Art, Footwear and False Economy

We save boxes to re-use for shipping. Cross-country ski boots especially call for boxes of a certain size to protect them properly without sending a bulky, space-wasting package.

I found this calligraphy on the perfect box for a pair of racing boots I was boxing for shipment today. Ordinarily we obliterate old marks so they don't confuse the shipper. In this case I figured I did not have to destroy something pretty since it did not convey misleading information to UPS. It was box 1 of 1 in our shipment as well as the one in which it had arrived. The number meant nothing but was harmless. I liked how whoever wrote it made it look nice.

This post started as a little report on winter cycling footwear. Opportunities to write are limited. So are opportunities to ride. Generally at some point in mid December I just take a deep breath, dive down and swim hard (metaphorically) toward the end of the holiday season. Maybe that takes me into the beginning of ski season or maybe we spend long dismal hours waiting for bankruptcy in an endless mud season. Ski season no longer represents much in the way of fun, because I don't get to ski consistently enough to call it a conditioning program. I might as well still live in Annapolis. But I digress. For the moment, I take the rides I can get.

The weather has been warm for most of the fall. The big snowstorms weren't particularly cold and they had warm weather before and after them. For most of my path commutes I have been able to wear an old pair of Diadora touring shoes that are great for toeclips. They have a smooth sole and a tapered toe, plenty of support and only light Velcro straps. Of course they are no longer made.

The touring shoes have the usual mesh uppers.  I have used neoprene toe warmers and even booties with them, but the lack of a cleat means the pedal wears more directly on the neoprene. Also, neoprene covers all have huge holes in them to accommodate cleats. That's a drawback even with cleated shoes because cold air and wetness can get in through these built-in leaks.

I put tape over the mesh in places, but it doesn't last and it doesn't cover enough. I have also used various combinations of liner socks and plastic bags.

*****

 With my cleated shoes the neoprene toe covers and booties work adequately, but I don't like to ride the trail with cleated shoes in case I have to walk. I also don't like to ride far from home in the winter with cleated shoes because a breakdown might force me to walk in all kinds of sand, snow and slush. It has happened. A short ride can be a rough, long walk when you are abusing your riding shoes with every step.

A few days ago the temperature was about 20 degrees. I skipped the cycling shoes entirely. I have a pair of North Face shoes -- called Snow Sneakers I believe -- that are insulated and waterproof. They're stiff enough. They fit into the toeclips adequately. They were gratifyingly toasty on the truly frosty morning.

Bikes continue to trickle in for repairs. This fork is from a cheap mountain bike called an FS Elite (made in USA!) that a customer wanted refurbished for some offspring living in New York. He pointed to the broken fork brace.

"That's not important, right?" he said. "I mean, it doesn't really do anything." He did agree to have the fork replaced when I told him I could scrounge up a rigid, one-inch fork with a threaded steerer from the basement. We used to do fork replacements all the time in the late 1980s and early '90s. Suspension technology has virtually eliminated the damage riders used to inflict by jumping. They can still trash forks, but in different ways. This one was just cheap junk.

The holidays continue to bear down. I might get one or two rides before January. Then it's mostly up to the weather and whatever disruptive events might lurk in the mists of the future. Last winter was kind of a bucket of crap. I hope this one is better.

It's Brilliant!

After nine months with the dynamo hub, I still love it. It adds weight and resistance that a removable battery light wouldn't, but you would have to remove the battery light to save the weight. So that just leaves resistance.

A transportation bike is going to weigh more than a sport or competition bike. Even mountain bikes are using exotic materials and evolved designs to reduce their weight compared to bikes with similar features from a decade or more ago. But the transportation category includes cargo bikes and heavy tourers, so we quit worrying excessively about every gram when we started down that path. Or road.

In 1980, when I worked at my first bike shop job and thought it was a temporary thing while I got a more illustrious career in order, our tribal elder and wise man -- he was 32 -- told us that a generator adds about a gear's worth of resistance when it is operating. He said this as he was installing the classic Union bottle generator onto the Motobecane he was configuring as a fixed-gear commuter with racks and fenders. We were all assembling different forms of the same thing. Most of us, with limited budgets and more of a focus on racing, used completely inadequate lights.

When I got a better job (relatively speaking) the following year, I invested in my own Union generator, and later acquired a Sanyo that drove off the tread face of the rear tire, rather than the sidewall. The increase in resistance never seemed as clear-cut as "a gear's worth." Does that mean a one-tooth jump or a larger increment? Even in the days of anemic incandescent bulbs it was great to have a fairly steady light. With Union's battery pack accessory it would even stay lit when the bike stopped. Any resistance it might have added was never enough to discourage me from flipping the lever to activate the light.

The specter of resistance still haunted me. When I moved to my present home and faced a 14- to 15-mile hilly ride each way for my commute I carried as little as possible on the bike or myself. The season of darkness ended my riding each year.

When powerful battery lights emerged as mountain bikers pushed into the darkness, they offered amazing illumination compared to any battery or generator light I had previously encountered. But then the problem of battery life became more important. When your light is already pretty feeble, its dimming seems less dramatic than when you start out with something that lets you read a newspaper at 50 yards when it's fresh, but leaves you groping in its dying glow when the charge runs out.

Rechargeable batteries needed careful handling to avoid over-discharging them and over charging them. As battery and charger technology evolved, we were told that running the batteries out was no longer a problem. So-called smart chargers eliminated the problem of frying the batteries if you left them baking too long as well. After using some of them I remain unconvinced, especially about the chargers.

At best, rechargeable batteries have a finite life anyway. They can only survive a certain number of charging cycles. So you go through a period of diminishing efficiency as the battery nears the end of its functional life.

Cold temperatures also diminish the power of many batteries. When I used my mountain biking light as a headlamp for night skiing I had to tuck the battery inside my clothing. When I took cold rides with the battery mounted to the bike it would suffer from the exposure. The battery lights I have on my helmet now don't work as well in sub-freezing temperatures. But then, who does?

The SRAM iLight hub dynamo I chose had very few reviews on the Internet compared to the Shimano, Sanyo and Schmidt hubs. Schmidt is the gold standard: expensive but excellent. Shimano is often rated as the next best choice. Shimano has prospered for decades making the second best item in many categories, bringing them to market at a price significantly lower than the top brand. Now they are recognized as a leader by many. Love 'em or loathe 'em, they do put out a lot of useful items along with container ship loads of technofascist whizbang garbage. I try to avoid them when I can because of that, but they're so huge that they end up providing things their major competitors won't.

Shimano made my job easier when choosing a hub because they did not offer a 36-hole hub that was not set up for disc brakes. SRAM did. So did Schmidt, but I work in a bike shop. I'm not pulling in Schmidt money. We have an account with Peter White, importer and distributor, but even with that it's an investment.

The SRAM seemed like it was a bit better than the Sanyo for comparable money. In particular it seemed to have lower drag with the light off. That resistance is the price you pay for unlimited light.

A 36-hole hub is probably overkill for my commuting routine. I went with something that strong in case I take a heavily loaded tour. Since I can imagine putting dynamo lighting on almost every bike I own now, I could see building on hubs with lower spoke counts for some of them.

Because I have not ridden with the Schmidt or Shimano hubs, I can't say if I would find them easier to push. The Schmidt certainly has impressive numbers, especially with the light turned off. However, I don't go without the advantages of the dynamo hub just because I could not afford the very best.

If you have a frame with a dynamo bracket already built onto the stays or fork, you can mount a sidewall generator like the Busch and Muller Dymotec 6 I used initially. I had problems maintaining alignment because of the tires I use and the way the add-on mounting bracket clamps the seat stay. Rather than continue to put a hurt on the frame tubing I went to the hub. With the sidewall generator you have zero resistance with the lights off. The downside is that you have to make specific arrangements to improve performance in wet weather. The wire-brush roller for wet conditions can mess up a tire pretty quickly if you don't have it lined up right. Also, most tires do not have a real dynamo track molded into the sidewall. German brands are more likely to, because of Germany's lighting requirements for transportation bikes. It's not a feature most tire makers highlight in their product descriptions in North America.

If you go with a dynamo instead of battery system you can get accessories to charge and power your small electronic devices so the electricity you produce during daylight won't go to waste. Some lights also come with daytime running lights now.

I have noticed that motorists show more respect when I run the big light. Something about its power seems to put me on a more equal footing. Fewer oncoming drivers leave their high beams on when I have a light that makes a bigger impact on them. It's aimed down where I need it, so it does not blind anyone driving toward me, but it clearly gets their attention even when I'm not running flashing lights on the handlebar to enhance visibility.

The wide Toplight Line Plus tail light probably helps for overtaking vehicles, but I never ride on the road without my full array of flashing tail lights as well. The Planet Bike Superflash pounds out a sharp warning that commands respect even when the sun is up. As the centerpiece of a night array with two flanking flashers it probably makes me look like an official vehicle. The bluish tint to the Beamers in flashing mode on the front of the bike may subliminally suggest police lights to drivers who chronically have a guilty conscience anyway.

Some things you have to experience for yourself

Riding out the path on Saturday night I was pondering how I (or anyone) could shoot a video that really presents the essence of a night ride.

It's hard enough in daylight. A ride appears linear, but travels through four perceptible dimensions on its apparently forward course.

Exceptionally talented fixed-gear riders might proceed an impressive distance on a backward course, but such riders are rare and even they usually have better things to do.

At night the most visible field narrows to the areas shown by whatever you are using for lights. When I was in my twenties, if my corrective prescription was absolutely up to date I might be able to ride at a foolish clip at night without any lights, but now I rely on powerful technology to make sure I see and am seen. With light comes shadows. But the world still exists in the darkness all around you.

The temperature was 27 degrees F when I started out. Some frost was starting to form. Stars glittered alongside half a moon. Things tend to glitter on winter nights even before snow spreads a luminous blanket over everything. The sky, if it's clear at all, seems exceptionally clear in the cold months. The bright stars quiver as if the frigid breeze reached them. Crystals form instead of dew as the night's chill settles. Reaching beams from a cyclist's light strike these minuscule reflectors that sparkle back.

As noted many times, the path I ride requires frequent zigzags to go between the rails or exit from them. The rhythm of the ride includes the sudden slowing, the well-practiced angulation, the sprint away. Each of these maneuvers swings the light. My comparatively weak helmet light probes for the course I plan to take while the powerful dynamo light splashes its radiance where the bike is actually pointing. Each pass through the rails is a tricky bit of peering to find the built-up crossing outside the brightest patch and get the bike lined up with it. When the fallen leaves are deep the crossings can disappear. I've over-run them a few times, jolting humorously down the uncovered railroad ties beyond the filled-in travel way.

Riding often leads to reverie. The rhythm provokes a meditative state that becomes even stronger at night. It can be nicely dreamlike.

On the road, a rider needs to be careful of motor traffic. Some roads are quite nicely desolate. Others are annoyingly busy. Off road it can be weird and lonely. But what you feel comes from inside you, so you can control it. If you are fortunate enough to have one or more compatible companions for the night ride that can hold any creepy feelings at bay. Remember, of course that in scary movies they often pick off members of a group one by one. The progressive disappearances add to the fear. So just because you have someone with you doesn't mean you won't be abducted by aliens or successively slashed and/or devoured by someone or something. So hey, you might as well go alone.

Wishbiking

This is the story of a project that may never happen.

The grand movements of nature and society have traditionally followed their own course regardless of the plans of individuals. This seems especially true when individuals lay those plans to adapt to those grand movements.

In the previous couple of years that I have been trying to use the Cotton Valley Trail to extend my bike commuting season into the dark months, the decision to quit has been mine to make, well before winter weather really shuts things down. This year we've had two significant snowstorms that forced me off the path before December even arrived. Each one melted after a while.

Between October's storm and November's I took a look at my old mountain bike. The Cross Check is an excellent bike. If I owned only one bike it would be that one. But I don't. I build to meet my needs. I quit riding the mountain bike completely after I built the Cross Check, because I no longer wanted to spend time looking for technical trails. But what if technical trails came to me?

 The basic bike starts with a 1996 Gary Fisher Aquila frame. Originally I switched over most of the parts from my 1991 Stumpjumper. Over time I added linear-pull brakes and a 58-94 crank so I could run smaller rings up front. Who knew 58-94 was going to be such a temporary thing? I mean, bike companies make perfectly good stuff disappear all the time, but some things really seem to have a very short run. I put on wider bars with a bit of rise because my technical mountain biking advisor told me they would improve the handling. They seem to, but I hardly rode the bike after the mods.

The shifters remain where they belong: on top of the bars.

When mud was a selling point and filth was fun we would charge out on the rotting ice of thawing snowmobile trails and laugh about our sprawls in frigid water and silt. As much fun as that sounds, it's not good if your ride ends at your place of employment. They don't care how I look when I arrive. We all used to ride in the gook together. However, I have to be ready to work with customers.

In the 1990s I tried studded mountain bike tires when they first became popular. They were novel, but I was more likely to skate or ski if ice or snow were good. If the winter was acting like an endless November I wouldn't need the studs to ride the trails. I sold my test pair to a local ice boater who used his bike to ride around on frozen lakes when he had left the boat offshore. Ice isn't the issue here, but cargo capacity, mud and water are. So is darkness.

Fenders and a rack are easy. Lights not so much. I'm really addicted to the power and limitless running time of the dynamo lights. Knobby tires make a hub dynamo a better choice. Since the entire evening commute takes place in the dark now, lights are not a luxury. For the short duration of the regular evening ride a battery light might be fine, but once I've made a technical-trail explorer it might as well have full night capability. Cha-ching! Honk! Honk! Honk! The unnecessary investment horn sounds. I've talked myself out of it...for now.

What can I say?

The long lapses between posts don't indicate a lack of thought, they are the result of too many thoughts, too close together. Strangely for this time of year, when nature slumps toward hibernation, I have trouble finding time to sort and edit what occurs to me.

The weather has been erratic even by New England standards. The storm on the day before Thanksgiving brought eight or ten inches to the neighborhood. That stopped me from riding. By Monday the roads were clear, so I got back out. I still haven't done a commute. Friday and Saturday look good. Sunday the cellist and I have to do automotive maneuvers to get her car inspected and serviced before winter might actually arrive.

When I lived for ski season I would go insane when winter did not cooperate with my need to have deep snow in the woods. Since I refuse to let an unrequited desire drive me crazy I got myself over that fixation in a couple of seasons. Unfortunately, in a specialty shop you have to deal with some people who do not control their addictions well. You might think they'd be a great source of revenue, but they can actually be a little psychotic. They can also be highly annoying when they need endless therapy. Seems like the climate may be either killing them off or crushing some sense into them, though. I haven't heard a lot of chirpy bullshit about when and how much it's going to snow. Maybe they've just learned to keep it away from me. Either way, problem solved.

No doubt the season has affected my own mental processes. I take a strange pleasure in the last dark dip at the year's close. Sometimes that pleasure is hard to discern. It's best when I get the chance to contemplate it quietly without a bunch of people trying to overcompensate for what they perceive as the gloom.

Conflict avoidance vs. conflict resolution

My autumn adventures in side path land have been at once restful and disturbing.

The peace of a car-free path is undeniably restful. I worry about very little as I ride in the secret world of the path. Hardly anyone is on it this time of year. It runs through the woods, unseen from the busy road except at a couple of crossings in Wolfeboro and a couple of long views where it runs on causeways beside Crescent Lake and Lake Wentworth. After Route 109, no other major streets cross the path for the rest of its completed length. If anyone ever raises the funds to finish the route to Wakefield, as planned in the 1990s, virtually all of it will be in the woods. My biggest worries are skunks or the occasional moose.

When I imagine myself restricted only to the segregated path I start to feel as if I have been locked into a small room and left there. It's not quite like being buried alive, but it's a feeling of imprisonment nonetheless.

Every time I ride a path, whether it was the Potomac bike path and related Washington, DC-area trails in the late 1970s and early '80s or the B&A Trail from Glen Burnie. MD, to Annapolis in the late 1990s, the C&O towpath, or the Maine Mountain Division Trail, I have the same disoriented, unprepared feeling when I emerge and have to deal with the realities of traffic cycling as it happens in the vast majority of places. Paths are relatively rare. Well-designed paths are much rarer still.

Cyclists and motorists alike get spoiled by paths. Motorists have complained to me when they see me on a road near a path, because I'm not using what they consider to be a superior facility to the dangerous road. As a cyclist, I find myself less warmed up and alert when a lot of my route consists of largely-level, segregated path instead of hilly roads shared by everyone who really has somewhere to go.

A path that makes good connections feels like an advantage. The more I have to bend my route to fit the path into it the more obvious the artificiality of the path becomes. And, as I already noted, cyclists who need or want to ride on the streets near the path may hear more criticism from motorists there. When popular paths are very busy, a fit cyclist is safer riding among the motor vehicles than dodging the many obstacles on paths choked with strollers, dog walkers, darting children, and a variety of things with small wheels, moving erratically.

The mix of users on the trail in Maine last week did give me an idea for an event called strollercross, in which cyclists sprint up to people pushing strollers, singly or in groups, and have to dismount, run past the stroller(s), remount and resume speed. My colleague envisioned stroller derby, in which the jammers are small skaters who try to get past much larger blockers pushing double-wides. That is more of a closed-track event instead of the cross-country format of strollercross.

Traffic-phobic cyclists and non-cycling planners view the only critical user conflict as a problem between motorists and bicyclists. In a broader context, bicyclists are usually lumped with pedestrians. But who gets the stink-eye on multi-use paths? The bicyclists again. We are NEVER on top.

Motorists have been the focus of road planning for decades. Pedestrians are the focus of non-motorized route planning. Sure, paths are often referred to as bike paths, but they usually turn into bike and pedestrian projects, even though they are usually barely wide enough for a moderate to high volume of bicycle use, let alone bicycle use slaloming between people on foot. The main goal is not to provide genuine integrated routes that help bicyclists ride efficiently for transportation and pleasure. It is to get cyclists out of the way and show something that looks like progress to overseers who have no idea what progress really looks like.

It's great to take advantage of some corridors, like old rail lines, that are not being used and that can connect some portions of a transportation network. Other paths follow corridors defined by things like power lines or wherever route designers can stitch together a strip of land left over from development that had a completely different focus over the centuries. This elaborate, frustrating work is all to avoid upgrading the existing rights of way used by vehicle traffic to truly accommodate the non-motorized user on a travel way appropriate to each type of propulsion: sidewalks for the walkers, lanes and intersections configured to reduce motorist-pedaler conflict, secure parking and general acceptance.

Rides in November: Fact Finding and Favorite Spots

Last Sunday the cellist led us on a field trip to the Maine Mountain Division Trail. It parallels a portion of her route to Windham, Maine, where she teaches orchestra in the middle and high schools three days a week. She was thinking the trail might provide an opportunity for her to do some park and ride commutes when the days lengthen again in the latter part of the school year.

The first part of the trail in Standish, from Route 35, is a dirt road of compacted glacial till. The fine-grained sediment looks sandy, but was not loose and treacherous the way sand can be. The bad news was that the till contains cobblestones about the size of a potato, which stud the surface with endless bumps. They're not the jagged tire-slicers we have further inland, but the jolting was relentless. The cellist decided years ago she did not like anything resembling mountain biking, so this initial surface aggravated her considerably.

The Cross Checks are well suited to handle rough bits, but their forks are not as robust as real mountain bike forks, whether rigid or sprung.

Once the trail descended to the rail line we reached the paved part that looks like your typical multi-use path. On the dirt, multi-users included people on horseback and many dog-walkers. The horse folk advised us that their mounts were calm enough for us to ride past, but they couldn't guarantee other horses would be as accommodating. Most of the dog walkers just looked at us like something someone else neglected to put into a plastic bag for proper disposal.

 I didn't take a lot of pictures because we needed to keep moving to complete the route well before dark. I had my well-lit bike, but the cellist would have to make do with Beamers and blinkies if we let sunset overtake us. Beside that, the scenery was nice but not outstanding enough to make me interrupt the ride.

 This bridge over the Presumpscot River brought us to a stop while traffic cleared from the pathway. The center strip of the wooden deck has been reinforced with that recycled plastic lumber stuff, creating a one-way path where tight two-way passage might have been possible. The raised edges of the plastic planking create a tripping hazard even if the rider has the whole pathway to use. The plastic slabs are warped, presenting an undulating surface with some raised seams even down the middle of it.

A stupid idea. I hope they get rid of it. If you notice, in the pictures of the bridge on the trail's website the decking does not have this added reinforcement.

On a warm Sunday, albeit a cloudier one than the forecast seemed to promise, the trail saw a lot of use. Planners must feel gratified when people prove the popularity of a project like this. On the other hand, it can lead to other problems of conflicting styles of use. Other problems arise as users try to get on at access points where the planners might not have anticipated as many people trying to leave vehicles, for instance.

In Windham we left the segregated world of the path and joined the rest of vehicular traffic.  No one went out of their way to bother us but it does raise the stress level when motor vehicles are buzzing by. Anyone who has ridden with traffic for a few years has had enough encounters to know that anyone at any time could decide to inflict some bullshit. They probably won't. But they might. The bicyclist is an oddity in this country. Some of you may live where these oddities are more numerous, but the cyclist is still in the minority, perhaps well tolerated in places (better in some than in others) but almost nowhere welcomed and encouraged. We are encouraged to drive to side paths to enjoy our little hobby out of everyone's way. When we ball up our little fists and insist on having our piece of the road we may be granted it, but some of our fellow travelers will express their opinion. Traffic riding calls for extending the senses while simultaneously thickening your hide.

The total round trip, including about four miles each way on the roads, came to about 18 1/2 miles.

The next day I went out to do one of my favorite routes, taking in Huntress Bridge Road. Huntress Bridge Road traverses a tamarack swamp on the border of New Hampshire and Maine. I missed the peak golden  color of the tamarack needles. There are still a few pale ones left. They made delicate compositions with winterberry shrubs splashed among them.

The red berries hang in the dun-colored framework of leafless branches.

The day was unseasonably warm again. You wouldn't know it from the sky. It was a typical November gray. The beech and oak leaves have turned russet brown. The sun slides cross the southern horizon, lower each day. I prefer clouds because they eliminate blinding glare.

Riding didn't fit the the schedule on Tuesday, Wednesday or today. Tomorrow I'll be back on the commuting trail, finding out if the rails and fallen leaves on the Cotton Valley Trail are merely wet or actually icy.