Becoming a Ride Leader

I’ve pondered why more members are not leading rides. My own trajectory to leading rides was slow. I joined the club and—if my recollection is accurate—I didn’t attend a club ride until maybe a year later. Part of it was time: I was in graduate school and working part time. I was also mainly into running at that point but did lots of errands in SF on my bike. But I kept getting running injuries and decided I had to get back to cycling. I can’t recall if I attended one of the monthly club meetings or a ride first. On one of my early club rides I met Ron Decamp, a member who lived in the South Bay. We talked about riding on the Midpeninsula and eventually we agreed to colead a ride since the club didn’t ride there often enough despite the area’s marvelous cycling routes. Neither of us had led a club ride before. After that first time coleading, it was easy to lead on my own even though I still didn’t lead often.

Making friends in the club led to doing more club rides and often we just got together to ride when there wasn’t a club ride (or a club ride that appealed to us). We also had the now vanished Decide & Ride: show up at McLaren Lodge on any Sunday at 10 am. Whoever came would decide where to ride. There almost always was a small group who showed up when there wasn’t another club ride. That all led to leading more rides. But I rarely led more than maybe three rides per year—usually less—unlike in recent years when I’ve led or co-led a couple per month.

We used to have monthly club meetings back then and I think they helped draw out some ride leaders. Those meetings always involved exhortations from the ride coordinator as well as a preview of next month’s rides and the slots in the calendar that needed filling. (We printed a monthly newsletter, the ChainLetter, which included the ride calendar for the month. So rides had to be gathered at least three weeks in advance.) At the meeting ride hosts would talk about their rides to encourage participation and informally members would talk about where they were interested in riding and get encouragement from others to lead a ride. Everyone was gently encouraged to lead a ride they liked and I think hesitant members got enough positive feedback at those meetings to step up and lead their ride.

Of course we no longer have regular meetings and most of our communication has shifted from in-person to the Internet. This I think makes it harder to foster ride hosting. Personal contact makes a difference in persuading members that they can lead a ride, and that other members will indeed show up. The most commonly mentioned reason not to lead a ride is “but what if no one else shows up?” and that fear was assuaged by people telling the potential ride leader’s face that they were interested in that ride.

Believe me I’ve posted rides and been the only person to show up. But I’ve made it a point to post rides that I wanted to do. So if no one else showed up, I still got to do a ride I wanted to do. It was hardly a burden if I was going to ride anyway.

I’m not sure why there is reticence today to lead a ride. There are the usual reasons: not wanting to be “obligated” to do it (FOMO??); being shy (as if we were going to judge you based on your ride); and “I wouldn’t know where to lead a ride”. At some level it is a matter of personality: some people are afraid of being in a leadership role. Is that due to lack of self-confidence? Chris Thomas is one of the shiest people I know and yet he went from volunteering to lead a ride in Fresno, where he lived at the time, to leading a zillion AIDS Lifecycle training rides and then Double Bay Double training rides. (Incidentally when he did list that ride, we drove all the way to Fresno to do his ride and support him as did a few other Bay Area members.)

But I don’t believe ride leaders are born even if personality makes it easier for some people to make the move. Ride leaders are made and we don’t yet have a proven recipe for developing ride leaders despite 40 years of existence. We are indeed slow learners! One thing I do know is that I cannot recall a single case of someone new to the club showing up and then leading a ride very shortly thereafter. Someone new to the club comes on a ride, checks us out, and decides whether to come a second time. If they like the experience, then maybe they come on a few rides and make friends in the club. Only at that point do they offer to lead a ride. That rarely happens nowadays. Coleading a ride with another member makes it easier to step up. Also, having a coleader means that someone else is guaranteed to show up!

I also suspect that we rely too much on self-volunteering rather than directly asking, “Hey, would you be interested in leading a ride for the club?” We replicate what we know and in my case no one needed to ask me to lead a ride. I haven’t started cold calling members but maybe that’s the next ride coordinator’s decision.

Stepping up to leading a ride is surely a sign of some emotional investment in the club. When you make friends in the club, leading a ride becomes much easier. We certainly don’t expect every member to lead rides (although that would be wonderful!) But at our membership level we should have about 15-20 active ride leaders in any year and we’re below that.

Ride Recap: November Jersey, S&S Rides

[Ed. David Goldsmith and Jeff Mishler recap this past weekends club rides.]

David: An unexpectedly beautiful day and not unexpectedly a nice group as usual. Short and Sassy had four riders: me, Ginny, Laura, and a new rider, Chris. It was Chris’ first-ever group ride although he told me he had done eight or nine 20-30 miles rides recently so he felt like he would be able to deal with the distance.

I had a mechanical problem (brakes) upon arrival and needed some time with my bike while Ginny and Laura welcomed Chris. Wait for it … I managed to fix the problem on my own without having to go into Mike’s for help! Laura rode with us on her non-ebike road bike, the first time she had been on it for over a year. We left Mike’s around ten. Riding out, I stayed with Chris for a while to make sure his pace was going to work for the group that was riding and to orient him to group riding since it was his first time.

The Slow and Sassy riders connected with the Jersey Ride coming from San Francisco at our usual meeting point, the stop sign at the base of Camino Alto. After that we mostly stayed together although we got a little spread out on Paradise as usually happens because we have riders with varying paces. Roger S. had a little incident when his jacket started slipping out of his jersey pocket and got caught up in his rear wheel. Fortunately it just slowed him down and he was able to stop safely and untangle the mess. It was the end of the jacket though as one of the sleeves was pretty much ripped to shreds.

After the usual nice lunch at Woodlands, we made it back to Sausalito arriving back at Mike’s a little before 2. Chris’s parting words were “So, when’s the next one of these?” Nice to hear.

Jeff: To add to David’s comments the Jersey Ride had five leaving from SF—Roger S, Jeff P, Stephen, Maurizio, and me. The sections to and from Sausalito were mainly notable just by how fog and wind-free they were! From the Presidio we were able to see Bolinas well past the Headlands.

When approaching the GGB, there is a small wooden bridge that leads to the gravel path. On that small bridge there is a new “security bollard”. It is abnormally low and large, like 18″ in width, bright orange, and seemingly under construction still. No idea what they’re trying to do with it, but watch out.

Ed. Next Jersey Ride and Short & Sassy Tib Loop will be Saturday December 9.

Don’t You Have People For That?

“How about I ream out that bottom bracket?”

David Goldsmith asked me that question years ago. I can’t remember exactly what it was in reference to but I do recall being amused and of a lightbulb popping up in my head about the cultural zeitgeist behind that question. There was a time when people did most everything around the house whether it was house cleaning, fixing the car, installing a new garbage disposal, gardening, or wiring a new outlet. It was just understood that we could do that and we only hired someone to take on tasks that required a professional such a lawyer, doctor, architect, etc.

Certainly part of the ethos of 1950s and 1960s was that boys learned from their fathers (or that shop class in high school) and girls learned from their mothers (or the home ec class in high school) how to do these kinds of things. Boys grew up learning how to do household repairs and to wield as many tools as their dads could afford to store in the garage workshop. Is that still true today? Perhaps less so. Today boys’ spare time is devoted to a myriad of after school activities instead of helping their dads with household repairs.

When I was in high school I hung out with a small group of budding bike fanatics and yet none us had anything remotely special for a bike. (I had a Schwinn Continental with steel rims and an Ashtabula crank!) One day John suggested we take our bikes apart, clean them, and put them back together. On his backyard patio no less. Before that I had only a vague idea of how bikes worked and were put together. John knew only a little bit more then I did. That experience was revelatory if hard and frustrating. It was a bit over our heads but we managed to take apart our bikes right down to the ball bearings including the freewheel and reassemble everything. It took all day. And yes, we did have a couple of parts left over. But by that point we were exhausted and our bikes appeared to work fine anyway. The end result was that I was never intimidated by working on a bike again.

Until now. Taking apart a downtube indexed shifter is as “contemporary” a repair as I feel confident to do on new technology. Shimano shifters—thank god!—are not intended to be disassembled and if they fail you just replace them. But other technologies give me the heebie-jeebies: suspension forks, hydraulic brakes, and electronic shifting systems. I have managed to learn to use a torque wrench and live with tubeless tires. I know that at some point I’m going to bite the bullet and learn how to do those repairs, make a shitload of newby mistakes, but eventually get competent enough to handle my own repairs and maintenance. But I am avoiding it as long as possible, ie. until something irretrievably breaks.

But beyond the higher technological skillset necessary to take care of these repairs—it really isn’t that much more complicated than before—there has just a cultural shift in bike repair: find people to do ALL your maintenance and just throw money at your problems. The inability whether it’s due to lack of time, lack of interest, or just ennui is much more acceptable these days. We all understand when someone hires someone or uses a convenience instead of doing the work themselves. Instead of preparing a meal we go out to eat. It’s easier especially when you’re tired after a day’s work. Fix your bike? You’d rather be riding it instead of wasting your precious Me time wrestling with a recalcitrant tire. How many of us still clean their home instead of hiring a cleaning service? Dry cleaning? Nowadays we can send out all our clothing for washing and it’ll be returned nicely ironed and folded too. There is no shame anymore in not knowing how to do things ourselves; we just understand that we hire others to do things for us. It’s just more things than before.

When I was a teenager I took car repair classes at the local community college. I am probably the last person with any kind of abiding interest in cars. I’ll drive anything as long as it’s cheap and can get me from point A to point B and is reliable. But I thought I should know something about our car and feel less marooned when it came to an unexpected failure. Working hands-on on my car was just as revelatory as working on my Schwinn. After those classes I didn’t work on my car very much but I certainly felt competent and could talk to my mechanic. As with bikes, auto technology has quickly advanced and now nothing can be done to a car engine without a diagnostic computer to tune it. So I’m back to square one again: ignorant and completely in the hands of auto mechanics.

We are embodied beings so knowledge we acquire through our bodies and not just from reading or watching YouTube videos can take us to another level. The experience of using our hands especially to learn about the world is valuable knowledge. How much torque do I need to apply to snug up a bolt? What does that feel like? How much to turn that adjustment screw to quiet the rattle in the rear derailleur? You learn that through your body. It is felt knowledge. Buddhists say that you don’t give a starving person a menu, you give them food. That is to say, talking about enlightenment is worthless; one has to experience it directly to know. So it is with bike repair. To understand your bike intimately you have to work on it. Yes, mechanics can make your problem vanish. But will you be “fed”?

Sucked Any Good Wheel Lately?

Has it felt like there haven’t been many club rides recently? Maybe you hadn’t noticed because you’re not riding much. Or, at least you’re not riding much with Different Spokes. And we know one begets the other: fewer rides results in less interest and expectations, which results in even fewer rides. This has been a bad year for the club partly due to the record rainfall for the first four months of 2023. But we didn’t rebound once the weather improved for riding. As some of you know this has also been a bad year for illness, injuries, and accidents and not just among the usual ride leaders. Both David Goldsmith and I have been derailed this year from leading many rides (although David is doing a lot better than I!) Whether it’s a home remodel, Covid, accidents, or one’s aging body letting one down, life has a way of interfering with cycling.

There is also usually a lull in rides before AIDS Lifecycle as some members focus on that event. But honestly we don’t support AIDS Lifecycle anymore as we used to by offering training rides. Lifecycle has its own robust training ride schedule and doesn’t need any help from us. (We’ve outlived our usefulness to it, it seems.) This year the rebound post-Lifecycle didn’t happen for some reason and we had very few rides offered.

What has been revealed in glaring clarity is that there is little interest in leading rides in the club right now. The Jersey Ride, which by the way has been the most popular and well-attended ride in our history, does not have throngs of members eager to lead it. It’s usually a board member or an ex-board member who finally relents and volunteers to lead it after much exhortation and prodding from Yours Truly. Do I like beating the bushes to find a JR ride host? No, it’s a minor chore but the fact that I have to do it rather than having a member spontaneously step up before I even ask, saying, “Hey, I’d like to lead next month’s JR? May I do that?” reveals the lack of volunteerism and ennui we have now. I find JR hosts and often with a response such as, “Oh, I’ll do it but only if no one else does.” Apparently leading the JR is also viewed as a minor chore by others. And perhaps that says something about the JR itself. Maybe it was a good horse in its youth but it’s outlived its time and should now be put out to pasture. If no one is jumping for joy to lead the JR, then perhaps we should just stop offering it in its present form. If you like the JR, then maybe you should do something about preserving it by leading it once in a while because frankly that burden has fallen on an extremely small number of members who likely would prefer to be riding somewhere else. Or maybe the JR needs to get away from the Tib loop and go elsewhere as a breath of fresh air?

The shitshow on the GG Bridge in the afternoon doesn’t help. It’s one of the reasons David now leads the Short & Sassy Tib loop since it starts and ends in Marin and he doesn’t have to risk life and limb on the Bridge. It’s also the reason Roger and I no longer lead it: after two JRs where we were nearly hit we will no longer ride southbound on the Bridge in the afternoon and prefer to lead the much safer East Bay Tiburon loop. Maybe you feel the same way and that’s why you don’t want to lead or participate in the JR? But your silence tells us little. Speak up and let us know.

One could argue that the resistance to leading the JR is idiosyncratic. But we’ve had a glorious summer almost devoid of oppressive heat waves and wildfire smoke and yet we’ve had less than half the number of rides we usually have had. For at least a couple of years we’ve averaged about one club ride per week throughout the year. This year it’s going to be much less than half that.

This isn’t to say that no one volunteers to lead rides. There are still a few members who without urging will occasionally post rides from their repertoire. But the ride leader cohort has been dwindling and not replenished at the same rate, so it’s fragile right now. When two or three of the main leaders can’t lead rides, the calendar suffers greatly. This might be tolerable for a month or two. But at some point I would expect members to think, “Gee, there haven’t been many rides. I’ll lead one next month.” This was actually my thought process when I volunteered to be the ride coordinator back in 2016. The ride calendar was dismal and we hadn’t had a ride coordinator in over two years. So at first I led more rides and then in the vain hope of having a multiplier effect I volunteered to be the club ride coordinator. It clearly had some effect since the numbers went up. But now rides are dwindling again and frankly I’m not sure what to do to rectify it. Perhaps there is no rectification needed and this is just part of the natural up and down cycle of the club.

Over the past five years the board has worked to structurally make it easier to lead rides. The club RideWithGPS account has a curated library of rides throughout the greater Bay Area including a Most Popular selection for each county. This should make it easier to peruse and find interesting rides without having to generate a cue sheet, map, or GPS file for participants. Some rides even have ride notes and ride history information in their files. Posting rides on the ride calendar is easy through the “post a ride” link and usually are up in less than a day or even faster through the QuickEvents method. There is a dedicated ride leader forum for those who lead rides to discuss and problem solve issues pertaining to ride leading.

I suspect the common reaction amongst you to the dearth of rides is at best very mild disappointment. It’s so easy to get on a bike and ride by oneself; you don’t have to do any work to arrange or coordinate it, you can leave at whatever time you want, and you can do whatever ride you want including changing your mind midride. Leading a ride does involve a time commitment at an appointed date and time. Why bother when it’s easy just to text a friend or two and see if they want to join your personal ride than it is to organize a ride for the club? I would like to say that it’s easy to find another ride at any of the non-LGBTQ clubs. But that is becoming harder too. Larger clubs such as the Valley Spokesmen and even Grizzly Peak Cyclists have diminishing ride calendars and they periodically plea for more ride leaders. So it’s not just us.

The idea behind leading a club ride isn’t to put members through an ordeal. If that is your reaction, then don’t do it. In all the years I’ve ridden with Different Spokes leading rides has been about wanting to get together with your friends to ride. If that’s not enough to get you warm and fuzzy about leading a club ride, then don’t do it. You should feel eager to lead a club ride, jazzed about it and not repulsed. If that is not the reaction of most of the members, then it’s time to shutter the club. Don’t lead a club ride if you don’t feel like it. On the other hand, as a member you should feel that giving back to the club is something you want to do. Those who take should also give. Or have we forgotten the moral of the childhood story of Stone Soup?

At this juncture of the club, the real question is why members don’t want to lead rides because not wanting to do the most vital function of our club means there is something radically wrong. The culture of the club should be one of excitement, fun, and sharing. And sharing means sharing the “work” of making the club a continuing, viable organization. If there aren’t enough members who want to contribute to the club, then we will wither and vanish just as Different Spokes Seattle, Rainbow Cyclists in San Diego, and River City Cyclists in Sacramento all did.

Well, if you don’t care, then you don’t care. But I know some of you do and now is the time to act rather than sit back in the in the draft and let others plow into the wind. You know what cyclists say about wheelsuckers, don’t you? I’m flicking my elbow at you. Yes, you.

Right On

The SF Board of Supevisors voted unanimously at their board meeting on October 3 to recommend instituting no right turn on red (NTOR) throughout the City. This resolution means the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which oversees transportation regulation, then has 120 days to decide whether or how to implement this into law. Although the Board resolution is the widening of NTOR from just the Tenderloin, which has had NTOR for some years, SFMTA may choose to extend NTOR in a limited way rather than completely throughout the City. Exactly who is affected by NTOR if implemented—all motor vehicles, buses, taxis, bicycles—is also SFMTA’s purview.

Other than in a few places in the US such as New York City, Washington DC, and Cambridge, MA, NTOR is uncommon although it is very common elsewhere in the world. Turning on red actually started—or at least gained wide traction—here in California many years ago and eventually became a standard practice in the US. We take it for granted that making a right turn at a red light is common sense. Why waste gasoline and time idling at the light when a right turn affects no one else and may help to speed up traffic and reduce congestion? When I’ve cycled in countries such as Japan where NTOR has been and is the law, it feels absurd to sit at a light and not turn (left in Japan) when there is no traffic. But I know this is because I’m not used to it.

I am a traffic law martinet. There are very few traffic laws I ignore when cycling; for example, I’m one of the rare cyclists to stop at stop signs. I’ve even been run into from behind by cyclists who just presumed that I would ignore the stop sign and ride through it. But I can rightfully be called a scofflaw for rolling through stop signs and even red lights when I am turning right here at home.

The reason why the Supes voted for NTOR is because it’s more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. Often motorists make that right turn when it is NOT safe hitting pedestrians in the crosswalk or right-hooking cyclists. This is especially dangerous when it’s a truck making the turn.

When this is finally codified in city law there is sure to be an adjustment period since everyone is habituated to turning right on red and will need to be informed constantly not to do so anymore. Will there be signs at every lighted intersection? That’s a lot of signs to install! Furthermore we’ll all have to remember that SF is now the exception and as soon as we cross from Oakland, Marin, or San Mateo into the City, we will have to drive differently. Will there actually be traffic enforcement or will this be just another instance of legal virtue signaling? [pun intended]

Traffic statistics show pretty conclusively that NTOR leads to a reduction in pedestrian and cyclist deaths and injuries. So it’s probably a good thing although how that’s going to play out with SF being essentially an ‘island’ of NTOR is yet to be seen. There are always unforeseen consequences and how people react to this new law is not entirely predictable. A combination of ped/cyclists presuming drivers will respect NTOR and drivers forgetting about NTOR in SF is going to be a heady brew.

Of course completely ignored in the public discussion is cyclists’ behavior to NTOR. Although cyclists are not motor vehicles we are considered as having the rights and responsibilities of motor vehicles under the vehicle code. Unless the SFMTA makes an explicit exception for cyclists, we are going to have to stop and wait at red lights to make a right turn just like motorists.

The two governing principles cyclists in SF abide by are: (1) will I get killed? and (2) can I get away with it? Lights and stop signs are given lip service only to be ignored at the next intersection. As long as they can get away with it. I don’t expect that to change with NTOR. If there is no exception for cyclists, I predict we are going to see the vast majority of cyclists ignore this new law except when a cop is present.

There is an elementary school that I ride by very often and it has a traffic light directly in front of it. It’s a four-way cross, ie. all traffic stops to let pedestrians (= children) cross in any direction. The city installed NTOR warning signs. Apparently the four-way stop lights are not sufficient and crossing guards staff the intersection during school opening and closing. One of them was hit and killed by a motorist a couple of years ago while he was protecting a child crossing the street.

The stop lights at this school are activated by pushing any of the beg buttons. To stay on the bike route you have to turn right at the light, and Roger and I are the only cyclists who respect that sign and stop even when there is ‘no good reason’ to do so. Every cyclist we have ever encountered there has ignored that sign. (We’ve seen an occasional motorist also drive through!) So I don’t expect cyclists are going to respect any new law either.

Cyclists are gonna do what cyclists gonna do. So whether there is an exception made is hardly relevant to actual behavior. Given that California cyclists have been advocating for stop-as-yield (which is how stop signs are treated by cyclists in real life anyway), it’s laughable to expect cyclists to stop and wait at red lights before turning.

Just be prepared for some slight chaos and maybe some motorist blowback as well.

Of more relevance to the club is: will ride leaders respect this law on club rides? It’s really bad form for members to skirt the law on official club rides. That’s why official rides involving trail poaching, trespassing, ignoring road closure signs, and yes, running lights or stop signs is not officially sanctioned. What you do in your private life is one thing but what you do on club rides is another. And club liability insurance? Of what help will it be when the facts reveal that a ride leader ignored NTOR and a participant then followed and was struck by a car? I don’t want to see that happen.

But this is America and we all know that traffic laws don’t apply to us when there aren’t cops around.

Ride Recap: September Jersey Ride

Word has it that this month’s JR and its twin sister, the Short & Sassy Tib loop, was a fabulous time. Instead of scorching heat or gloomy fog, nine Spokers were entertained by a delightfully beautiful and sunny day. Since it was Ginny’s birthday, Jeff brought out a cake from Woodlands Market in celebration. Bike, sun, pleasant company, cake—what’s not to like?!

You too could be part of the party! Next month’s JR takes place on Saturday October 14. And don’t forget to wear your club jersey!

Same As It Ever Was

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down.

This year’s Orinda Pool Party was a rush job. The pool was well over 55 years old and gravity had worked its magic slowly tilting the pool towards the creek to the point that the water level was getting so low on the uphill side that it just was able to flow into the skimmer. We bit the bullet this past winter and decided to have the pool leveled. It was either that or just fill in the pool with dirt and forget about it. Like owning horses, having a swimming pool is just a silly excuse to shovel money into a pit, in this case a literal one. We were assured that it would be done by the end of April. Of course no contractor worth his salt is going to stay on schedule and it was barely done by mid-July. After months of workmen coming and going along with dust, dirt, and loud Mexican music all emanating from the pool area finally over, I was not chomping at the bit to put on another Orinda Pool Party. I’d like to say the pool looked fabulous post-reconstruction but almost the entirety of the remodel is underneath the pool and invisible to the naked eye. The redwood deck is still in need of a good powerwashing and restaining; the concrete decking is still cracked and heaved up. So of course we were going to put on a party: shabby chic never goes out of style!

With just a month Roger and I got a listing up a bit late and managed to sway 15 Spokers over for a fun day in the sun and pool along with a ride to keep it honest. For the first time ever we had more non-riders than riders: just five had the chutzpah to throw their legs over a bike and climb up Pinehurst. The indolent supermajority preferred to sashay over later in the day, park their ample butts on the patio chairs, and gab up a storm while politely waiting for the riders to show up at the manse so we could all chow down together.

The weather was perfect—mid 80s, no wind, plenty of sun. The pool was 90F—practically a hot tub. But when the riders arrived no one went into the pool and instead they all headed straight for the meal line. Roger was again lured into smoking a smokin’ delicious rack of pork ribs. We literally tossed together a vegan brown rice salad—yes, it came from an old ‘hippie’ cookbook—and a pesto pasta salad different from the same old dross we ply most years. And just like at this year’s annual picnic we threw in grilled corn on the cob of which we have become so enamored. Not to be outdone the crowd showed up with some delicious homemade food including several kinds of salads, tomato caprese (is there any other kind?), a rich fruit tart, and brownies and cookies. Lamberto and Joe brought some buffalo chicken wings even though there wasn’t a football game in sight. (After tasting one—I had never eaten one before—I gobbled them down with gusto!)

I thought post-meal torpor would slay the crowd but instead a few finally ventured into the pool to cool off and splash around. It was a really pleasant afternoon filled with feeding frenzy, plentiful persiflage, and of course even some cycling on the side.

Classified Information

Modern drive systems for road bikes are slowly evolving towards just one front chainring. Who would have thought that the double chainring setup was in jeopardy of disappearing? It wasn’t that long ago that triple chainring setups were not uncommon in general and quite common for touring bicycles. They’ve been shown the door by wide-range double chainring drive trains made possible by ten-, eleven-, and twelve-cog cassettes, which allow a wider spread of gear ratios with tolerable jumps between gears. Although wide-range doubles are possible even with just seven or eight cogs, these sacrifice tight gear jumps to get that wide range. For some folks those tall jumps are either inconsequential or are tolerated because the lower low gear is a necessity.

Now that same trend is hitting double cranksets. Campagnolo’s thirteen-cog Ekar drivetrain was the writing on the wall: there is no double chainring option—it’s just one front chainring, period. Although Campagnolo markets Ekar for so-called “gravel” bikes, this is just because it’s the market that is ripest for one-by. In this year’s Tour de France the eventual winner Jonas Vingegaard used a single chainring set up for a few stages in this year’s race as well as in the Criterium du Dauphiné, which he also won. (These were presumably twelve cog setups unless SRAM was secretly trialing a thirteen cog drivetrain.)

It’s hardly a deluge of one-by’s but it’s a start and an ominous one as the hype of one-by is relentlessly propagandized online by the cognoscenti. The advantage of one-by is ad nauseum repeated like a holy liturgy: (1) eliminating the front derailleur and second chainring means a lighter bike; (2) it’s more aero with all that drivetrain furniture gone; (3) it’s easier because you’re too inept to shift a front derailleur; and (4) double chainrings have a lot of duplication of gear ratios so it’s not really useful. Realistically do any of these arguments apply to the real world? Aero and light weight are awesome for going fast but the difference these specific changes make is irrelevant except perhaps at the highest racing levels. And how many of us are racers let alone World Tour racers?

Shifting a front derailleur does require some skill. Indeed shifting gears must require some skill since I see a lot of people riding in their highest gear while struggling up steep hills so scared are they to touch their shift levers despite all the progress road bike drivetrains have undergone to make shifting easier. Today’s electronic shifting systems have essentially completely de-skilled the entire process and made shifting bicycle gears analogous to shifting a car that has an automated manual transmission: you just select a gear and the system does the rest. In the days when all shift levers were ‘analog’, ie. friction shifters, there definitely was a learning curve to shifting gears accurately and quietly akin to learning to drive a car with a manual stick shift: there was a whole lot of grinding going on until you got the timing of your shifts down! Even indexed mechanical shift systems, which we’ve been living with since the late ’80s, require some skill since you could still move the derailleurs partway just be pressing lightly on the shift levers and you can still mistime a shift and grind your gears away. Not so with electronic shifting!

The horror of duplicate gears is mostly baloney. Unless you’re an acolyte of half-step plus granny shifting—if you even know what that means—those duplicate gears also function to keep you shifting just the rear derailleur until you absolutely need to shift the front derailleur when you’ve come to either end of your cassette. No one needs 20, 22, or 24 completely different gears but what you probably do want is to be able to move up and down the cassette comfortably while minimizing shifting the front chainrings, i.e. avoiding double shifts as much as possible.

Now a company called Classified has come up with another take on one-by allowing you to have your cake and eat it too. Classified’s system is one-by but with a clever rear hub with a planetary gear that allows you to shift to a lower ratio with just one front chainring. And it’s done electronically and wirelessly! If you grew up with Sturmey-Archer three-speed rear hubs, then you’re already familiar with this idea since it too was a planetary gear hub that had two additional gear ratios. Shimano, Rohloff, and Sram also make planetary gear rear hubs so this isn’t a new idea at all. But in those systems the planetary rear hubs are designed to eliminate the rear cassette whereas Classified’s system preserves the cassette and eliminates a front chainring. Classified’s genius is in making such a system electronic, wireless, and relatively light. With just one front chainring you get the same number of gears you’d get in a double chainring setup. Classified claims that there isn’t a weight penalty with that rear hub but I’m not convinced that’s entirely true; it probably depends on which specific drivetrain you’re running. By pressing their shift button you can instantly lower the effective gear ratio by 68.6% while still in the same chainring. For example, if you’re using a 50-tooth chainring, then Classified’s second gear makes that equivalent to a 34-tooth chainring. The real tradeoff is in dollars: that Classified system costs about $3,000 including a wheelset. Classified’s system generally has gotten positive reviews online although it’s too early to assess the longevity and long term durability. Nonetheless I’m intrigued by this ‘solution’…

My interest however is not in eliminating the double chainring but in getting lower gears that replicate a triple by adding this system to a double. It’s almost impossible to get a high quality triple crankset plus the accompanying derailleurs anymore. And if you like indexed shifting as I do you’re going to have to go down pretty far on Shimano’s groupset hierarchy to the Tiagra level to find a triple crankset or else look on EBay for used or NOS parts. (Sram has never made a triple and Campagnolo has completely stopped producing them.) But what about a Classified system with a double chainring? If you add it to a 50/34crankset, you then get a 23-tooth granny equivalent. If you pair this with a tight 11-25 eleven speed cassette, you get a very nice spread of gears going from 123 to a low 25 gear-inches; if you instead use a 11-28 cassette, you get an ultra low gear of just 22 gear-inches. This is mountain bike territory! What makes this gearing extra delicious is that the gear jumps are just one tooth from 11 to 17 and then two teeth to 25, giving you not just a wide range but small jumps so that you can find exactly the right cadence. The icing on the cake is that you don’t have to do a lot of shifting gymnastics—you can stay in one front chainring (or virtual chainring) most of the time.

If you look at the gear ratio chart below you can see that my hypothetical Classified double set up compares well to a triple. The gear jumps up and down the cassette are almost all reasonably tight. Compare either the triple of the faux triple Classified to a compact double with approximately the same range and you’ll see that the latter has bigger jumps because to get that spread you need more two-, three-, and even four-tooth jumps. To find a gear with a comfortable cadence you’re doing to have to do more front chainring shifting whereas the triples obviate most of that.

But there’s always a catch, isn’t there? The wireless system is built into the the Classified rear hub’s thru axle, so quick release skewers are out. That leaves out all older bikes. If you have a modern road bike built for disc brakes, you’re probably fine as they are almost entirely made for thru axles. But retrofitting the Classified system to a bike built for quick release levers is going to involve a lot of messy work, ie. replacing the rear dropouts and possibly having to spread the rear triangle to accommodate a wider hub. For old school steel frames this is doable but unless that frame is your soul mate you’re probably better off getting a newer frame that accommodates a thru axle.

Of course the point of all this is irrelevant if you’re the kind of cyclist who is not sensitive to cadence, in which case having big gear jumps doesn’t bother you.

Over Your Left Shoulder

David Sexton was hit from behind and killed by a car driver on July 1 while on his way to meet his partner Gordon. I don’t recall exactly when David joined Different Spokes but it was likely around 2008 or after. I recall he came to a club pool party and he was interested in bike touring overseas. Roger and I had ridden with private tour companies as well as the Bicycle Adventure Club, a coop to which we belong, and I recall that we talked at some length about our experiences. David was a frequent participant on club rides especially the longer ones. On one of the club rides he met another recent member Gordon and they soon became “bike buddies with benefits”. Both David and Gordon travelled extensively in North America and especially overseas in order to cycle tour. At some point David left the club for reasons I wasn’t privy to. But during the Pandemic he rejoined. The last time I saw him was actually on a ride I was leading in Tilden Park, an early “gravel” ride along with Doug O’Neill. That was a cursed ride. Shortly after we were on the Nimitz trail David’s pedal partially unscrewed from his crank. Our efforts to reinstall it were fruitless and he wisely turned around and headed to a bike shop. A bit later on the ride I was bitten by an unleashed dog in the park and ended up in the ER.

David was a careful cyclist. I don’t ever recall seeing him taking unwarranted risks unlike, ahem, some other Spokers. Everybody makes mistakes and it is impossible to be vigilant 100% of the time. It is also impossible to control the behavior of others especially car drivers. All of this is to say that as cyclists the possibility of a serious accident or death is a benighted reality even if we subconsciously push that prospect out of awareness. Accidents can happen in various flavors and death by motor vehicle is what we fixate on as cyclists despite the multitude of ways we could end up six feet under.

When I heard the news that David had died I was stunned. Something so common as being hit by a car—I mean, there are over 46,000 traffic deaths in the US alone every year and about 1,000 are cyclists—seemed bizarrely unusual despite being such a commonplace that we hardly blink an eye at another “accident” dully announced in the evening news. Until now most of us probably don’t know personally anyone else who has died while riding so it seems to be a dim prospect. Yet it isn’t. Those who’ve been Spokers for a number of years may recall Big Dave Fales who died while bike touring in Arizona in 2008. Dennis Nix, another longtime member who was a club officer in the ‘90s, died in 2015 while on his scooter after being hit by a car.

When I joined the club in 1983 it was just as the AIDS epidemic was starting to sweep through the gay community like a scythe. I can’t begin to recall the number of Spokers I knew who died of AIDS and there were plenty including some fellow travelers who rode with us yet didn’t join. Sometimes it was rumor mentioned on rides, sometimes other club members knew of another member who was ill; there were neighbors who were Spokers who were desperately sick and wan. Then came the obituaries in the BAR and starting to attend memorial services for friends and acquaintances. During this sad time I recall not one Spoker dying for any reason other than AIDS. It wasn’t until my late partner Tom —also a Spoker—died as the result of a head-on car crash that a non-AIDS death entered my consciousness. David died due to a car?? That doesn’t happen to us. Yet it does and his demise is an unwelcome reminder that death by many different modes is a constant presence just over our left shoulder.

We may push away that fear and continue with our daily lives filled with responsibilities, future hopes and goals, errands to be done, and the comfort of a nest egg growing and safely stowed away for an old age. But death comes when it wants, often unexpected and when it does what will all those things we obsess about mean? Will the moments of pleasure turning the pedals be of any comfort? We love cycling and yet cycling is inherently dangerous, perhaps not as dangerous as base jumping but dangerous nonetheless. We count the risks and deem them insignificant and so head out on a ride in search of an endorphin high, the pleasure of the wind on our face and basking in the sun, the warm company of good friends. Death makes everything insignificant and at the same time also immensely valuable and cherished. When a friend dies and we grieve the loss, everything else falls to the wayside and we are left to wonder what could have been, a future now irrealis. And then we pedal on anxiously glancing over our left shoulder.

Waiting for Go-DOT

Winter rains are a long gone memory, we’re in a heat wave, and the living is easy, right? Except for those pesky roads that were washed out and destroyed in January and February. Those of you who plied those roads regularly know which ones I’m talking about. But Spokers who live in more ‘isolated’ communities such as San Francisco may be blissfully unaware that some of the best roads for cycling are still unrepaired and have no firm timeline for repair.

This past winter was one of the rainest, wettest on record. In Orinda we received 53 inches of precipitation; an ‘average’ year would bring us about 35-36 inches. That rain damaged and led to the closure of the following, among many others:

Redwood Road
Stage Road
West Old La Honda
Wildcat Canyon Road
Veeder/Redwood Road
Norris Canyon
Highway 84
China Grade
Schulties Road
Glenwood Drive
Old Santa Cruz Highway
Highway One
Crow Canyon
Mines Road/San Antonio Road
Patterson Pass
Bolinas Road

Most of these roads are still closed with uncertain timelines for reopening. A few such as Mines Road and Bolinas Road have partially reopened to one-way traffic without the wash-out or road failure being repaired. Quite a few roads that had been shut down have been fully repaired such as Patterson Pass and Crow Canyon. Some of the closed roads are still being used by cyclists although it involves ignoring a closure sign and possibly walking the bike around the collapsed section of road such as Wildcat Canyon and Veeder/Redwood Road.

Roads such as Redwood Road and Stage Road are used heavily by cyclists and they have no easy alternate. This means either ignoring the signs and K barriers or consigning oneself to not being able to do a larger set of rides to which these roads lead. A secondary effect is that if a closed road has an alternate, it’s also being impacted by car traffic. An example is Old La Honda Road. With Highway 84 closed for an indefinite period of time, traffic from Woodside up to Skylonda or to the San Mateo Coast is forced onto Kings Mountain, East Old La Honda, and Page Mill Roads making these roads even more hazardous for cyclists. To make things even worse these roads are curvy and have sections with terrible sight lines and no shoulder.

A pleasant and unexpected benefit of a few road closures is the absence of car traffic once you get beyond the road closure. You may recall the Mud Slide which took out a huge section of Highway One below Big Sur in 2017. A hastily, ad hoc trail built through Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park allowed walkers and cyclists to access Highway One from the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge all the way down to Limekiln State Park, one of the most scenic sections of the Big Sur area, to enjoy with almost no car traffic. Wildcat Canyon Road is closed to cars but cyclists continue to use it from Inspiration Point to San Pablo Dam Road; it’s incredibly pleasant not having to share it with the rush of cars hurtling through the narrow curves!

If you look at the various county websites listing road closures you will see that none of these roads has a timeline for repair. Some list inspections and geotech surveys having been done but that is merely a prelude to engineering a repair and then lining up a contractor. These road repairs are not cheap and county road budgets are wellknown to be under stress for many years already. Highway One and 84 are state roads and are therefore under Caltrans’s purview and we can expect them to be dutifully restored to their prior condition if not better. But even today Highway One has not reopened even though the extent of the damage in no way compares to the Mud Slide in 2017, which took about a year and a half to be remediated enough to be reopened. Wildcat Canyon is not expected to be reopened until sometime in 2024 or 2025! Redwood Road, Stage Road, and West Old La Honda have no date for reopening whatsoever, not even an estimated date and that indicates that the eventual repair is no where near beginning.

In the meantime as we await reopening we can remind ourselves of notorious road closures in years past. Calaveras Road, which was also ruined this past winter (but has since reopened) was closed for about ten years (!) due to the earthquake retrofit of the Calaveras Dam; the repair of the Crystal Springs Dam in San Mateo similarly took more than ten years for Highway 35 to reopen. I doubt we’ll have to wait that long for these roads to be repaired!