Category: Biking

Troptember

lpaulriddle

Once again we find ourselves in the month of September.  September is one of those months that’s neither here nor there.  It doesn’t really feel like summer any more, but it’s not autumn yet either.  It’s still humid and muggy all the time, and I work up a good sweat every time I ride my bike, but it’s too cold to use the pool most of the time.  The tropics are cranking out a new hurricane every week.  I think September should be declared a separate season.  We’ll have Winter, Spring, Summer, Troptember, and Autumn.

This week, we’ve got endless rain on deck from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee.  It was drizzling when I rode to work, but not enough to make me want to wear rain gear.  I did pack it along, though, for the first time since last spring.  I suspect I’ll need the rain gear for the ride home this afternoon.

All this rain is a good thing, though, because it’s keeping a big category 3 hurricane out at sea, which otherwise might have threatened the east coast.  Yep, it’s that time of year.

Won’t be long ’til October…

First Day of Classes

lpaulriddle

So today, I rode the upper Grist Mill Trail through Patapsco State Park, took River Rd. to Ellicott City, then rode up Oella Ave. and into Catonsville via the No. 9 Trolley Trail.  No issues at all until I went to turn from Bloomsbury Ave. onto Asylum La. to cut through Spring Grove.  Asylum was blocked by a large fallen tree, and apparently they’re not in a big hurry to clear it out.  No way around it on either side, so I had to drag the bike through a bit of foliage, but it was passable.  There was a small section that looked more beaten-down than the rest, no doubt from other riders doing the same thing, so I did my part and helped tamp it down some more.

Other than the tree, there was not much to report.  There was a big fallen power line on Oella Ave. right near the Oella Mill complex.  I’m guessing some people there are still without power.  River Rd. was clear and dry, with no mud, and only one little area with a bit of runoff.  Lots of friendly riders, walkers and joggers out in the park.

Today is the first day of fall classes at UMBC.  Traditionally during this week, I’ve always come onto campus via Poplar Ave.  However, ever since they started the new zoned parking plan last year, the traffic on Hilltop Circle has increased quite a bit, particularly early in the semester.  Today I decided to try coming in via Walker Ave. instead, and it wasn’t too bad.  There was a bit more traffic on Wilkens Ave. than in the summer, but the traffic light at Wilkens and Valley Rd. does a good job of metering the traffic.  When I come in this way, I don’t have to ride on Hilltop at all.  I just cross it, then take the access road behind the library parking garage, and follow the trail over to the Engineering/Fine Arts building area.  It looks like Walker will be a viable way to come onto campus, so the only route I’ll need to avoid is Hilltop Rd., which I’ve been riding less and less anyway.

Outfitting for Winter

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Labor Day is less than a week away, summer is mostly behind us, and thoughts are turning towards the coming fall and winter.  To avoid the rush, I’m getting my shopping done early for the cold-weather biking season.  After a bit too much excitement with icy roads last winter, I took the plunge a few weeks ago and bought a set of studded tires.  After careful consideration, I went with the “Marathon Winter” tire by Schwalbe.  These tires have been well reviewed, and seem to be best suited to the type of riding I’ll be doing:  mainly paved roads, with occasional icy patches.  I got the 26″ size and will put them on my mountain bike.  I plan on putting the tires on in early to mid November, and riding them all winter.  I’ll be sure to post my experiences.  If they work out well, it’d be nice to get a set for my single speed, which should be able to take 700cx32 tires with studs.  However, there wouldn’t be enough room for fenders.

For the past 3 winters, I’ve been using a NiteRider “Sol” headlight.  It’s not super bright, but good enough for commuting.  Unfortunately, the cable that plugs the light into the battery pack died recently.  I can make the light come on if I flex the cable just so, but as soon as I let go, the light goes out.  I’m a bit disappointed that the light didn’t last longer.  I’m now in the market for a new light.  Quality issues notwithstanding, I was thinking about going in a different direction for my next headlight anyhow.  The NiteRider, while functional, isn’t the best for commuting.  It has a proprietary battery pack that’s expensive to replace, and the o-ring handlebar mount is difficult to deal with when you want to move the light from one bike to another.  After 3 years of night commuting, I have a very clear list of things I want in a light:

  • It must use non-proprietary batteries, preferably NiMH rechargeable AA or AAA cells.
  • It should be as bright, or slightly brighter, than the Sol.
  • It should include a daytime flashing mode for visibility, something the Sol lacked (though most of NiteRider’s newer lights include this feature).
  • It should be easy to transfer between multiple bikes.

I researched lights, and quickly turned up the Planet Bike “Blaze”.  On paper, this looks like the headlight of my dreams.  Self contained, takes regular batteries, has a flash mode, has a quick-release mounting bracket, extra brackets available for other bikes, and best of all, ridiculously inexpensive.  I actually ordered 2 of them, a 2-watt and a 1-watt model, plus 2 extra mounting brackets, all for less than I paid for my NiteRider back in 2008.  I’m already a fan of Planet Bike, but I’ll be an even bigger fan if all this gear works out for me this winter.  Stay tuned.

That time of year

lpaulriddle

So, in the past week, central Maryland has weathered an earthquake and a hurricane.  Now we get to weather the first week of fall classes at UMBC, which is always exciting, and almost never in a good way.  We’ll see what this year has in store for us.

Took my first post-Irene bike ride to work today.  The goal was to scout out Patapsco State Park, to see if there were any downed trees or debris to block my passage.  Today I rode into the park on the Howard County side via River Rd., past the Avalon day use area, out to the swinging bridge, and back via the Grist Mill Trail.  Figuring there’d be lots of debris to negotiate, I took my mountain bike.  This part of the park turned out to be in great shape.  There was definitely evidence of recent trail maintenance, which must have taken place yesterday or Sunday.  There were no fallen trees blocking the road or trail, and no more debris than you’d expect after any average summer storm.  Tomorrow, I’ll ride the upper section of the Grist Mill Trail out to Ilchester Rd., and check out how River Rd. fared in the storm.

Howard County schools are back in session starting today (one day late, again thanks to Irene) which means that for the next couple of weeks, I’m going to avoid riding on Montgomery Rd. in the mornings.  I’ll start my rides by going down Lawyers Hill Rd., and then vary the routes from there.  If I’m feeling adventurous, maybe I’ll even attempt a few climbs up the notorious Ilchester Rd.

It seems like the biggest fallout from Hurricane Irene has been the power outages.  Apparently it’s going to take until the weekend to get power restored to everybody.  Irene’s track was very similar to Hurricane Floyd back in 1999, and I remember Floyd causing a lot of power outages.  It seems worse this time around.  It might just be because the area has gotten so much denser and built out in the 12 years since Floyd.  The more electrical infrastructure you build, the more you have to support, and the more vulnerable it is to storms like Floyd and Irene.

Humps

lpaulriddle

A few weeks ago, Westchester Ave., which runs between Ellicott City, MD, through the town of Oella, and ends in Catonsville, was re-paved.  As recently as a month or so ago, I remember riding my bike up it and being kind of surprised that they hadn’t added speed humps, as they seem to be ubiquitous pretty much everywhere else in the area.  Sure enough, not a week after, zillions of speed humps had magically appeared along Westchester Ave.

Speed humps are a band-aid fix for a larger systemic problem.  People speed on back roads because they’re built too wide.  Roads are built too wide because fire departments require it (Google it if you don’t believe me, or read the excellent book Suburban Nation, by Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck).  Paradoxically, this increases speeds along the roads, which makes them less safe.  Traffic engineers “fix” this problem by building speed humps, which annoy everyone.  It’s suburban planning at its finest.

Catonsville provides an interesting case study for this.  Catonsville has older sections and newer sections.  The older sections have relatively narrow, tree-lined streets with on-street parking.  These are the kind of streets where when two cars approach each other from opposite directions, one has to give way to allow the other room to get by.  Motorists drive slowly and carefully without the need for “traffic calming.”  It’s not uncommon to see kids playing in and around the street.  Contrast that with the newer sections of Catonsville, which have wider streets and fewer trees and other obstacles.  Everyone drives too fast, kids aren’t allowed anywhere near the road, and planners try to fix it with speed humps.  Guess which type of street is statistically safer?  And, as a corollary, guess which is more enjoyable to ride a bike on?

Grout Removal

lpaulriddle

Nothing much exciting to write about on the biking front lately.  I was off work last week, and didn’t do much biking, but this week I’m back at it again.  August has brought some slightly more pleasant weather so far, but still not much in the way of rain, other than the occasional torrential downpour.  In other words, business as usual for mid-summer in Maryland, more or less.

Been doing a little bit of work in our master bathroom lately.  We decided to re-grout the bath tub and shower area, because a lot of the old grout was either in bad shape or gone altogether.  Also, the shower door, likely a 1950s original, was shot (the rollers at the top were corroded to the point where they wouldn’t turn any more).  The first step to re-grouting is to remove the original grout.  According to everything I read, there’s no getting around this step, if you want the new grout to last.  Problem is, grout removal is a slow, boring, dusty job.  Over the course of the last few months, I’ve spent countless hours with my Dremel and my cartridge respirator, grinding away at the stuff, and I’m still only around 75% done (granted, this is a larger than average job, with 3 full walls and ceiling fully tiled – probably around 100 sq. ft. of tile).  The good news is, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This tile was initially challenging to work with.  Dremel sells a specialized grout removal bit and guide, but I couldn’t use their system because my tile was too close together.  I would end up grinding away the edges of the tile along with the grout.  I ended up using the Dremel with a right-angle adapter and a diamond wheel.  It was skinny enough to get into the gaps between the tile, and relatively easy to control, although there have been a few spots where I’ve nicked the tile glazing.  I’ve completely worn through one diamond wheel and am on my second now.  Looks like the entire job is going to cost me two diamond wheels.  Fortunately they’re not all that expensive — around $17.

Once we’ve re-grouted, we’ll replace the faucet handles and trim, the shower head, and the recessed light at the top of the shower, then install the new shower door, which we’ve had since last September.  I think the end result will look pretty nice, but this isn’t a job I would want to do again.  If we ever redo the other bathroom, I’m going to argue in favor of ripping out the (beautiful 1950s retro-pink) tile and re-tiling.

Disabled List

lpaulriddle

2011 has been a bad year for me in the injury department.  A couple of Saturdays ago, I messed up my ankle during a home improvement project (I should know better by now — it’s physically impossible for me to get through any home improvement project without some kind of injury.  Maybe that’s why I’m doing less and less of it these days).  It’s just a contusion (no sprain or anything), and 20 years or so ago it probably would have been back to 100% after a couple weeks.  But being that I’m 40ish now, everything takes longer to heal.  I hate getting old.  But anyhow, I’m icing it and trying to keep weight off it, which means curtailing my walking for now.  Walking isn’t too bad, but I’m definitely favoring the bad side.  At home, I hobble around on crutches.  Standing is uncomfortable, as is sitting, unless I keep the ankle elevated.  I’ve experimented with an ankle brace, but can’t decide if it’s helping it or irritating it.  Ice and Ibuprofen both provide some relief.

The good news is, I seem to be OK with non-weight-bearing exercise.  I have no discomfort either biking or swimming, so I’m keeping up with both of those activities (though I’ve dialed the biking back — 3 days this week instead of 5 — just to be on the safe side).  I’ve been a little slower than usual on the bike this week, but that’s as much due to this summer’s endless, relentless heat than anything else.

Here’s hoping for an injury-free 2012.  Maybe the daily highs will be out of the 90s by then…

Today’s temperature: 60°F

lpaulriddle

OK.. Wishful thinking.  This is summer in Maryland, so 60°C is probably more like it.  But I keep a log of all my bike commutes, and as part of that, I always record the ride-time temperature.  After this past Friday’s ride, my average ride-time temperature topped 60°F for the first time in 2011.  It seems surprising that it would take until mid-July for that to happen.  I’m curious to see what the average will be over an entire year.  Both 2009 and 2010 ended up averaging around 58°-59°, but in both cases, I neglected to record the temperature for a significant number of rides, primarily during summer.  That leads me to believe that a typical yearly average is probably somewhere north of 60°.  That’s higher than the climatological average for the area, which makes sense, because overall, I tend to ride more frequently in warmer months than in colder months.

Anyhow, this is going to be a short riding week, because I’m heading to Milwaukee on Wednesday for a well-timed business trip.  I say “well-timed” because we have yet another miserable heat wave headed this way.  It’s going to be hot in Milwaukee too, but not as hot as here.  And I likely won’t miss out on the tail end of the heat wave either, as I’ll be back Friday night.  But, it’ll spare me from a couple of days of biking in likely triple-digit heat indices, almost certainly accompanied by “code orange” air quality, or worse.  Yay summer.  Just 7 weeks ’til Labor Day!

Planet Bike FTW

lpaulriddle

Well, it happened.  I rode my fender-less road bike to work today, and now it’s raining.  So much for my theory that “30% chance of storms after 3:00” means it isn’t going to rain near Baltimore until evening.

I have a set of Planet Bike “SpeedEZ” fenders for this bike, because full fenders don’t really fit it.  But I don’t like riding around with the fenders all the time, because they rattle, tend to get knocked out of alignment easily, etc. and most of the time I don’t need them, because this is my fair-weather bike.  But, they’d be perfect in a situation like this, where it was bone dry during my morning ride, but figures to be wet for my ride home in a couple hours.  I could keep the fenders in my office, and put them on when I need them.  The problem is, the fenders are missing a couple of parts.  I’ve been meaning to seek out replacements, but didn’t feel like running around to various bike shops trying to track them down, and didn’t feel like paying exorbitant shipping rates to order a couple of small parts off the Internet.  Today’s weather finally inspired me to check out Planet Bike’s web site to look for parts.  To my surprise, replacement parts were available there for cheap, with free shipping to boot!  I ordered what I needed, plus some extras “just in case”, and I am an extremely happy customer now.

This experience inspired me to also contact Topeak customer support, to ask about getting a replacement bungee tie-down cord for my “beam rack” MTX, which I lost a couple months back and have missed ever since.  We’ll see how that endeavor goes.

In any case, it’ll be nice to have those fenders back in service, and available on days like today.

8000 Miles

lpaulriddle

I hit 8000 miles on my road bike at the beginning of yesterday afternoon’s ride.  I was coasting down through the UMBC campus in the 92-degree heat, on my way to Poplar Ave.  That’s part of my usual strategy for beating the heat on hot summer afternoons.  The two keys are:  take it easy, and drink lots of water.  Coasting down hills is one of the easiest things you can do to stay cool.  In general, it’s best to keep pedaling, but extreme heat is one of the exceptions to that rule.  Coasting gives you a breather, and the air movement helps cool you off.  In the heat, you also want to think holistically; in other words, take the entire ride into consideration when planning how hard to exert.  My ride home consists of rolling hills for most of the way, followed by a 1.5-mile uphill grind.  I have to be careful not to overexert at the beginning of the ride, or I will overheat and run out of gas on the final climb.

I ride like this when it’s 90° or more out, and also during Maryland’s trademark “code orange” bad air quality days, which lately seem to happen almost every day (though we seem to have gotten a reprieve today).  Paradoxically, on really hot days, I often arrive home less sweaty than I would on a slightly cooler day, because I tend to go faster and push harder when it’s below 90 out.

The road bike is still seeing the lion’s share of my riding this summer.  It’s my go-to bike when it’s hot and dry out.  This fall it’ll likely need new tires and maybe a new chain.  Also, I’m starting to see silver peeking through in a couple spots on the handlebars, so I may need to re-wrap them soon.  Tire-wise, I’ve been pretty happy with the Continental GatorSkins I’ve been running on this bike, so I’ll likely go with another pair, though I’ll probably up-size from a 700cx23 to 700cx25.