One Watt Planet Bike Blaze (and some other lights) Reviewed

OK, first off, here's the disclaimer. For quite a while I've said that I'm just an ordinary guy who bikes around and writes some stuff. But by riding more than a lot of folks and writing more than a lot of folks, I find myself, more and more these days, in situations that don't happen to normal folks. I call this the Jerry Pournelle Syndrome.

Back in the early days of personal computers, Byte magazine was the magazine for computer nerds. A guy named Jerry Pournelle (yeah the same Jerry Pournelle who writes science fiction novels) wrote this column that was supposed to represent the "normal" user's view of computers. But his column became popular, people sent him stuff and when he'd have a problem, he could make phone calls that "normal" people couldn't. I remember one instance where he had a problem with some Microsoft product and Jerry's solution was something like "so I called up my buddy Bill Gates and he flew a couple of techs down from Redmond to look at my system..." OK, maybe it wasn't quite that extreme, but it was close.

Anyhow, these days if you have a blog and a point of view and a reasonable set of eyeballs that show up on your web pages, folks will send you stuff. I turn down a lot of stuff that doesn't interest me and I sometimes do spend my own money on some stuff I review. And, as the folks at Accelerade will tell you, freebies don't guarantee a good review. It really helps if you actually have a product that the reviewer likes.

Another factor that adds to the moral fog of the blog review process is that some bloggers, like me, make some money off sales that come via blog links. So if I say good things about Planet Bike and the link goes to Amazon and you buy a Planet Bike light there, I do get some money. Which I then spend on still more bike stuff and the cycle repeats.

So, as I've said many times, I may be biased. Let the buyer beware.

Which brings me to Planet Bike. They make good stuff. They donate 25% of their profits to Bicycle Advocacy. For example, they donate to my employer, the Bicycle Alliance of Washington and have helped us out with programs like Get Lit. And sometimes they send me stuff. For free. Sometimes being a blogger is pretty dang cool. The freebies (along with red cape and goggles and getting to hang out with Xeni and Cory in the Boing Boing hot air balloon) are definitely up there on the list of blog perks.

Monday I wind up signing for a package at the Bikestation. Inside the box was a nifty "Global Cooling Machine" t-shirt from Planet Bike and their brand new, first sample batch off the boat, not availiable is stores yet, One Watt Planet Bike Blaze Headlight.

Initial reaction among the folks at the Bikestation was "Wow!"

The Blaze One-Watt is bright. Low beam is brighter than what is put out by its half-watt sibling. I've been happily commuting with two of the half-watt lights this winter. At 6:00 PM, I set off for my 18 mile commute home in the 48 degree rain. The new light uses the same mounting bracket as both the Beamer and the half-watt Blaze but the light itself is about a centimeter longer.

I played with the light on the commute home. This is a very nice light. I have good night vision, so I mostly ran it on low. Low beam doesn't seem much lower than high, but the difference is noticeable. The flash rate is rapid. I have mixed feelings about flashing lights, they help drivers notice you, but it's hard to gauge the location of a flashing light. Because of my mixed feelings and an appreciation for the value of redundancy, I'll probably stick to a dual light set-up, but the one-watt Blaze would really be all the headlight I'd need. Still, I think a Blaze as the main light and a slightly lower powered Planet Bike light, possibly set to flash, makes for a real nice commuting set-up.

The new one-watt Blaze uses a very efficient Cree XRE Power LED and when I got home at the end of my hour and half commute, the light was still cool to the touch. The extra centimeter of length on the light is taken up by an aluminum ring which seems to do a fine job as a heat-sink.

As you can see from the pictures, the new light is iMac white. I'm not wild about the color scheme, but the light works well enough I'd use it even if the case were purple with green polka-dots. And, since the back part of the light is identical to the grey half-watt light, I can swap back portions to make a couple of unique white/grey and grey/white lights.

I haven't ridden with the one-watt Blaze enough to test the battery life claims, but in general Planet Bike seems to be in the right ballpark with their claimed battery life. The light works fine with NiMH rechargeable batteries.

Planet Bike lists the battery life (probably assuming alkaline cells) as:

High beam -- 7 hours
Low beam -- 14 hours
Flashing -- 20 hours

The suggested retail price of the one-watt Blaze is $39.99 to $44.99

And Planet Bike is also coming out with a two-watt version (Even I don't have one of those yet!) They tell me the specs on that light will be:

High beam -- 4 hours
Low beam -- 8 hours
Flashing -- 15 hours

The suggested retail price of the two-watt Blaze will be $49.99 to $54.99

From left to right: Planet Bike Beamer 3, Planet Bike Blaze Half-Watt, Planet Bike Blaze One-Watt. All three lights are powered by 2 AA batteries and can run on NiMH rechargeable batteries. Note in this picture, I used the flash on the camera. This picture probably most accurately reflects the relative brightness of the lights.

The same shot, but with the camera's flash suppressed. You can see a bit more of the side light spill from the Beamer 3 and the Blaze One-Watt.

The light added to this picture is the Princeton Tec EOS. The EOS has been on the market for several years and is still a very good light. My original review of the EOS is here. The EOS is still quite a good helmet light, but in terms of a light to have on the bike, the new Planet Bike One-Watt Blaze with it's Cree XRE LED beats the EOS. The beam is better, the flash rate is better for cycling and I much prefer having 2 AA batteries instead of three AAA cells.

Finally, here's a fuzzy picture of some tail lights. Here's the short story, if your current tail light is more than a couple of years old, you owe it to yourself to check out the recent LED tail lights. LED lights have gotten much brighter and more efficient in the past couple of years and even the cheapest lights of today may be brighter and run longer on a set of batteries than an expensive light from a few years ago.

In the above picture, the light on the left is an under-$10 Bell light that I blogged about over a year ago. That cheap light is still working fine, although the cheaper lights are often prone to problems in the wet weather.

The second light from the left, the light that makes all others pale in comparison, is the Planet Bike Superflash. This is a very bright, some might say obnoxiously bright, light. Some folks, including me, have had problems with water leaking past the seal on the Superflash, causing the light to shut off. Dan at Planet Bike tells me they did have gasket problems with some of the Superflash lights and they've now changed the durometer of the rubber on the gasket. Planet Bike has a good warranty and will replace lights that have a problem or you can do what I did, which is wrap a bit of electrical tape around the outside of the light. Since I did that, I haven't had any problem with water getting inside my Superflash.

The other two lights are also Planet Bike products. The kidney-shaped light is my favorite tail light, the Planet Bike Blinky 3. The Blinky 3 is inexpensive and plenty bright. I've never had a problem with one and I have them on various bikes and clipped to my backpack. The final light is a little Planet Bike tail light with a pivoting bracket designed to go on the back of a helmet. I uses a single AAA cell as it's power source. The pivoting bracket is nice in theory and the single cell keeps the weight low, but the light may or may not work on your helmet.

Finally, about that green shirt the Planet Bike folks sent me. It's green, it's cotton and it's something I can wear to all those planet-saving eco fairs I wind up going to as part of my job. Of course, the green clashes with my red blogger's cape, but I usually don't wear the cape out in public!

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

The Politics of Human Power

Politics effects public policy and those policies effect the places we live and how we travel through the world. This post expresses some of my views on the current political situation and does not necessarily represent those views of my employer, the Bicycle Alliance of Washington. There are many people, many cyclists, who hold a wide range of views and I have friends (and family) whose politics run across a wide range of political thought. Whatever your views, I appreciate the time you take to read my blog.

Saturday, February 9th 2008, political caucuses were held across Washington state. Unlike primaries, where people simply vote (and in many places can vote by mail), in a caucus you actually show up. In a primary vote, your ballot is secret. In a caucus, you are physically in a room with your neighbors, making your preference known, discussing candidates and issues and possibly swaying others to your point of view.

Mark Thomas, Kevin Humphreys, Matt Newlin and I skipped the Seattle International Randonneurs ride on Vashon Island, opting instead for a more local morning ride that would get us back to our respective homes in time to attend our local caucuses. My precinct caucus was at a school on up on the Issaquah Plateau, about three miles from my home.

My wife and I live human-powered, human-sized lives and have opted not to own an automobile. We get around mostly by foot or bicycle and sometimes use various forms of mass transit. Christine is predominantly a walker, she walks to her job as a shopper for Safeway.com about a mile from our home and at work she walks up and down the grocery aisles, filling home delivery orders that customers have placed on the internet. Even though I'm a professional bike commuter, Christine and I often walk around Issaquah together rather than bike. It's simpler, more conducive to conversation and we're in no rush. We hold hands like young lovers.

Naturally, we walked up to our caucus.

The area east of Seattle, including the Cascade foothill town of Issaquah where I live, has grown tremendously over the past several decades. The downtown core of Issaquah is boxed in by low mountains to the south, Lake Sammamish to the north and the Issaquah Plateau to the northwest. The Issaquah Highlands, up on the Plateau, is where many of the new homes, businesses and schools have been constructed in the past few years.

Traffic is a problem here, but Issaquah's mayor (herself a walker) and city council recognize that cycling and walking are part of the transportation solution, so we have things like sidewalks and trails and we're working on getting more. A local group called Getting Around Issaquah Together (GAIT) works at the grassroots level to keep our city walkable, bikeable and liveable.

Christine and I walk from our home in downtown, along streets with sidewalks, complete streets, and up the Plateau via a pedestrian and cycling path. The last half mile, along the busy Issaquah-Fall City Road, has a narrow shoulder and a thin strip of grass where we walk, but this could be better.

As we walk to our caucus, Christine notes that the Republican caucus is happening over at Clark Elementary school, a much closer walk. Our family is fairly diverse politically, our 22 year old son Peter, who is currently attending Eastern Washington University in Cheney, has explained to me "I don't ride a bicycle because I'm a damn hippie like you, Dad. I ride a bike because I'm fiscally conservative." His 19 year old brother Eric, who is attending Bellevue Community College and working as an office manager for AOA Dental Lab in Seattle, is similarly more right-leaning than Christine and I and he gets exasperated with our low-consumption lifestyle. "You always say things like 'money can't buy happiness', Dad but how do you know? It can buy some pretty cool stuff! Maybe if you made more of it you'd see that." Christine and I are just happy that we've raised a couple of boys who can think for themselves, fend for themselves, figure things out and make the choices that they think are best.

Despite Eric's close following of the presidential election process, he's not going to his caucus. Things seem to be more settled on that side of things and he seems confident that Senator McCain will get the Republican nomination whether or not Eric Peterson of Issaquah Washington attends his caucus.

On the Democratic side, things are not so settled. Although I have a great affinity for Congressman Dennis Kucinich since, like me, he is short, carries a lot of stuff in his pockets and has a gorgeous wife. But even the quixotic Mr. Kuchinich has determined at this date that he cannot win the presidency. Christine and I are attending our caucus to have our say, to advance the cause of the candidate we feel best represents our views and has the best chance of winning the election.

The school cafeteria is packed when we get there and becomes more even more packed as the time approaches 1:00 PM. The Democratic caucus organizer truthfully jokes that George Bush has been the most effective person for Democratic recruitment ever. Christine and I find our precinct table and settle in.

The turnout is huge. Families with young kids, a hunched and wrinkled old woman with a walker, teachers, software engineers, retired folks, moms, dads, singles, couples, veterans, Americans.

We get instructions, a lot of us are new to this process. At 1:30 PM we sign in. We fill out our names, addresses, contact information and finally initial presidential preference. There is a second blank, one that we can fill in if we wish to change our selection after discussion. There are more people than blank sign-in sheets but tablet paper can be used.

Almost every on in our precinct votes initially for Senator Clinton or Senator Obama. One person cast a vote of Mr. Kucinich and a couple listed as undecided but the bulk of the votes went to the two Senators. And of the forty or so people gathered around our precinct's couple of tables more than thirty voted for Senator Obama initially.

We could speak to make our case for the candidates we chose. A young school teacher introduced herself and said why she was supporting Senator Clinton. She talked about Clinton's health-plan, how it would cover more people. I spoke after her and I spoke in support of Senator Obama.

I talked about my sister who lives back in the midwest, my sister whose son is currently on active duty in Iraq. I recounted a conversation I had with my sister where she stated flatly that she'd never vote for Senator Clinton. My sister is not alone in that sentiment. It may or may not be fair. While there are many folks who support Senator Clinton and her policies, there are many others who are steadfast in their dislike of her. Just as George Bush can mobilize the Democrats and independents against him, Senator Clinton can move the Republicans and independents against her.

And Senator Obama is bringing more people in. In terms of policy there is very little difference between Obama's and Clinton's positions. Earlier in the campaign Senator Obama filled a stadium in Boise with people eager to hear him speak. Boise, Idaho, a state not known for it's Democratic leanings. On Friday, Senator Obama over-filled the Key Arena in Seattle. He took time outside the arena to speak to those who could not get in. Senator Obama is bringing more people in, people anxious to change this country for the better. I don't think the large caucus turnout is just anti-Bush, there are a large number of people out to support Senator Obama.

A few members of our precinct caucus changed their initial votes. I believe one vote changed to Clinton and two changed to Obama. In the end when the ratios were calculated and the delegates assigned, our precinct allocated three delagates to Senator Obama and one to Senator Clinton.

Now, hours later, the caucus results for Washington are in. Democratic turnout was high state-wide. The radio tells me that in Kirkland the caucus was too big for the school cafeteria and overflowed into the parking lot. Senator Obama won Washington by a factor of about two to one.

I believe Senator Obama is good man and I think he has the best chance of any Democrat running to win the presidency this fall. I also believe in a lot of his positions and what he stands for. I like that he reaches out to work with others, a trait that also is apparent in his likely opponent Senator McCain. I'll also restate what I have often said about the job of President of the United States. Mr. T said it best, "I pity the fool" who gets that job.

Of course there is more to life than bicycles, but I do feel good about supporting a candidate who recognizes human power as a valid component of human life. Over on the Bicycle Diaries Blog I found this from Senator Obama's response to a letter asking for his support of Senate Bill 858: the Bicycle Commuters Benefits Act of 2007:

The benefits of commuting by bicycle is almost an endless list — reducing harmful emissions, reducing congestion, reducing petroleum consumption, promoting personal health — but our public policies have evolved to where smart and sustainable transportation uses are discouraged.
Roads are designed without pedestrian or bike paths, office and shopping parks are designed around the automobile, and even the best transit systems may be incompatible with bike use. It is time to revisit all federal policies to better accommodate the energy and environmental health priorities of the 21st century.
Also on that site I found this picture of a young Barack Obama on a trike. Even today, he looks like a man who still remembers what it was like to be that smiling kid. A man who hopes for a better world and tries to make the world be that better place.

David Sylvester: Doing his best each moment

David Sylvester describes himself as "A man, just a regular guy." David's story, no make that David's life, is an example of what can be done by choosing a vehicle, choosing a direction and doing your best.

David's life is out there on the road. His story is here:

http://tinyurl.com/2crt32

Dave Kannas: View From The Saddle

Dave Kannas recently started writing a cycling column for the West Seattle Herald. His piece yesterday, Can't we all just get along? is wonderful. You can read it here:

http://tinyurl.com/3yfpwv

Sheldon Brown

A wise, gentle, witty, caring, thoughtful and generous man has left the world of the living, but he leaves behind a great example of what one man can do with a passionate life, freely shared. In the past few hours, the internet has bloomed with tributes to Sheldon, folks telling how he touched their lives, how he was always generous with his time and patient with his answers.

Sheldon lived an astoundingly full life and somehow found time to log his discoveries in rich detail. He certainly knew bikes but he also laid down some of the first tracks in a wilderness called the internet and he taught a lot of people how to homestead here. How to homestead and how to behave. Share what you know, do what you love, live life beyond the computer screen and report back. Sign your work. Laugh often. Read. Sing. Rejoice.

Sheldon was so encyclopedic in his knowledge, so prolific in his postings that some of us wondered sometimes if perhaps he'd actually joined with his computer, his email filters and databases of arcane facts welded together with home-brew scripts that of course he'd freely share. And now they tell us Sheldon is gone, his mighty heart has beat its last.

His cyber opus will live on, of course. Google's spiders will tell you how deeply wound the man's knowlege is woven into the world's web. But no more postings from the man himself? No more delightful bikes? No more reports of his lovely family, the books he's read, the songs he's sung? Our world is poorer for his passing, but so rich for his having been here with us, showing us a wonderful way to live.

Sheldon Brown had perhaps the richest home page on the internet, a page that gave the reader perhaps the truest sense of the man. Sheldon is gone, but in a way he's not. He gave us so much, so freely and because of that we can still go here:

http://sheldonbrown.com/home.html

Thank you Sheldon. Thank you for everything.

Danger In The Bike Lane

I'd mentioned a while back that I'd gone riding around the city with Mike Lindblom of the Seattle Times. Mike's article, Danger in the Bike Lane, is the Time's front page story today. You can read it here:

http://tinyurl.com/2lwc62

An Update On Louise

Louise is out of the hospital now and is recovering at home. She's in very good spirits and she's strong as a bear. I think the doctors weren't used to seeing somebody as fit as Louise, they'd been concerned about her low pulse rate but that seems to be a function of her big cyclist's heart. And BTW, the other cyclist whose name I didn't get (sorry), was a seventy year old guy who was on his way to the Y to work out. And it sounds like he is going to be fixed up OK as well. Louise's comment, when she was told she was being discharged and it was OK for her to walk around a bit was "can I ski?" She was told that isn't a good idea yet.

BTW, for those folks who say cyclists NEVER stop at lights, both Louise and this fellow stopped at this red light. The crane driver stopped at this red light. The truck that was supposed to be attached to the crane just kept rolling. I'm pretty sure it was the crane driver who called 911. As far as Louise and the other cyclist's injuries and bike damages being covered, I sure can't say for 100% certainty but I can tell you that the folks from the crane company are expressing extreme concern and nervousness. If I was in their shoes, I'd be feeling the same way and I wouldn't be hesitant to write a couple of checks once the investigation is done and the extent of all the injuries is known. And Louise and the Bicycle Alliance have some pretty good cycling friends who also happen to have some pretty good legal credentials that will be working to make sure things balance out.

I've worked with Louise for a couple of years, her desk is right next to mine. She keeps track of what happens with the Bicycle Alliance money but more importantly, she makes things happen for cyclists. And even though she has to spend a lot of time sitting in meetings and lobbying folks, and sending emails and all that other not-very-exciting bike advocacy stuff, she also gets out there. She rides, she hikes, she gets things done. A couple of months ago I was out at the opening of the High-Point Trail Connector in Issaquah. I was representing the Bicycle Alliance there and I was walking along the trail chatting with one of the Issaquah City Councilmen. As we hiked along the trail, this guy says to me "Do you know Louise?" "Sure," I replied. "She and I were the first ones to hack our way through the blackberry thorns and map out this route years ago," the fellow tells me. That didn't surprise me. And I wasn't surprise that Louise hadn't told me this. She's one of those people who knows what matters is working together to get things done and she's too busy doing the work to spend much time talking about it.

That's what I know right now. Louise will be back working to make cycling better in our town and our state soon. Thanks to everybody for all their concern.

Be careful out there.

Kent

Low Probability Crash

Yesterday morning, just about the time I was starting to wonder "where's Louise?", we got the call at the Bicycle Alliance. Louise McGrody, our friend and colleague, had been struck by a truck as she was riding her bike to work. At first, details were sketchy. Louise and another cyclist had been hit from behind while they were stopped at a red light. Both Louise and the other cyclist (a 70 year old fellow) had been taken to the hospital. It turned out Louise had four broken ribs and the other rider had a fractured shoulder and hip.

Once we went through the initial "is Louise OK?" concern and got the "she's not, but she will be" we moved onto the "how's her bike?" discussion. But even before we extended our concern to Louise's battered Trek, we each remarked, in the way that only bike safety wonks can remark, "you know, that's a really low probability crash!"

It's true, even though it's human nature to fear being struck from behind, statistically it's a very rare type of bike crash. We speculated about the driver being distracted by a cell phone or tuning the radio. We never guessed how strange the real story would be.

Louise was struck by a truck with no driver. The story is here:

http://www.komotv.com/news/local/15073291.html

Be careful out there.

Sedentary life 'speeds up ageing'

Yet more evidence suggesting that getting around via muscle power pays off:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7212698.stm

Wooden Bicycle

The good folks at Lee Valley Tools just published a great article by 16-year-old high school student Marco Facciola. You can read Marco's wonderful story of his amazing wooden bicycle here:

http://www.leevalley.com/newsletters/Woodworking/2/3/article1.htm

In every age we have people predicting the end of the world, doom and gloom and how we as a species are just too stupid to survive. While there certainly is a lot of stupidity in this world and a very large share of problems, there are also folks like Marco. And when I see that this world, with all it's problems, still manages to turn out a guy who can make a chain out of maple and make a freewheel system out of wood, I can't be pessimistic.

Keep 'em rolling.

Why Doesn't Everyone Ride Recumbents?

Note: Basically every word I'm recounting here occurred in bits of conversations I've had with various recumbent enthusiasts over the past dozen years. For purposes of brevity, I've compressed these discussion to a single conversation and created the composite character of Perry. Perry is not a real person, although his resemblance to any real person is far more than coincidental.

-----

When the December drizzle settles in on Seattle, it's a good time to hole up in the corner coffee shop with a warm beverage and maybe a good book. I'd just settled with some hot, liquid form of caffeine in one hand and more than a thousand pages of Thomas Pynchon's latest tome in the other when my friend Perry rolls up, locks his sleek, laid back bicycle up next to mine and strolls into the coffee shop. Mr. Pynchon's novel can wait for another day.

Perry lays his dripping helmet on the table and after getting his own drink in order, opens our conversation with his standard gambit, "Still riding that horsey bike, I see."

I counter with my standard rejoinder, "Still lying down on the job."

Years ago, while recovering from a broken collarbone, I decided to learn about and test ride some recumbent bicycles. As things turned out, I wound up riding and owning a lot of those machines, even building a few recumbents of my own and going on lots of rides with the local recumbent club. I got to know folks like Perry and also Bob Bryant, the publisher of a little magazine called Recumbent Cyclist News. Bob convinced me to write some articles and I became a semi-regular columnist for his magazine. It was certainly an interesting couple of years and the people I met were at least as interesting as the laid back machines they rode.

While the machines might be laid back, many of the riders, people like Perry, were anything but. They were passionate about their chosen vehicles, evangelistic in their enthusiasm, willing at the slightest provocation to expound as to why their machine is what a bicycle should truly be. And many of these folks, not all but many, would speak of a conspiracy or at least a conspiracy of ignorance, that kept the world from embracing the design of the recumbent bicycle. In the future, they were sure, "wedgies" would join the high-wheeler as a quaint reminder of a more primitive age. And our current time, with bike shops filled with bikes that look like what Lance Armstrong rides, is still a primitive age.

When I went back to riding what Perry insists on calling "horsey bikes" some of my recumbent cohorts took this as some kind of betrayal. Perry, on the other hand, figured this was evidence that I was not too bright. Bob encouraged me to write an article about my choice, but I became more interested in the bigger picture and the question I posed to Perry right now.

"If recumbents are so good, why doesn't everybody ride recumbents?"

"Well, you don't because you're dumb, or maybe just because you like to piss me off. But most folks don't even know about recumbents. And even if they've heard of them or seen one, there's hardly any place to buy them."

"But why is that?" I press.

"C'mon," Perry says, "Don't play dumber than you are. You know this. 1934? The Ban?"

"Yeah, I know about the ban. In 1934 some guy on a 'bent beat the fastest folks on upright bikes and the UCI declared his machine wasn't a bicycle. And you really want me to believe that's what's keeping folks off 'bents?"

"That's a big part of it," Perry says, wagging his head. "Folks watch the Tour de France and think they're seeing fast bikes when they don't even get to see what a fast bike looks like."

"I guess you have a point there, but let me throw out a counter-example." I say, "Look, they don't let cars in the Kentucky Derby, but somehow autos managed to catch on. I can't run a motor in the America's cup, yet somehow speedboats are doing a booming business. If you've got a better mousetrap, isn't the world going to beat a path to your door?"

"Emerson was a better poet than a businessman," Perry notes.

"Quite true," I concede, "but he actually made quite a bundle off his writing and speaking gigs. However it looks like he may have never actually said that thing about mousetraps and in any case the history of the mousetrap is filled with neat designs that never resulted in riches. But enough about mousetraps, let's get back to 'bents. Today, there are lots of events where recumbents aren't banned. They race in RAAM and recumbent riders show up on brevets and international events like Paris-Brest-Paris. And the IHPVA has their own series of races..."

"Yeah," Perry inserts, "and we kick ass. The recumbent hour record is much faster than the UCI record and..."

"Freddie Markham in a Gold Rush is way faster than Eddy Merckx ever was on his 'horsey bike'," I break in. "Look, a guy taped inside a pedal-powered carbon-fiber torpedo can go like hell on the salt flats, no argument from me there. But that isn't going to make me go "ooh that's the kind of machine I want to ride down to the coffee shop."

"That's 'cause you're a slow learner," Perry explains.

"No, I don't think so," I say, "I think the recumbent speed thing is over-rated. Winning this race or that one isn't going to change a bunch of people's minds."

"But getting the bikes seen might," Perry ventures.

"Maybe," I concede, "and I guess with the way the ban went, we'll never know. But don't give me the 'if they let us in the Tour de France, we'd kick ass' argument..."

"But we would..." Perry begins.

"No," I say, cutting him off, "you wouldn't. The Tour is set up around the peleton, team tactics, sprint finishes and climbing. There are only a couple of time trials in the entire thing and the whole race is built around wedgie bikes, wedgie teams, and wedgie tactics. A recumbent stands as much chance of winning the tour as my cat does of winning the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show."

"So you admit wedgie bikes are dogs..." Perry says with an evil grin.

"Hardly," I say, taking pains to look pained, "and in real world riding, with hills and traffic lights and all the rest, most stock recumbents won't get me to work any quicker than my plain old upright bike does."

"Yeah, but a stream-liner," Perry begins.

"Feels like an underpowered car to me," I say. "I know you love your enclosed HPVs but I don't like riding around in a coffin. And that's what HPVs feel like to me."

"But what about your open low-racer, didn't you have fun with that?"

"Yep," I admit, "the Pillow Bike was a blast. But I got tired of lying down in the rain and I really got tired of being at tail-pipe height in traffic. On my wedgie, I've got a much better view."

"How about a high-racer, something like a Bacchetta?"

"Bacchetta hit the scene after I'd moved back to uprights, so I never had a chance to ride one..."

"Aha!" Perry shouts, loud enough that some of the other folks in the coffee shop looked over at us. "That's what you should be riding," he added in a softer tone.

"Perry," I say, "I hardly think the fact that I haven't ridden a bike means it's destined to be my bike."

"You'd love a Bacchetta," Perry enthuses, "it's fast, it's comfortable, you wouldn't have that wedge of plastic crammed up your butt..."

"And that's another thing you 'bent folks just don't get," I say, matching Perry's level of animation with some volume of my own, "I AM COMFORTABLE ON MY BIKE!"

"You're kidding, right?" Perry looks genuinely confused.

"No," I say softly. "I want you to understand this. I'm comfortable on an upright bike. Lots of folks are."

"No," he says, "I know lots of folks who are miserable on wedgies. I see 'em on the STP, rubbing their necks, walking like cowboys in their dorky pants. They can't wait to get off their bikes."

"Look," I say, "I'm not saying everybody is comfortable on every bike. Some folks have their handlebars too low or the wrong kind of seat. Maybe their bike just doesn't fit or maybe they really can't get comfy on an upright bike. But there are people, people like me, who are comfortable riding an upright bike."

Perry still looks doubtful, "Really?" he asks.

"Really," I say, "Recumbents solve problems I don't have. They solve problems lots of folks don't have. That's why people don't buy them and that's why wedgies aren't going away."

"But...but...recumbents are better!" Perry insists.

"Better how?" I counter, "Faster? More comfortable?"

"Yeah!" Perry says, "C'mon, you know they are..."

"Well, Perry," I say, "my experience to date hasn't convinced me of that but what if I grant you those two points? What if a recumbent is faster than a wedgie bike and more comfortable. If my upright bike is fast enough for me and comfy enough for me, I don't think I'm going to change. It's like the Dvorak keyboard..."

"Hey, I use a Dvorak keyboard!" Perry exclaims.

"And this doesn't surprise me at all," I say, "in fact I think I'd be more surprised to find out you were a QWERTY man. Do you live in a geodesic dome as well?"

"No," Perry says, "but I've always wanted one."

"Me too," I confess, "at least I did until I read this article by the author of the two Domebooks that points out a lot of the problems that show up when you try to put the theory of domes into practice. I think a similar thing happens with recumbents."

"Like what?" Perry wonders.

"Like some are so laid back you get a crick in your neck from holding your head up to look forward. Or the way some people get numb toes from a high bottom bracket, or recumbent butt from a more upright seat. 'Bents aren't always magically comfortable."

"And then there is the drive-train thing," I continue, "if you've got the pedals out front and the drive wheel in the back, you've got a lot of chain. Chain is heavy and you've got to manage it somehow. Idler wheels suck a little bit of power..."

"But those things can be worked out," Perry counters.

"Oh yeah," I agree, "I'm sure every problem I can list has been solved by some 'bent, somewhere. But it's not like folks have settled on a common solution and different designs have different trade-offs. Front-wheel drive 'bents beat the chain problem but they can't climb steep hills in the rain. A long wheel-base bike like a Tour Easy is great for cross-country touring but not what I'd choose for busy urban riding."

"That's what you need the Bacchetta for," Perry states.

"What, did you become a Bacchetta dealer when I wasn't looking?" I wonder out loud, "look maybe it's the greatest bike ever and I'm really missing out..."

"You are," Perry insists.

"OK, OK," I admit, "you like Bacchettas, I've figured that out. My point is this, we're not moving to some future where everybody rides the same kind of bike. Look at that," I say pointing out the window to the street.

"Look at what?" Perry asks.

"The street, the cars, the world. There's lots of stuff out there. Look at that Honda Accord."

"What about it?"

"It's a car. As cars go, it's probably a good car. I've heard good things about 'em, but what do I know, I'm not a car guy. But let's say," I continue, "that it's a great car. Let's say Accord owners just love 'em. Does that mean it's the perfect car for everybody?"

"Of course not," Perry says.

"So you see my point," I say relieved that I'd finally gotten through to my friend.

"Of course I do," Perry said, "they shouldn't be driving Accords or any other car for that matter. They should be riding recumbents. And so should you. In fact, I think you should be riding a Bacchetta!"

The Queen of Gleen (or another one of my damn hippie pals)

Yesterday I was riding with a reporter from the Seattle Times, helping him out with a story he's doing on Seattle's bike infrastructure. Somewhere in the course of our four hour tour of the city, he asked "So does your Bike Alliance job pay you a living wage?" "I don't need much," I replied, but when I saw his eyes still looking puzzled I tried to elaborate with "I worked in software for over twenty years, let's just say I make a lot less doing this and like it a lot more." I could see him connect the dots the wrong way, but then most folks do. He figured I'd packed away some huge pile of money and now could do what I want. The truth is simpler, I'd given him the simple answer in the first four words, but people seem to want to believe that rich people must be happy and happy people must be rich, so they go with the more complex fable instead of the simple truth. I think Thoreau had it right when he said "wealth is the ability to fully experience life." By that standard, I'm pretty wealthy.

I've never met my friend Jacquie or her husband Charlie, but of course I've known about them damn near forever. A month or so ago I got a big kick when Jacquie sent me a fan letter. I told another one of my buddies, "I feel like a kid playing guitar in his garage who just got a fan letter from Clapton." Since then we've been trading little bits of email and one of these days we may manage to have our tire tracks intersect and actually meet up on terra firma.

Jacquie wrote a terrific article about how being wealthy isn't really about money. You can read it here:

http://tinyurl.com/yvogwr

Of all the adjectives I can think of to describe Jacquie, "anonymous" isn't one of them, so I found the byline on this piece to be particularly amusing. Also, since Jacquie ratted out her authorship both on her own blog and in an email to her buddy list, I don't feel bad about spreading the news. Articles by Jacquie are one of those things that makes all our lives richer. You can read more of her stuff on her blog here:

http://www.jacquiephelan.com/

Steal This Wifi

As I've written before, I have a tiny Nokia N800 portable computer that I use to keep in touch and do things such as update this blog while I'm off bicycle touring. On my trip around Washington last July the N800 worked like a champ and I'm still pretty pleased with the device. The N800 is still doing a great job and even though the new N810 with it's built-in keyboard and GPS might be even a little nicer for touring cyclist, I'm not rushing out to replace my N800.

Open wifi hotspots are great boon to the touring cyclists but it seems like every time the subject of wifi comes up on the Touring list you get people expressing the "that's stealing!" viewpoint. My own approach to this one of intent, I try to use hotspots that I believe have been intentionally left open. And if I'm using a coffee shop's open wifi signal, you can bet I've bought my coffee there. Unless they're closed, then I don't feel guilty.

In densely settled urban areas in the US it is common to pick-up connect to an open wifi spot without being able to figure out exactly where it's coming from. Very often these hotspots will just have an identifier like "Linksys" which is the default name for a common brand of wireless router. It is these spots where it is almost impossible to determine the intent of the router's owner. Did they leave the spot open because of neglect or courtesy?

My router at home is open because, as my son notes, "you're a damn hippie, Dad." I've tried several times to explain this to people but Bruce Schneier over at Wired just did a better job of explaining it than I ever could. You can read his essay here:

http://tinyurl.com/22s3wx

Like Bruce, I sometimes talk to strangers. Sometimes my computers do as well.

Where do you think we are?

"Where do you think we are?" At this point my friend Mark Vande Kamp's question is more than a merely academic inquiry. It's a cool January morning and I can say with a high degree of confidence that we are somewhere in the Taylor Mountain Forest, but I take off one of my gloves to indicate the spot on the map with greater precision.

"I'm pretty sure we're here," I say indicating the convergence of two dimly dashed lines. "Down there," I wave, "we should find this little trail." I point to an even dimmer dotted line. Mark and I point our bikes in the direction I've indicated and find something an optimist might call a trail.

Mark is the ideal companion for such adventures, for he's the kind of fellow who gets up on a rainy morning and rides the twenty or so miles to my place simply because he'd earlier said that he would. While we ride we discuss important matters of the day, comparing Felini's "8 1/2" with "Superbad" and trying to decide if Sherlock Holmes is more or less fictional than Angelina Jolie.

Taylor Mountain is the area I've been exploring lately and while that doesn't mean I know it well, I do know it well enough to show Mark some of the things I've found there so far. Today we are here to push beyond what we know. We have a map with us, but we both know the truth of the adage "the map is not the terrain."

This map is a close approximation of the terrain but it's unique in that while it has the problem common to all maps, the problem of reducing three dimensions to two, it has the added complexity of being askew from reality in the fourth dimension as well. This map is untethered from our time. It is an optimist's map of the future, drawn over a lost map from the past. And Mark and I are stubbornly using it to navigate this undiscovered country we insist on calling the present.

Perhaps I should explain.

Taylor Mountain is a chunk of land about 8 miles south of Issaquah, land that had been owned by timber interests until a few years ago. It is now owned by the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks. Well, most of the land is owned by the county, a couple of parcels are owned by private citizens, folks with strong senses of the boundaries of private property, folks who put up very serious-looking warning signs expressing their desires for privacy and fervent beliefs in the second and fourth amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Having a strong desire to keep our bikes and bodies in their current lead-free configurations, Mark and I take their boundary issues seriously and thus try to play close attention to our map.

But our map is one of utmost optimism, drawn over the old roads and trails from the logging days and labeled "Public Use Concept Map." So it shows trails-yet-to-be and roads-that-once-were and we, we are Magellans of the moment, navigating an uncertain present. Even the most modern GPS could not tell us exactly where hope and reality converge, this is something only we can discover.

The tiny dotted trail is more notional than actual and after fifteen minutes of hiking with our bikes through terrain filled-in with fallen trees, underbrush and blackberry vines more tenacious than ourselves, Mark and I retreat to map lines of more definite pigmentation.

Our next attempt is more promising, not exactly inviting but at least not so openly hostile to our passage. Someday, the map assures us, this will be an equestrian and hiking trail but in the here and now it is series of narrow gaps in the undergrowth, hopefully marked here and there with fluttering bits of blaze-orange plastic. We crash downward off the mountain, riding small bits where we can, walking others, scrambling and puzzling now and then.

The crossing of Holder Creek will be lovely in the future, We can almost see the bridge they'll build because most folks wouldn't want to ford a knee-deep stream. Most folks don't know that if you keep moving the water is not that cold and that wool socks keep proving their worth when you push beyond the comfortable trails you know. Most folks don't know the things Mark and I have learned to take for granted.

We gradually pass through the future and as the trail winds closer to the outer boundaries of the land we hear the cars rolling on contemporary pavement. The path becomes clearer and more rideable as the map converges with the present. Now our tracks are laid down clear, tempting others to follow back along our course until they run, baffled, into a future yet to arrive. I'm reminded of an other trip, years ago, when my friend Andy and I followed paths that became faint elk trails and then nothing at all from Roslyn all the way to theTeanaway River. When we came splashing across the river and into the campground, other campers asked where we'd come from. "Roslyn," we said. "I didn't think there was a trail," they said. "As near as we know, there ain't," we answered.

For better or worse, we build the future. Stumbling, our tracks are something others follow, assuming we must have known something they do not. Can we tell them that our maps work best because of the empty spaces, because of the spots marked "Here Be Dragons?" They wouldn't believe us if we did. And years from now, when these tracks are well tread, we will have fled, "No one goes there any more, it's too crowded."

Looking back at our tracks coming out of the woods, Mark comments, "You know, a lot of folks wouldn't even hike that." "Yeah, not yet," I agree.

I can't rail against a more accessible future, one that my own tracks are helping build but somehow I know that when it's built it won't be home for me. My tracks will be somewhere else, some other dotted trail torn loose from time. A future yet to be or a past mostly forgotten. A spot not perfectly triangulated on the map. "Where do you think we are?" If I knew for certain, we wouldn't have to go. "I'm pretty sure we're here."

Triple bike racks being (temporarily?) removed from Metro bus fleet

Metro just updated the bus bike rack info on their website here:

http://transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bike/loadbike.html

There have been problems with some bikes falling off the triple bike racks on the bus fleet and Metro is taking this very seriously. Here's the text of the notice:

----- Start of Metro's statement -----

CYCLIST ALERT-Updated Jan. 4, 2008

Starting Saturday, Jan. 5, 2008, bike racks will not be available on some Metro Transit routes and trips.

Some bike racks are being removed due to rack-operating concerns, and will be replaced in the coming weeks as they become available.

This change affects all bus trips on routes 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 12, 13, 14, 36, 49 and 70, and some trips on routes 7, 43 and 44.

The concerns regard bikes remaining tightly secured to the 3-position bike racks. Metro is working with the manufacturer to resolve the issues. In the meantime, all 3-bike racks are being removed. The goal is to temporarily replace them with 2-bike racks, but there are currently not enough of the 2-bike racks to equip every vehicle in Metro’s fleet.

During the transition, it is possible that some buses may or may not have racks when or where cyclists expect them. It is not possible for Metro staff to know ahead of time if a bus has a rack. Cyclists are reminded that rack use is first come, first served, and, with the exception of bikes that fold safely, bicycles may not be carried inside buses.

Metro appreciates your patience while this issue is being resolved. Please check this site for updates.

------- end of Metro's statement -----

Not What I Had Planned

William Least Heat-Moon opens Blue Highways with the words, "Beware thoughts that come in the night. They aren't turned properly; they come askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote sources." He then, of course, goes on to act one of these night-skewed thoughts and writes a book about the consequences of such an action. And this is the kind of tome that resonates with those of us of a certain restless nature, folks who think that zen might actually have something to do with motorcycle maintenance, that perhaps Thoreau's cabin was a bit too spacious, and that Proud Mary isn't just a good song, it's good career advice. So when late-night thoughts come askew, they tend to stick in my head 'til morning.

"I think I'm going to spend the entire last day of the year riding," I announce to my wife. It should be noted that Mr. Heat-Moon's wife left him sometime prior to chapter one of his blue book. It should also be noted that my wife, Christine, understands that when I say "all day" I mean "24 hours."

Christine never completely vetoes my more hare-brained ideas but then again, she never has to. "There will be drunks on the road," she says, looking concerned, logical and cute all at the same time. Words from a Springsteen song roll through my head, "Jesus sent some good women to save all you clowns."

I cut my plan in half. Christine leaves for work at 5:00 AM, I'll leave for my ride at 5:00 AM. I promise I'll be back home by dark. "Maybe I can do one of those Jill-style, picture-every-hour things for the blog" I think.

The first problem is, it's really freekin' dark at 5:00 AM. I take a picture of my breakfast at 4:20 AM, but pictures of breakfast are pretty dull. The second problem is I'm not much of a photo guy and dark pictures don't tell you much of what it's like to be out and about at 5:00 AM.

Let me tell you what it's like to be out and about at 5:00 AM in my part of the world on the last day of the year.

It's a few degrees above freezing when I leave home. My bike's studded tires buzz on the pavement, crunch on the gravel and shine in the light of my twin Planet Bike LED lights. The lights cast twin moonbeams, brighter than what hits the trail reflected from the half-lit moon hanging a few hundred thousand miles above the trees. My breath fogs out in little puffs.

A few cars roll by on the freeway but I roll on a tiny gravel trail, up to High Point. Slushy puddles shine like flawed mirrors and for an instant I think I see an owl lifting off, white and silent, like a warm ghost. A repeat performance betrays the trick. As my bike rolls up and down the rolling rises of the trail, the lights are bouncing off the low puddles. Those reflected light beams climb the trees. The owls are not what they seem.

I'm headed east, into the mountains. The small towns of Preston and Fall City still mostly slumber and I pass by un-noticed by the humans, noted by the rest. I'm the ghost the dogs bark at, and cat's eyes track me in the night. As I ride up the trail from Fall City to Snoqualmie and North Bend, the bulk of the mountains are beginning to glow with a mix of fading moonlight and gradual dawn, too diffuse to be logically associated with the eventual sunrise. Rabbits race perfectly haphazard, Brownian particles with cotton-ball tails that make me wonder for a moment about the wisdom of this particular bit of evolution.

It's still too dark for a camera but perfectly fine for a set of night-tuned eyes when I see the first of the elk. It's a small herd of large beasts, fat from the summer, wary but not rushed as they cross the path and slip, not entirely silently but with sound much smaller than their size, into the forest off to my left.

It's fully light by the time I reach Rattlesnake Lake, which is low and cold this time of year, but not frozen. I pretend to be a photo-journalist but my camera decides that it is time I put away such notions and decides that it has had enough of being a camera and instead would like to be a rock. Well, maybe not a rock exactly, but something that does not take pictures and is kind of heavy and really not worth lugging around. I got three decent shots before my camera turned to stone.





One of the photos is of the sign telling the story of Rattlesnake Lake, the site of the former town of Moncton. It's a story of plans not quite working out the way folks had intended. It's not a bad thing to be contemplating on the last day of the year.

I stow my expensive rock in my pocket, listen to a Canadian goose call out across the lake and turn my bike back toward the valley. There are more people out now, walking dogs or walking themselves, marveling at a day that has grown clear and almost warm.

It's time for second breakfast when I'm back in North Bend, so I stop at Twedes for eggs and more hashbrowns than I can eat. Somewhere back aways I had a plan for 12 hours of riding or at least a century but numbers don't seem to matter much right now.

I roll back down the trail, turning north up the valley instead of heading south and home. I want to see the town of Carnation, see that it's still there, despite the recent horror. I don't want to go through town, I don't what to gawk, I just want to know, somehow, that life is stronger than death.

I thought maybe it would be the dogs or the kids riding their bikes or the horses grazing in the fields that would do it and they all helped, but it's the light that surprised me. The unseasonable sun shining down on a valley still green. Waving to others on the trail, we smile, we say "Happy New Year". We know the darkest days this year are behind us and today we have things to do.

I ride north to Duvall, cross to the west side of the valley and turn south. At Union Hill, I head west again and climb up and over Redmond Ridge. At the old brick road I ride south and work my way to the shores of Lake Sammamish.

I'm eight miles shy of a century and well shy of 12 hours but I have a beautiful wife waiting at home. I roll into Issaquah, my home, my riding is done for the year.

This is not the ride I had planned. This was just the ride I needed.

I hope your 2008 is filled with the best kind of adventures.

Time To Ride

My buddy Joe Broach just wrote a little essay called "My Own Power" which contains a lot of nice truths. Joe's essay is a celebration of human mobility but it contains a bit of wistfulness when he writes:

"The past year has made it clear that my own power is not the same as your own power. And, it is not even in the same league as my distance riding pals like Kent and Michael. As it turns out, my own power is pretty ordinary."

Later on Joe states:

"I'll never be able to ride as far in a day as Kent or Michael or a lot of other cyclers do. And, I certainly can't access all of the woods I could by car."

It is in those wistful statements that I respectfully disagree with Joe. I think he goes awry when he confuses space and time. He's not alone in this. I do this often and so does every other person I know. But it's the wrong way to think about the situation.

Joe writes "I certainly can't access all the woods I could by car" but this can only be really true if those woods are at the end of some auto-only roadway. If it's just a question of distance, Joe could bike there. Maybe the trip takes lots of time and he'd have to pack lots of sandwiches. Maybe there are lots of hills and he'd have to use very low gears and pedal slowly and maybe walk beside his bike on the steepest sections. And maybe he doesn't have the time to do that. So those woods he longs for are not too distant, they are too time-consuming. The problem is not distance, it's time.

But somehow Michael and I are different than Joe. Distance is different for us. How can that be? Did we come to this planet when the sun near our home world exploded, carefully packed by our doomed parents in tiny rocket ships and raised by loving human couples in Smallville? So, of course, we leap tall buildings in a single bound, see with X-ray vision and ride farther than Joe ever can with his mere human power.

Or perhaps we have some other relationship with time? Do Michael and I get 28 hours given to us each day while Joe and the rest of the ordinary humans have to suffer along with only 24? That would explain it. Michael and I go farther because we get more time. We're lucky that way.

Or maybe, just maybe, the old adage has it wrong. Time is not money. Time is more valuable. You don't save time, you spend it at the same rate as everybody else on this planet. The rate is 24 hours each day. You can never save it, but some ways you spend it may work out as investments. Am I wasting three hours each day by cycling back and forth to work? If I drove a car my commute time would be half that, think of what I could do with that time I saved! But that hour and half each day that I drove, that hour and a half each day that I didn't enjoy, I know that would be wasted. And I know that I love my hours on the bike.

I go riding on Christmas, a three hour tour while Christine is curled up indoors with the cat and some cocoa and Christmas carols on the CD player. The boys are making dinner and Christine is used to my being uncomfortable with too much comfort. I tell her I'll be back by two.

The old trees are silent and the moss is still green on the trails of the Taylor Mountain woods. By the time I meander my way up the trails and ultimately emerge near the Tiger Mountain summit the air has turned white with the snow of the season. My studded tires crunch and grip the trail. As I descend the snow gets wetter and turns to rain. Back in town, White Christmas is only a song on the radio and a mountain glimpsed out the window.

It's all within biking distance. I learn this one pedal stroke at a time and it's a lesson I get to keep relearning every day. Like Joe, my own power is pretty ordinary. And my own time gets delivered to me at a rate of 24 hours each day. I guess I could waste it racing around in some attempt to save it but mostly I spend it slowly, close to home. But the funny thing is those trips add up. My legs get into the habit of turning and I learn how many sandwiches it takes to go from here to there, even if there is Tiger Mountain or Portland or Minnesota or Mexico. I still don't travel far from home, but home is a lot bigger than it used to be.

Comfortable Cycling Clothes For Damp Days

I'd always assumed that the number of people in the world who look to me for fashion advice was basically zero, but my friend Michael made me revise that estimate slightly upward when he suggested "you should write about what you wear." And if Doug in Duluth can write his "What I Wore Today" series in two part harmony ( part 1 and part 2 ) well then by golly I can ramble on about my clothes and if you find this boring you can just surf away to any of the eight-hundred and eleventy billion other pages out there on the internet and I won't be even a little bit offended.

But before I dive into talking about my clothes, I'm going to talk about one of my buddies from my younger days, my pal Ed. Ed was an empiricist, always experimenting with one thing or another. He was also the kind of twelve-year-old kid who would use words like "empiricist" in daily conversation and recreationally read the encyclopedia. While there are bookworms who never take their learning out of the library or out of doors, Ed was never that way. Every bit of book-learning would be double-checked against the real world and Ed's parents where the sort of folks who were smart enough to let Ed and his brother Dave set up a laboratory in the basement and not get too upset when things would sometimes explode or some reptile would get loose. Empiricism may be a sure path to knowledge, but that path is seldom smooth.

We all grew up in northern Minnesota, in a little town about twenty miles outside Duluth. This is a region not known for its moderate climate. In the warmer months we would ride our bikes most of the way to school, stash them at our buddy Todd's house and walk the rest of the way, but in the cold months we would take the bus. The bus stop was at the edge of Epherd's Woods, a block from Ed and Dave's place and Pete, Tom, Dave, Ed and I would gather there each morning and wait for the bus.

As it got later in the year, we all began showing up to the bus stop in warmer, heavier clothes. All of us, that is, except Ed. Ed had this blue nylon windbreaker jacket that he wore through the fall and into the winter.

"What's with the jacket, Ed?" I asked him.

"Humans are extremely adaptable beings," Ed explained, "Natives of Lapland can sleep on the ice without blankets, while denizens of the tropics can work for hours in the sun without breaking a sweat. As the weather gets gradually colder, I am gradually adapting to the cold. You bundle, I evolve."

While we all admired Ed's continuing attempts to better himself, we also could not help but notice that part of his "evolution" involved arriving at the bus stop later and later as the weather got cooler. His brother Dave, the control portion of the experiment, dressed like the rest of us with big boots, a heavy jacket, scarves, a cap, mittens, etc. Dave would trundle from their home to the bus stop, moving slowly, like an old-time diver in a pressure suit, while Ed, would wait until the last possible moment and then quickly dash the block from his home to the bus stop. We figured that one day Ed would cut things too fine and miss the bus, but Ed's mom was stern about shooing him out the door.

The experiment ended the day the bus broke down. In Minnesota in those days they pretty much never canceled school because of cold, saving our "snow" days for the days when a foot or two of snow would make travel truly impossible, Cold, even 30 degrees below zero, was just something you would deal with. And on this day, we waited at the stop for a bus that did not come in a timely fashion. Ed dashed out at his customary time, his eyes looking down the street for the bus that should be coming, his teeth clenched to keep them from chattering. The bus wasn't there.

At the stop we speculated as to where the bus might be and twenty minutes later when it did show up, the driver explained that our regular bus had stalled at the base of the hill and a replacement had to be dispatched. Ed by this time was as blue as his windbreaker and spent the duration of the bus ride curled into a fetal ball on the bus seat closest to the heater.

The next day Ed showed up at the bus stop wearing the biggest, warmest snorkel parka I have ever seen. Years later I would see the character Kenny on South Park and be reminded of Ed. Somewhere from deep within the cozy confines of the parka Ed explained, "Humans also evolve via artifacts."

And now, thirty-six years later, I'm thinking of my own artifacts of comfort, the clothes I wear each day. Like my friend Ed, I am an empiricist. What I wear is what has survived the tests of time and climate. These items may or may not be right for someone else, somewhere else but for this forty-nine year old fellow living and cycling in the Puget Sound and Cascade Mountain regions of the Pacific Northwest, these are the clothes that get the job done.

In contemplating my wardrobe I notice that mostly I don't have "bike clothes" and "normal clothes." I haven't had a car or a driver's license in years, so biking everywhere is "normal" for me and it would be "abnormal" for me to have clothes that don't work for cycling. Just as most drivers don't have special clothes for driving, I don't really have many special clothes for cycling. I do have a few bits of safety gear and a rain jacket that is cut to work well on the bike but most of my clothes came from places other than the bike shop.

I'm sure people in sunnier climes have more intelligent things to say about dressing for warm weather than I do and I'd be hard pressed to come up with something better than what Grant Petersen wrote here. Like Grant, I favor loose, button down shirts for summer riding. On very hot days if I know I'm going to work up a sweat coming into work, I'll cool down for five minutes or so (I'm usually the first one at the office), do a quick sink-shower in the bathroom and switch into a different shirt for the work day. But for many times with a cool, loose shirt, I don't work up an unacceptable level of sweat. Part of this is a function of living in the relatively cool Pacific Northwest and part of it is logging lots of miles. One of the convenient truths of bicycle commuting is that the more you do it, the easier it gets. As my friend Ed would say, you evolve. So a younger, out of shape me might have gotten to work a soaked, stinky mess, the older, maybe a little mellower me often finds the trip is "no sweat."

But it's the winter weather that people seem the most curious about and again I'll defer to people in more extreme places for serious advice about bike riding in the sub-freezing zone. Jill in Alaska, Doug in Duluth, or Scott in Minneapolis all have more intelligent and timely things to say about cold weather riding than I do. Even though I grew up in Minnesota and still think of it as a swell place, one of my adaptations took the form of migration. For the past 14 years, I've made my home in Issaquah, Washington. Not long after Christine and the boys and I moved here, I was on the phone talking with my father, who still lives in Northern Minnesota.

"How do you stand the rain, son?" It was February and it had probably been raining almost every day for the past few months in Issaquah.

"Dad," I replied, "what's the current temperature back there right now?"

"About four."

"And how many feet of snow are on the ground right now?" I further pressed.

"About four," he admitted.

"You don't have to shovel rain, Dad."

And that is one of the reasons I've chosen to live in the Pacific Northwest. Because of this choice, my wardrobe is optimized to deal with conditions that are often damp but rarely icy or bitter cold.

Starting at the top of my head, I have a helmet. I won't go into the big helmet debate right here other than to say it's the law in King County (where I happen to reside) that cyclists wear helmets when riding. And over the years I've found it to be a handy bit of gear. My helmet is sized to fit snugly over my cap and since I ride a lot at night, I've added a couple of lights and some reflective stickers to the helmet.

Under my helmet I always wear a cap. In rainy weather the brim keeps the rain off my glasses. On sunny days it keeps the glare out of my eyes. The brim also shields my eyes from headlight glare when I'm riding at night. For years I used cotton or wool cycling caps but my favorite cap now is a nylon runner's cap I bought at REI. In colder weather, I use a Buff as an earband. The Buff is a very light tube of Coolmax fabric that I can fold into various layers and configurations depending on the temperature. I thought it was kind of expensive when I first bought it but I've used the Buff for years now and if I ever loose this one, I'll go right out and buy a replacement.

My main torso layer is almost always wool. Depending on how cool the day is it may be a thin layer or a thick layer, anything from a Smartwool long sleeve zip t-shirt, a wool club jersey or a sweater from a thrift store. If the day is dry or the more common light Pacific Northwest drizzle, my over layer will be my Marmot DriClime Windshirt. The DriClime sheds light rain quite nicely and of course it's great as a wind-blocking layer. And if it does get wet it dries out quickly. TheDriClime is designed to wick moisture from the inner layer and I've found that many times I stay drier wearing the DriClime than I ever did with a true rain jacket. If there is heavy rain and I feel I need something more waterproof, I'll wear my Rainshield O2 rain jacket. The DriClime and the O2 combined weigh less, take up less space and work better than any single jacket I've ever owned. For conspicuity, I wear very light weight bright yellow Bicycle Alliance nylon vest over whatever jacket or jersey I choose to wear.

My hands are another place where I have a wool base layer combined with a more visible synthetic top layer. Military surplus rag wool gloves stay warm even when wet and can be easily wrung out if they get soaked. Every pair of "waterproof " glove I've ever tried has been problematic. Either the gloves would leak or they would be so waterproof that my hands would sweat. Once wet, the gloves would loose their ability to insulate, making things miserable, and the damp gloves would take way too long to dry. Wool gloves don't keep my hands perfectly dry, but they keep me very comfortable. Wool insulates even when wet (I wrote about this a few years ago) and that's why it forms the basis of my "comfortably damp" wardrobe. For a while I carried water-proof nylon shells to use with the wool gloves in heavy rain but I eventually figured out that the wool gloves alone were sufficient. I do wear Glo Glovs over the wool gloves most of the time. Day and night, the Glo Glovs help me when I've communicating with other road users via hand signals. And, in the interest of civility, I tend to use all my fingers when I signal.

From the waist down my base layer is a pair of lycra cycling shorts, what Scott Adams identifies as "dorky pants." Despite the fact that pretty much everybody knows that I am a dork, I do have a fondness for pockets and I got tired of all the chicks checking out my finely sculpted buns, so I over the dorky pants I wear a pair of REI Sahara Convertible Pants. The Sahara pants are made of lightweight Suplex nylon and feature plenty of pockets and zip-off legs. I have several pairs of these pants and wear them year round. The nylon dries really quickly but in heavy rain, or extreme cold I add a pair of Rainlegs as a top layer. As I noted in my 2006 review of Rainlegs, these things work well but they do kick the dork factor back into high gear. I guess I can't deny my true dorky nature. And if I'm going to be a dork, I might as well be a safety dork, so I wear yellow reflective ankle bands to keep the cuffs of my Sahara pants out of my bike chain and to further increase my conspicuity. By the way, if you find yourself slipping the word "conspicuity" into conversation, you too may be a safety dork.

My big breakthrough in foot comfort was when I finally decided that for the riding I do, cycling shoes are not the solution. For the past year I've been riding with plain platform pedals. My shoes are Keen Targhees that I wear over either a pair of thick wool socks or a couple of pairs of thinner wool socks. The Keens are pretty weatherproof, but if things are really nasty, I layer a plastic bag (bread bags work great) between the inner and outer sock. This system works better than any fancy membrane sock/shoe cover/cycling shoe combo I've tried.

Well, that's it. That's pretty much what I wear. But that certainly doesn't mean this is what you should wear. People live in different places, have different metabolisms, and have different tolerances for temperatures. We're all experiments of one, empiricists clothed in artifacts.

Why Cupholders Make You Safe

Malcolm Gladwell writes really smart interesting articles and books and I recently found his treasure trove of stuff here:

http://www.gladwell.com/archive.html

My favorite piece, Big and Bad: How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety, contains this gem:

Over the past decade, a number of major automakers in America have relied on the services of a French-born cultural anthropologist, G. Clotaire Rapaille, whose speciality is getting beyond the rational—what he calls "cortex"—impressions of consumers and tapping into their deeper, "reptilian" responses. And what Rapaille concluded from countless, intensive sessions with car buyers was that when S.U.V. buyers thought about safety they were thinking about something that reached into their deepest unconscious. "The No. 1 feeling is that everything surrounding you should be round and soft, and should give," Rapaille told me. "There should be air bags everywhere. Then there's this notion that you need to be up high. That's a contradiction, because the people who buy these S.U.V.s know at the cortex level that if you are high there is more chance of a rollover. But at the reptilian level they think that if I am bigger and taller I'm safer. You feel secure because you are higher and dominate and look down. That you can look down is psychologically a very powerful notion. And what was the key element of safety when you were a child? It was that your mother fed you, and there was warm liquid. That's why cupholders are absolutely crucial for safety. If there is a car that has no cupholder, it is not safe. If I can put my coffee there, if I can have my food, if everything is round, if it's soft, and if I'm high, then I feel safe. It's amazing that intelligent, educated women will look at a car and the first thing they will look at is how many cupholders it has. "

Damn, I better make sure I keep a latte on my bike at all times. For safety, of course.

The Story of Stuff

My son Eric loves to rant about my being a "a damn hippie" when I post links to anything that even remotely suggests that our consumptive habits are having dire effects on the planet. Well, Eric, this disclaimer is for you.

Don't watch this 20 minute video. It'll just piss you off:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html

Like pretty much every American, I've got way more stuff than I need. My wife will enthusiastically attest to that fact. And I have way more bike stuff than I need, even though I try to pare it down and I really don't buy into the "ten-speed is great, nine speed sucks" or "I can't believe you're still riding steel" mindset.

My scrounging tendency often works against me. While I may make fenders out of old campaign signs or rework old bikes to suit my purposes, I'm a sucker for tools ("I can use that to fix old stuff!"), parts ("I can use that to keep old stuff running!") and nifty gadgets ("that jacket with zip-off sleeves can replace my jacket and my vest!") and the next thing I know I have lots of tools and parts and not only a jacket and a vest but a jacket/vest and wait a minute, don't I have something like four other jackets here? And don't get me started on t-shirts. How the hell did I wind up with so many t-shirts?

Living in a small place and being car-free helps keep me conscious of my stuff. Almost all the stuff filling our place was lugged here by my wife or my kids or me under our own power. Of course, it's really to easy to click on something at Amazon and have that guy with the brown truck show up a few days later with the latest bit of niftiness. And of course, I'm part of the problem. I've got Amazon links on my site, I tell people about nifty things I've found and heck some of those damn t-shirts spilling out of my dresser drawers are things I myself designed and sell.

But you've gotta have some stuff, right? Well, yeah, you do. But it's a balancing act and some days I feel more out of balance than others.

It's a lesson I keep re-learning, one that often seems the clearest when I'm out on my bicycle, going up a hill. Everything I have with me gets weighed, maybe not on a scale, but with each pedal stroke as the grade goes up. The stove and fuel that I brought for comfort in camp do not give me comfort on the climb. So do I take them with me or not? It's a calculation that can be made both ways.

The video I linked to at the top of this post talks about the environmental costs of all this stuff but it's not just the big environment that's polluted, it's the local environment that's polluted. My apartment, my desk at work, my mental spaces are all filled with too much junk.

I don't need a shed for all this stuff, I need to get rid of many sheds worth of stuff. What I need, what I really need, I'll keep. Right now, I need to go on a stuff diet. For every item that comes in, at least that much has to go out.

Quality wins out over quantity. The TV just lost out to 1080 pages of Thomas Pynchon's latest novel. Stuff I've kept "just in case" for too long are going away. Books I won't re-read will go to the used book store, good clothes can find some other man to wear them. The almost-right jackets can keep someone else dry. At least one more bike needs to go.

I may still get that shed. I will probably by the next great bike light that comes out.

I'm not off the treadmill, but I'm trying to think about my steps.

Orson Scott Card: Three Essays

Now I'm sure that I don't agree with every word Orson Scott Card has ever written, but then again I'm not always sure I agree with every word I've ever written. As somebody once wrote, "I don't know anybody smart enough to be 100% wrong or dumb enough to be 100% right." I do know for sure that I don't have all the answers and that's one of the reasons I try to read at least some stuff that I don't agree with. And along the way I find things that may make me go "Yeah, right on!" or "Jeez, what a moron" or in my favorite cases "Jeez, maybe I've been a moron on this." I still am pretty sure that Mr. Card and I have some disagreements on certain policies, politics and personalities, but the man does think about things and he's one of those writers who makes his readers think about things as well. So I spent a bit of time this past weekend reading through this site:

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/index.html

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine where Mr. Card and I differ, but I will tell you that these three essays:

Life Without Cars: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-04-08-1.html

Walking Neighborhoods: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-04-15-1.html

and

Oil -- Past the Peak: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-05-06-1.html

are some of the ones that had me saying "Yeah, right on!"

Major Taylor Ride

If I wasn't so darn well suited for my job at the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, it's a pretty safe bet that I'd be working at Bike Works. Dara and her crew not only do terrific work, they consistently demonstrate just how much fun it can be to change people's lives through bicycles. Every time I volunteer at Bike Works or work with them on a project, I'm reminded that the velorution is happening right now. Whether it's teaching kids to fix stuff or getting people rolling on rigs that cost less than what most folks spend on a monthly car payment, the lessons are the same: this is what's possible, this is what's practical and this is how you do it.

This week three of the Bike Works folks, Jayanthi, Joe and Melanie, all have birthdays. This is also the week that the great cyclist Marshal "Major" Taylor was born, so it just made sense to have a celebratory ride. Friday night, November 30th, 2007 a bunch of us gathered at Bike Works for little off-key singing of Happy Birthday and a ride up to a restaurant in Seattle's central district.

It's 36 degrees Fahrenheit as we gather in the cool air. It's cool enough that as we discuss techniques for keeping feet warm (slightly bigger shoes and double socks, one pair of which is wool), our breathing fogs the air. On occasions such as this we all naturally check out each other's bikes. My favorite of the bunch (excluding my own Red-Bike-of-Courage) is a neat old orange Peugeot set up as a fixie with cowhorn bars. This turns out to be Melanie's rig but right now, a couple minutes before take-off, she's realized that it's dark and she doesn't have lights.

As Red Green says, "if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy." I can't let Melanie go riding with just her 100 kilowatt smile for protection and thanks to the Bicycle Alliance Get Lit program, I've got a spare set of lights in my handlebar bag. Melanie tries to protest, "but those lights are for the needy..." "And that's why I'm carrying a set around, to give out to some needy unlit cyclist," I tell her, "right now, that's you. Call it a birthday present or later when you get yourself some lights, pass these on to somebody more needy than you. But right now," I say firmly, "we're lighting you up."

In addition to having the best lights of the group, I'm also the guy with the working camera. Tina takes the group photo of the gang. See the guy with the bright reflective sash and helmet near the center of the photo? That's me.


It's a nice ride but I do notice that a bunch of my Bike Works buddies are a bit too black in their bundling. I'll have to talk to Dara and Melanie about scheduling a Get Lit fashion show at Bike Works sometime soon.

I have to get home to Issaquah, so I wish everybody a safe ride and split off from the group at the I-90 bridge.

At home I read more about Major Taylor, a truly inspirational fellow. This website:

http://www.majortaylorassociation.org/who.htm

has a lot of great information about Major Taylor including the final chapter of his autobiography here:

http://www.majortaylorassociation.org/clean_living.htm