Street Smarts

Here are some photos from my local Greenway with the Rans Street:

It sports the Rans Rear Rack, Avid BB7's, Nitto albatross bars and the polished riser spun 'round toward the rider.





















These are pix from my phone, so they aren't as clear as I'd like. The photos certainly don't do the metallic red color justice. It is quite a good looking frame, even it there were no other components on it.

I've been on a couple of "training rides" in preparation for the Tour To Tanglewood MS150 Ride, in Central North Carolina. We'll ride 90 miles over two days with a wonderful campout after the first 45 miles. The rest of my rides have been mostly along this greenway, which I can get to by cutting through a couple of nearby subdivisions, where I can easily make a 10-15 mile ride from my door to the greenway and back without having to load it up in the car. I like being able to ride my bike to my favorite riding area. My goals now are to get my city to provide spurs off this greenway to make it more utilitarian, that is to give cyclists destinations they need and want to ride to IN ADDITION to the picturesque ribbon that rolls quietly through a dozen miles of a large city and winds through several Industrial/Office parks. I'm also working on an idea to get a local University to start a "borrow-a-bike" plan like the ones I've read about at Ripon College and Duke University.

The Rans Street is a wonderful platform. There have been no comfort issues, no soreness aside from muscle soreness from healthy use, and I've ridden more this year so far than I have in the last 15 more years combined. That's what the Crankforward format can do. For people who have found typical mountain bikes and road bikes to be uncomfortable, the Rans design offers a true alternative that's similar enough to the standard upright bicycle that you have no learning curve! People who have taken my Street for a ride have come back smiling talking about how easy it is to ride. It's the joy of cycling like when you were a kid, without having the kid's body.

More folks on bikes around here. Life is Good, or at least Better.

I see more people on bikes these days around my town. Mostly they're not the lycra-wearing, riding-for--fitness types. The new folks I see are riding cheaper bikes, mostly mountain bikes, from non-bike-shop venues. The big box stores are selling more bikes looks like to me. I'm not really a bike snob; but I see some problems with bikes and their riders. The bikes are not well-fitted to the riders. The bikes are mostly equipped with fat, knobby tires. The riders have no idea how to adjust the handlebars, the seat height, the seat angle, or even to install the wheels properly with a quick-release lever. I saw a group of three riders trying to put a rear wheel in on one of the bikes and they said it had fallen out 3 TIMES ALREADY on that ride. I showed them how it worked and they thanked me. I wondered how many bikes are sold in the big box store without even a 10-second presentation on how to work the bike.

I see older people (ok my age or a few years older...40 to 50) riding flashy new mountain bikes riding down the sidewalk or shakily starting out across the intersection at the wrong time against the lights. They're all bent over, knees higher than their butts, reaching way too far to the bars. I can't imagine how they think that is what cycling is about. I just want to stop and chat with them about the sizing and differences between bicycle types. If I can start up a conversation with them, I usually tell them about some good websites they can visit, I wish I had a little business card printed up with the site URLs and some little pictures. Not everybody can visit websites, or surf the internet effectively. Surprise.

Maybe the best approach is to ride around and look for these "new cyclists" and provide some assistance/leadership in the cycling community. I'd say almost any of these "plain-clothed" cyclists could use a quick review of how to install a wheel or how to adjust the seat to a reasonably good height. Mentioning the good karma of carrying a few tools and a tube, even if you don't know what to do with them, is a good idea. If they get stuck on the side of the road or bike path, at least a good Samaritan could help using their own tools and stuff.

Of course, the next obvious thing about these new riders is their total lack of any provision to carry stuff. I see them riding down the street w/ a plastic bag swinging from their hands/handlebars. They swerve and jerk down the road looking like an accident waiting to happen. Few of them wear a helmet. Most of them have pants legs dangling down in the pedal/chain/wheel area. It's painful to watch.

If you tell them there's a better way to secure stuff and ride, then in the next breath you say it costs $400 for the Xtracycle on top of the cost of their bike, or $900 for the Yuba Mundo, or $1900 for a complete Big Dummy, they look at you like you just landed from Mars. I bet that Tahoe/Suburban/Explorer/Armada sitting at the house in their driveway costs about that much in two months. Where is the button you push to change a person's version of value? I read an article regarding the servitude of Americans to their cars where the average American pays $378 / month on their car payment. That doesn't count the gas, the insurance, the upkeep, the washing, or any other stuff you put in it.

Looks like we've got a long way to go to use the bikes we have for more utility purposes. Just parking the car doesn't help that much, we need to sell it, and buy something more appropriate.

Soul of a bike - and some off-topic wonderings

I read an interesting line some time back that said "I've had the same bike for 25 years, replaced the frame twice, and every component has been replaced." So is that a new bike, or just a reincarnation of the soul or spirit of the old bike? I had a bike I sold in order to buy my newest bike, but I wouldn't claim that that one is still, or became, the new one. In strictest terms I would look at it mechanically and say if you put a bike on the workstand and clamped it in there, replaced everything on it but never unclamped it, you could say you upgraded it. However, if you clamped an old seatpost into the stand, added a new frame and every other component, I would call that a new build, and thus a new bike is born. It seems like semantics; but there's an existentialist argument to be made that while it is completely changed, it is still your bike. Is it the soul that continues to live in the new form?

If the soul of the bike continues on in some new clothes, let's say, then when does the soul of your bike finally release from this world and let you share time with a new one, or at least a different one. If you change all the components, and the wheels and the frame, don't you have a different bike. Precisely where does the soul reside? Is it analogous to the human soul, which is yet to be concretely and definitively defined? For example, if a person gets all new organs but maintains their own brain-matter, we would presume they are the same person, and would contain or "have" the same soul. However, if a person receives significant head injury, loses consciousness forever and yet the rest of the body and organs function properly, we say that person is dead and gone. Their soul is no longer connected with the body. Perhaps it never was.

My immediate catalyst for this discussion follows from a task I've wrestled with recently. I have a relative who has lost a lung to cancer, and has significant cancer left in his body. For a while the doctors were treating him with chemo, but have stopped, saying that the chemo is killing him faster and more expensively than the cancer. So until his final breath, he will live at home knowing that his time is nigh. During this time while he's at home with his family, he has had a birthday, and therein lies my problem. Note that this next line is not to be taken as funny or sarcastic or any way like I'm trying to be comedic. What do you write in a birthday card to someone you know (and he knows) will be dead in the next 30 days or so. In fact, the hospice workers have given their opinion based upon experience with people in this situation, that he will be gone in under two weeks. This will be the last birthday card I send him. It may be the last communication we have, as it's difficult for him to talk on the phone, and additionally, throughout our lives we never really just called one another to chat, so it seems a little unnatural to try it now. Given that, could you write anything that would be worthwhile to someone you truly care about but have never had a particularly loving or caring conversation with? And on further extension, why don't we write/talk to people we care about NOW while they're alive and fully functional to comprehend our conversation instead of never saying a word until it's too late. Then perhaps we will stay up all night before the funeral trying to craft something to say about that person. It seems a peculiar ceremony to write a eulogy ABOUT someone when clearly you've had a lifetime to say those things TO the person but never did. The old saying is that there are two things certain in this world, death and taxes. Well friends, we pay our taxes every year; but I bet it's been more than a year since you told someone in the last generation (like your mom or dad) what you really appreciate about them, or about the way they raised you. I know I've never uttered a word like that. Perhaps the time has come.

Too often on the TV and in the movies we see the same scene played out: one character lies dying in a bed, maybe in a coma, but certainly unconscious or unable to respond while another character finally decides to tell the dying one how much he loved him or respected him or enjoyed him or whatever. Maybe the media has programmed us to wait until the very last second to communicate anything meaningful. But then, it's always just a few seconds too late.