Mount Washington Century today!

My friend Lauren brought this ride to my attention and suggested that I might like to do it with other Ciclismo Classico folks.... But since no one else from CC is doing it, she asked me to lead it on behalf of CC. I'm just having breakfast now on my way to the ride. I don't expect more than a couple people to turn out in my group, though.

The trouble is that this is also the weekend of the Pan Mass Challenge ride, and Ciclismo always has a sizeable contingent there.

It's a little chilly this morning, and cloudy. Weather reports call for rain here and there.

I left Gem, Elsie, and Kim sleeping at the North Conway Grand, where they'll spend the day. Shouldn't be hard for them to keep busy, since the hotel has 3 very nice pools, and it's right in the middle of a great outlet mall!

I'm going to try to do blog updates during the ride today. Now to pay for my oatmeal and hit the road!

Bike Friday ride to Boston

Click through to see more photos!
Originally uploaded by ahconway

Today was the first of Bike Friday rides into the center of Boston from various points north, south, and west. I rode up to Lexington to the start of one of the rides (sure, it passed right through Arlington anyway, but why not do a longer ride?)

After days of crazy thunderstorms and a persistent downpour that soaked me to the bone yesterday, today was perfect. Whew!

There were probably almost 20 riders in Lexington, but we picked up more in Arlington, Davis Square, Porter Square, and Harvard Square, and by the time we crossed the Longfellow Bridge, our group was probably almost 100 strong.

The ride was delightful, and I had some nice chats with people along the way.

When we converged upon Government Center, there was little fanfare, but lots of bikers, free breakfast, and some tents set up by sponsoring vendors - nothing exciting, by any means.

All in all, a really nice morning!

For next year, though, here are a few things they could improve:

• Get police escorts who know the route, and the neighborhood. As friendly as they were, our two escorts were clearly based in Boston, and didn't know anything about Cambridge, let alone the route we were riding.
• Plan a better route through Harvard Square. The route our guide took us on was circuitous, going round the bottom of Cambridge Common, and eventually heading back across Mass Ave before finally eeking over to Broadway.
• Have a plan for what happens at red lights. Our escort stopped traffic for the first dozen or so riders, and the rest were left to their own devices. The group was split several times, and following groups went the wrong way. Made me wonder if these guys had ever escorted a big city ride before. Which leads me to my next point:
• Train escorts and guides in how to lead a big city ride. It's not enough to go out and ride the route, shouting encouragement and directions here and there. Particularly with a group like this, when everyone thinks they're better qualified and persistently shouts tips to the leaders (I somehow resisted that urge!)
• Publicize the ride better. From the lot that showed up, it seemed to me that at least 80 percent of the participating riders are regular riders, if not regular commuters. That tells me that they all heard about it the same way I did - through bike advocacy channels. Next time, let's get more novices! A police escort should be a nice way to get a nervous rider out and riding.
• Be more clear in communications. I was thoroughly confused by the information provided about this ride. It took me several emails just to confirm where my branch started, and where. Turns out that all the essential info was embedded into the Google Map.

Despite these little areas for improvement, it seemed that the ride was a great success, and I'm looking forward to doing the next one in August!

Here's a little Youtube video I shot this morning.

Redline d460 29er

The bike I rented in Portland recently was really fun. It was a Redline d460 29er. I'd expected a standard hybrid like the one I'd rented in St. Louis, but it was a real treat to try a new sort of bike.

What's different about a 29er? A 29er is a bike with 29-inch wheels. A bit of an odd size, I'm not exactly sure when this trend started, but it's definitely growing in popularity. The guy at the bike shop said it was a little new to him, but people like 29ers because they roll easier through holes and other small obstacles, and they have a different feel from 26-inch wheels. It also seems that most 29ers have other quirky traits - the one I rented had wide knobby tires like a full-fledged mountain bike, but no suspension (standard on MTBs these days) and a single chainring in front with a seven-speed cluster in back.

Despite having only a third of the gears you'd expect on a modern MTB, I found it very easy to ride, both on road and off. The tires were pumped up for easy pedaling on the road, but they still had plenty of grip on the gravelly trail surface. There were lots of switchbacks and I was riding cautiously, but I never had any problems at all. I also found the hills to be easy to ride in the bottom two gears. Lacking any suspension made the ride a bit of a bone-shaker, but the steel frame softened that a bit.

It's great to see a quirky bike like this from a mainstream maker like Redline! This isn't even the most avant garde of their offerings, which include various single-speeds for use on-road and off.

I still consider myself a roadie, but this bike definitely made me want to invest in something a little trail-worthy!

Portland Oregon Ride

My business trip to Portland is almost at an end. Work went well, and we managed to have a couple very nice dinners to boot.

Of course, I was very excited about experiencing some of the cycling scene while I was here, and I had a chance to do that on Sunday morning. My hotel (the Doubletree near the Convention Center) is nothing to rave about, and the surrounding area is also unremarkable, but it's a very easy walk over the Steel Bridge (that is, the dedicated foot & bike bridge underneath), or a quick ride on the tram to Old Town.

So on Sunday, I was up early and walked over for a nice breakfast at Cafe Bijou, then went to Waterfront Bicycles to hire a bike for the morning. I was lucky to be as early as I was, since there was already a queue at 15 mins past opening, and I got one of the last rentals they had on hand. I was allocated a hybrid of some sort, but then I spied a Redline 29er and got that instead! The staff there handled the fracas admirably and fairly, and I was all kitted out in less than 15 mins or so. The person who set me up recommended that I ride up to Forest Park and do the Lief Erikson trail, a wide hardpack gravel road up along a beautiful forested mountain ridge north of town. He marked a good route on a free Portland Bike Map and I was off!

The route through town took me through some delightful neighborhoods and up a reasonably steep hill to the entrance to the park. The grid system was very easy to navigate, and it certainly helps that the streets in that area are numbered going one way and alphabetical the other! At some point, I also picked up a series of signs pointing to the park.

When I reached the entrance to the park, I was glad to find a water fountain, since I hadn't brought any water with me. Trail continued uphill, and the surface was a hardpacked gravel, with some really rocky, bumpy bits. Beautiful trail, though, with glimpses of the river down below through the thick forest. It continues about 11 miles from one end to the other. I opted to turn around at the halfway point and head back downtown, where I tooled around for another hour or so before returning the bike.

I took the wonderful Max tram back to the hotel to prepare for an afternoon meeting after a mediocre burrito from a stand in the Saturday Market.

It was a really wonderful ride, and a great surprise to be able to spend time on an offroad trail, not just around town. I'd wanted to be immersed in the famous Portland bike culture, and I guess I did that - to the degree that such a thing is possible in a few hours. I had a great chat with the guy at the bike shop, and experienced lots of marked bike paths and dedicated infrastructure, and also headed out of town to share one of the city's greatest assets. The tram was also a high point, and apparently a boon for cyclists, since every ride I took had at least one cyclist onboard with his or her bike.

Note: I had hoped to do a guided tour by bike, and I was referred to Evan Ross of Portland Bicycle Tours. I didn't contact him until the night before, so by the time I heard back from him, I was already on my way back to the shop to return my rental bike. Once we had established contact, though, he seemed very responsive and friendly. Definitely worth a try next time!

Family bike ride to Lexington

Family bike ride to Lexington
Originally uploaded by ahconway

We managed to dodge the thunderstorms today and have a really nice extended family bike ride to Lexington. Amy brought her bike up from NY and rode on her own, with Gem & Ginny with me and Elsie on the Bobike Mini with Kim. I wasn't sure Elsie was still going to fit on the Mini at 2 years old and about 28 lbs, but it was a perfect fit with the footrests on their bottom hole.

Because of the thunderstorms that were forecast, we thought it best to take the car to the Park Ave access to the Minuteman path so there would be an easy retreat if we needed it (for those on 2 wheels, anyway). The plan worked great! We had a delightful ride out to Lexington, and by the time we arrived, there were big black clouds overhead. We played on the grass next to the Depot for a bit, then we had dinner at Bertucci's while rain came down.

By the time we were done with dinner, the rain had stopped, and we had a very nice ride back to the bikes, and Amy rode back up the hill with me and the older girls!

Great day for all.

Bike tour of St. Louis

Bike St. Louis street marking
View more pictures here

I was in St Louis last weekend for the long-anticipated reunion of the University City High School Jazz Band from 1983 - that's 25 years since we went on our grand tour of Europe, playing in Paris and Montreux.

The reunion was a pure delight, and it was wonderful to see everyone who turned up. It was like the realization of a dream I've had many, many times in which I'm playing with the band again, even improvising when my turn comes around! I may not have the chops I once did, but I think all (especially me!) were suprised to find that my improvisational skills are no better and no worse than they were back then.

I also took the opportunity to spend a full day exploring all my old haunts by bike. I arranged in advance to hire a bike from City Cycling Tours, recommended to me by someone on the St. Louis Bike Federation's Yahoo Group. Even though the company primarily runs guided tours of Forest Park, the proprietor, Chris, was all too willing to drop off a nice, well-maintained Giant city bike at my hotel and pick it up at the end of the day. He's a great St. Louis cycling advocate, and he recommended lots of routes for me. (I'll have to return for most of it, though... I'd love to do the Katy Trail, and even the Riverfront trail I was going to try was underwater that day!)

Even though I last biked through St Louis over a decade ago, everything came back to me quite easily. Apart from visiting my old High School stomping ground, I also really wanted to experience the routes put in place by the Bike St. Louis program and the new infrastructure around Forest Park.

I started in Forest Park, and found the trails to be extremely well maintained and marked. While I believe most (if not all) of the paths existed when I last rode them over a decade ago, the signs and markings are all quite new. They're shared-use paths, of course, but there's a network of running paths that also seem quite good. City Cycling Tours is based out of the park's Visitor Center, and while I didn't stop in, there seemed to be a lot of bikes available there, and lots bikers were stopping by to fill up water bottles and whatever else.

Riding around the park was pure bliss. There were lots of people out (it was Fathers' Day, and a beautiful one at that), but at no point did it seem crowded. I did at least two circuits around the periphery of the park, and criss-crossed the interior several times to visit the Art Museum, see the Muny, etc.

It did seem to me that there could have been more bike parking facilities, and better access to drinking fountains. When I stopped at the Zoo, the one standard bike rack was completely full, the one at the Art Museum was the same size and also quite full when I arrived.

The free Forest Park map was quite good, with clear indications of all the "wheel" and "heel" paths in addition to roads and landmarks. The one shortcoming, which Forest Park shares with the Bike St. Louis program, is that there's no obvious link between the two. The routes and markings in the park seem to be maintained by the park, and there was no clear link-up with the routes outside the park that I could see. In particular, it was a little tough to figure out how to navigate from the Forest Park path to the Bike St. Louis route at the northeast corner of the park. Maybe I missed it, but it would be nice to have signs inside the park that point to the external routes.

Generally, though, I was really impressed with the Bike St. Louis routes as well. I followed them through the Loop and down to the Arch and back through the Central West End, and they were very easy to find, understand, and follow. It was particularly nice to have the combination of street markings and signs pointing to various landmarks. One thing I found to be a bit odd was that many of the routes seem to be along main roads where the traffic would undoubtedly be really heavy on weekdays, and it seems like there could be better alternatives in more residential areas here and there.

When I was last in the area about ten years back, I distinctly remember thinking things had taken a turn for the worse since I last lived there in the 80s. This time, though, it's exactly the opposite! Especially around U. City and the Central West End, everything seemd to be thriving, clean, and beautiful!

I really look forward to returning with the family, and hopefully, it won't take another ten years to make that happen.

Here's a comprehensive photo set of my day out.

And here's a subset of shots of bike infrastructure.

And here's a more-or-less accurate account of my journey:

• Started at my hotel, the bizarre Cheshire Lodge
• Around Forest Park on new marked bike paths
• To the Arch via Bike St. Louis route
• Back via Central West End, where I had brunch at Companion (verygood, nice outside table, unfortunate Tropicana OJ - why not fresh?)
• Through the Loop
• To Delmar Harvard & Library
• All around University City Heights
• Took break in Lewis Park
• To U City High School
• To Jackson Park and Wash U
• Back to Forest Park
• To Art Museum, browsed impressionists
• To the Zoo, browsed animals
• After that, I finally returned the bike and took the rental car to alate lunch at White Castle and dessert at Ted Drewes!

Arlington hand-built cargo bike

Arlington hand-built cargo trike
Originally uploaded by ahconway

Kim spied this cargo bike outside the Fox Library in Arlington and snapped this photo. Interesting! I hope I can run across it myself and find out more!

Beating the traffic sensor

On my usual route to work, there's an intersection (the corner of Pleasant Street & Gray Street in Arlington), where I often get stuck at the light because it's triggered by a traffic sensor. I have two options: run the light when cross traffic allows, or press the pedestrian signal button, which stops traffic in all directions.

But this weekend, Kim and I rode down to Harvard Square along the same route and discovered that the Christiania trike and her Fahrrad Manufaktur bike combined will trigger the light! My Chrisitiania alone might do it, but I'll have to try that another time.

You have to celebrate the small triumphs.

Ricola Race

Ricola Race Peloton
Originally uploaded by ahconway

An otherwise dull business trip turned interesting for a couple hours last week, when it turned out that there was a pro cycle race in Basking Ridge, the very town where I was working! I had a few extra minutes to grab dinner, and it just so happened that the peloton was lining up for the Ricola Race at that very minute. Perhaps not the most exciting race, but it was a lovely evening, and it was a very well-run little criterium. Lots of small-town interest, with people watching from porches and dining on TV tables on their lawns. I had to leave halfway through to get back to work, but it was still lots of fun!

My sister on a bike!

Hooray! After I don't know how many years of encouraging my sister to get on a bike for fun and exercise, she's finally at it. She's had a nice bike for over a year now (a great first step!), and now she's actually hit the road. Go Amy go!

Cycling postman in Miami Beach

Cycling postman on Lincoln Road
Originally uploaded by ahconway

We spotted a few cycling postmen in Miami Beach last week. Interesting steel utility bikes with smaller front wheels. No helmets on the postmen, but I also didn't see any of them actually riding!

Book of Bicycle Tours in Maine

Because we have family in Maine and travel to the region several times a year, I've been on the lookout for a compendium of good Maine bike routes.

I've scoured the internet, looked a few books, but came up pretty much dry. I was sure there would be marked trails, like ones I've seen in Vermont, but I wasn't able to find anything at all.

I started thinking about this because of relatives in Skowhegan, with the ambitious goal of cycling the 300-odd miles from Boston later this summer. But a recommended route? I was left high and dry.

So I was delighted to come across a spiral bound book "Explore Maine by Bike - 25 Bicycle Tours" at a mediocre bike shop in Kittery. It's a full-color, 8.5 x 11 inch book, including 25 detailed maps and nice detailed fold-outs of the routes. It's publisehd by the Maine Department of Transportation. I was ready to buy it on the spot, but I could find neither a price nor a sales stooge, so it was mine. (I'm reasonably certain that it wasn't meant to be charged for, but it probably cost the state at least $15 to produce.)

The routes are primarily along the coast, with a high concentration in the southern end of the state. Perfect for me!

It didn't make any sense that they would have produced this and kept it a complete secret, so I set about searching the web again, and finally came to Explore Maine - By Bike on the state's official website. It seems to have all the same content in downloadable PDF format, though it's really hard to find and substantially less than straightforward to navigate.

The two tours I have high hopes of completing before the end of the year are both a stone's throw from Skowhegan:

Kennebec River: This hilly and scenic gem winds through the historically important Kennebec River Valley and features a mix of agricultural and rugged mountainous terrain.

and

Waterville-China Lakes: Challenging hills and excellent views make this tour a 3-season pleaser as it traverses the China Lakes region with its ridge views and charming villages.

How exciting! I just can't believe how poorly Maine has publicized all this!

It is a glorious day!

A little hay fever notwithstanding, today is certainly the nicest of the year so far. I have a meeting at Babson, so t've biked from home and will change beforehand. I made very good time on this lovely day, so I've got about an hour to spare. Which i'm spending in the park and doing emails. Ah!

Big week, mileage-wise

Last week I set out to ride 100 miles. It turned out to be a less-than-ambitious goal, since I topped 110 after just 4 days riding in to work. It was nice having a goal, though, and I ended up making extra time in the morning to do an extra loop here and there. I also added an extra mile or so on the way home by coming up the bike path to Park Ave instead of the direct route.

Then on Sunday, I did another 55 in a gorgeous early morning ride. I followed a Rubel map out to Shelbourn and back. It was particularly tiring for some reason (maybe because I'd already done 110 miles that week?), but also the most beautiful ride I've done recently. Wild turkey count: 1. Giant coyote count: 1.

Close call on Park Ave

I was cruising down Park Ave this morning at a little after 6, and a large van from "Eddy's Bakery Products" started to cross in front of me. I'm sure the guy saw me (I was a reasonable distance away from that intersection when he pulled out), and I did my best to catch his eye. He pulled out anyway, of course, and slowly crossed in front of me, causing me to slam on the brakes to avoid running right into the side of the van at 25mph. I was in control the whole time, but it was very annoying nevertheless. So this morning at 9:30, I called and left a message at the Arlington company with my name and phone number, and details of the almost-incident.

---

Update: The owner (I believe) left me a message toward the end of the day with a sincere apology, letting me know that he'd speak to the driver.

Christiania all fit for Spring

As mechanically disinclined as I am, i'm all the more clueless when it comes to the inner workings of my Christiania trike. Not that it's so terribly complex, but I haven't had disc brakes before, and what goes on underneath is a bit of a mystery.

And since when just about every journey I do with it involves riding up and down hugely steep hills with all of my children inside, I figure it's a good idea to keep it in good shape.

I agreed with Dave at Broadway Bike that I should bring it in for a quick once-over to see if we needed to order any parts, so yesterday, that's just what I did.

I dropped Gem off at school on the way, which is always fun. Then I rode on to Cambridge . I wanted to avoid the rough pacing around Porter Square but largely failed at that, then I ended up in a giant traffic jam on Oxford Street, approaching Harvard. Turns out there was a chemical spill of some sort so there was a huge turnout of emergency vehicles in every direction. And what I sometimes forget about the trike is that its width essentially relegates me to waiting with the queues of cars since I can't squeeze between.

Still, the 10 mile journey to work took only about an hour, not bad considering the various delays.

On my way home, I stopped at the Broadway Bicycle School and spent about 20 mins and 10 dollars with Dave. He declared the Christiania to be in great shape and only ended up adjusting the disc brakes so they're a more even.

The next service will be in a 3 months or so, when the chain might need replacing or tensioninh, and the brake pads might need to be replaced. To that end, I've emailed Andrea at Velorution in London to see who makes the brakes, and how I can get replacement pads.

In the meantime, it's about time we started enjoying the Springtime, and the Christiania will play a big part in that.

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Update: I've heard back from Velorution that the brakes are made by Winzip - http://www.winzip-diskbrake.com/ . A terrible brand name, but it's apparently popular as an OEM component.

More Bobike Kudos

When I took Elsie out on the Bobike Mini last weekend, I was approached by a guy who badly wants something similar for his own bike and his small daughter. Of course, I told him all about it and suggested that he Google for a US supplier. (I really do need to carry cards with me when I go out with the Bobike or the Christiania!).

And coincidentally, I got another nice message about my Bobike article today, with a question tacked on to the end:

You have a fantastic page on the Bobike and your daughter looks so sweet! I remember when we went out the first time with our youngest on the front in the Bobike Mini and our middle daughter was behind me! I could barely squeeze in between them! Our youngest has now sadly grown out of the Mini and is in a Hamax behind me; the middle one goes behind my husband and our eldest proudly whizzes around on her Princess bike!

I wonder if you can help me with a silly thing – I still have the mounting bracket on my handlebar for the Bobike mini as we cannot remember how we put it on! I’ve lost the little box with the instruction leaflet and we just cannot work it out.

And my reply:

Removing the bracket is pretty straightforward, but it's awkward without the tool that comes with the seat. There are two hex nuts that need to be unscrewed to release the two halves of the mounting bracket. The bolts are more or less perpendicular to the stem. The best thing to use to get them off is the barrel-shaped wrench that comes with the seat; otherwise, use a standard wrench, but be prepared to turn in tiny increments. That's all there is to it!

The Boston Globe: Good News & Bad News

There were two articles in the Sunday Globe about cycling in Boston - one good, one perfectly atrocious.

The first was part of what appears to be a regular column (though I couldn't find it last week) called Shifting Gears. Based on the couple columns they've published so far, I'm enthusiastic. It's well-written and reasonably insightful, focusing on local policy and advocacy issues while still managing to appeal to a non-cycling (or, in many cases in this town anti-cycling) readership. This Sunday's column focused on Nicole Freedman, who is heading up the bike program for the City of Boston. It also mentions one of her first initiatives, the mapping program that uses Google Maps, which I contributed to when it was launched.

On the other hand, there was the piece in the Business section called On the trail of a good recreational bike. This was an insipid bit of fluff that really did nothing more than state that there are many choices for a recreational bike. It's unfocused and confused, a real hodgepodge of the quotes that the correspondent collected from his interviews. It starts by saying that you can spend as little as $100 on a new bike, and ends with a recommendation that a prospective buyer consider the appearance of a new bike. What really amazed me about this article was the 2 inches of white space after the last column. When is the last time anybody saw white space in a newspaper? This tells me that the corresponedent couldn't dredge up anything else to say, which is all the more surprising considering the paucity of actual information conveyed in what was published.

Nevertheless, I'm bolstered by the new Shifting Gears column and I eagerly look forward to the next one, whenever it might appear.

First really lovely day

Despite forecasts of incessant rain all day, it got to be very nice this afternoon, sunny and in the 50s! Elsie and I went for a nice ride down to the playground at Spy Pond, then all the way back up the bike path to Arlington Heights. It's only the second time she's been on the Bobike Mini, and she really loved it! She held the handlebars right next to my hands when she wasn't ringing her bell. Very sweet!

The other interesting development today was a couple free second-hand bikes I picked up, thanks to a posting on the Arlington List and Kim's keen eye. I got a strange early-80s Diamond Back mountain bike. It has a chunky steel frame, high handlebars, and 12 speeds with friction (not indexed) thumb shifters. I pumped up the tires and it seems to be in pretty good shape! What'll I do with it? Who knows, but it's free! Also got a little Gary Fisher bike for Gem (I guess) with training wheels, which will have to come off: I don't want her learning on a bike with them.

Almost April and still freezing!

I picked up Thorny from Harris Cyclery yesterday after a tune-up and hub oil change (I know, I should be doing all this myself, but who's got the time?). So today, I got up at an ungodly hour and did 50 miles before breakfast (left around 6, returned around 9:30).

It was a beautiful route, courtesy Rubel's Pocket Maps once again. The route picked up at the Bedford end of the Minuteman path and took me through Lexington, Carlisle, Bedford, Acton, Concord, etc. The destination of sorts was Nagog Pond, a public water supply lake in Acton with no public access. Very pretty, though.

But man it was cold! It was dark and about 22 degrees when I left the house, and it only eeked up to about 33 by the time I arrived back home. Because it was pitch black until around 6:30, I opted to avoid the bike path until Lexington. And in that first half hour, both of my water bottles had already frozen up substantially - an hour later they were completely frozen! At least I was dressed warmly enough, except for my toes, which were pretty cold all morning.