutes and riding to meetings fit comfortably within a two-hour run-time. But I want to try out the Tuesday Night Urban Assault rides starting in October. I have a feeling they run longer than an hour—I have to figure in the ride to and from the ride as well.
There’s still time to look. My after dark riding right now is limited to one commute from work and riding home from meetings in the twilight and my LED is good enough for another month or so.
