Everything I know about mountain bike racing would fit in the unused neurons of a common garden slug, but there are some folks I enjoy reading that know lots about it.

FatCyclist is posting his race report (a bit at a time) of the epic Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race in Colorado, which he did on a freakin’ single-speed. Much like the Great Divide Race article I posted on earlier, it’s inspiring and it’s making me hungry for trails.

Linked from there was this short video documentary of 7-time Tour De France winner Lance Armstrong and 5-time Leadville 100 winner Dave Wiens pushing each other way out in front of everyone else. Great photography, commentary, and soundtrack, plus Lance Armstrong admitting at the end that he told Dave Wiens to go on without him when he ran out of gas. Ever think you’d hear Mr. Armstrong saying, “I can’t do it.” and mean it? Crazy-ass superhumans, they are, both of ‘em.

My friend Carl and I used to ride from up to Ojai from the beach in Ventura, and then up into Matilija Canyon along the creek. He still rides that GT Avalanche, I haven’t seen my beautiful old Trek 970 in probably 14 years. But I can remember vividly, like it was last week, climbing those trails, flying down the fire roads, rear end drifting precisely around the turns, hopping from one tractor rut to the other at high speed, coming around a turn into a meadow and resting on a boulder next to the burblin’ brook.

Good times, maybe something I’ll get to enjoy again, but clearly nothin’ like the mayhem they were stirring up in Leadville. Check out Fatty’s race report and then watch a couple freakish superhumans go at it in the Colorado Mountains.

This is pretty cool.

I love the pedal-powered farm equipment. Story in the WaPo here, website here.

(h/t TheWashCycle)

I’ll soon have more to post about biking in New York with the kids, pastries from Balthazar, toddlers gone wild at Tompkins Square park, picnicking with friends at 9th and C, and other delights. There are many pics that need pulling off the phone, but I thought I’d post one that had me thrilled.

Check out what they done gone and built in Chelsea, going south on 9th Avenue:

That’s a real honest-to-god bike lane. Note, going from right to left: three lanes of traffic, one lane that’s parking or a left turn lane (depending on which way the cross street goes), a physical barrier, and a full bike lane. You can’t see it very well in this shot, but the traffic light at the corner, to the left of the bike lane, is a stop light exclusively for regulating the bike lane (the red, yellow, and green lights are actually in the shape of a bicycle). The light just to the right of it regulates the left turn lane, allowing cars to safely cross the bike lane.

Riding down this section of 9th, with my daughter in her kid-seat, I felt like the city recognized us as legitimate traffic and took our safety seriously. I felt like I was on a road built with bikes at the core of the design, rather than one where the design half-heartedly acknowledges that bikes are vehicles and then throws us into a raging current of cabs, busses, and SUVs. It felt really, really good.

That is infrastructure you can believe in, my friends.

[UPDATE]: fixed the lane order, here’s a document that lays out what I’m trying to describe, around page 19 or so. There’s more benefits than I’d considered, like a shorter crossing distance for pedestrians and a barrier to turning the wrong way on a one-way street. Neat.

It should also be noted that food messengers don’t seem to understand that the awesome new bike lane only goes one way, and that the northbound bike lane is over on 8th Ave. Or, they get it and don’t care. I’d typically blow off that kind of anarchy because, ya know, it’s New York and they gotta make a living right? But this is a real, permanent, well-designed bike road we’re talkin’ about, it’s undeniably a one-way thing, and going the wrong way on it makes it unsafe the same way that driving a car the wrong way up a one-way street does. So fuck that, ticket the living shit out of ‘em. Growing up ain’t always easy, ya know?

[UPDATE AGAIN]: This really was just supposed to be a short post, but I ran into this StreetFilms short about efforts to create more separated bike lanes in New York, it seems appropriate to throw it on the stack. I wonder if Mayor Fenty’s seen any of this. It’s quite a vision of what a city can be.

A young lady here in D.C. was killed riding her bicycle in the Dupont Circle area last week. Evidently she was going straight through an intersection and was run over by a garbage truck turning right. It’s the kind of story that makes my stomach knot and my heart break for her, for the family, and for the driver as well. The life of everyone involved has been redefined in that instant, and not in a good way.

The blog pundits have weighed in. Matthew Yglesias isn’t looking to accommodate, he thinks we ought to take more street back from the cars and use it for bus lanes, bike lanes, and light rail. Megan McArdle stokes flames by asking whether drivers or cyclists suck worse, and comes to the easy conclusion that it’s the drivers, and further that it’s D.C. drivers in particular. I disagree with Ms. McArdle on a variety of issues, but we’re solidly in concurrence on this one.

Ezra Klein draws attention to a study finding countries with more cyclists are safer. Sounds about right to me, the more familiar people are with mixed traffic, the less freaked out they should be sharing the road. Additionally, as more and more people turn to bicycles for relief from rising fuel costs, we’ll have a larger, more affluent, and therefore more powerful constituency. Sucks that you need numbers and money to get anyone in power to take notice, but that’s life. Mayor Fenty is already a strong supporter of alternative transportation, I’m hoping that between the growing ranks of cyclists and smart, progressive administrations we should see some real improvements in infrastructure.

And then come the comments (some of them mine) where each side shouts J’accuse!, and describes how they saw this bike/car run this red light/stop sign etc, etc. It’s predictable, like a fight in a small town bar that keeps happening between the same drunks over habitual insults and injuries. I frequently throw a punch or two, because shit, someone is wrong on the internet. But every so often, a stranger will walk through the door and throw down with something really special that just leaves jaws on the floor.

This country is not set up for bikers like Europe is, with its smaller city streets and huge population of bikers. Biking to work in most American cities is just taking an unnecessary risk. Go bike on a bike path for fun, but get the hell out of traffic.

Yeah that’s nothin’ I haven’t heard before. Blow it out your…

Biking to work is an affectation, and selfish in many ways. Look at the consequences to the family of that poor girl who was killed.

Wha-wha-Whatdidyoujustsay?!?

It IS selfish to unneccessarily risk your life if you have a family. Of course you can find cities in Europe that are not good for biking — such as Paris and Prague. Those that are, and have by COMMON practice and agreement, a large urban bike population, like Amsterdam, are the ones I was speaking of.

Paris, huh?

On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city’s image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.

Hey, those Frenchie bike rental stations look just like… ah nevermind. It should be noted that we do have common agreements, called laws, that lay out how we share the road. But g’head, continue.

Here, biking to work is eccentric, and therefore often done by people trying to strike a pose. There are some people who refuse to go along with the herd on most things, insisting that every single thing they do be marked by the stamp of their individuality. In my experience, that’s the person who bikes to work in a large U.S. city.

I was angry about this yesterday, but now I can’t stop giggling. Put aside the laughable Eisenhower-era attack on “eccentricity”, or the false equivalencies of cycling with eccentricity, or eccentricity with vanity. Put aside the fact that anyone who’s paying attention knows that your “stamp of individuality” in modern America comes from the products and media you consume. I mean really, c’mon, whattaya new here?

What I’m really curious about is this person’s experience. I know plenty of folks that ride to work, and I read a bunch who care to write about it. Many do it because they love bicycling, some do it because they hate driving, some do it to reduce their impact on the environment, and some believe it’s great for their health. Self sufficiency comes up pretty frequently, as does the need to respond to our country’s addiction to oil. Some even see it as an alternative to war, ambitious! At least one person believes that it saved his life. There are as many reasons for biking to work as there are people doing it, and most of us have more than one.

But I have never, ever heard anyone say, “I bike to work because it’s an expression of my individuality.” I’ve heard people say that about their hair, their clothes, their tattoos, their jewelry, their kitchens, their barbeques, and their lawns. People say it about their cars and motorcycles every day. After all, what’s a Hummer but an attempt to show the world your hairy swingin’ grapefruit-filled ballsack? But I’ve never heard anything remotely like, “I’m going to ride my bike to work and show the world who I am!” (Well, okay, there’s these guys, but to be fair, lookin’ hip is their business, and business is good.)

Which leads me to conclude that this commenter’s “experience” isn’t worth a shot of warm spit.

…in a city like DC, there is ample public transport. Taking a bike is not a practical choice, but some other kind of choice.

Au contraire, mon frer. If we leave the Brookland station of the Red Line, you on the train, and I on my bike, and we both head for Capitol South, I will have been waiting for you for about 20 minutes when you emerge from the station, and that’s if I’ve waited at every red light on the way. I will also be eating a breakfast sandwich, paid for with the $4 I’ve saved from not taking the train both ways. I will also have an extra one to three hours of my day that you do not have, due to your slower mode of transit, and the hour that you now need to spend at the gym to make up for your suffocating cubicle-based job. A gym which, I must remind you, requires lighting, air conditioning, and power so that you can watch television while spinning your hamster wheel.

Tell me again about practicality?

And so long as we’re talking public transportation, let’s return to your original point about selfishness. If you’re driving your automobile (I’ll even assume that it’s not a Ford Excursion for sake of argument) to work in this city, contributing to congestion, pollution, lack of parking, and a general decline in the quality of life for everyone else when there’s ample public transport available, then who’s being selfish?

If you drive a car and are honest about your observations, you know that the lives of bikers are entirely dependent on your driving accuracy and attention in a way that other drivers’ lives are not — you are behind tons of steel, and they are exposed. It’s just that simple — a huge risk, with utterly predictable tragic consequences for some bikers and their poor families. It’s just not a risk worth defending.

Living life in a steel box, decoupled from people and terrain, spending precious moments of a finite life hating everything is not worth defending. Vainly attempting to meet our transportation needs by escalating car-centric solutions is not worth defending. Destroying the livability of a city by accommodating the selfish desires of suburban car commuters, at the expense of our quality of life, is not worth defending. Continuing this way of life that’s wrecking the environment, changing the climate, miring us in middle-east geopolitical conflicts and transferring trillions of dollars of our wealth into the coffers of foreign dictators while our economy continues to degrade is not worth defending.

Riding bikes certainly involves some risk, but the stakes are high and the upside is huge. I think the risk is well worth defending.

When Rebbie and I began to put together our plans for total bicycle domination, one element of that plan was service self-sufficiency. Over the past year, I’ve accumulated tools, built a solid workstand, spent a lot of time at the Park Tools website becoming familiar with procedures I haven’t done yet (and then doing them), and generally becoming a more proficient mechanic. Whatever we’ve spent on tools has easily paid for itself in tune-ups and repairs, and honestly I just really enjoy workin’ on bikes.

Until very recently, though, I hadn’t built or trued a wheel. It’s always something I’ve wanted to learn, but felt was beyond my skills. A couple months ago, I decided the time had come to enter the world of wheel building. I was doing some research and getting ready to drop some cash on tools, when a post on a forum steered me across the internet towards Roger Musson’s book, aptly titled Wheelbuilding. Roger is a professional wheelbuilder, and owns a shop called Wheelpro in the UK. Reviews and feedback seemed positive and enthusiastic, so I purchased it (as a PDF, which is both immediately gratifying and environmentally beneficial) and dove into Mr. Musson’s book.

It paid off immediately. The book has plans for the stand he uses (here’s a fine example that someone else built), instructions for how to make a nipple driver from a cheap flat-head screwdriver, and his “plans” for a wheel dishing gauge (made from cardboard, duct tape, and a pencil). The one thing I haven’t gotten to yet are the truing gauges. His are made from wood and small pieces of plastic. Mine thus far are made from my daughter’s Legos, they work splendidly. The total cost of all these tools ended up being less than $40 in cash, and maybe an extra weekend in time to construct them, but time’s worth investing and I believe that tools one builds are more valuable than tools one buys.

A few weeks ago, a friend of ours, who had been complaining that her old heavy mountain bike made it impossible to keep up with her husband on rides, brought her bike over to get tuned. I swapped out her wheels and knobbies for an extra pair I had laying around, lighter and sporting road slicks and told her to hold on to them and see if they improved things. Her wheels were lower end than mine, single-walled rims with Shimano Alivio hubs and galvanized steel spokes, but I figured they’d be perfect for practice. I disassembled them completely, cleaned everything up, Naval-Jellied the corrosion off the spokes, and repacked her hubs. Then life got busy and it had to be set aside.

Yesterday I got a chance to return to it. I’d trued a couple wheels by then to get a feel for how the tools were working, and to get some hands-on experience before taking on a total rebuild. With my wife and the kids downstairs watching the Princess Bride, I set about re-lacing the back wheel, tensioning the spokes, and bringing it back to a state of lateral and radial truth.

True Enough, My Friends!

The lacing and initial tensioning took a little over an hour and a half, and would’ve taken less time if I’d noticed that I’d alternated the pulling spokes in the wrong order. The truing took much longer, and I had to loosen all the spokes and start over a couple times. But even as a first-timer I could still pull it off, so long as I was willing to put the time into starting again. Screwing up and starting over with something like carpentry, by comparison, often involves sacrificing time and material to gain experience, with even surviving pieces carrying the irreparable mistakes. Being able to undo mistakes is sweet.

I found building the wheel intense in that it required fine focus, but also relaxing by virtue of its methodical, iterative nature. Bringing the wheel to the correct spoke tension, and seeing it become straighter and rounder, little by little, reminded me somewhat of seeing a black and white print come up in a tray of softly rocking developer.

And in the end, it came out beautifully. The wheel is strong, round and straight. I’m looking forward to taking on the front wheel, which should be easier since it has no dish. And then with that first pair built, I can turn my attention to building the wheels for our next longtail. DT Swiss straight gauge black spokes laced to XT disc hubs and Velocity Cliffhanger rims. Yummy. I don’t expect that I’ll be particularly fast or efficient, but I bet the time I spend building them will be enjoyable.

I agree with those who believe that life shouldn’t be about attaining goals or certificates or badges. Indeed, I’ve stated more than once that I don’t need no stinking badges. But at the same time, it is nice to hit a milestone from time to time, and this one’s a good one to reach. I’m sure over time, with patience and practice and repetition, I’ll gain skill and wisdom. I’ll look back and laugh at the fumbles, errors and ineptness of my early efforts. But this will always be the first wheel I built myself, and that makes it special.

Via the foyn folks at Car Free Days, check this out:

I’d say that’s worth more than a thousand words, eh?

Also, they’re drawing attention to a July 4th Cargo Bike Ride meeting at Pioneer Square at First and Yesler at high noon, partner. If it weren’t 2700 miles away and two days from now, I’d totally be there.

On the commute home last night:

• Coming up T St. NW, I come upon this fellow with his truck parked across the bike lane, which was both narrowing the lane for cars and forcing cyclists out into the traffic trying to get around his pickup. He had, oh, 8 bags of mulch or soil or something like that. I let him know that there was a parking spot 14 feet behind where he was double parked, and he yelled back that he was unloading. Evidently, he couldn’t be bothered to move those bags 14 extra feet, so commute traffic had to accommodate him.
• Don’t mistake my anecdotal evidence for real data, but I’m pretty sure that I’m one of the very few cyclists in D.C. who stop at lights and stop signs downtown. So I’m stopped at a light on New Hampshire, with about a foot and a half or so between me and the car stopped next to me. A woman on a road bike in business casual mode squeezes between me and the car, then blows through the intersection forcing cross traffic to brake. I only realized she was shooting the narrow gap between the car and I as it was happening, because she didn’t see fit to break her ninja silence at any point during her approach. She looked annoyed with me as she snaked past.
• Coming down the east side of the Taylor St. overpass, where it crosses over the Red Line, I’m doing about 30, keeping up with traffic, and taking the lane. Much to my astonishment, a yuppie scumbag (now now, no need for that) young professional in a Yukon passes me on a pretty tight part of the street, with traffic oncoming, giving me about a foot of space on my left. Since I’m on pace with traffic, I actually have to slow down to let him back in (or not get hit by him as he floats right, though I can’t say for sure if he’d have actually hit me). I look into the Yuke’s window to see if he’s doing this because he’s pissed at me, and he’s got the blankest, most apathetic look on his face imaginable.

Some days, there’s just no winning. Last night’s ride didn’t trip any serious pressure valves, but it did depress me enough to consider riding the Red Line for the rest of this week to relax and maybe catch up on some reading. I woke up and shook that off, it’s a beautiful day and I couldn’t let the jerks steal my morning ride.

But it did get me thinking about whether or not it was realistic to expect anything but ignorance, arrogance, and self-centeredness from our single-strand society. If I’m not well acquainted with the people who provide my sustenance, or my entertainment, and my job doesn’t involve me directly providing anything to the people in my community, then where’s the value in kindness, consideration, or humility? Why wouldn’t I adopt a philosophy of I got mine, now fuck you? What’s the penalty for treating my neighbors and fellow citizens contemptuously in the pursuit of my own goals, or the benefit of putting my own desires aside for the good of the community (much less my country or the world)?

I mean, aside from avoiding a physical attack. But is that what it’s coming down to, where the only reason for me to signal a turn is so that I don’t end up having another driver pull a bat or a gun on me? Is that the end state of a society where we dispense money and fuel from machines that say “Thank You”, order every scrap of our Chinese-made clothes and every shiny gadget from the internet, get our food from factories a thousand miles away, and only find pleasure in entertainment made by professionals? That courtesy is self-defense, and nothing more?

(I should make clear that, for me, the answer to “why” is: “My kindness, consideration, and humility shouldn’t be a response to you as a reward or punishment. That’s about who I am, and who I want to be, not who you are or whether or not you deserve it.” I should also make clear that I don’t think I’m particularly overflowing in those qualities, but I care enough to keep workin’ on it. I don’t know what other people’s answer to those questions are.)

Makes one feel like heading into eastern Pennsylvania, growing a mustache-less beard, and learning to live Amish just to see what it’s like. Hell, I don’t even need a barn, but I’d sure like to raise one in the neighborhood just to build something with my neighbors and share some lemonade. Ya know? It also makes me want to redouble my efforts to find a local bike shop in which I don’t feel like a plebe diminished by the whithering gaze of a barrista with a bone through his nose because I made the mistake of ordering a “large” coffee instead of a “venti”. Or maybe to open one.

Of course, I could be wrong, and I’ll probably do something on the way home tonight out of obliviousness that will convince someone else that the world is gone to Hell. And maybe I just rode through the wake of a few people having a bad day. Fuck do I know, anyway?

I had an errand to run downtown today, and I got an early jump on it so I could ride in the relative cool of the morning before we head towards the upper 80’s (which is a nice break from the upper 90’s we’ve had for the past couple days). My old commute to Capitol South flowed down the east side of the city, through residential areas that I’ve found to be pretty mellow traffic-wise. Often I’d float along, keeping up with traffic or even passing it by, and notice that the people in the cars weren’t having any fun. I’d sorta feel sorry for ‘em.

This morning’s route cut southwest across the city on some much busier streets, which left me feeling more vulnerable and brought my adrenaline up a bit. I found trouble on the way, getting into a spirited disagreement with a fellow commuter. The odd thing was that on any of the multi-lane, really busy streets, I was able to ride in and with traffic without trouble. But going south on 4th St NW through beautiful LeDroit Park (which is a slow, narrow street featuring a series of speed bumps), a motorist gave me an unfriendly honk before passing me dangerously. He also advised me that I should be riding on the sidewalk, and that the street was no bike lane. He also said, “fuck” quite a bit between the other words.

Now, the gentleman clearly was unaware of the municipal codes regarding bicycling on city streets, or the law regarding passing another vehicle safely and legally. Traffic ahead of us was stopped, passing me gained him nothing, so it’s unclear what advantage he was pursuing.

But none of that concerned me much at that point. What did concern me was the rather cavalier regard this hostile motorist had for my safety. Closely following the startled fear was intense, red-hot anger that I associate with car commuting. I loudly explained to him that I was well within my rights to be riding on the road, and that I was traffic.

It would be a lie of omission if I didn’t also mention that I used two shorthand terms that 1.) accused him of having sexual relations with his mother, and 2.) asserted that he was a provider of oral sex to men. (Please don’t construe this as meaning that I disparage those who are skilled at fellatio, it makes the world a better place, salute.) He attempted to rebut my points, but I let him know that I was no longer interested in continuing the discussion, and then invited him to stop talking. The words “fuck” and “fucking” were sprinkled liberally throughout my invitation.

Well, that didn’t get either of us anywhere. I’m reasonably certain that our discussion didn’t result in his rethinking his beliefs on sharing the road, and for my part I came away trying to remember how that Supreme Court decision came out regarding handguns in D.C., and whether or not I could apply for a bike-mount holster permit. And I don’t like either of those results.

One of the reasons I despise driving in the city is that driving among people who are casual about safety and oblivious to the flow of the world around them annoys the shit out of me, which accumulates over the course of the trip and converts to rage. And I don’t like being that way, especially when I’m piloting a few thousand pounds of metal. Bicycling, on the other hand, frequently melts away whatever concerns I had when I got on the bike, and leaves me feeling more alive at the end of the trip than when I started. What’s not to like about that?

So this is disconcerting. I don’t want to go back to the world of road rage, and I don’t want to inspire it in my fellow citizens. I’m mostly friendly to motorists and give them the benefit of the doubt when they violate my vehicular rights, because everyone makes mistakes, right? I’ve certainly pulled boneheaded maneuvers.

But there’s thousands of drivers in this town whose attitudes towards sharing the road with cyclists range between dull-edged apathy to aggressive hostility. It’s beyond my abilities to do anything about them, so I’m trying to figure out what to do about me, but some part of me thinks that without strong infrastructural support and traffic enforcement from the city, this is just how it’s going to be. Until the city actually treats us like traffic, the public won’t either.

I don’t know, ultimately I need to learn how to blow these things off, especially in those circumstances when my gorge rises because I feel like my safety’s been threatened. What do you do?

NOTE: I updated verb tense in a couple places, and made a couple edits for clarity.