Cycle Commuting – Ten Steve Rules

Hmm, somehow I missed the initial post over at Commute by Bike about ten rules of urban commuting, but Dottie at “Let’s Go Ride a Bike” flagged it. Unable to resist a real or imagined challenge, I think my own version of “Ten Rules” is somewhat different than the one that Dottie felt missed the boat. Here goes:

Plan Ahead – Bike commuting is not high tech, but planning ahead can greatly increase your enjoyment of the commute. If the commute isn’t enjoyable, you won’t keep doing it. A good plan, incorporating the other rules, is the cornerstone of an enjoyable commute that you’ll come to love. Besides some of the obvious things such as clothing, bike equipment and such, decide what you do when something goes wrong. Like really wrong. Even the most experienced bike commuter can get a flat tire in the rain, or have a chain break, or brakes that suddenly don’t work right. If the plan is to call for help, make sure help will be at the other end of that phone line. There is no AAA for urban bike commuters.

Plan Your Commute

Run Tests – Assuming you have access to a car; urban bike commuting need not be a giant “all at once” commitment. For example, just taking clothing as an example, you can ride in work clothes, you can ride with “cycling comfy” clothes of various sorts, and while doing the latter, you can either bring your work clothes along or bring them to work separately. Try the various approaches to find what you think works best for you. Try different routes – drive the route candidates at the proper time (imagining you are cycling it while you drive), ride it on a weekend or after work, and experiment. Use Google “Streetview.” Testing commute elements will give you the experience you’ll need to focus on the task at hand without getting stressed out. Remember, cycling should be fun and safe!

Test Various Clothing Combos
Maybe not all at Once, However

Don’t Overbuy Early – Some people, having made a plan, will start buying all sorts of stuff for their bicycle commute. Panniers, packs, fancy lights, tool kits, special cycling clothing, special commute bikes, and so on. I counsel stinginess. The problem, buying all this stuff, is a lot of it will not suit your own particular commute requirements and approach, but there will be OTHER stuff that you WILL find helps the commute experience. Wait. Don’t buy more than the basics (you really DO need lights if you’ll be riding in the dark, but don’t buy expensive ones). One advantage of deferring commute-related purchases is you don’t have to lug all that stuff around until you really understand how you’re going to use it. Maybe you will discover you don’t NEED those tires that are impervious to pot holes. Maybe you’ll discover that the $1500 commute bike is not for you and your existing bike actually works better, especially after a few small additions.

Hold Off on Buying a Lot of Stuff at First

Get Smart – Of COURSE you know how to ride a bike, and how to adjust it, and so on. Still, keep in mind professional cyclists benefit from coaching. Come to think of it, professional cyclists use education far more than “regular” bike riders. Take a Bike Ed course, even if you’ve been riding for years. Trust me on this, you WILL learn something that will help you get there safer, and easier, and with less in the way of unexpected failures. Your coach will see things you can improve that you will NEVER see. My coach found bike adjustments that helped me after I’d been riding for many years, and found simple things that help me daily on the street. The added confidence will help that ride be just a little safer and a little more fun. Little things really DO mean a lot. Looking at it another way, if you are already “practically perfect in every way,” you’ll confirm it. If not, why delay?

Get Smart, Get Educated!

Start at a Good Time – Don’t make your first commute on the hottest or coldest day of the year. If I had to pick a “best” date, I’d pick late spring, after the schools have let out for summer, when there’s lots of light, on a dry day, and before it gets hot. If you’re having a good time commuting, you can always figure out how to deal with tougher situations afterwards when you have the basics nailed. For your first commute, if you’ve planned and tested, make that run based on the results. Keep in mind that driving part of the distance and riding part way can lower the threshold of that first commute even further. You want success.


Don't Pick a Morning Like This for Your First Commute


Be Flexible – Once you start commuting for real, you’ll quickly discover that some of your plans and test results don’t turn out as you expected. Maybe there’s a traffic light that won’t change. Maybe it takes longer than you expected. Maybe you can’t park the bike where you expected. Maybe you get sweatier riding in work clothes than you expected. Maybe they started construction work on your route. Well, all these things have solutions. It’s your job to find clever solutions that are consistent with your cycling being fun and safe. Commuting is always the same until it changes, but it changes often.


Perhaps a Route Change is in Order


Optimize – A corollary to flexibility is the principle that there is almost always a better way to make a given commute. If your commute is more than a couple of miles, you will see alternate routes and short cuts. You’ll find clothing combinations that work better. You’ll want to get there just a little quicker. You’ll find a route variant that is simply nicer. You’ll be able to deal with more weather situations. I’ve been making my “new” commute for well over a year and it is a rare week I don’t find some way to make it a little better. I find tweaks that reduce traffic stress. I redo my clothing arrangements. It’s always something. I can’t BELIEVE how ignorant I was a year ago, much less two years ago.



Dutch Says LISTEN to
Other Commuters, But VERIFY





 Join the Club, but Take a Few Grains of Salt – If you work at a workplace of any size, or live in an urban area, or read blogs, you won’t be the only one who commutes by bike. Your fellow bike commuters are sources for profound and wonderful knowledge, and a smart commuter will take advantage of the wisdom. While each commuter’s experience will differ from yours, listen carefully to what they say, and apply your own experience to combine it with the things you have learned on your own. In the words of Ronald Reagan; “trust, but verify.” Everyone’s experience differs a little.

Diverge and Digress – Cycle commuting, particularly if you have a longer distance to ride, can represent a large portion of the time you devote to cycling. What’s more, if you are doing it properly, it can become routine. I’ll freely admit that developing a more reliable way of triggering a traffic signal in the dark may lack a certain devil-may-care cachet, but it breaks up the routine. To spice things up, make a point of doing non-commute cycling, “just for the fun of it.” That can be as simple as taking the long way home, or taking up some sort of trail riding, or whatever else keeps all this fresh for you. If you lack inspiration, I suggest cyclocross. Mud and guts and tossing your cookies and all that. On second thought, maybe cyclocross isn’t for everyone.



Cyclocross Can Make Your Commute Seem Even MORE Relaxing!

 Traffic is a Many Splendored Thing – Some people think you can only cycle on bike paths, or bike lanes, or in some special circumstances. If you cycle commute, you’ll almost certainly hear comments along these lines – mostly from people that do NOT cycle commute. In the real world, a transportation/utility cyclist will deal with many different situations over time. Apply your own road experience from driving and you know that motorists are trained not to run into things. YOUR JOB, as a commute cyclist, is to make it easy and un-dramatic for motorists to apply their training and experience. Similarly, YOUR JOB is to learn how to make it easy for people in parked cars NOT to have to say “OMG” due to you hitting a door they just opened in front of you without looking. Similarly, YOUR JOB is to learn how to not hit an unlit jogger or skunk on that path in the dark, or the clueless dweeb riding a bike the wrong way in your bike lane. Build on your experience and follow the other rules, and this will, perhaps, be the simplest rule of all to follow.

Do NOT Run Over an Unlit Stinky in the Dark!

Cyclocross Observations

Tires - If you use your commuter bike for cyclocross, you might wind up changing a lot of tires if you only have one set of wheels. Friday night, I took off my commuter tires and put on knobbies. I also took off all the other various commuting items. It didn’t take long. On Sunday night, it seemed to take a LOT longer to change back. With four local races, that would be 16 tire changes. I don’t NEED that much practice changing tires. Racing might be fun, but changing tires gets old.

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Run Over - Unlike commuting, getting run down from behind in a cyclocross race is something that occurs fairly often. When you hear “on your left,” you better not swerve, drift, skid, or bounce left. Go OVER that root! Much more than in traffic, the ability to throw a head check without swerving is an important skill, because sometimes an “on your left” will be followed by one rider passing. Sometimes it’ll be followed by three passing. I didn’t get run down, but I saw a number of overtaking collisions. Wearing a helmet would be smart even if it weren’t required.

Sore Muscles - How exactly do you get sore after 45 minutes of riding around in the grass and mud, when a much longer commute has no equivalent effect? This one is a mystery to me. I figured that riding around in a park would use pretty much the same muscles as riding the same bike on the road. If you haven’t cyclocrossed before, pick the shortest race they’ll let you enter.

Water Bottle – While a bottle carrier/bottle may interfere with your ability to cleanly toss the bike onto your shoulder, a small sport bottle in a rear jersey pocket wouldn’t be a bad idea. I’m not sure it makes sense to bring along anything more than this. You get a flat tire or a mechanical failure, the race is probably over.

False Fable - The fable of the tortoise and the hare does not apply to cyclocross. This is a race where the hares rule. Slow and steady types are called “lappers.”

Belgian Invasion - Where do all those Ridley frames come from? It seemed like half the frames in the race were made by Ridley. There were a few of just about everything, but Ridleys seemed as common as Huffys at a WalMart. Ironically, according to the Ridley website, there are NO authorized Ridley dealers at all in Texas!

Cleanup - It’s no harder to clean up nasty, sticky mud than regular commute grit. Hose it down with a low pressure garden hose; a washcloth and a wheel brush on the tires will get most of the junk off. Do that BEFORE you take your post-race shower. After the shower, use Simple Green and a cloth to remove residual grime.

It’s a Small World, After All – Entirely by coincidence, I ran across an engineer who was also entering cyclocross for the very first time. We took Lamaze class together 20+ years ago in California. Time has been kind to him & his wife.

They Like to Get Dirty

Photo shows why you want a lot of mud clearance on a cyclocross bike

The photo was "as at the finish" with no artistic rearrangement

Race plan followed. The mud pit is scary, but also the most fun of anything on the course. RatTrap looks like he got some great videos of all kinds of stuff I was a little too preoccupied to notice. The "traction" setting on the tires was the better choice, at least for me.

It's too bad it doesn't snow this time of year in North Texas. I HIGHLY recommend this sort of tomfoolery to all, as long as they don't take it too seriously.

One thing that did surprise me was the number of odd noises and aspects that Buddy exhibited for the very first time. I had gears skipping. I thought I had a broken rear spoke until I realized about the third lap that the "broken spoke" was actually gravel stones hitting the aluminum down tube with a loud "ping." It only happened on a very specific segment of the course. I fear I'll have a lot of paint touchup ahead. If you plan to cyclocross, a strip of duct tape down the front of the down tube might be a good idea to reduce the paint damage.

And Watch for Anna's report! She's racing tomorrow. You go girl!

More later. Right now, I feel like taking a long, hot shower. In the meantime, see what RatTrap had to say.

Watch for Anna

She's crossing tomorrow, here. Singlespeed which is extra tough.

Preview from the bamacross site. Don't puke, Anna! You'll love it, AFTER it's over. While it's going, just keep going...

Don't try this at home, on a Dutch bike OR a road bike...

Saturday Objectives

In order of priority, cross race objectives PLAN (thanks, ChipSeal) includes:

• Don't break anything, and ESPECIALLY don't discover cause to regret my tetanus shots aren't up to date
• Don't puke, at least not on the racecourse
• Don't get laughed off the racecourse - I'll try to do that shoulder thing and not just push the bike around stuff
• Don't get silly and insist on riding all the way HOME unless it seems right - most every bike travels attached to a car at some point in its existence. At least we'll have ridden TO the race under our own power.

FRIDAY UPDATE - Gosh those cream-coloured knobby Vittoria tires look cute! I also remember why I took them off and replaced them with the Continentals for commuting. When I put the Vittorias on, my daughter noticed they had a "traction" direction and a "speed" direction. Since I figure I didn't have any of the latter anyway, I picked the "traction" direction. That seems consistent with the first element of the race plan, possibly at the expense of the second. I have the brakes set at the maximum amount of clearance they'll handle and still actually work AS brakes. V brakes and road levers is a touchy combination.

NEW MOTTO: "PLAN TO RACE, RACE TO PLAN!"

Night photo of Buddy, stripped down and ready to rumble

(well, except for the lights which I'll need to get to the train)

Bad Pavement Makes Serendipity

This afternoon promised to be somewhat of a non event. It's been nice this week, unlike the entire month of October. Not quite chilly mornings and temperate afternoons. I know Rantwick claims life is enhanced by smooth pavement, but rough stuff like that shown in the photo also can make things a little brighter. It gets us all to slow down a little and interact with the neighborhood.

Coming home, I'd made the turn from FM 1709 (also known as Keller Parkway International Raceway) onto Anita, headed south, prior to turning onto E Hill Street. The photo was shot from Hill Street, looking West. You can see where I started my turn, at "1."

This used to be a nice, fast left turn, prior to a similarly fast right turn on to Gloria. Southbound, all the stop signs are in your favor. Nowadays, it's a little trickier. Now, I wait for any oncoming, northbound traffic to clear the gravel moat so I can sneak down the gutter pan onto Hill Street (carefully following the line of arrows) without having to do a cyclocross shoulder carry or risk bending a wheel. Commuting is NOT a cyclocross race, though I am occasionally tempted. As a wrong-way gutter bunny, debris in the gutter pan bothers me not at all. I just make sure I go slow until I reach the SMOOTH pavement beyond.

Today, by chance, towards me came a lady in a new VW Beetle going northbound . She was clearly intimidated by the gravel moat, creeping forward across the construction so as to not damage the paintwork or suspension of her very nice car. All this while, I was waiting at "1," with one of my weird left turn arm signals. As she pulled up alongside, she smiled and said out her open window "you'll pop a tire if you go through this!" I replied, "I'll be careful." I thought about elaborating, but I'd been waiting for a while and didn't want to unclip from the pedals for a long chat. Little did she know that I was about to make ChipSeal tempted to make a special post about salmon masquerading as cyclists, and sneak on to Hill Street without a care in the world just the moment she proceeded past me. Apparently, it didn't occur to her that my left arm, weirdly hung out, was signaling an intention to turn left rather than cross the moat. A block later, I decided to return for a shot of the scene of the crime. I'd missed the opportunity to capture the scene with the Beetle and its nice driver present. Smooth pavement doesn't prompt friendly motorists to warn cyclists about popping tires. Instead, they just want to zoom by them.

This delay due to rough pavement was serendipitous a second time. When I turned on to Gloria, what did I see, off on the sidewalk to my left, but what was either a middle schooler or a racing dwarf on a bmx bike, riding down the sidewalk. We waved and then I asked "you ready to race?" He smiled and laid the hammer on. Yup, whooped by a middle schooler, but I'll bet he was nearly as pleased as the occasional dog that gets to chase me as far as the corner of its fenced yard. He certainly stopped with a flourish when he got to his crowd of admiring fans. Another pleasant interaction on a pleasant day - due to rough pavement. Actually, due to no pavement at all.

Bikes really ARE different...

Six Days to Cross

Looks like fun, eh? Maybe I'll not complain if it is dry leading up to this on November 7. I just hope I don't break a wheel because it'd be a long walk home...

http://www.txbra.org/db/events/2009BrokenFilmsCross3.doc

Z Boaz Park in Fort Worth. I figure if Buddy and I ride down to the early TRE, we can then dawdle to the race course and be fresh for the race.

Buddy's Design Point

It's coming. November 7. Boaz Park in Fort Worth. You gotta do it once if you have a cyclocross bike, even if it's mainly a work commute bike. Even if the OLD guys make you feel REALLY old. 14 days from now. Personally, I think it gives the term "Lovely Bicycle" a whole new meaning.

the first 109 seconds captures the essence of cyclocross
the rest hammers on the point in case you missed it

I figure I can't come in worse than last. It's the first race ever for both Buddy and me...
details
Rab, say hello if you recognize me . I'll be the really old slow guy on the Specialized Tricross Expert.