Resolute: Bicycle Commuting in NYC

heat

2008-06-09T13:12:00.003-04:00

Good lord. It's on the way to 100 degrees today, which would seem to be a perfect occasion to give in and take the climate-controlled subway to work. And yet, I rode. And it wasn't bad at all. Here's an incomplete list of tips for biking in ridiculous heat.

First of all, leave early. I have a day job, more or less, so I leave my house about 8:15am and arrive around 8:45. This morning, I left closer to 7:45, knocking a half-hour of sunlight energy from the day's heat. It's the morning commute you need to stay cool on. In the PM, I know a change of clothes and a shower awaits, so who cares about staying cool?

Second of all, start cool. I took a cool shower and stayed close to our little AC unit while getting dressed, so my core temp was as low as possible before leaving the house. This gave me about a 10 minute jump on the real heat, which is a good chunk of my 35 minute commute.

Next, GO SLOW. I've already written that commuting is not racing, and that goes double for crazy hot days. Strangely, it takes practice to go slow. You need to know your body and your route well, and lay off the gas twice as much as you think you need to. The only "hill" in my route is the Manhattan Bridge at about the halfway mark, and if I can stay cool (read: dead slow) while climbing it, I'm in pretty good shape. If I try to keep up with some punk on a fixie, I'm screwed. If, like me, you get competitive when people pass you, just try to turn it into a game in your head: "if I sweat less than you I win". I was in my granny gear this morning going up at about 5 mph. Leave early, relax, enjoy the view.

Then, find shade! I pay a lot of attention to where the sun is, and try to ride on the side where it's not. In the city, frequently the middle of the intersection is in blinding sun, but there's shade a couple of car lengths back. I found myself stopping well before certain intersections today, in some cases forty or fifty feet before the light, just so I could stand for a moment under the shade of a house or a single tree.

Avoid the backs of buses. They throw off a ton of heat in about a 10 foot radius. If you try to draft trucks and buses to save a bit of effort on most days, drop that habit when the mercury gets above 85.

In addition, all the normal stay cool things apply: drink lots of fluids, wear light fabrics in light colors, and for god's sake, pull over if you think you're gonna pass out.

way faster.

2008-05-29T16:38:00.001-04:00

Bicycle wins the Commuting Challenge once again. Not even close.

hal and kerri grade your bike locking

2008-04-29T09:31:00.003-04:00

Hal and Kerri grade your bike locking. I passed Hal on the Manhattan Bridge this morning. Also, I recognized one of those signposts as the one where we lock our bikes when getting food at Spring Street Natural!

lotus

2008-04-22T00:14:00.003-04:00

Been trolling ebay looking for a good used road bike for Deb, and have been paying particular attention to mid- to late-80s Japanese bikes. This was the height of Japan-manufactured bikes before production moved to Taiwan. There are some great marques still floating around: Miyata, Fuji, some Nishikis, Bridgestone, and so on. I think I've got a bike or two lined up for her... more on that to come.

But while surfing, I found this achingly beautiful Lotus (a brand for which I've always had a soft spot), which was in my size, and didn't appear to ever have been ridden. Incredibly, no one placed a single bid on it, and I got it for the minimum bid. Despite the fact that I wasn't really shopping for me, I couldn't resist.

The frame is clearly quality (though I'm going to have to research the tubing), and the parts have some charm, too. That Sugino GT crank is haute sweet, as is that vintage leather saddle. I'm going to steal some parts off of it for Deb's new ride, and turn this into a single-speed bar bike (not a fixie, though). It's way too pretty to call it a beater.

I'll post pix when I get her, and document the build.

car

2008-04-20T19:48:00.003-04:00

I have a new car. It's a 2008 Honda Fit Sport. I have had it for four months, during which time we've put on... wait for it... 842 miles. That works out to about 210 miles a month, at which pace we'll reach the first scheduled (100,000 mile) tuneup in about 39 years. Now we do need a car for some longer trips. My family is (mostly) about 3 hours away, and my girlfriend's family is (mostly) about 2 hours away, at which distance Zipcars are impractical. We did the math, and there was no combination of Zipcars and traditional rentals for frequent trips of that distance that came out any better than owning. So we started looking for a used car. The Fit was my first choice, but they have only been available in the States for about 18 months, so there was a dearth of used stock. We drove some other cars, but the Fit is ridiculously well designed. It's very Japanese. The designers started with a full-size, practical interior and wrapped the minimum amount of car around it. It has a tiny footprint for city driving, but a rather tall roofline, so the space you lose on the sides you gain to to bottom, for about the same net interior space as many midsize wagons. There's a very small class of things that would fit into an SUV and not into this car. The rear seats fold perfectly flat for a huge usable area; no weird bumps or seams. Plus it's way fun to drive.

I know I sound like I'm shilling for the car company, but it's not that... I just love when tools are well put-together and well thought-out. The Fit is such a success as a practical design object, you wonder why there aren't more cars like it.

The whole "new car" thing got me thinking about carbon footprint and the like. The Prius is a great car in this regard, but expensive. And at 37mpg, the Fit's got near-hybrid mileage for a lot less than a Prius (in fact, it's one of the cheapest new cars on the market). We're intending to keep this car for a long time, and gas doesn't look like it's getting any cheaper or cleaner.

But the biggest impact on my carbon footprint is that first number: 220 miles a month. When our old car died, we sorta became involuntarily car-free, and it's been pretty remarkable how few trips really need a car now that we have one that works properly. Here's where we've driven so far: a couple of visits to my dad in a town ill-served by mass transit, hauling a new computer home from the store, grocery shopping on winter days when the weather really sucked, and taking a bunch of my framed art to a show.

Here's the lesson: it's not suffering, or dogma. On any given day, I pick the best tool for the job. For most trips (commuting to work, getting groceries), that's the bicycle. Second choice is the subway or walking. The car fits in where needed and I don't really have a lot of guilt about that. It just struck me, after 4 months with the new car, how natural and easy it is to work with less. I honestly can't imagine ever needing more car.

things i saw on our ride today

2008-04-19T20:53:00.002-04:00

We're considering participating in the MS170 ride next month, so we're trying to get some mileage in our legs. Today was a ridiculously beautiful day and everyone in the city emerged into outdoor activity. We did about 42 miles: laps around Prospect Park, then to Central Park, then back to Prospect Park. Along the way, we encountered the following:

A bald man riding a unicycle while walking his dog

The Pope

A band of Hare Krishnas waiting for the Pope

A guy in Union Square, with what appeared to be a script in his hand walking up to random strangers and asking them, "Do you work in the theatre? Does anyone here produce plays?"

Yup. Spring is here. Welcome to New York.

spotted: cbgb's bar

2008-03-26T10:10:00.003-04:00

My commute takes me up Bowery from Houston St. to Cooper Square, which incidentally is the shittiest stretch of pavement in the whole 6.5 miles. This morning at Bleecker, I spotted about a dozen or two workmen struggling with a long, bulky object... and then I realized hey, that's the CBGB's bar! It was like spotting the sheet-draped corpse of a famous drug overdose being wheeled out the back of a hotel.

They seemed to be taking great pains to remove it in a single piece (it was about 40 feet long, at least) and onto a flatbed trailer, so perhaps it's bound for the rumored CB's Las Vegas.

No pix, sadly. I lacked a camera today.

slow down

2008-03-22T11:16:00.003-04:00

One of my pet peeves about the perception of bike commuting is that it requires a) a aerobics-class level of effort, and b) a shower at the end to clean up the stink from said effort. This is really counter-productive, since the benefits of commuting by bicycle can be achieved without (and even run counter to) sprinting your ass off.

This misguided perception comes first of all from the positioning of bicycles in the American marketplace, where they are still largely marketed as sporting goods, akin to a elliptical trainer or a set of running shoes. In a store where the top of the line bikes are the racing team models and "light light light" is the mantra, those who invest in a non-crappy bike are made to feel that if they're not attacking the on-ramp to the Manhattan Bridge as if it's the 21st switchback at Alpe d'Huez, they're doing it wrong. To those, I say: slow the hell down.

In European and Asian countries where cycling is taken seriously as a form of transport, most people ride in their street clothes on practical, upright, slightly heavy bicycles. It's understood that you only get sweaty enough to require a shower if you are making an exceptional effort. On hot, muggy days, you'd need a shower if you ran to work instead of walking. So we walk. It's no different on a bicycle.

So, how to slow down? Here's some things I've learned:

1. Practice. Yes, it takes practice to go slow. My natural tendency (especially riding in New York City) is to go faster than I should. I want to beat other riders to the end of the block. I want to outsprint taxis. I get competitive. It has taken me a while to tell that impulse to shut up and enjoy the ride.

2. Constant effort, not constant speed. I don't have a heart rate monitor or anything, but I've gotten pretty good at listening to my body. If I feel the flush of strenuous effort coming up, I dial back. The idea is to stay below the sweaty threshold. If I'm only looking at my speed (and lately I haven't even been riding with a cyclocomputer), I'll miss the signs that I'm making too much of an effort. The difference in wind (especially on the bridges) means that a 10mph average might be laughably easy one day and brutally difficult the next.

3. Gears: use 'em. I could never commute on a fixie for this reason. Maintaining a constant effort means constantly cycling through the gear choices to find that sweet spot. I find it easier to keep my heart rate down by pedaling faster with lower effort than by pushing hard on a big gear.

4. The ride home. It's cooler in the morning on the way to work, and my mellow, non-sprinty, Zen commute works better on the ride to. Coming home, I may feel the need to blow off steam, and I have a shower there. If I feel a sprint coming on, the return trip is the time to indulge it.

sheldon brown

2008-02-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

Sheldon Brown, the author of one of the quirkiest, funniest, and most informative web sites about bicycles and bicycle commuting, has passed away. An opinionated, sometimes goofy, always educational voice, he turned a gig as a mechanic at an obscure local shop in Massachusetts into perhaps the biggest resource on bicycle transport and bicycle history on the entire web. He'll be missed; our sincere condolences.

strida

2008-02-04T21:30:00.000-05:00

I've seen a few of these around town, and each gave the impression that an Anglepoise lamp was being ridden down the street. But oddity aside, these look like great little bikes, perfect for stashing in hall closets and toting on buses. Great article, with tons of images from the designer's notebooks.

saturday night

2008-02-03T11:35:00.000-05:00

One of those nights that reminds me why I love bicycling in the city so much. Deb biked in to get her hair cut, and I biked in later to meet her at Temple Korean in the East Village. The ride in was super-fast... I've gotten so used to riding in to work with a heavy messenger bag that I feel free whenever I ride without it. Took the Manhattan Bridge into the city at dusk. It was clear and about 42 degrees, no traffic. Saw two other riders on the bridge but that was it. 25 minutes door to door.

We had a nice meal at Temple, where we usually just order a pile of appetizers one after another. The woman sitting next to us turned out to be someone who live down the hall from me in college. For dessert, we were hoping for the carrot cake at Spring Street Natural Restaurant, which is dairy-free and awesome. We called to make sure they had it on the menu tonight, then cycled the 25 blocks or so down to Soho. Now, at 8:30 on a Saturday night, Soho becomes a parking lot. Traffic from uptown, the Holland, Williamsburg, the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge all converges, and the streets are packed curb-to-curb with well-dressed party people looking sullen and late. Stressed-out girls in the highest of heels vainly flag cabs that aren't coming because traffic isn't moving. Through all of this we glide across 9th Street, down 2nd Ave, right on Kenmare, and lock our bikes to the signpost immediately in front of the door. Carrot cakes and coffee, sitting at the bar.

On such a clear, cool night, I figure that the view will be sweet on the Brooklyn Bridge and the tourist load will be low, so we head straight down Lafayette, on a new, wide painted bike lane. There's only about ten other people on the whole bridge, most of them on bikes (of course, not counting the honking rows of unmoving cars fifteen feet below us). The skyline has that hyperreal quality Manhattan gets on exceptionally clear days. We slow at the top to take in the panorama (from straight ahead, moving to the right: the east tower, the Promenade, Red Hook, the Verrazano, Staten Island off in the distance, the tiny Statue of Liberty, the Financial district, the west tower, Chinatown, Midtown looming with the Empire State Building all blue for some reason, the other two East River bridges, Dumbo...), but we don't stop.

bogota

2008-02-03T11:29:00.000-05:00

"A protected bicycle path is a symbol that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important as one in a $30,000 car."

A conversation with the Mayor of Bogota, Colombia. Many great quotes about people-centric planning vs. car-centric planning.

moving with a bicycle

2008-02-02T10:37:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's "moving" as in "moving to a new apartment".

I recently purchased a Bob Yak trailer, and I've been amazed at how much I could carry (recently took 5 kitchen garbage bags of old clothes to the Salvation Army in one trip). I could never get away with this (too many pieces of large, uncollapsable furniture), but I applaud the effort. Bikes can carry a lot more than most people think.

wah-mei birds

2008-01-17T12:43:00.000-05:00

Starting a list of things I love about my commute, in no particular order. Today's is the Wah-Mei Bird Garden, on the north edge of Sara Roosevelt Park at Chrystie and Delancey.

Many mornings, when passing this corner, I hear a burst of loud, clear, beautiful bird song. Apparently the Chinese men who keep these songbirds bring them to the park every morning to allow their pets some fresh air. Once or twice, I've turned into the park and walked my bike up the steps to take a look and say good morning. The birds are pretty, but not the rococo beauties that the songs would have you expect. Their collective song is a note as clear as a tuning fork above the diesel/horn/subsonic subway rumble that comprises the usual Chrystie Street soundtrack.

This morning, cold and clear and, inasmuch as my commute doubles as meditation, the bird song banished a bit of darkness from my thoughts as surely and completely as a gong in a Himalayan temple, driving out the demons of disorder.

david byrne is a fellow commuter

2008-01-17T08:53:00.000-05:00

Some years ago I found that if there were a few music or art events happening one evening in downtown Manhattan the fastest and easiest way to hit them all was by bike. While other club, film, restaurant or gallery-hoppers were searching for cabs or pacing subway platforms I would be zooming through the cool night air. I felt a little superior, but also a little lonely — it’s hard to have conversations or meet people on a bike. But you sure can turn an evening into a mini-festival.

-- David Byrne

real freakin' cold

2008-01-04T00:41:00.000-05:00

It was the coldest day of the year (so far) today, and it was 13 degrees when I left the house. Thirteen is around where I get into "What the hell am I doing on a bike?" territory, but I was happy I rode. I don't generally have any specific cycling clothing other than gloves (by Specialized), which are an all-weather must-have. My gear today was four top layers: a t-shirt, a thin sweater, a fleece jacket for warmth and a German Navy surplus outer nylon shell for windproofing. Bottoms: jeans, insulated sox, and Merrell hiking boots. $5 knit cap and $5 scarf from the Ghanaian street vendor in front of my workplace. I could have used an extra layer on my legs (either thermal undies, cycling tights, or my gore-tex rain gear for windproofing), and my thighs got a bit numb towards the end of my 35-minute ride. The gloves were about at their limit, too... once safely on the Manhattan Bridge where one needn't brake, I pulled my fingers out and balled my fists for a couple of minutes.

If you adhere to my philosophy that you should bike in street clothes, dressing for a ride in 13 degree weather is much like dressing for a walk in 13 degree weather. Layers, layers, layers. I do, however, highly recommend a neoprene headband that covers the ears. Toastier than any hat. And headband plus hat = happy head.

Of course, riding should never be punishing. I happen to like the cold much better than the hot. Ideal commuting weather for me is clear and 40 degrees (with a tailwind, natch). Cold by itself is not enough to keep me off the bike. I'll ride through the winter, unless there's ice or snow on the streets. Chunky ice curbs do not play well with skinny tires.

working bicycles

2007-12-02T19:24:00.001-05:00

A great Flickr set of Working Bicycles. Will post more on this later, but wanted to share the visuals now.

new bike! part 4: road test

2007-11-30T00:31:00.000-05:00

I was going for solid, and I got solid. My impression after one week of riding is that this is a big boy bike. I'm very happy with it. The Cross-Check has the same forward zoom that the RB-1 had when stomping on the pedals. The bigger tires absorb all sorts of road noise, and despite all the crap I bolted to it, there's not a rattle or squeak in the whole lot.

The relatively slack front end will take some getting used to. The Cross-Check is a good replacement geometry-wise for the RB-1 everywhere except the head tube angle, which is 72 degrees to the RB-1's 74. Add to that a bit more fork rake, and you wind up with a bit of weird side-to-side behavior. The RB-1 handled perfectly, never too fast or too slow. In contrast, the first time I sprinted on the Cross-Check, I felt the bars go a little funny and wound up about three feet off my line. A bit alarming, but I think that's just a matter of getting the muscle memory to find my center of balance. And other than that one quirk, I love the ride. The bike tracks dead straight in all but that full-on sprint, and has a pleasing, springy ability to go a little faster with just the slightest effort. I paced next to a cab that desperately wanted to invade my bike lane this morning on 21st Street, and when he accelerated to get past me, I just tapped the pedals a bit harder, my speed jumped up to keep pace, and I shepherded him back to the car lanes.

It's not perfect-- yet. But pretty much everything I dislike about the ride is tweakable. The Brooks saddle is brand new, hard and slippery. It will eventually break in, but It's also extremely hard to get it in the right position; it seems like the minutest up-and-down adjustment requires a front-to-rear adjustment as well, and vice versa. I'm making tiny tweaks still. I also slide all over the slick saddle, changing my balance involuntarily.

The handlebars, as well, aren't yet as comfortable as I'd hoped. When riding with my hands on the brake hoods, the outside bend of the bars catches me in the heel of the hand. Some bar/lever positioning is in the cards. Also, the drops are a bit far down for me to remain in comfortably without a few more yoga sessions. I think I may need a stem with a few degrees more rise.

All in all, though, very happy. This is a bike I know I could ride out the front door on, and make it to Patagonia.

new bike! part three: customization

2007-11-25T23:08:00.000-05:00

Note: This is going to be a long and detailed post, but some folks out there might be looking to set up commuting bikes or buying a Cross-Check, and I want to share my parts-gathering process since I am an opinionated, obsessive, unapologetic bike nerd.

When my new CC arrived, I knew it wasn't really mine yet. I have all sorts of bicycle habits, preferences, preconceived notions, obsessions, tastes, peeves and annoyances which must be worked through via careful selection of new parts, application of tools, and rootings through the Box Of Old Parts.

OK, first things first: the graphics on the Surly are UGLY. Yes, they're a quirky bike manufacturer, and Surly itself is a great name for a bike company (reminds me of an older mechanic I used to work with whose dream if he won the lottery was to open his own bike shop called Rude's, from whence he'd insult any patrons until they left. Kinda like a bicycle version of the record shop in High Fidelity). And yes, the paint is inoffensive (can't go wrong with solid, neutral colors). But the graphics are cheesy in an early-90s Mountain Dew commercial sort of way. I have to admit one of the things that sold me on Surly was the fact that they don't clear-coat their decals, and therefore I could remove them without screwing up the paint. That was step one in the reclamation process: removal of all stickers. While I was at it, I removed the tubing sticker, the lawyerly warning about closing your quick-release properly, and as many other brand names as I could scrape off. Also removed were the cheezy reflectors on cheezy plastic mounts (I later added lights).

Note to anyone who wants to try it: some of the forums recommend that applying some heat with a hair dryer or heat gun. I didn't do that. I had great success with scraping carefully with a straight-edge razor blade at room temperature... UNTIL, that is, I put a couple of nasty gouges in the paint. Not recommended. I'd listen to those folks and their heat.

Some other things became readily apparent on the inaugural ride home from the shop. Most obviously, the cockpit setup was pretty unworkable. The Salsa Bell Lap bars were way too wide for city riding. The boxy Tektro levers didn't have a good feel when riding on the hoods (sorta like holding a deck of cards in each hand). The bar-end shifters were waaay too far away. And the black tape? Just boring. So basically I loosened the cables, unbolted the bars from the stem and started over from scratch.

With the bike stripped except for crank, derailleurs and seatpost, here's how I built it back up. Half the parts came from Velo Orange, a shop specializing in retro randonneur equipment, and the other half from Universal Cycles. A couple of others were in my garage already.

Part #1: Nitto "Noodle" bars, 41cm. Comfy, light bar, elegant bend, silver, and crowned with the goofy Nitto heraldic crest (how does a parts company based in Tokyo decide that the brand image they need is medieval helmets and crossed broadswords?). More importantly, they're narrow enough to avoid car side mirrors, almost 5 inches narrower than the stock bars at the bar ends.

Part #2: Shimano Ultegra STI shifters. The big purchase, but this is the interface to the bike. I spend most of my riding time with my hands on the drops and I've just gotten used to being able to brake and shift at will. Frequently both at once, such as on that weird access ramp on the Manhattan side of the Manhattan Bridge. Invaluable for city riding. The Cross-Check comes with a Shimano drivetrain, so I could leave the rest intact.

Part #3: Cinelli cork tape in Natural. A classic. Two layers for the cushy cushy. Finished with a pair of Velox rubber bar end plugs I had laying around (I have never had a Cinelli plastic bar end plug stay in more than three months).

Part #4: DMR V8 Pedals. The CC delivered with crap pedals (as most high-end bikes do these days, since manufacturers assume you're going to replace them with whatever matches your shoes). I don't wear cycling shoes. In fact I don't really wear any cycling-specific clothing these days except rain gear. As such, I put on a pair of middle-of-the-road DMR mountain bike platform pedals. Big, durable, symmetrical so there's no mucking about with tipping your toes into them at traffic lights. Just stomp on 'em and go. Added bonus: the gray ones almost match the Surly gray. Almost.

Bonus Part #5 (Super Impulse Purchase): Paul NeoRetro Brakes. OK, this was a little unnecessary, but my gear-fetishist tendencies kicked in and I convinced myself I had to have 'em. I have a thing for strong, simple brake calipers. I like having springs that you really have to exert some pressure on (I still have a set of Deore XT brakes from 1990 that I am jealously guarding). The recent trend towards light, fingertip-control brakes is nice in the shop, but after two months of poor maintenance they feel like cardboard. These Paul brakes, with their machine-shop lines and tough-as-you-want-to-crank-'em spring tensioners really appealed. Plus, they're based on 1950's French Mafac Racer brakes, which are just gorgeous. Hell, you only live once.

Part #6: Brooks B17 saddle. I've never owned a old-skool riveted leather saddle, but I've never met anyone who's owned one who's regretted it. The break-in period's a bitch but afterwards it's like butter. I'm in the break-in period. Ow. Can't beat the looks, tho.

Part #7: Brass bell, with Velo Orange headset spacer mount. Nifty little bell, pre-mounted to a headset spacer so it rides next to the stem instead of on the bar tops. I like having clean handlebars (both visually, and for the extra hand position on long rides), so this was a great idea. In practice the jury is still out. First of all, it speaks very quietly. When commuting in NYC, you are frequently ringing a bell to signal "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!" A polite little Japanese bell may not do the same trick (I had an Incredibell on the RB-1 that did). Also, the stem mount is hard to ring, especially with gloves. But, damn, it looks nice.

Part #8: Nitto front rack. A weird, vintage looking little front rack that I bought thinking "I can make that do something", but I wasn't sure what. Once mounted, though, she's a keeper. For starters, it is beautifully made, polished to a mirror finish. It wound up serving as an extra mounting point for fenders, a mount for a light (keeping yet another damn accessory off the handlebars), and occasionally, a rack. I discovered this weekend that a full plastic grocery bag slung over the handlebars so that the bag handles catch on the stem will nestle quite nicely on this rack as if by design.

Part #9: Honjo "hammertone" Fenders, extra long. Oh yes. Yes yes yes. These are the shit, a Japanese reproduction of a 1950s French design. Handmade. And uber-cool looking. And LIGHT (I think they are lighter than plastic fenders)! And very solidly mounted. The RB-1 had very little clearance so I could only fit thin plastic fenders that easily cracked. I went through about 4 pairs in 8 years (at $20-$30 bucks a shot), so spending $79 on the Most Beautiful Bike Accessory In The World was thoroughly worth it to me. They're tricky to mount (took me about 3 hours to do it right), but amazingly enough, there's a Flickr group dedicated to Honjo fender mounting. With the closeup pix of a half-dozen real world installs bettering any instruction manual, I got the job done. Not a creak or a rattle. Of course, I added my pix after the install too.

Part #10: Tubus Cosmo rack. I wanted a rack that would fit well, wouldn't break, and would be sufficient if needed on a long loaded tour. Trekkers seem to swear by Tubus and/or Jandd Expedition racks. The Tubus Logo and Cosmo get the load lower and further back (which avoids a problem with heel clearance on larger frames like mine), and the Cosmo has that great indestructible stainless steel finish. I can't come this far and cheese out, can I? Cosmo it is. I've never owned a rack with such a solid and sensible connection to the frame. No wimpy stamped sheet metal tabs here, but two 8mm dowels of solid aluminum. This thing feels like I could tow a truck with it. If you get one, make sure to get the 2007 model with the wider deck and flared tailpiece that protects the taillight. Finally, I put the Cosmo's beefy German-spec taillight mount to good use with a car-blinding Busch and Müller taillight/reflector, like a cherry atop a bicycle sundae.

Total cost: about $1900. Up there, but really not super-crazy. This is, after all, every-day all-weather transportation for me, and the alternative of spending $4 a day on the subway adds up to a similar amount after just a couple of years. Plus, good shit doesn't break very often. Throw in the health benefits and the enjoyment I get out of well-made gear, and it's money very well spent.

More pix of the Crosscheck, in process and completed.

So, how's it ride? Is there something wrong with me if I push this to part 4?

new bike! part two: selection

2007-11-25T19:18:00.000-05:00

With a fairly good idea of what I wanted, I started scouring web sites and forums for clues of what's out there. Here are the bikes I considered:

Bianchi Volpe
Surly Cross-check
Surly Long Haul Trucker
Rivendell A. Homer Hilsen

The Bianchi is a beautiful bike, well-designed, with plenty of clearances in the right places. The olive-drab with red decals is a color scheme I particularly adore, with a welcome minimum of fussy details. Unfortunately, the largest size it comes in is a 61cm center-to-top. Not big enough for me at all, so it wound up a non-starter. But had it been available 2cm larger, I would have given it a serious look.

The Rivendell was almost perfect. Lots of commuters who favor all-around performance and practicality swear by them, and I won't offer much of an argument. I had loved my RB-1 for 13 years, so it made sense to look at the bikes its designer is creating today. In the case of his Homer Hilsen, I swooned. The Art Nouveau lettering! The randonneur geometry! The support for fat tires! The eccentric charm! And oh, that atomic-age headtube badge! I primed to open my checkbook when three things stopped me. First, the bike isn't available until January, and I need something now. Not insurmountable, but gave me a moment to stop and think. Second, the $1500 price tag for frame/fork would eat up a lot of my budget. I'm not averse to spending the money; I figure I save at easily $1000 a year in car and subway expenses by commuting on a bicycle, and I take care of my bikes well enough to get 15 years out of them if they don't get stolen. You do the math. But for $1500, I could purchase, modify, and almost completely outfit any of the other bikes on my list. So that came down as a second strike against Homer. Finally, the choice of long-reach sidepull brakes seemed a bit risky. Rivendell can tend towards the quirky; for a guy who rails against non-standard specs, Grant Petersen tends to include a lot of them (650B wheels, anyone?). Sometimes they pan out, sometimes they don't. In this case, there's only one manufacturer (Tektro) currently making decent brakes that fit this bike. Not sure what would have been so bad about spec'ing cantilevers (thus offering almost unlimited choices). So, Homer, so close. But not this time.

That left the two Surlys. I'd had my eye on Surly bikes for a couple of years, since someone often parked a candy-red Cross-Check in front of my office. It looked good, solid, and like a remarkably sensible, no-bullshit bike. Lots of braze-ons, a minimum of fussy design affectations, and smart chainstays that advertised "fatties fit fine" on a sticker. No, that's not referring rudely to your waistline... that means fat tires can fit in this road-ish frame with plenty of clearance left over for fenders. My second exposure to the Surly was, amusingly enough, reading the Ditty Bops' blog on their pedal-powered USA tour last year. This charmingly awesome band rode a pair of Cross-Checks from Santa Monica to NYC, while playing shows along the way. So I had confirmation that this was a bike that could make it from coast to coast, at least.

The Cross-Check bills itself as a race-ready cyclocross bike, but copious braze-ons belie its true capabilities. The bike seems plenty solid for moderate-duty loaded touring, and is plenty sprightly with narrow tires. It's also available as a pretty inexpensive frameset or a decently spec'd complete bike. Long horizontal rear drop-outs also allow a lot of flexibility to build the bike as a single speed, or vary the wheelbase by up to an inch for performance tweaks (or tire fitting).

The Long-Haul Trucker is the Cross-Check's heavy-duty younger brother, with heavier tubing, every braze-on you can think of, and a longer wheelbase. This is a true trekking machine, designed to be loaded like a burro and ridden across continents. Also, it's available in the ugliest shade of green in the Pantone book.

Ultimately, I chose the Cross-Check. I figure it's plenty capable of being loaded with my touring gear, and if I need the extra durability on offer from the Trucker, that probably means I'm going on a trek so outlandish that I should buy a special bike for it anyway. Also, the main job of this bike is going to be COMMUTING IN NEW YORK CITY. I need to preserve a modicum of lateral handling, since going in straight lines all the time is not always an option in the land of crazy taxis and clueless pedestrians. I don't need the tippiness of a messenger's keirin track bike, but the Cross-Check seems at least partially designed for nimbleness. The Trucker's loooong chainstays seem like they'd require an oil-tanker sized turning radius.

SO: Cross-Check it is. I went over to Bicycle Habitat, ordered me up a brand new 62cm one in Gray, and picked it up the day before Thanksgiving. I then promptly took it apart. Tune in for Part Three, when we put it all back together.

new bike! part one

2007-11-22T22:19:00.000-05:00

Part of the reason for starting this blog now is that I recently purchased a new bike, so I had to kit out my every-day ride from scratch. My trusty Bridgestone RB-1 that I rode almost exclusively since I've moved to New York was recently stolen from in front of my office, when I ran in for "just a couple of hours" on the weekend. It was built up from a frame in 1994, first as my go-fast bike, and most recently it was stripped down to the frame again in May 2005 and rebuilt from scratch with a full Shimano Ultegra Triple group and a beefy set of 36-hole Mavic rims. The Bridgestone, one of the last Grant Petersen-designed bikes sold under that brand, rode wonderfully, with a real tendency to go straight real fast. Handling was awesome, not too quick or too slow; it was stable as hell, but was also nimble enough to keep me out of trouble in NYC traffic. It was also a machine that was dialed-in to my tendencies, and when I found it missing about a month ago, I felt like I had lost a close buddy. Not to mention the fact that it started a lot of bike geek conversations... I was constantly being approached by bikers who appreciated what a great bike RB-1 was, and felt lucky to have gotten mine. I have a couple of the catalogs from that era, and they capture Bridgestone's quirky, anti-corporate philosophy of just making great bikes that are pratical, rideable, not too flashy, and built to last. Of course, they soon went out of business (in the US, at least).

However, the RB-1 was not perfect. First of all, the largest frame at 61cm was about 1.5cm too small for me (I'm 6'4"). In recent years, I rode with "bullhorn" handlebars (actually, 3ttt drop bars flipped over and cut off at the drops) to get the handlebars a bit higher. This eliminated some extra hand positions, and even with a 140mm stem, the top tube never felt long enough. This also put my STI brake levers in a downward-sloping position that put their center of gravity too far forward and made them rattle badly when hitting a bump of any magnitude.

Second, as I've become a car-free commuter, I've started bolting a lot of accessories on my bike: rack, fenders, pump, lights, BOB trailer hitch, the works. The RB-1 had one set of rack eyelets in the back, elegantly placed mid-dropout. but this could only be used for rack, fenders, and BOB with some creative washering and grinding. More crucially, the relatively short rear chainstays left only enough space between the rear wheel and seat tube for the thinnest plastic fenders, and I was constantly battling (with an ugly combo of zip ties and stiff wire) to keep the fenders in place. They ultimately cracked and flaked off.

Third, it was designed as a racing frame (granted, a versatile, thoughtfully-designed Grant Petersen racing frame, but racing nonetheless). This left it a teeny bit too flexy at the bottom bracket (especially when pulling the trailer or loaded with groceries). I was definitely pushing the operating envelope of the RB-1, and feared that it would just someday fold up on me like the Bluesmobile.

Finally, that wheel clearance thing limited tires to a practical limit of 700x28 smooth tires with the fenders. Deb and I do a lot of touring, frequently on dirt, and the ability to have a bike shod with 700x38 cyclocross mini-knobbies for a weekend would be a definite plus.

Bike nerd that I am, I gave all of these things a lot of thought even when I had the Bridgestone, and after it got lifted, I got serious about finding the right bike.

Full custom was (and still is) an option. I know that for the amount I ride, and how well I take care of my bikes (the RB-1 was 14 years old, and my other bike is going on 21), I could justify a custom ride. However, the waiting lists at my two favorite builders (Vanilla and Richard Sachs) are, as of this writing, 4 1/2 and 6 years respectively. Uh, dudes, I need a bike NOW. So plan B was to find the best stock bike, tweak the crap out of it, and secure my place on the custom waiting list so I can upgrade in, say, 2013.

What was I looking for? Well, I was 90% happy with the Bridgestone, so starting there was a good first step. A road bike, with drop bars. Similar frame geometry. Steel: there's outside chance that I might do some loaded trekking in the future, and I want something I can bend back or have welded in a Mexican village in a pinch. Aluminum (usually feels dead to me, and fatigues when crashed) or carbon (sorry, no) were not considered. Titanium woulda been acceptable, but there aren't a lot of good touring/city-ish road bikes out there stock in titanium, so again, we're looking at custom, and with a ~$1000 material penalty as well.

WIth that as the starting spot, I wanted to address the RB-1's shortcomings. First of all, the bike needed to be bigger. I'm right at the top of the size scale for off the rack, both in suits and bicycles, so just buying the next size larger isn't always an option. If a bike maxes out at 62cm, I need to make sure that 62cm fits me. And the ideal geometry would still maintain RB-1-like numbers but be slightly stretched around the top tube (for my ape arms) and around the chainstay (for fenders and fatty tires).

Clearances for all accessories are a must, and lots of braze-ons would be a necessity. A stiff, heavier-duty frame would also be required, as would big tire clearance. So I wound up looking in the touring/cyclocross category, to see what's out there. In the next post, the decision is made.

Kickin' It Off

2007-11-18T17:19:00.000-05:00

Watch this space for chronicles of a daily bicycle commuter taking the leap into a car-free existence. I'll be posting news about daily bicycle commuting in New York City, gear reviews, sharing ideas, and chronicling my hack-and-build bicycle projects. This may also be leading to a bicycle-related project that will go far beyond just blogging-- but more about that at another time.

My day job is computer programmer, but I've been an active cyclist and bicycle commuter my whole life (having started riding to school), and I worked for six years as a bicycle mechanic. I've ridden a variety of bicycles, mostly lightweight racing bikes (and I even entered a few races when I was younger). But lately I've realized I am never going to race again and that my racing bike are an ill fit for my riding style. I have begun to really appreciate the design of the traditional touring bike and all the dorky gadgets that go with it.

My daily commute is 6.5 miles each way from Park Slope, Brooklyn to central Manhattan, and I average about 3,000 miles per year. I've built up a ton of tips and tricks which I'll be sharing here and I hope to get others to post their ideas in the comment threads. Let me know if you're living car-free, cycling a couple of days a week, or just considering starting out. With the cost of gas going ever up, there's no better time to get on the bike.