Ken Steinhoff spent more than 40 years in the ink-slinging newspaper business where he had a license to be nosy. Palm Beach Bike Tours renewed that license in his retirement years. The blog is ostensibly about cycling, photography and using GPS technology to figure out where you're going and where you've been. It's really an extension of his lifelong effort to tell the stories of "ordinary people doing ordinary things", which sometimes turns out to be pretty extraordinary. If all that sounds like something in which you might be interested, please sign up for the PBBT RSS feed to keep in touch.
When my Trek Navigator was getting ready to turn over 5,000 miles and before I bought a used Trek 1220 to replace it, I took a picture of all the accessories mounted on the handlebars.
From left to right:
Bell
Heart Rate monitor
Cateye Enduro Cyclometer.
Police scanner (I work at a newspaper and like to keep up with what’s happening).
NiteRider Pro-12E headlight.
Cateye Astrale cylometer with cadence. (No, the two halves of the bike don’t go at different speeds. I just wanted to be able to monitor my RPMs, so I bought the Astrale after the Enduro and never bothered to remove the old one.)
Control head for the NiteRider
AirZound II air horn, powered by a refillable air bottle.
I quickly learned that my heart rate and cadence was a better measurement of how I was doing than my speed. If I keep my heart rate in the 158 to 162 range and my cadence at about 82, I can go all day. My highest heart rate climbing a hill on a hot day was 194. It’s not uncommon for me to hit the mid-180s, but I can’t sustain that long.
The AirZound is great for chasing away charging dogs and dealing with clueless motorists. I saw one car starting to make a left turn in front of me and laid on the horn. The way the front of his car dipped down showed that he thought he was about to get nailed by an 18-wheeler. It’s also nice to be able to respond to the honks of jerks who think that you don’t belong on the road.
Wait until you see all the stuff that’s on my Trek 1220.
2 responses so far ↓
1 pmspirito // Sep 30, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I ride a recumbent. In my cockpit there are cup-holders, stereo speakers and a microwave. It’s just a matter of different priorities.
2 kls // Sep 30, 2008 at 5:23 pm
A guy at work had a Rans Rocket he was willing to part with cheap. I bought it as a Christmas gift for my son, Matt.
He rode it for less than a year, including on the TOSRV out of Tallahassee and then decided he liked riding upright better.
I hauled it up to St. Louis for my kid brother, Mark, who rode it about 100 feet and decided he was an upright kind of guy, too. (We’re talking bicycles here, not general character.)
If you know anyone in the St. Louis area looking to get into bents for very little money, let me know.
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