I’d love to believe the bikers. I’m not so sure, however.

Bike Crunch in Boulder, Colorado

Earlier this year, I caught a crunch out of the corner of my eye and whipped my head around in time to see a biker go down and the car stop. I grabbed my camera so I could take pictures of the accident and get a picture of the license plate in case the driver tried to run.

The biker was coming down a hill outside Boulder, Colorado. The car was doing less than 20 miles an hour and slowing to make a left turn into the parking lot. The cyclist was going too fast — nearly twice as fast as the car. He didn’t realize the car was turning and went to pass. He misjudged distance and intent. The cyclist crunched into the driver’s bumper.

To his credit, the driver stopped. To his credit, the biker admitted he was at fault for the accident.

If the cyclist hadn’t fessed-up, well, there were enough of us in the parking lot ready to blame the driver and beat him senseless before the cops arrived. (It was Boulder, after all. The biker is always right.) The biker did the right thing.

But, what if he hadn’t?

What if the biker said the driver had been ticked-off, unable to pass the biker on a narrow mountain road? What if the biker had said the driver had tried to run him off the road then slammed on his brakes in front of the bike? Road rage. Damn cars.

Would we have believed the biker? I probably would have.

Busted Wheel and Trip to the Hospital

The front, carbon fiber wheel was toast. I’d be surprised if the front fork didn’t need replacement.

We drove the cyclist back to his apartment — five or so miles away — and his friend took him to the hospital. He didn’t think he had any broken bones but was worried about soft-tissue damage. He looked okay on the mountain given the fall but by the time he was back to his apartment he wasn’t feeling well at all.

We joked as to if his repairs or the bike’s repairs would be more expensive.

In the Land of Critical Mass

Cyclists are becoming more militant and organized. Would I run my bike into the back of a jerk’s car if I could get some cash, sympathy and the local government to install more bike lanes? Probably not.

Would I immediately believe every cyclist that is involved with a car? Probably not.

Before I start jabbing spokes under the fingernails of drivers, I’m going to make sure I know all the facts and a court of law has made a ruling. Until then, I’ll just give everyone a bit more space.

—Matt

I gotta be honest

His family, particularly his older brother, didn’t rate his chances all that high. We figured he could bike OK; he could run OK; he could swim sort of OK, we just weren’t sure he could do them all at once.

Swimming was the first leg. He thought it would take him 45 minutes to do the 3/8 mile. (We don’t know if that counted the time to recover the body.) In fact, he finished the swim portion in 11 minutes and 10 seconds.

His mother and I opted to skip the swimming part and catch him during the biking phase. Because he was way ahead of schedule, he was on his second turnaround when he and Scott buzzed by us.

We had enough time to drive up to where the running portion was making the turn off A1A onto the road leading to Dubois Park. We hit a police roadblock where a very friendly policeman told us we could pull our car into a parking lot right across from the watering station. It couldn’t have been any more convenient.

Right on schedule, Scott and Adam passed by looking only a little worse for the wear.

Here is where you can find all the results.
For more pictures, navigate here. They are mostly unedited.

This is the guy who really deserves recognition.

He’s got on a race number, but I don’t know if he pushed the kids the whole way. I’d loved to have seen him on the biking and swimming legs.

Cycling tourists believe that one or more of three things should be on your bicycle at all times if you expect to keep it: your hand, your butt or a strong lock. One of the phreds mentioned seeing an interesting cable lock at The Graveyard Mall, a site that says it’s “where high prices go to die.”

It was supposed to have an eight-foot plastic-covered cable with a 120db alarm. All for ONLY $9.99 each, plus shipping.

How could you go wrong with that? I was in for five: two for a buddy at work, one for me and one for each of my two sons. It all came to $59.94.

Graveyard Mall doesn’t have the fastest shipping, so I had almost forgotten that I had ordered the things when a big box showed up. I ripped it open to find the locks safely protected in those blister packs that cut you all to pieces while you’re trying to extract the innards.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

The front of the package promises that the lock will scream when cable is cut. The back is equally persuasive. That eight-foot cable looks like it’ll go around everything you own, if you believe the pictures. Oops. looks like the 9-volt battery to make it work isn’t include. Go dig around for a battery.

Unwrap the cable, stick it in a hole in the front and turn on the key. Wiggle cable around.

Yep, I have to admit, it’s loud. Nearly four-year-old grandson covers his ears and says, solemnly, “Granddad, I don’t like that noise.”

The only catch is that it doesn’t take much wiggling to make it sound off. Wind swinging it around would be enough to do it.

What makes it work and how secure is it?

Well, to be honest, the most effective part of the lock is the big sticker on the front that says 120 Decibel Alarm because the cable would be easy to cut and it wouldn’t take much to pull it out from behind the light-weight hook that holds it to the body of the device. The alarm sounds if the metal pin at the end of the cable pulls away from a contact.

The device is bulky, the cable is wrapped around the body of the lock and secured with a clip and it’s easily ripped apart. The alarm WOULD sound, but I’d be way down the road by the time you heard it go off. And, once the cable is pulled out from behind the flimsy plastic hook, you could unwrap it from around the item like pulling a belt out of a pair of pants. You can get a sense of the size by looking at the dollar bill in the background.

Graveyard Mall gave me an RMA to return the locks, but I see in the fine print that they’ll only refund my money if the package is unopened. If it’s defective, they’ll only replace it with a like item. I would consider the whole design concept defective, but getting a new one won’t solve that problem.

Anybody out there want this one? I’ll ship it to the first person who’s interested for the cost of postage.

If Mark Tatulli’s Lio is right and this means there are bikes in hell, my afterlife is looking up. On the downside, I’d prefer bibs to shorts.

Speaking of Hell and Bike Bibs…

This weekend, I wore through the Pearl Izumi Slice UltraSensor Bib Shorts that I just bought last month. With just five outings and 153 miles on them, these should not have worn out.

By the end of my short ride Saturday, the insides of my thighs had been rubbed raw where the fabric developed holes. I’m still walking funny today. Ouch!

It is a good thing Mark Cavendish wasn’t wearing this bib on his winning 232-kilometer trek from Cholet to Châteauroux in the Tour de France. He may not have made it across the finish line before his crotch fell out.

The last bib I had was worn for two years and nearly 1,100 miles. I’m hoping this was just a spurious anomaly in the Pearl Izumi manufacturing process. My experience with Pearl Izumi has been good and their bike clothes have held up very well. So, I’m going to take another swing at this bib — for the few miles I did wear them, they worked very well.

Fortunately, Performance Bike has a great, 100% satisfaction return policy. So, I’m going to send these back and pick up a new pair. I’ll let you know how the next pair works out for me.

If the second Pearl Izumi pair fails as quickly, I’m going to give the Performance Bike branded line of shorts (Ken’s bike bib review) another look.

—Matt

I was sitting at the dinner table snacking on a fresh mango off the tree in our back yard when I heard The Other Half (TOH) say something about finding some typos on PBBT.

I told her I’d give her edit access so she could correct them, but she said she’d just make notes and I could fix them later.

Now here’s a confession: Kid Matt set up this site and wanted to salt it with content, so he took a bunch of messages I’d posted to cycling newsgroups, boiled down the info and stuck them in the archives, figuring I’d either flesh them out or delete them when I had time to catch up.

Don’t get me wrong, Matt has great verbal skills and a wonderful writing style. But TOH said when he was in about the third grade that “this is a kid who is going to need a job high enough up the food chain to have a secretary to clean up his prose.”

When I finished my mango, here’s what greeted me.

I immediately thought of the proverbial blonde who had to buy a new computer monitor because the old one was covered with so much correction fluid that she couldn’t see anymore.

So, do I fix this blizzard of pink or do I do what our newspaper does?

I’m headed down Retirement Lane, so I’m going to let you in on a secret about the newspaper business: we’re perfect. Every reporter gets every fact right, every word is spelled correctly and no editor ever screws that up. Nobody in the composing room ever gets the picture of the mayor and the picture of the city’s new garbage cans mixed up. The sports scores never have the wrong team winning and the carriers never pitch your paper in a puddle.

Never.

So, what’s the problem? Focus groups told us that there are some folks who aren’t happy unless they can find fault. Perfection doesn’t let them feel superior.

Solution: we hire an editor whose sole job is to sit in a dark corner with bucket of spare punctuation and nonsense words that he flings willy-nilly into the copy to change otherwise perfect stories into something a little less than perfect for those pickers of nits.

The average reader, thankfully, generally doesn’t notice - or care. After all, slay and sleigh both get across the idea that some thug has been taken on a ride to that great garbage pail in the sky, gone beyond the pale, so to speak.

OK, I’ll make the changes. I just have to go out and buy a new computer monitor.

At the top of the story was a picture, “Adam Arnold, 14, Fort Scott demonstrates the proper use of bicycle safety equipment including the use of a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads while riding his bike Wednesday afternoon in downtown Fort Scott.”

Oh, by the way, they were riding on a sidewalk, which is more dangerous than being in the street.

Safe or silly?

Here are the comments I sent to the paper:

I wish you had posted the part of the KDOT site that says that bicycles have all the rights and responsibilities of a vehicle. (And, yes, I acknowledge that there are a lot of jerks on two wheels who don’t respect the last part of that sentence, just like there are a lot of jerks perched on four wheels.)

And, while it’s courteous to not let traffic back up behind any slow-moving vehicle, whether it’s a tractor, 18-wheeler going up a grade or a bicycle, none of those vehicles is required by law to dive for a ditch just because someone behind wants to go faster.

Here is why I wear a helmet.

Bike Helmets: Magic Foam Hats

On the other hand, magic foam hats are like parachutes: you only need one when something has gone tragically wrong - and wearing one doesn’t always mean that you won’t get hurt.

Your picture of the two kids riding with all the protective gear raises two questions:

1. Do their parents make them wear all that garb when they’re in the car, where they are much more likely to be injured?

2. Do they know that they are more likely to be involved in a crash on the sidewalk because cars coming out of driveways and at intersections aren’t looking for things moving at faster than walking speeds. (Arguably, I could have ended that sentence after “looking.”)

This isn’t an anti-car, anti-helmet rant. I’m just pointing out that bikes have a place on the road and that we all have to watch out for each other.

Tour de France Above, Science Below

Science is all well and good but what caught my eye was the guy on the cover next to the accelerator; the guy riding his bicycle to get around the underground labyrinth. While the Tour of France’s peloton is cranking across the country, scientists are cranking along the 27 kilometer tunnel many meters below the surface on bikes. Good for them!

Over 100 Years and Still Recognizable

While science today would be unrecognizable today to the scientists of a hundred years ago, the bicycle is still basically unchanged.

The bicycle was invented in the mid- to late-1800s. While materials have changed substantially over the years, the basic bike concept has changed little. Johan Smith from 1885 could ride a bike from 2008 without any additional instruction. The same couldn’t be said about Johanna Smith being able to turn on a modern day kitchen stove.

Your Mechanical Challenge

Here is your challenge: come up with a common household machine that was invented prior to 1890, is still used today and whose current incarnation could be used by someone from 1890 without additional training.

—Matt

Sally Forth has a bike and you should, too.

In the land of $4.25 a gallon gas, a friend of mine just bought the largest SUV he could find in advance of hurricane season. If worse came to worse, he could load the wife, two kids and their collection of 18th century Mexican art into the vehicle and escape. He’s new to Florida so I can understand why he might think that was a viable plan. (In his defense, since no one wants a Nissan Armada and its 12 miles per gallon around town, he got a good deal.)

How to Escape in an Emergency: My Bike

Me, I’m going to ride my bike to safety.

I was born, raised and live in South Florida. I survived the nasty hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 and have the t-shirt to prove it. I watched the evacuations of New York after the eleventh and New Orleans during and after Katrina.

Here is what I have learned: when all hell is breaking loose, a car isn’t going to do you any good. During evaculations, the roads are packed and moving 15 miles an hour. Cars run out of gas. Cars break down. Tempers flare. The roads move slowly.

After the 2004 hurricanes, 100-year-old oak trees in Orlando were down and even the most beefy Hummer could not get around town. Yet, you could get just about anywhere by bike if you didn’t mind lifting the bike over a trunk every once and a while.

Can I Get Away Fast Enough on a Bike?

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake spawned one of the largest tsunami’s known to man. Over 225,000 people died as a result of the wave and its after effects. The furthest inland the wave traveled was 1.24 miles.

Hurricane Andrew was the second most destructive hurricane in history and one of only three Category 5 hurricanes to hit the United States in the last hundred or so years. It did $44.9 billion dollars worth of damage. Less than 20 miles inland, damage was minimal. At 50 miles away, you’d never even know there had been a storm.

Even Katrina’s devistation, too, is limited to 20 or 30 miles inland for both Mississippi and New Orleans.

September 11? Just five miles would have gotten you out of the dust. And, without subways or cars, a bike would have gotten you away or home hours sooner than walking.

An out of shape person can do ten miles an hour on a bike. Someone who is in average shape, has ridden a bike anytime in the last six months and is fleeing for his life can be 15 to 20 miles away in an hour.

Fleeing for my life with a hundred thousand other people, I’ll take a bicycle over a car every time.

Gasoline or Diesel Anyone?

After the hurricanes, it was my job to stand in line for hours to get diesel fuel for the office generator. We burned about ten gallons each 12-hour work day. In order to get those ten gallons, I often had to drive to several gas stations to see if they were open and had fuel available and then stand in line for two to three hours before I could buy my day’s allotment.

To avoid hoarding, no station would sell you more than 20 gallons. Many wouldn’t sell you more than 15 gallons. That means that every day or so, I had to search for fuel. We were based in a low-rent area of town and it took two weeks for the power to be restored to our building.

Even if you have a spiffy SUV with four-wheel-drive and a six-inch suspension lift, you may not have fuel. When I ride by on my bike, I will snicker to myself.

But What About My Stuff?

You’re right. I don’t have enough room on my bike or in the bike trailer for a nice collection of 18th century Mexican art. For that, I’d need an SUV or minivan.

Still, nothing I have is worth dying for. Quite frankly, I’d probably be better off if half my stuff was gone anyway. Chances are, it’ll be there when I get back. If it isn’t, I’ll get new stuff. Or, better yet, I won’t.

All I need is a bike each for me and the wife and the kid in his bike trailer and we’ll be out of town before you’re out of the gas station line.

So, while you’re thinking about the next disaster to hit your home town, give a little thought about how you’re going to get out of town. Even if you decide to take the car, you may want to strap the bikes on the back in case you need to get home again.

—Matt

There was a pretty even-handed story in the Kalamazoo Gazette this morning about clashes between the increasing number of cyclists on the road and motorists who don’t understand that riders have the right to be on the road.

Unfortunately, it sounds like Kalamazoo has the normal percentage of jerks and clueless riders who swarm all over the road and break every law in the book (I’m talking about bikers, not the 100% law-abiding motorists who would NEVER speed, coast through a stop sign, blow a red light, drive while impaired or text on a cell phone while changing CDs.)

Mr. Thornton sounds like a bad driver

Donald Thornton doesn’t think it’s a good idea to take the lane. “Not everybody can react immediately if they drive around a curve and there’s a bunch of (bicyclists) right there in front of them,” said Thornton, who lives on Van Buren County Road 358 in the Lawton area.

I responded with the following comment:

Motorist Donald Thornton says he can’t react immediately if he drives around a curve and finds a group of cyclists in front of him.

How about a slow-moving tractor? Or a broken-down 18-wheeler? Or a small child crossing the road? Or a garbage can that’s been blown into the road? Or a rescue rig working an accident? Or a fire truck?

Sounds like Mr. Thornton’s comment tells a lot about his abilities as a driver.

He’s not alone in his thinking, unfortunately.

http://www.palmbeachbiketours.com/2008/06/17/bumper-stickers-and-road-rage/

Be friendly to the bikers you pass. If gas prices go up much higher, you may be one yourself. And, you’ll find that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Today, I decided to speak with them. The entire call took nearly eight minutes.

Vehicle Make and Model? Trek 7300

Dave asked for vehicle’s make and model: Trek 7300. Dave asked for the model year: 1998. Dave couldn’t find ‘Trek’ in his database. I told him it was a bike. He asked how much it weighed. I wasn’t sure but guessed ‘28; maybe even 32 when fully-loaded’. He asked if it was heavy. I explained that it was twice as heavy as I’d like — a serious rider would like a bike that weighs half that amount.

Dave was very confused. Dave asked me to describe my bike. I told him it was a hybrid bike — tires of a road bike, straight bars and thick frame like a mountain bike — with 27 gear combinations, about its generator hub for lighting and the sweet, melodic bell.

How Big is My Motor?

Dave wanted to know if it had a motor. Yes: the Trek’s motor can do 100 watts for several hours at one time but could push two or three times that for short bursts. I’m looking forward to tuning up the motor this summer before I ride the MS 150 in Memphis.

Dave asked if I was talking about a bicycle. Yes, of course, what did you think I was talking about? He didn’t know.

He was simply calling because my vehicle had a warranty that was soon to expire or had already expired.

My Trek Has a Lifetime Warranty

I explained that my vehicle only had a lifetime frame warranty but that the components were no longer covered. I asked him what it would cost to add a warranty to my Trek 7300. He asked how much the bike cost and how many miles it had on it. My answers: $550 or so and, pitifully, fewer than 10,000 miles.

Dave explained that his company only sells extended warrantees for cars and light trucks used for non-commercial purposes.

Worse Than Road Rash and Harder to Get Rid Of

I asked him how he could know that my vehicle’s warranty was expired or about to expire but not know that my vehicle was a bicycle. It was then he admitted that his auto-dial machine was just dialing every number in sequence and that he had no idea if I even had a vehicle, was old enough to drive or if I was even a human and alive. His honesty was refreshing and he was polite throughout the phone call.

He said he would take me off their call list. Since it hasn’t happened the last seven times, I doubt it will happen this time around.

—Matt

(Update for July 30, 2008: They just called again, this time from 215-542-4930.

Them: How many miles do I have on the vehicle?

Me: About 8,000 miles?

Them: What year?

Me: 1998.

Them: Wow… you don’t drive much do you?

Me: I wish I could put more miles on the vehicle I just don’t have the time.

We went round and round for about six minutes. They couldn’t find the Trek brand in their database. Finally they asked if I rode a mountain bike. I said ‘no’, it was a road bike. The guy made a disgusted noise and then hung up on me. Imagine that!)

(Update for August 13, 2008: Now they are calling from 731-588-2771.

I gotta fudge my mileage from now on. My vehicle age is right in their wheelhouse but with just 8,000 miles on the machine, I didn’t make their minimum requirement of 25,000 miles. Next time, instead of quoting my Trek, I’ll use the Bianchi Talladega which has over 25,000 miles. Most of those miles aren’t mine. But, still, the odometer has the requisite miles. The call lasted just four minutes. He eventually hung up on me.

I managed to record this call but I’m not sure if I want to run up my bandwidth bill to put it online. If enough people are interested, you’ll get to hear this call.)

(Update for August 14, 2008: Same call: this time from 954-369-1828.)