Heavin' into some heavy headwinds

It was blustery outside with a small chance of some rain, but the sun was out and I made the decision: Ride. I rode 51 miles the day before, but the forecasts were for several days of intermittent rain, so it was hit the trail while there’s still a rain-free riding window. Bang! The Doppler map on my phone showed a heavy green blob of rain coming into the region, but it looked clear after that.

I texted my riding buddy Vinnie to see if he was up for a ride, with possibly some rain thrown in. It was his day off too. It didn’t take him long to get on board. He’d been planning to go to the gym to work out. Not even close!

We met up and took off with a 15-20 mph tailwind that immediately helped boost our pace. Amazing, that little extra pop you have in your pedals when there’s some wind pushing you along! It wasn’t a total tailwind, more like a semi-crosswind hitting us diagonally from behind. So depending on the curves in the trail there was some tailwind, some crosswinds and even some spots of headwinds. But we finished the first 14.5 miles in 47:48, or an 18.1 mph average. The second 8.8-mile section has about 1,000 feet of intermittent climbing. This is where I usually bog down a bit after banging hard on the relatively flat, long section just before.

It started raining on us a bit, and I called out to Vinnie, “It’s just a cell, it’s gonna blow through.”

After continuing to ride in the rain, he couldn’t help but laugh as he yelled, “It’s just a cell, it’ll be sunny in no time.”

But the rain went away as we pedaled on and the sun did peek in and out from the clouds as the wind continued to push us.

At the turnaround point, we got out of the strong south winds – had to be 15-20 mph -- in the shelter of a closed snack bar. The temp wasn’t bad, in the mid 50s, but it was easy to get cold as we ate some snacks and shot the bull. As we took off back down the trail, I knew we would face a nasty headwind for the next 25 miles or so.

There’s a mile-long section of trail along a lake and at the foot of some steep cliffs where there’s almost always stiff wind out of the north or south. Since this part of the trial goes directly north-south, you get hammered by a strong headwind either way, almost every time. This time we headed into it going south. This is where – if I have the energy – I try to see how long I can sustain 18-20 mph going straight into a headwind. Doing that for a mile, man, it’s brutal. This time I maintained a 20 mph pace for the whole stretch, but I was pretty much toast when it ended and I hit a gradual uphill pitch. Vinnie caught up and said something to me, and I couldn’t even answer --  I was still in oxygen recovery mode. The rest of the ride continued into tough headwinds and we got a bit more rain too. “ Just a cell!” Vinnie called out, laughing again.

I tell you, when you’re riding in the rain, and all you see are black, water heavy clouds ahead, it feels like you’re doomed to be doused for the rest of the ride. You start saying to yourself, “Why TF am I doing this?”

But lo and behold, the skies parted in surprisingly short order, and we even finished the ride in the sunshine. Vinnie had a lot more leg power than I did on the last 14.5-mile section. The ride the day before, plus my all out against the headwinds on the cliff section pretty much burned all my matches. I was punchless against the headwind rounding out the ride at a molasses-like average pace of 15 mph. I was just glad to get the eff back home in one piece!

Well, as I look outside now, it’s raining as predicted, with no end in sight for the next several days. Glad I rode when I could. It might be awhile before the next chance to pedal.

 After the ride we hosed the mud and sand off the bikes, had a few beers and watched some Jackass classics. Talk about shooting some bull, check this one out: 

Looks like the bull won!

Til next time, remember to strap on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then, keep the rubber side down, ride safely, and don’t forget: Have a blast.

-- Mark Eric Larson

Respite in the rain? Time to ride

Getting out for a good long ride can be a real challenge during the winter. That’s what I found the first week of the new year when it rained just about every day. I’m not a fan of riding in the rain, so I’m good with waiting til some rain-free weather returns. But this week, on my second day off – my first day off was spent catching up on errands and slowing down a bit – rain was forecast. I woke up early to put the trash and recycle bins out on the curb, fully expecting rain to be on the way. With this expectation, my mind wasn’t geared into doing a ride at all. I started to plan what I’d do with the day, inside, out of the rain. But although it was cloudy outside, it wasn’t raining. Plus it was a little bit warmer than a few recent rides, at about 51 degrees. I checked the rain radar on my Weather Channel app. It always shows if rain is heading in from the San Francisco Bay Area. And if it’s raining big there, it usually makes its way northeast to this area. But when I checked, there were only sporadic small cells of rain in the Bay Area and they weren’t moving northeast. I looked at the hour-by-hour chance of rain in the area and there was at least a five-hour window predicted to have about a 10% chance of rain. And that meant one thing: I was going to ride. I had the time, the conditions lined up favorably, so that was that.

I decreased the pressure in my tires to 90 psi, since I was sure there were still plenty of wet spots on the streets and on the bike path where I was headed. I cleaned and oiled my chain, got my water and food together, and hit the road.

As I rode out, I decided to fully commit to getting to the turnaround point 26 miles away. The black clouds I rode under here and there put extra power in my legs. I figured to outrun any rain they might dump. But I also had to ride carefully on corners when my tires were wet, which seemed to be most of the ride.

Last year I learned the hard way about making turns on the bike with wet tires. I was banging it with another rider. He passed me, I passed him, and we had a speedy little race going. I was too confident on a quick right/left turn, and although the pavement was dry there, I’m pretty sure my tires were wet. And I hadn’t decreased the air pressure in them to give me more traction in wet conditions. So I’m ahead of this guy and really pushing it, too confident on this quick right/left. My weight was way forward over the handlebars and I leaned way too much to the left as I turned right on my too hard, fully inflated, water-slicked front tire. I couldn’t pull out of the turn to do the left turn. Instead, the tire squirted out to the left, the bike went down on its side, and I went down hard onto the pavement on my right forearm and hip which got smacked and cheese grated. Down, I panted on the deck from riding so hard.

Didn’t break anything, but got some serious road rash. Thinking back, it all happened because I was too concerned with speed on that quick double turn. I needed to stay more upright on the bike and minimize the lean on wet-tire turns.

So, lesson learned. For a little while, anyway.

On another recent ride when the trail was mostly dry, but still had some wet parts, I again forgot about what can happen when you want to slightly turn the bike as you ride over a mat of wet leaves. I hadn’t planned on riding over them on this fast descent, since the downhill lane was mostly dry or damp pavement. The uphill lane, however, was a carpet of slick, matted, wet leaves – essentially ice to a road bike rider needing to turn on them.

So I bombed down this descent, feeling pretty good about banging up a peak speed by the end of the downhill a few hundred yards away. But I came around a corner and was suddenly blocked by a group of walkers, filling up the clear and clean downhill lane. I was moving fast and had to go around them riding an arcing turn – over the wet leaves. I didn’t have any time to think, but I knew braking would have made me slip and slap down hard, like last year. I rode through, banking slightly to get back on the clear downhill lane ahead of the walkers. But then – in a millisecond – the front tire slipped a hair, and this was the moment of truth. When you either pull out of the slip in a heartbeat, or you go down in a heartbeat. Fortunately I wasn’t leaning to far either way on the bike, so I luckily pulled out of the slip in the following millisecond. But believe me, as I continued down the rest of the descent, I cooled it. Because I realized I’d just dodged a completely unexpected bullet – having to veer over the wet leaves because it was too late to slow down to avoid them – and a nasty crash could very well have happened.

So with those wet riding scenarios fresh in my mind, this most recent ride was done with much more care on corners. Especially when I saw my front tire was wet. Easy does it, minimum amount of leaning to get through.

On the last stretch home, it really looked like I might get caught by rain in the bank of ominous looking black clouds I saw ahead of me. I rode as fast as I could, and when I made it back to my house dry, and free of road rash, I was just plain glad. All I got when I swung off the bike were some nasty quad cramps. I pounded on them with my fists to, to get the muscles to cool out, and soon I was good to go.

A few minutes later in the back yard I hosed the mud off the bike, and bounced it a bit on its tires to shake off the excess water. My buddy Marc likes to let his bike dry off in the sun after washing it. And after I did the bike hose down at the 51-mile ride in which rain was a constant threat, something else happened instead.

The sun came out. And so my bike dried off in a welcome winter sunshine,  Marc style. It made me smile. It was fitting end to an impromptu, semi-wet ride.

Til next time, remember to pull on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then keep the rubber side down, ride safely and most of all? Have a blast.

-- Mark Eric Larson

Bully driver? Stay cool under fire

(Editor's note: Happy New Year! Here we are, looking at a brand new year of cycling. One of the best parts about being on the bike for me is having great riding buddies to hit the road with. After that, it’s trying out new rides with plenty of climbing.

My new cycling buddy John and I are trading info on rides the other hasn’t tried. John’s told me of a couple routes I haven’t done that sound like awesome pain-fest challenges! I’ve told him of a few he hasn’t tried, so it should be great knocking them out this year. We both ride with pretty much the same goal, to push our limits to see how fit, or not, we are. All these upcoming rides involve road trips, but no worries. Ready to roll!

Hope you have both good cycling buddies and great rides ahead in your cycling adventures this year. Thanks for checking out the blog, too, much appreciated.)

Roadway clashes can get ugly

A friend who commutes a short way to work on his bike often rides home late at night. He’s 31 and about 6’3”. A middle-aged guy in a truck drove alongside of him while he rode home one night, minding his own business. The guy berated him apparently for being an offensive cyclist for some reason. My friend jawed right back at the guy, who kept driving alongside of him. Finally, my buddy stopped his bike and got out his phone to photograph the truck’s license plate. Mr. Dick then got out of his truck and shoved my friend.

But then for some reason, maybe because he realized my buddy was pretty big and could probably mop the pavement with him, Big D stepped back cautiously.

“I don’t know what I did, I must have given him a bad look, but he got back in his truck and drove away,” my friend said.

My friend said he realized when things were heating up that the guy could have pulled a gun and shot him. And then he realized he shouldn’t have barked back at the guy. Fortunately, all ended well, no physical harm went down. But the incident shows that like it or not, there are drivers out there that absolutely hate cyclists for taking up any space on the road, which they believe is meant only for cars and trucks.

To be fair, many of these hateful feelings come from the all too many irresponsible cyclists who at night don’t bother to wear reflective clothing and/or lights and drivers can’t see them. Or even when they can be seen, they dart through and between traffic carelessly with a “hit me if you dare,” attitude.

I ride through a stretch of heavy traffic when riding to and from a bike trail on a regular basis, and over many times, only a few drivers driven by me super close or have honked at me in anger. So there’s bound to be a small percentage of cyclist hating drivers to be wary of. Hopefully they don’t become so irate that they run us down or shoot us. But in any case, it’s a good policy to keep from arguing with these people, because it will more than likely only heat up an already volatile situation. My buddy’s a big guy, and is fearless. Glad that he didn’t get hurt or worse killed though, because with a little worse luck, he very easily could have. My tactic, even after almost being run off the road intentionally by a hateful driver, is to wave at them like a friend. Maybe it’ll make them think twice about trying to rattle cyclists by honking or driving aggressively close to them. Maybe not, but probably better to diffuse aggression, not throw gas on it.

I’ve found that sometimes, cyclist hating drivers don’t always think ahead about their bully tactics. They’ll assume they can harass and speed off without consequence. Like when they honk at you and/or almost run you off the road as they pass. But sometimes there’s a stoplight ahead that they have to stop for. And they hadn’t planned on that. And that gives the bullied rider time to catch up to them. Now if I’m the aggressive driver, I’m suddenly worried about what that cyclist coming up from behind might do. Not that they will do something violent, just that it’s a possibility.

I once saw a driver take a right hand turn right in front of a cyclist and the cyclist had to brake fast and he narrowly avoided a crash. The driver either didn’t see him, or just bullied into the turn not caring about how the cyclist would fare. The car drove on, and I happened to be driving my car right behind the offending driver. I also saw in my rear view mirror that the cyclist was in hot pursuit.  When the driver ahead stopped because of a stoplight, the cyclist rode up to the car, and shouted more than a few well chosen words. Looked like the driver had the windows rolled up in defense. But the rider got his point across without doing any physical violence, and rode away. That’s something the driver probably never thought would happen. But no doubt, cyclists can be hot heads too, capable of vengeful acts beyond just verbal abuse.

Mileage tops up nicely

This past year, I ended up logging 6,098 miles on 125 rides from January to December, which beat my old personal record in 2014 of 5,612 miles in 112 rides. That was 486 more miles for 2015 and gotta say, that felt good! Breaking the 6K-mile plateau in a year has a solid feel to it. I didn’t do as many good climbing rides as I wanted, but the ones I got in were knockout great. So more climbing is a goal for this year. Can I hit the 6K mile plateau again this year? Hey, only time will tell…

Til next time, remember to strap on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then keep the rubber side down, ride safely and most importantly? Have a blast.

-- Mark Eric Larson

No wasted energy = more speed

Having the ability to burst into a higher speed to chase and/or drop a rider is no doubt a great feeling.
It’s a happy jolt when we call upon the body to power up with a burst of acceleration – and our reserve power, the gas in our tank, is right there, at the ready, answering the call.
The flip side of that, and we’ve all had this feeling, is when we call upon ourselves to step it up… and we find out pretty quickly that we don’t have it. Just not there. 
But chances are it probably won’t be there if we don’t have reserve energy from enough pre-ride sleep and rest, and from using our energy efficiently – by not wasting any -- while riding. Having needed rest is huge, because even if we know how to ride efficiently and conserve energy on a ride, if that energy level is too low to begin with, those techniques aren’t going to help much.

Energy conservation pays off
But after being fit and well rested for a ride, one of the biggest ways to keep from needlessly burning up energy, says at least one cycling coach, is to keep low in the saddle, down in the drops. There we can ride faster with the same pedaling effort against higher wind resistance.
That’s something we all pretty much get, but can sometimes forget. Sitting on the bike only slightly bent forward, but still nearly upright, is going to make the upper body a sail. Pedaling like that, we drain extra energy by pushing against high levels of wind drag that are minimized when we’re crouched low over the drops.
I tend not to ride low for extended miles, however, because sometimes the old psoas muscles in my lower back lock into that position if I don’t occasionally shift around in my saddle. One time while trying for an extra fast time on a long ride, I stayed low in the drops and pedaled hard all the way to the finish. As I pulled up to brake and punch in my time, my back muscles locked up. They didn’t really want to relax enough to let me sit upright without, hey, pain!
So, sure, I got a fast time probably because I was very aerodynamic through most of the 51-mile ride. But my back muscles rebelled enough to make me think about not doing that again! It took several days of stretching routines to relieve the back muscle tension.
Mind you, this may not be a problem for riders with no back spasm histories like I’ve had. You’ll definitely ride faster if you stay low in the saddle. For me, though, it’s a good idea to move to various positions in the saddle for short periods to keep the back muscles loose, even if it does slow me down a bit. Because a tight, stiff back pretty much has to be relaxed through a bit of physical therapy over a few days before the back is happy enough to ride again.
Efficient pedaling is another way to conserve energy, say the video coaches. And that, I have learned, includes keeping mindful of your toe position on the backside upswing of each pedal stroke. When we drop our heels on the backstroke, we lose momentum, disengage our lower leg muscles and waste energy. To keep that momentum on the upswing, we keep the heel up slightly and the toe down. That keeps the lower leg muscles engaged through the backstroke and boosts the down-pedal power of the opposite leg.
Sometimes when I’ve been desperate to power up with my pedaling, I’ve actually pulled up on the backstroke, which seemed to strain the ligaments connected to my knees. So I stopped doing that!

Other (sometimes) available energy savers
Other riders as well as wind can also help conserve a rider’s energy. When I’m tired and get passed by another rider, I try to catch his or her wheel and draft off of them to give myself a rest while maintaining a higher speed. Or, I can save energy while a tailwind pushes me at a nice clip.

Til next time, remember to pull on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then keep the rubber side down, ride safely, and don't forget: Have a blast.
-- Mark Eric Larson

How to tap into the energy within? Other riders

In the past few months since I’ve been at a grocery store job that requires a lot of walking, stocking shelves, lifting heavy boxes and kneeling on the floor, my  bike rides times have slowed a bit.
Also during that period, the weather has turned to biting cold. On one ride the average air temp was 44.8 degrees. Add in the wind chill from riding, and it had to be around 39 degrees at most. Ooooph, yep, that’s cold on the bike.
Both factors have worked to lower my energy levels when I go out on my stay-fit, 51-mile ride. It’s a subject I chatted up with another rider recently while at a turnaround rest stop. He noticed his times have slowed recently and it bothered him. Both of us are older guys, and to be sure, both of us don’t like the notion that age may be slowing us down.
“Well, the air’s heavier,” he said, recounting that his usual fast times are in summer when the air is dry and light – less resistance.
But for me, it’s a combination of some leg fatigue from work, cold heavy air, and ultimately less willpower to push for speed.
That’s the interesting part for me. Because if I have the will power to push for speed, I’ll ride faster. The question is, how much is slower riding a physical lacking of pedal power, and how much of it is plain old mental fatigue. When you don’t have the will to whip the horse, you’ll never know if you have the reserve energy to up the pace!
My conclusion is it’s a mental thing to unleash physical energy that you have, but you haven’t tapped into. The key here is the mindset when you ride solo in tough conditions. It’s  a whole lot harder to push for up-tempo speed when you ride solo. Like a lone breakaway rider from the pro peloton, your  all-alone mental/physical energy level is all you have. You’re essentially stranded on an island with no help. But when you’re prodded by other faster riders, the willpower to push the pace is easy and energy reserves come up from within. You feed off the energy of other riders, and get a boost.
This week I found that out, in spades.
My buddy John and I rode together and each of us pushed the pace, especially him. He finished the first 14.5 mile split at about a 19 mph-plus average speed, and because I was influenced by trying to catch up to him, I came across the end of the split about a minute behind him, getting an 18.5 mph average. I hadn’t had the energy to get a pace anywhere near that fast on several previous solo rides in the cold. I think I was doing around 17 mph average or less  for the split riding solo.
And on the return ride through the same 14.5-mile split, the last long leg of the 51-mile ride, we got some help from another rider, who drafted us going 20 mph for several miles. The guy peeled off on a crossing road, and at that point, John and I were primed at keeping the 20 mph pace we’d been pedaling with relative ease. We were rested from drafting the other rider, and we powered through the split, getting a pretty damn fast 19.8 mph average.
That was done in mid-50 degree air temp, and is a speed I’ve only been able to get solo in warm, dry air conditions.
So, with help, I fed off the energy of my buddy John and the other rider, and got the higher speed. If it had been a solo ride, though, I’m positive I wouldn’t have been able to muster the will power to push the pace to close to a 20-mph average.
It’s kinda weird. The energy gets shared and pulled out of you by other fast riders. But bottom line is, I had the internal energy to draw upon and connect. I just needed the shared energy of other riders to bump up my speed higher than on a solo ride. On a solo ride, even if the energy is there, and I think it is, if there’s not a mental command to power up – and if you’re cold and a bit tired, that can be difficult – you’re almost sure to ride at a slower pace than you’re capable of riding. Yep, it’s weird!

Should I stay or should I go?
If while on a ride, you get caught in the rain what do you do? Look for a nearby sheltered area and stop, figuring it makes sense to wait until the rain passes through? Or do you just hang in there and keep riding?
I’ve done both. Once on a mountain bike ride at Lake Tahoe, it started raining hard, so me and buddy Marc stopped under a rock ledge to wait it out. But, there was a downside: It was cold just standing there, and it seemed to get colder the longer we stood. It lasted about 15 minutes, then we rode on, trying to warm up by pedaling harder.
Another time Marc and I got caught in a hailstorm coming down a mountain on road bikes. He pulled over, and got off the bike, and went under a big tree canopy. I decided to keep riding. I just wanted to ride through it, and figured it would be even more cold to stop and stand waiting for whatever time it might take the hail to pass through. I rode on, my hands and feet immediately numbed in the 30 degree air temp. But eventually the hail stopped, and the clouds pushed through, and the sun even came out. While it was very chilly staying on the bike through it all, I was glad to ride out of it and shorten my time in it.
I vote for keeping on the bike when caught in the rain. Don’t stop, power through. Rider buddy John agrees. We both have the theory that even if you get drenched and chilled to the bone by staying on the bike, you’ll be back home and warmed up sooner than if you get off the bike and freeze waiting for the rain to stop!

Til next time, remember to pull on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then, keep the rubber side down, ride safely, and don’t forget: Have a blast.
-- Mark Eric Larson

Murphy's Law? Goes with road cycling...

I shot the bull with a couple of fellow riders recently about the relative alertness required when riding a mountain bike vs. a road bike. John said he thinks road bike riding requires less attention than riding a trail on a mountain bike. He won’t even listen to music while riding a mountain bike for fear of getting distracted and crashing.
Jim, on the other hand, said he’s OK with hearing his music while mountain biking as well as road biking. To him, a road bike also requires close attention at all times. He said, that on a road bike, the second you look away, get distracted by a thought, whatever, is when you’ll either hit a chuck hole you didn’t see, a squirrel will dart in front of you, or you’ll have to correct course to avoid going off the pavement and into the dirt. Without fail!
We agreed, it’s like Murphy’s Law. You’ll get caught in a no-man’s land for a split second if you’re distracted. And sometimes you can get out of it, other times you can’t. Like these fun little road bike scenarios:
• You forget to unclip one foot before stopping. You stop, and you can’t unclip fast enough to catch the tipping bike. Result? You fall onto the road, clipped into your bike.
• You’re not watching the road in front of you closely.
Result? You hit a bone rattling chuck-hole BAM-BAM, that immediately spikes the irritation meter. Damn! I never saw that hole!!! Hate it when that happens!
Hey, gotta forget the jarring bang-bang smack up and move on. But it’s easy to kick yourself for letting it happen. Oh, and right after that if you hit another chuck-hole you didn’t see right, all you can do is let out a primal scream!
• There are small deep grooves at a railway crossing that you need to keep your tires from slotting into. You don’t. Result? You’re front tire locks in, and you’re thrown off the bike. Arrrrghh!
• You’re agitated thinking about something or someone annoying while riding along, and your not nice thoughts seem to attract a road hazard, bet it a twig or branch, a rock, or an unmoving squirrel in your path. You see one of the above at the very last milli-second and make a quick evasive move that in itself almost makes you crash.
 But sometimes you don’t react in time and you ride over a twig while leaning on a turn, causing the one or both tires to skip laterally, bringing a split-second loss of control.
Result? You kick yourself and mutter, oh that was stoopid, bro!
So it’s true what John said, that on a mountain bike there’s so much information to process, you have to pretty much be on red alert at all times. Mountain biking is a series of stop and go sprints and constant preparation for riding through whatever’s ahead on the trail -- just to stay upright.
Road cycling tends to be more rhythmic and steady, so it’s a lot more conducive to periodically zoning out. Instead of seeing what’s on the road ahead, we don’t pick up an obstacle until the last millisecond and sometimes make a panic move. Which, yes, can cause a crash.
It truly is like Jim said. The second you stop paying attention on a road bike, it seems, without fail – BAM!! -- something unexpectedly funky pops up. If we’re lucky it’ll only be annoying instant and not the cause of a crash! Yep, plenty of focus is needed while riding the road bike, too.

Sand riding experiment
Sand bogs down tires and quickly slows down most bikes, even a mountain bike with thick, knobby tires. So it’s usually something most riders either avoid, or ride through as fast as possible to keep from getting thrown off the bike. One rider buddy, though, who rides both a road bike and a mountain bike, told me he just bought another bike with four-inch wide tires. Whaaaat?
These fat boys, he said, are made for riding through sandy areas. When I saw him this past week he was about to find out if this rig and its wide tires work in sand as advertised. He plans on riding across the exposed sandy bottom of Folsom Lake, a large reservoir that these days looks like a moonscape. It’s almost empty because of the nasty California drought over the past four years.
He’s looking at it as an adventure in the making. Will the fat tire bike negotiate a sandy, shifting surface that hasn’t been packed down by vehicle tires of any kind? Knowing this guy, however his experiment turns out, he’s gonna have fun with it. Rock on, bro.

Clipping in, clipping out
Unclipping from pedals can be a dicey move – especially if you can’t get out of your clips the very second you need to, and you, uh, tip over. Some clips hold tighter than others, and the lateral movement needed to pull out of the cleat can do a nasty twist of the knee if it’s too tight. I learned the hard way to adjust my mountain bike’s SPD clips, which are kind of like old-style ski bindings, so that they’re fairly easy to kick out of. Other style cleats make unclipping very fast and smooth, which is ideal. But a fast and smooth cleat release won’t necessarily stop a tip-over every time. I’ve found, and other riders I’ve talked to about this have agreed, that whenever you need to clip out super fast, you’ll usually be leaning the wrong way, and your wrong-way momentum will bring you down, clipped in! Yep, Murphy’s Law applies to cleats. But hey, really can’t blame the cleats. It’s mostly the result of good ol’ operator error!

Til next time, remember to pull on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then, keep the rubber side down, ride safely and don't forget…have a blast.
-- Mark Eric Larson

Driving to a ride with a roof rack? Uh oh...

When we need to put our bike(s) on or in our cars or trucks to drive somewhere to get to a ride site, we have three choices: Put the bikes on a roof rack, put them on a rear-mounted rack, or put them inside our car or truck.
As for roof racks, I’m pretty much over them for a couple reasons. One, it’s really easy to forget that you have your bikes on a roof rack. And that’s really not good. Because you have a lot less clearance with a bike on top, you can drive into low clearance areas with the bikes on top and BAAAMMMM!
Once I went on a group mountain bike ride and met at a foothills trailhead. One of the riders in the group, a guy that worked in the same office with me, was climbing a rutted pitch on the trail fairly early in the ride when his seat post suddenly broke off, seat and all! He got off the bike and saw that there was no fixing it, the post had snapped. He was faced with riding the rest of the super technical trail with a piece of round broken metal for a seat, or ride slowly, standing up, back to the parking lot and just wait for everybody to finish.
Which is what he did. The rest of us who rode on, couldn’t figure out how in the hell a seat post could just break off seemingly out of the blue like that without taking a sledgehammer-like hit.
When we got back, we heard the story. The week before, they guy had his bike on the roof rack of his buddy’s truck when they were on the way to a ride. They decided to stop to get a cup of coffee, and that required driving into a parking garage. The guy driving remembered at the last second that there were bikes up top on the roof rack, and hit the brakes. My buddy’s bike’s seat got wedged and torqued by the cement header over the garage entry. They backed out, checked the bike, and everything looked OK. But my friend’s seat post took on some serious force, and even though it seemed like no damage had occurred, the post’s tensile strength had been seriously compromised. Still, it made it through his ride that day, without a problem, so he didn’t know there was a looming problem.
But on the second ride after the stem was hit, when he sat down on it – the dude is 6 foot 7 and well over 200 lbs. – the seat post couldn’t handle the stress. Snap.
Then it happened to me and another buddy, after we had gone on a mountain bike ride and were almost home, coming off the freeway exit. A lane was closed off, but I told Kevin, hey, we can take a shortcut right through that parking garage.
Neither of us remembered we had our bikes on the roof, and BAAAAMMMM! He hit the brakes but the damage was done. The impact on the bike rack, bent one rail into a 90 degree angle and tossed my bike off. A cable lock kept it dangling, so it didn’t hit the ground. Kevin’s bike and rail was forced down onto the rear window, which popped on impact, turning the safety glass into gravel-like chunks.
We lucked out, both bikes were OK, no damage. The one rack rail was toast, as was Kevin’s rear window, which his insurance eventually replaced.
The cop that happened by while Kevin was on the phone to his insurer told us he’d seen roof-racked bikes get low bridged fairly regularly. So, no more roof racks for me. Plus they’re a pain to put on and off the roof. No longer happening.
Then there are the rear-mounted racks, which I’ve used on a buddy’s truck many times. He always put the rack on and took it off, so it was never a hassle for me, and it handled our bikes fine. But I also know that they’d be destroyed if ever we got rear-ended. So I’m about 50-50 on them.
Then there’s the put-it-inside-the-vehicle method of bike transport, which has become my favorite.
Why, you may ask? Mainly it’s safety and convenience. My buddy recent came to town to do some rides and my car was our mode of transport. I could have put one of the bikes on my roof rack and the other in the car’s expanded trunk with the rear seats folded down.
But hey, putting on the roof rack takes too much time, and then there’s the real potential of a low bridge smack-down of the bike. So no and no.
We took off each bike’s front tire, and laid one bike on its side. Then we spread a blanket over that bike, and put the second bike on top, reversed, back to front. We did so gingerly, so as not to bend derailleurs or spokes. And in very little time, we were good to go.
It worked out well. It’s my go-to bike transport solution. And the other good thing is the bikes are more secure covered up and locked inside the car than on a cable secured rack. Yep. It’s nothin’ but a win, win situation.

My bike computer’s battery died? Whaaaat?  
Somehow when I was recently recharging my Garmin bike computer, the thing was unplugged too early and it wasn’t fully charged when I took off on my next ride, a 32 miler.
The thing warned me the battery was low, but I figured I’d see if it would last for the length of the ride, then I’d recharge it. But it died with about six miles left in the ride. No biggie,
I rode home and plugged it in. But it showed my how much I look at the thing while I’m on the bike. When there’s just a blank screen, it’s pretty different. You can’t be preoccupied with the numbers on the screen. You tune into seeing surrounding landscape and ribbon of trail, you’re more present. But hey, I still can do that and check my speed and mileage on the computer. It’s a pretty well worn habit. So yeah, want the computer fully charged and working at all times! Isn’t that sort of like a weird addiction?

Til next time, remember to strap on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then, keep the rubber side down, ride safely and don’t forget: Have a blast!
-- Mark Eric Larson