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What Do You Owe Your LBS?

Buy Levitra online in the Uk alt=”” src=”http://www.palmbeachbiketours.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Malcolm-on-bike-500×332.jpg” width=”500″ height=”332″ />I was supposed to meet 6-year-old Malcolm this afternoon to ride home from school with him. I was running late, so I threw my Surly Long Haul Trucker on the rack and headed 12 miles up to his school.

As I was cranking along at 65 miles per hour, I noticed in the rearview mirror that my front fender was flexing a little more than usual. I figured it was just getting buffeted by the wind coming off an 18-wheeler next to me.

Planet Bike fender had cracked

When I got to his house, I took a closer look. The front fender had cracked and was barely holding on by a thread. I guess it must have developed “plastic fatigue.”

The fender was a Planet Bike Cascadia, so I went to their website to see if they had a local dealer who might have a replacement in stock. Bingo! Not only did they have a local dealer, it was one I had done business with. I’m not going to name the dealer for reasons that will become apparent.

A call to a local bike shop

“Hi, do you have a Planet Bike Cascadia fender in stock?”

“No, but I can order you one.”

“If you’re going to have to order it, is there any financial advantage to having you order it versus me ordering it direct.”

His tone changed and he said, “If you order stuff off the Internet, where are you going to go for local service 10 years from now when all the local shops are out of business?”

“Whoa, wait a minute. I support local bike shops. I bought two bikes from you. I’ve bought accessories from you. I’ve sent friends to you.”

He just kept asking, “Does Planet Bike put back anything into the local biking community? Does Planet Bike put anything back into the local biking community? Answer me that, yes or no.”

Finally, I had to admit that, the answer was ‘no’.

Planet Bike donates 25% of profits to advocacy groups

I wish I had known this about Planet Bike while we were having our discussion:

Planet Bike helps out by donating 25% of company profits to grassroots bicycle advocacy groups. These groups of people lobby local, state and federal government to make our communities more bicycle friendly. Learn more about how these folks are Making It Happen.

Since 1996 Planet Bike has donated over $1,000,000 to grassroots bicycle advocacy. Most of our money goes to the Alliance for Biking & Walking, (formerly the Thunderhead Alliance), a coalition of 160 bicycle advocacy groups across the nation that are working together to promote safe bicycling.

May I speak with the owner?

I asked if I could speak to XXXXX, the owner, a guy I thought I knew from doing business in the shop and from seeing him at biking events.

“You’re talking to him.”

“This is Ken Steinhoff,” I said, hoping we could connect on what I believed had been a previous friendly personal relationship. “I TRIED to do business with you. You were my FIRST call.”

How many products does Planet Bike Carry?

“Do you have any idea how many products Planet Bike carries?”

I had to admit that I didn’t have a clue.

“Well, lots. I can’t afford to stock one of everything that they carry for someone who might come in once a year to buy it.”

“You won’t have to worry about ME coming into your shop in the future.”

How could I have handled this better?

Maybe the exchange would have been less testy had I said, “I was really hoping to get one right away. I’ll call some of the other bike shops to see if they have it in stock.”

I really wasn’t trying to beat him up on price. I threw out the question about price advantage to give him an opening to save the sale.

Had he said, “I can have it here in two days, at the same price,” I might have thrown him the order, even though he’s a 26-mile round trip from my house. If I order it online, a nice man in a delivery truck will drop it off at my front door.

I don’t know how Planet Bike works and/or what their price structure for dealers is. I was looking for speed more than price, all things being equal. I know that some shops won’t place an order with a distributor until they get enough together to make it worth their while. If this place is like that, I’d rather deal direct.

What IS a local bike shop, anyway?

Several years ago I considered buying a double-legged kickstand. I knew Harris Cyclery carried them, so I called Boston to ask some questions. When I started to place my order, the guy at the other end said, “I KNOW you. I’ve seen your name on some of the bike forums.”

That’s better recognition than I can get from shops that are just up the road from me.

Hubbub Bicycles

Diane Lees of Hubbub Custom Bicycles in Cleveland and I have never met, but we’ve exchanged several dozen bantering emails over the past decade.

She’s my regular supplier for helmet-mounted Chuck Harris mirrors and she’s an active phred. Is SHE my LBS?

Peter White Cycles

I’ve never seen Peter White, but I’ve bought a two generator hubs and a bunch of lighting equipment from Peter White Cycles of New Hampshire. His bedside manner is a bit rough, but he knows about as much about lighting as any guy in the country. Is HE my LBS?

Will my local bike shop be extinct?

To go back to the question the owner of my former LBS asked, “What will you do if all the local bike shops go out of business?

The answer is, I’ll learn to do more of my own wrenching, and I’ll spend my money where people don’t cop an attitude.

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Droid Incredible, a Bridge and a Blader

Reader Pam Henderson sent me a question the other day, “Know what the grade is on Lake Worth Bridge?”

Lake Worth Bridge

I told her I’d have to dig out some old GPS tracks to calculate it, then I realized that I have on application on my brand-new Verizon HTC Droid Incredible that emulates a level. When I looked at the options, it allowed me to turn on angles and pitch.

Magic Droid Incredible Bubble Application

Osa called and said she was ready for a short ride after our LOST Full Moon adventure, so we headed to Lake Worth and the bridge. I set the phone up on the bridge railing, which appeared to be parallel to the bridge deck and saw that the angle was somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees, with a rise of about one inch of climbing for every foot of horizontal travel.

The photo also shows that my Glo Gloves are beginning to come unraveled.

Roller Blader Lynn Pohl

While mucking around with my camera and Droid, a roller blader whizzed past me on her way up the bridge. She and Osa were chatting at the top of the bridge when I got there.

“How fast do you go DOWN the bridge?” I asked.

“Pretty fast, when these walkers get past us, but I don’t know exactly how fast,” she replied.

20 mph down the bridge

I paced her on the downstroke, calling out speeds as we went along. Two-thirds of the way down, she hit  20 miles per hour and held it for some distance. Unfortunately, I pushed the wrong button on my video camera and missed capturing her descent.

At the intersection of A1A and Lake Worth Road, she turned south onto the multi-use path that parallels the road. I decided to follow her to see how fast she could go on the flats. She rarely dropped below 11 mph and frequently topped 15, for an average of about 14.4 mph.

A1A Trail between Lake Worth Road and Lantana

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Full Moon on Lake Okeechobee

I’ve been telling my riding partner, Osa, how nice it is to ride the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail (LOST) for months, but weather and schedules have kept us from going out until this weekend. Sunday night was supposed to be a Full Moon, so I thought it would be a perfect introduction for her.

Rain made it look iffy

Rain chances were put at 40%, but some pretty heavy boomers were popping up around the lake, then moving on. We decided to risk it. We got on the road about 5:45 p.m. intending to go where my Droid Incredible radar showed the least weather. All things being equal, we were going to start so we’d have a headwind out and a tailwind for the return.

The first thing that went wrong was that my normal route was under construction. A detour took us about 10 miles out of our way. That wasn’t so bad, though, because Osa hadn’t had a chance to see much of the Glades farming area. She was disappointed when we saw only one alligator in a canal that I said, frequently, had a couple of dozen.

Nubbins Slough looked rain-free

We opted to put in at Nubbins Slough, on the northeast corner of the lake. The winds were out of the southeast at 8-12 mph, and our route was mostly headed southeast to south.

We didn’t spot any gators at the Slough, normally a hot spot, but these birds were kind enough to pose for us.

Osa fitted with a bug screen

I’m working on a review of the GBNpro Bug Screen. Bob Prusinski was kind enough to send me three to try, so I fitted one to my helmet before I left home and gave Osa one to attach to her helmet on the way out. The contraption is held onto the helmet with a strip of Velcro tape.

I’ll have a full review after I’ve had a chance to see if a couple problems we ran into were because we use helmet-mounted mirrors. After getting her picture taken, Osa took hers off. I, too, decided to hold off mounting mine until it got closer to Bug o’Clock.

Blue skies above us

As you can see, we had blue skies above us when we started off on our ride. Osa has a thing about clouds, so she stopped frequently to take photos of the ever-changing skyscape above us.

That is NOT a Clif Shot bloc

During one of those stops, I took the opportunity to reach into my pocket for a Clif Shot Bloks (Strawberry, not that it makes any difference). I like them because I can tuck them in my cheek and suck on them as I’m riding along. It gives me a steady inflow of energy and encourages me to drink more frequently.

Anyway, I bit down into the first bloc. They’re about the consistency of soft candy Gummy Worms. On the second chomp, I bit down on something hard. Something that was definitely NOT soft Gummy Worm consistency. I had a sinking suspicion that I knew what it was. Yep, I had pulled a dental crown right out.

Fortunately, I hadn’t bitten down hard and I hadn’t swallowed it. I took a tentative sip of water to wash my mouth out. WHOAAAAA! We’re not gonna do THAT again. Even sucking in hot summer air let me know that something was exposed that didn’t want to be exposed.

Remember those rain clouds off in the distance?

It looked like we were going to go in the blank space between the two rain showers. It LOOKED like that right up until the point that the sky opened up. Osa pulled on a jacket and slipped her phone and some other stuff in a Ziploc bag.

I put my Droid Incredible, Sandisk Sansa Clip MP3 player and i-Ride Pro speakers into a Ziploc bag and put them in my jersey pocket (more about that later). I put the rain covers over my Arkel small handlebar bag and Tailrider Trunk bag and debated pulling on my Campmor Rain Cape, but decided it wasn’t going to rain that long. Plus, it was hot enough I wasn’t afraid of getting chilled.

Sure enough, we rode out of the rain in a couple of miles, just in time to get some photos of the moon rise. The frame at the top is a little unsharp because it’s a still shot taken out of a video. My Canon FS100 Camcorder has a longer effective lens than my Nikon D40.

Dusk means bugs

Shortly after we got moving again, I told Osa that I was going to put on my Bug Screen because it was getting to be “that time.” She elected to wait a bit longer. I thought that was a mistake, because I was already seeing small bugs bouncing off the screen and seeing them stuck in the sweat on my arms.

She started complaining that she could feel bugs crawling around inside her helmet, so I offered a bandanna to put over her hair. We stopped to find it, and immediately became a feast for mosquitoes that covered every part of us, clothed and unclothed. Osa went into a whirling dervish swatting frenzy, then hopped on her bike vowing to pedal until she dropped, hopefully dead, if she couldn’t outrun the bloodsuckers.

I photographed Mathilde doing the Frog Dance on one Full Moon Ride. Osa put her to shame.

When we got to our turnaround point, Osa didn’t even slow down; she just put it in whip-around and kept going. Fortunately, by the time we got back to the car to load up, the bugs were gone. Either the bug window had closed or we had satiated every mosquito around the northeast corner of the lake.

Health and welfare check

When we got into the car, I took the Ziploc package of electronics out of my jersey pocket (more about that later) and called Wife Lila to let her know we were off the LOST and headed home, even if a couple of quarts low and uncrowned.

I commented to Osa that my gas tank was a little low, but I was “pretty sure” I had enough to get us to a station. She remembered the mosquitoes and didn’t like the sound of that. She became even more concerned when the Low Fuel light flashed on. (That means I can go about another hundred miles, and we only had about 50 to go, but I didn’t share that with her.)

There’s a gas station in Indiantown

We pulled into the last gas station in Indiantown. The pumps say to pay inside, so I walked into what looked like a combination gas station, produce stand and night club and gave the clerk my credit card.

While I was pumping my gas, a guy came out of the shadows with a cell phone in his hand and asked if I had a buck. “I’m paying for the gas with a credit card as it is,” I told him, not literally being untruthful. He wandered back to stand in the shadows with another guy, waiting for someone who wanted good Karma (more about that later).

Maybe I should have given the panhandler the buck

We made it home uneventfully. Osa even said she had fun and was ready to go back again. With a stronger bug spray this time, though. When I carried everything in, I couldn’t find my MP3 player and speaker, even when I looked in the nooks and crannies of the car. My guess is that the slick Ziploc bag slipped out of my jersey pocket either at Nubbins slough or at the gas station.

Maybe I should have given the panhandler a buck to fill up my Karma bucket. If I lost it at the gas station, I hope he enjoys my taste in music.

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South Florida Bike Expo

I was originally signed up to be an exhibitor at the South Florida Bike Expo, but when an email came from the promoter saying that they were juggling space to handle additional folks, I volunteered to give up my booth.

Wall to wall bicycles

After all, I don’t have anything to sell. I don’t lead tours, so what you read here is what you get. That decision worked out well, because it freed me up to wander around shooting the other booths and get a feel for the event.

South Florida Expo open Sunday, July 18

If you missed Saturday’s show, you’ll have another shot Sunday, July 18, between 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. Admission is free, but you will have to pay for parking at Ft. Lauderdale’s War Memorial Auditorium. You can get directions and all the info at the South Florida Bike Expo website.

Charity Rides

There are lots of exhibitors who will sign you up for charity rides.

Bicycle Advocacy community represented

The South Florida Bike Coalition, League of American Cyclists, the Florida Bicycle Association and others who lobby for our right to be on the road were there.

Gallery of photos from the South Florida Bike Expo

Click on any image to make it larger.

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Bro Mark Sees Three Men in Fiery Furnace

A ride report from my brother Mark in St. Louis:

On Your Mark Cycling Club LogoMatt, on his visit to St. Louis, was nice enough to give me a bike jersey that he and his A/B riders wear on occasion. It’s the “On Your Mark” jersey. The weather that I had been waiting for came this week and I pulled on the jersey and headed out for a ride.

That was Tuesday.

My brother is crazy

Tuesday was the day that we hit our high for the year, 98 degrees. The heat index was 102. I like to ride when it’s hot. I also like to sit in the car with the windows up when it’s hot and let the heat warm up my bones. Sorta like being a ham in an oven effect, nonetheless I like the heat to a no-pun-intended, “degree”.

I went to Forest Park and did my loops of the park and immediately noticed that I must be the only one who likes that kind of weather because there were no other riders at 3pm in the afternoon.

In fact, the park was empty of people except for some of the city kids who were sitting in the areas of the park that have waterfalls in them, and they were sitting in the water in the shade.

I admit that it was hot. With every 6 mile loop of my route I filled up a water bottle.

When traveling on a bike there is always some constant breeze (given you are going fast enough to generate one) and that became very evident each time when I stopped to fill up my water bottle. As soon as I unclipped my feet the rush of stifling heat surrounded me and the sweat would pour off me much like the waterfalls the kids had taken refuge in.

A “cool” hot T-shirt

But I like the heat. Back on my bike I began to feel the heat get the best of me around mile 28. I told myself that I would stop at mile 30 and call it a day OR when the bright sky started filling up with specks of darkness right before I blacked out. I was just rounding out my 30 mile mark when I looked over to see three other riders with me, it was Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Apparently the Angel decided to sit out this fiery furnace ride.

[Editor’s note: for those of you who weren’t consigned to a parochial school for eight years, plus kindergarten, you can read about the Three Men in the Fiery Furnace here.]

The heat did not beat me to the point of blacking out and luckily I was close enough at mile 30 that I could coast to my car, load my bike up and sit in the car this time with the air conditioning on FULL blast. I have learned that a 102 heat index is my bar for NOT going out to ride.