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October Miles: 202
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 121%
2009 Miles: 2,218
Percentage of 2009 Goal: 110%

October is the riding month that Stephanie and I had been planning for all year. We had signed up for the Livestrong challenge in Austin, planning to do the 90 mile route through Texas hill country. While we didn’t do the 90 — for various reasons that I’ll get in to soon enough — we made it to the ride, really enjoyed the event and had a great time in Texas. We’re almost certainly going to do it again next year, maybe in San Jose instead of Austin. Fletch wants to do the ride as well, which I think is pretty cool.

First things first about the trip: a bunch of people helped us out with the event. Stan loaned us bike boxes for the trip, Erich and CLV loaned us their truck so we could get to and from the airport with our bikes, Randy and Karen put us up in their beautiful loft and loaned us a truck while we were in town, Jeni hung out with Fletch while Stephanie and I did the ride, she met us at the finish, drove us around all the day before the ride and put us up for the last night of our stay, and she, Jason, B., Jesse, Julie, Boris and Tanya schlepped out to the Salt Lick for lunch on Thursday. Add to that the big bunch of folks who donated their hard earned greenbacks to the LAF. We are truly overwhelmed by the generosity of our friends and family. You’re all the best. We’re lucky to know you.

Out trip started out way too early on a Friday morning. Throw everything in Erich and CLV’s truck, turn up the Elvis station on the XM, get almost to the freeway before we remember that we forgot Fletcher’s phone, drive home to discover that no, it’s in his pocket, hit the road again to LAX, check the bags have breakfast get on the plane fly to Denver have lunch and a beer fly to Austin and see this at the airport:

Which is pretty strong, greeting wise. Randy and Karen picked us up from there, showed us around town, helped us drop off our stuff and then took us out for dinner and beers. Stephanie and Fletch have met them just once before, and I think I’ve seen them maybe two or three times in the last ten years, but family really is family and we had a grand time hanging out with them. From there we went back to their place, they took off for their ranch, and we turned in for the evening.

The next day we had a nice walk around Austin. We went on the obligatory pilgrimage to Mellow Johnny’s bike shop, where Fletch got to see some of that Lance guy’s TDF jerseys.

We had a leisurely breakfast in town, walked around some more and then met up with Jeni for the drive out to lunch. Since her research trip in 2008, Stephanie has been telling us about the Salt Lick and its many wonders. It did not disappoint. Great food, great company, we got to see people we haven’t seen in years. Hard to ask for more than that.

From there, Jeni took us on a quick spin over to Dripping Springs where the ride would start the next day. Always handy to get the lay of the land, especially with a 7:45 start time. (We aren’t morning people.) After that we went back to Austin, had the obligatory pasta dinner, and turned in early. (Although we were serenaded by the good people of Austin re-enacting “Thriller” right outside of Randy and Karen’t window.)

We woke up obscenely early the next morning to make the start time. Dropped Fletch off with Jeni, raced over to Dripping Springs, parked the car, rode to the start line and holy crap this place is a zoo!

We were part of the Fat Cyclist team that won the fund raising competition — Fatty raised over $780,000 for the LAF this year — and were entitled to start at the very front of the ride, but since we were late, we just hung out at the back of the 90 mile group and rolled out with them.

Now, a ride like this isn’t something to take lightly, as clearly indicated by me doing the serious face before the start:

Stephanie also was taking things very, very ser… no, actually she was just having a good time.

And the obligatory couple shot:

We were really excited to do this ride together. It was a bit of an early anniversary celebration for us. (Our 3rd wedding anniversary was just three days away.) We don’t get a ton of time to go on long rides together, and whenever we do it’s a really good time.

The start of the ride was along highway 290, which the good people of Dripping Springs had kindly closed down a lane of for us. It was a bit of gridlock along that part, but it opened up soon enough.

When I originally looked at the ride — in particular the elevation profile — I thought that wow, it looks almost exactly like the rides we do out here. In terms of distance and elevation, it would be like riding from home to Rancho and back. Not a huge deal. What I failed to consider is that the Texas hill country has that name for a reason. While there are hills here, there are also flat stretches. Not so much in Texas. The other thing I failed to consider is that Stephanie has been training really hard for the last few months, so while we rode at about the same speed in the summer, she’s cruise along at about 5mph faster than I do now, especially on hills. (And as you’ll recall, there are only hills in that part of Texas.) So the ride was more… challenging than I expected it to be.

That said, we reached the first “power stop” together and one of the other riders was kind enough to take our picture.

The race organizers handed out “in honor of” and “in memory of” bibs for people to write dedications on. Stephanie’s, for example:

There were also “I am a Survivor” bibs worn by cancer survivors. They were pretty inspiring. Strong, in a “I’m not taking any shit off this disease” sort of a way. This was my favorite:

Ten miles or so down the road was the second “power stop,” which was kind of crazy because it happened right there on the road. This was the only poor logistical decision I saw the entire day, so that was cool.

A few miles after the second stop, things took a turn for the worse. Towards the top of a climb, my rear wheel stopped. Completely. Brakes were fine. Tire was fine. Stephanie touched the hub and it was burning hot. Not good. Funny thing is that, relative to the normal road rider, I was carrying every tool under the sun. I had spare tubes for both my and Stephanie’s bike. Spare spokes. I could tighten pretty much any part of either of our bikes that might come loose. (Including crank arms, which have come off on us during rides before.) I had more or less everything I needed to completely service a bike. But I wasn’t prepared for a wheel failing.

After fiddling with it for a bit, the hub cooled down and we decided to give it another go. That lasted maybe a quarter of a mile before the wheel made a horrible high-pitched noise and stopped spinning for good. One of the ride’s on-course bike mechanics stopped by and chatted with us for a bit. Eventually one of the SAG wagons picked me up and took me to the next power stop where there was a mechanic with a full set of tools.

Note the morbid onlookers. (The guy in the Mellow Johnny’s jersey had three spokes go out on a cattle grate, which ended his day.) After a few minutes he was able to get the cassette off the wheel, gave the never welcome pronouncement of “you’re screwed” and offered his condolences to my ride. “Shit happens” was the best that we could collectively come up with to explain why a wheel with less than 2,000 miles on it would just stop working.

The other two riders with day-ending mechanicals were anxious to get back to the start, so Stephanie and I had a brief talk, decided that she’d finish the ride and I’d get the bike to the car and meet her at the finish. I took the camera with me, so she doesn’t have any pictures of her ride, but she had a great time. At the next rest stop she met Philly Jen, the Team Fat Cyclist co-captain for the Philadelphia Livestrong Challenge. They rode the last 30 miles of the 65 mile course — because she spent so much time with me and my mechanically-challenged bike, Stephanie missed the cutoff for the 90 mile course — together and had a grand old time.

Here’s Stephanie coming down the home stretch to the finish:

One very cool thing at the finish is that Eldon Nelson, aka the Fat Cyclist, was waiting there to try to meet as many of the Team Fatty riders as he could. We’ve been following his blog for a while, and it was really cool to get to meet him in person. He runs a mean cycling team and does great work getting people motivated. We were proud to be even a small part of his great efforts.

We hung out at the finish for a while after that, then headed to Jeni’s place for dinner and to catch up. It rained that night, thunder and everything, which was a fun change of pace for us. We had one last Salt Lick meal in the Austin airport before we left, and the flight home the next day was wonderfully uneventful.

Oh, and Stan told me yesterday that the Surly is ready to roll again. I’ll probably pick it up this afternoon.

September Miles: 196
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 117%
2009 Miles: 2,016
Percentage of 2009 Goal: just over 100%

Well, an exciting month for certain. I made my goal for the year this month. Just this morning, in fact. I left the house with 1,995 and 3/4 miles, which put me just past The Arboretum when I crossed 2,000. Here’s odometer for the day at the first safe place to stop after then:

Also the intersection in question:

And proof that I was there:

So, yeah. Mission accomplished, I guess. I like counting by miles a lot more than counting by trips to and from the office. Longer weekend rides with Stephanie and Fletcher are so much more fun. Although I have to say that I don’t at all miss the alternative to bike commuting:

August Miles: 161
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 96%
2009 Miles: 1,820
Percentage of 2009 Goal: 91%

It had to happen some month, and I would have bet at the beginning of the year that it would have been August. I missed goal this month. By less than six miles, too. Which is pretty dissapointing. Thing is, I was at 161 a week ago today. That pesky Station fire made riding somewhere between hazardous and stupid. So I didn’t.

That said, I’m still over 1,800 miles on the year. That’s a ride from my garage to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. I’m pretty pleased by that. I’m definitely going to make it to Chicago (which is 2,000 miles from Monrovia) by the end of September.

I think I may revise my goal for the year. The Empire State Building is 2,775 miles from my house….

July Miles: 177
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 106%
2009 Miles: 1,659
Percentage of 2009 Goal: 83%

I know it’s still July, but I’m not riding tomorrow, so whatever.

August was the month that I worried about. It’s often damn hot for three or four weeks straight in August. I love riding, but I’m not commuting in that sort of heat. Anyway, August happened in July this year. For a couple of weeks the highs were over 100, plus I had some other nonsense going on — watching the Tour, which is just about the worst excuse I can think of for not riding a bike — and I ended up not commuting at all for three weeks.

That said, I still made goal, so I’m happy about that. Credit a ride with the good people from Stan’s, a run down to the Arcadia bike path with Stephanie and a Saturday in Ventura with her and Fletcher for actually getting some miles in. Fletch and I also did a couple of evening bike runs over to Sierra Madre for ice cream. It was pretty fun to do some different types of riding.

I’m not sure how we’re going to work it, as it’s more than likely to be hot, but Stephanie and I need to start getting some serious training miles in for the Livestrong ride in October. I feel like we could both do the metric century (65 mile) option today, but we really want to be fast enough to do the 90. (There’s no way that I could make it within the time limit.) It shouldn’t take that much work to get there, so here’s to hoping that the weather cooperates. (Clearly we need to start summering in Portland or Ghent or something like that.)

June Miles: 173
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 103%
2009 Miles: 1,482
Percentage of 2009 Goal: 74%

Slow going last month. I spent a little more than a week dealing with a cold and then a few days after that traveling. Add a few “hey, wear a tie” days at work to that, and I wind up barely making my goal.

That said, June definitely had its memorable riding momemts. Most notably, Fletcher’s scout troop finished up the cycling merit badge, including a 50 mile ride from Monrovia to Seal Beach. I’m really proud of how well he and the rest of the boys did with such a long ride. The farthest I ever rode as a kid was maybe 15 miles. The bike path down there was also really great. From our house, it’s about 40 pretty easy miles down to the beach — we had to circle around Monrovia for a while to stretch it out to 50. I’d like to do the down and back some time, just for grins.

July, likely as not, will be hot. I’m not looking forward to it. Stephanie and I already had a heated stupid cyclist moment this weekend, waiting until mid day to leave for a ride. Turns out that the middle of the day is a bad time to ride. Who knew! My hope is that it stays cool enough in the mornings for me to keep riding in to work. Otherwise, I’m glad that May worked out as well as it did, otherwise I’d have no chance of keeping up.

Today is Bike To Work Day. There are bike “pit stops” all over LA, all doing different things. My goal this morning was to check out the three Pasadena stops.

I rolled in to the REI-sponsored stop at the Allen gold line station at about 8:30. They said that they had talked to a lot of riders today.

Gift bags and free mechanical checkups were the order of the day. Also picture taking, it seems. I declined the checkup, but gladly accepted the gift bag.

Quite excited about the REI coupon — new helmet? wheel truing stand? — and the water bottle/patch kit/sun screen. We get out to Claremont often enough that I’ll definitely be able to use the Jax coupon. Those Clif bars look yummy as well. I’m not at all sure what to make of the TMZ-branded combination pen/bottle opener.

The Pasadena city hall pit stop looked pretty mellow from the street.

Inside, though, it was much more of a scene.

They seemed much more geared towards letting city and other very local employees know about alternative transit options. Metro and Fuller had tables set up. I think Pasadena Cyclery was holding a drawing for some sort of Gary Fisher city bike. I really wanted to hit the South Lake pit stop before it closed, though, so I grabbed the nice shopping bag they were offering and was on my way.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the South Lake stop. I rode up and down the street from Colorado to just south of California and back. Nothing. I guess it was getting on towards the end of the time they were to be there. Perhaps they packed up early?

Most disappointingly, this is what I saw when I got in today:

Oh well. I guess we won’t be getting those new bike racks after all. (We were running out of room pretty regularly last summer, and “there isn’t enough space” is a much more compelling argument than “these are crappy stands and they scratch up my down tube so I don’t want to use them.”)

Either way, though, a fun ride this morning. There were definitely more bike commuters than usual out on the road today, and it’s nice to see the city and local businesses help out cyclists. (Even if it is just marketing.)

I broke a pedal on the way in to work today.

It just snapped while I was getting started in to an intersection. I can still pedal the bike, but there’s a lot of give to it now, and I’m not entirely sure how hard I can push on it before it breaks further, which may make the last two blocks of my ride home (which is the only part that’s up-hill in a meaningful way) interesting.

The funny part is that on Sunday when I got my wheel back from the shop, I thought for a bit about putting the 20-year-old, aluminum (and completely bomb-proof) platforms that I took off the Bridgestone on to my bike. I guess I’ll be getting to that tonight.

It’s getting on winter, and in southern California that means rain. Well, it means the ominous if not particularly realistic threat of rain. Not even that: there is definitely a possibility that some time between now and next summer it may rain. And as you all know, rain means the opportunity to buy new gear for your bike. SKS fenders in my case.

Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of working on my bike after work, and the muse to wrench often strikes after particularly trying days. This leads to calamity more frequently than I’d like. This was definitely the case with the fender installation.

My first attempt was actually at the end of a very pleasant Sunday and got the front fender on without difficulty. Unfortunately I was a little overzealous with the rear fender, broke one of the little plastic guards that goes on the end of the v-brace and snapped a spoke on the wheel.

I have no spare spokes, nor do I know how to properly true a wheel — this has to change. I wonder if the bike kitchen still does wheelbuilding classes? — so I imposed upon my gracious wife to take it down to Stan’s and have it fixed.

After that was done I put the rack back on, rode it to work, had One Of Those Days, got home and decided that it would be a dandy idea to give the fenders another go. Not five seconds passed before I snapped one of the bolts holding the rack on — it was also to hold the fenders on! — right off the bike.

My best efforts to extract it with a locking wrench weren’t that hot. In fact they made the situation worse, breaking off what little was left of the bolt.

I consulted some friends and my dad and decided to invest in a left-hand drill bit to try to either drill the damn thing out or turn it out. A trip to Osh, one 5/64^th” bit, one 7/64^th” bit and twenty minutes with a drill later and I had a 7/64^th” hole through the still very immobile bolt.

My next attempt involved a trip to the Home Depot and the purchase of an Alden Pro Grabit damaged screw extractor. It’s basically a left-handed screw built on to a drill bit. It’s also not at all designed to take bolts out of bike frames: it lasted maybe half a second before it broke right the damn off.

It’s still wedged in the frame of my bike. I imagine that it will take an act of God to remove it.

At this point I was done with the whole thing. To hell with the fenders. I live in Southern California where it never rains. Off to REI for one of those dumb looking racks that just attaches to the seat post.

Unfortunate — or fortunately, depending on how you look at things — the dumb looking racks are way more popular than the old school racks that need 10,000 mount points and braze-ons and what have you, so they start about $50. Which was just enough to make me look around a bit more and discover a $5 pair of Delta Rack Mount Clamps.

These things are awesome. They hook on to the seat stay or the chain stay and let you pretend like your frame has all the mounts you need. It also lets you forget that you destroyed the perfectly good rack mounts that you already had. Anyway, about ten minutes after I got home I had both rack and fender attached.

(Pause for a moment and bask in the majesty of my high-tech bike work stand)

So now I can ride to work with my stuff, and I can avoid getting water sprayed all over me if it ever rains. Braggable. Here’s a closeup of the fully awesome Delta clamps.

Perhaps the best thing about getting the rear fender on is that I got to use my awesome reflecty tape. The night commuting is still sort of unnerving for me, so any chance I can get to be visible is appreciated.

So there you have it. cp: 1, broken bolt: 0. Also, there will from here on out be a house rule against screwing anything in to the frame of a bike without grease.

So over the weekend I got clipless pedals for my bike. (Fun fact: “clipless” pedals are the kind that you clip in to. Awesome naming.) If the internets are to be believed, I’m 1/3^rd of the way to breaking them in. The story goes that when you first start riding with them you’ll fall three times. On the way home yesterday I forgot to clip out as I pulled up to the intersection of Colorado and Michillinda. This, of course, resulted in the slow tip sideways and me on my ass in the road in front of a (stopped!) pickup. Both the bike and me (save a skinned knee) are no worse for wear, so things went about as well as they could have.

At any rate: one down, two to go. I can’t wait!

Hola, Amigos. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve rapped at ya about the bikes, so I figured I’d fire off a quick update.

I’m a little more than one third of the way done with my new years resolution. Today was my 17^th ride to/from work. To celebrate hitting the 1/3^rd mark, I took the northern route home through Sierra Madre. (Map below.) Stan recommended this route the last time I talked to him. He was totally right. The bike lane along Orange Grove and the section of Sierra Madre in Pasadena was awesome, and there were way fewer stops than my normal route. I don’t know that I’ll be taking it in to the office any time soon — the road in to Sierra Madre is, um… steep — but it’s great for coming home.

Some things I’ve learned over the past few weeks:

• I don’t enjoy riding home when it’s over 100, although the middle 90’s are fine
• Cars put out a lot of heat. It’s really uncomfortable being next to them at stop lights
• The Arboretum feels like a giant air conditioner when they’re watering the north end of the property. Which is really nice after sitting next to aforementioned hot cars.
• I need exactly one gear to get to/from the office. So perhaps I’ll get a single speed as a backup bike.
• If you’re putting a new chain on your bike, be sure to read the instructions carefully, least you destroy the chain pin. (Not that I did this. No sir. Not me. Although many, many thanks to Stephanie for taking the bike down to Stan’s and getting the chain fixed!)

Oh, I must remember to give glowing mention to the trunk rack I got a couple of weeks back. It’s a vast improvement over a backpack. No messy straps hanging all over me, no ugly sweaty back when I get to work. If you’re looking for something big enough to carry a change of clothes and a person’s worth of wallets and gadgets and keys, I can’t recommend the Novara “Deluxe” Rack Trunk quite enough.

So anyway, yeah. Yay bike commuting. I’m genuinely enjoying both not being in the car and getting outside more often. I’ve lived in the land of inordinately good weather for almost 14 years now, and I really can’t believe that I haven’t taken any advantage of that until now.