Plus Ça Change

Another day, another product announcement. Sigh. Since we live in the best of all possible worlds, new bike products must be unfettered goods (pun intended). But Shimano’s latest announcement, the new “2021”—really 2022 since you won’t be able to get them until later this year—Dura Ace and Ultegra road groups are sorely testing my faith in the ultimate goodness of God (or at least Leibniz). I’m sure lots of cyclists who can afford to buy bikes with either of these groups will be giddy with delight at their effortless shifting and smooth-as-butter disc brakes. However the announcement left me less than pleased due to three developments, two overtly mentioned and the other not so. The first is that these groupsets are electronic only: no more mechanical shifting. Perhaps that makes sense for Dura Ace since it is mainstay of professional road racing. But Ultegra is more of a bread-and-butter group for the rest of us, especially since Dura Ace prices seem to be going up relentlessly. Online pundits are bemoaning this loss and I would too except that in my experience maintaining a Di2 system has been less work. Cable actuated shifting systems aren’t a whole lot of work in this era but e-systems are even less work! And the less time I have to spend fiddling with a shifter, the more time I have to eat bonbons. What I don’t care about Di2 is the price. Mechanical shifting is fine and it’s a lot cheaper: the Ultegra Di2 groupset now costs as much as Dura Ace did just a few years ago.

The second is that Shimano will no longer be developing rim brakes. You will be able to get new 2022 rim brakes but they are the same old brakes with just a different date stamped on them. The writing is clearly on the wall: Shimano thinks there’s no money to be made in better rim brakes. So they’re now on death row with the execution date not yet announced. If you want Shimano rim brakes on some future bike—like in four or five years—they’re not going to have “Dura Ace” or “Ultegra” on them, more likely “Tiagra” or “Sora”. They’ll probably work just fine but they’ll be heavier, look a bit unrefined, and come with Shimano’s best cheap-ass brake pads. Maybe that will be the time to switch to ee brakes. (But the price: ouch!)

I’m not going to bore you with more rim vs. disc brake polemics. I use them both and both function fine. I like disc brakes when I’m riding in the wet—what, you don’t ride in the rain??—and they allow me to run fatter tires. But I also use “medium reach” rim brakes (what are called medium reach these days used to be the standard size back in the day) with bigger tires and they work pretty well although I really can’t run a tire wider than about 35mm. I like rim brakes because they’re about three-quarters of a pound lighter and are way easier to maintain and adjust. That’s important for DIY mechanics and as I get older I’ve not only gotten crustier but also more impatient with bike repairs that take me more than a half-hour to complete, preferably less than 15 minutes. If you always take your bike to a shop, then it doesn’t make much difference except to your wallet. In any case rim brakes are headed the same direction as spoon brakes regardless of how I feel: the boneyard. On the other hand given how expensive Dura Ace has become it’s soon to be out of reach anyway, so having Tiagra rim brakes is probably going to be just fine along with Tiagra everything else.

The third development flew under the radar. Now that Shimano road groups are going 12-speed, it no longer will be making a cassette with anything other than an 11-tooth small cog. With 11-speed you could get a Shimano cassette with a 12-tooth small cog; when Shimano groups were 9-speed, you could even get a 13-tooth cog. Going to 11 only is a move that SRAM made when it started making groupsets: it never offered a cassette with anything other than an 11. At the time I thought that was stupid and I still do. Most of us use whatever cassettes come with the bike, and being stuck with an 11-tooth cog is realistically no more than a minor inconvenience. I had never used a cassette with an 11-tooth cog until I bought a bike with a compact chainset. My previous experience was a 9-speed bike with a compact chainset; it came with a 12-cog and I thought that was plenty. Did you know that a 50×11 is just about the same gear development as a 53×12? It’s plenty big. The only time I used a gear that big was on some descents, and as I get older I’m less inclined to go ridiculously fast downhill. When I was “fast”—yes, that was quite a while ago—my top gear was a 53×13, which is less quite a bit less than a 50×11, and I rarely used it and I would still go downhill at 40+ mph. In other words, you don’t need a 50×11 to go downhill fast. All you need is stupid bravery and knowing how to tuck. So 11- or 12-tooth cogs are like vestigial organs I just don’t need or use. And I suspect that is true for the vast majority of recreational cyclists.

What I do like—and appreciate more and more as I get older and creakier—is having lots of gears in the middle of the cassette, where I ride a lot, rather than tiny cogs that I almost never use. With the new Shimano groups I’m just getting more of the same: cogs I don’t need. Oh well.

Finally, one other change caught me eye, which is the chainrings offered. The “standard” 53×39 chainset is gone replaced by a new 54×40. That is a damn big ring! Who do you know runs a 54-tooth chainring? Only Pro Tour cyclists and some oddball time trialists. Everyday cyclists need a 54 like a hole in the head. FYI a 54×11 is 133 gear-inches. All I can say is: wow. But hold on there just a minute! At some point Shimano is going to have to produce a 12-speed “junior” cassette. Junior racers (under age 18) have gearing capped at no smaller than a 14-tooth cog. It’s easy to imagine a great 12-speed cassette starting at 14 and giving something close to my ideal set of ratios. How about a 14-15-16-17-18-19-20-22-24-27-30-34? This would have a lot of useful gears in the middle, an excellent low gear, and a reasonable top gear of 54×14 = 104 gear-inches. Sign me up!

Hamilton

No, I’m not talking about Alexander Hamilton or a Tony award winning musical. I’m talking about Laurentine Hamilton, baby, whose name graces Mount Hamilton in the South Bay.

This coming Sunday club Treasurer Roger Sayre and VP David Gaus are going to lead the charge up the Bay Area’s tallest peak full-bore, no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners….well actually not: it’s going to be a delightful romp at a modest pace with the dynamic duo sweeping you upward. The club’s annual foray up the hill, which we had to cancel last year due to you-know-what, is going to be extra-special this year. David is going to sag the ride…in his car. So you’ll be able to bring along your hair dryer, curlers, and change of wardrobe—at least two!—and David will carry them to the summit for you. And if you want to bring along that picnic basket with the 10-lb. Honey-Baked Ham with all the fixin’s he’ll shove that in the back as well so you can brunch to your heart’s content whilst your eyes lovingly adore the Lick contemplating your (in)significance in the vast universe that said observatory has explored.

Seriously, this ride is a part of DSSF history. The first club ride up Mt. Hamilton was in October 1983, less than a year after the club’s birth, led by then club mover-and-shaker Michael John. MJ was responsible for numerous club rides in the nether regions of the Bay Area as well as several club bike touring trips around the US. He also led club rides up Mt. Tam on the Railroad Grade on full moon nights on his touring bike (!) However he never led Mt. Hamilton again for some reason. (I’ll have to ask him about that…) All was not lost however as Ron Decamp, another early member who happened to live not that far from the start of the ride, loved to go up Mt. Hamilton and led it no less than four times in 1984! Kevin Anderson aka ‘Flo Velcro’ and ‘Rex Flash, Mountain Biker’ led it in 1986. (Kevin actually did bring several wardrobe changes on club rides. He’d use a restroom and emerge in entirely different bike drag!)

Then it sort of lapsed until Sharon Lum came along in 1991. Sharon is also a South Bay denizen and liked to do long rides. So naturally she and Hamilton were a match. Sharon led the ride annually until 2007 when David Gaus took it over. Why does David love this ride? You’ll have to ask him yourself this Sunday. But I’m betting that one of the reasons is that despite the enormous elevation gain—over 5,000 feet in total—that makes it a double-dare-you challenge it’s entirely doable because the average gradient is only about 6%. It is however a bit long at 18 miles to the summit. But then it’s 18 miles mostly downhill afterward! That’s only about 36 miles total. Sure you can do that! Just take your time. Despite the elevation gain (or because of it?) the 2015 edition brought 33 people out of slumber to ride to the top! That was the most people on a club ride until this year’s Pride Ride

Weather on Mt. Hamilton has been unpredictable. Some years it’s been unseasonably warm making for glorious basking at the top…

…and other years it’s been extraordinarily chilly leading to huddling in the lobby next to the wall heater.

Becoming *good* friends with the wall heater!

And of course there’s always the chance of rain. Ten years ago Roger and I did the ride and it was in the low 30s at the top. Everybody crowded in the lobby to get some heat. The descent was unbelievably cold even with wind pants, GoreTex jackets, wool caps, and winter gloves. Roger could barely control the tandem it was so cold. And yes, it snows on Mt. Hamilton during the winter! (If you want to peruse the gory details of that ride, go here.)

This Sunday be sure to check the weather forecast before you head out the door. You will want to make sure you have plenty of warm—preferably windproof—clothing for the descent if the forecast looks at all chilly. No reason to hold back because you can always give what you don’t want to wear going up to David. Although the lobby has vending machines for snacks and drinks you will probably want to eat something more substantial like a small sandwich to replenish those calories so pack a lunch. Although Lick Observatory in recent years has sold hot coffee in the gift shop, it may not be open this Sunday. So throw that thermos of hot coffee into your goody bag just in case.

Sharon always brought freshly baked muffins to the start, something we always looked forward to. Rumor has it that David is going to show up with some special donuts. See you Sunday! To see the ride listing at the club website and to RSVP, go here.

Bear With Us

Despite a late change in plans we had a delightful Fall Social after all. The event was postponed a week due to the bomb cyclone and moved to Orinda just in time for moody fall weather: sun, overcast, sun, overcast, and finally sun. This year’s ad hoc FS put nothing over on Thomas Keller but participants happily made do with rotund burritos from the local Mexicatessen. Alas, you will have to wait another year for the return—hopefully—of freshly grilled turkey.

All told eleven came out for a calm jaunt around the Three Bears. Contra Costa County roadworks has been busy this year laying down a pancake flat sheet of new asphalt along Castro Ranch Road and then finally repairing a washed out section of Alhambra Valley Road. For bonus points they were currently busy repairing the recently collapsed section of Bear Creek Road. From the looks it won’t be long before they’re done too. As is custom Mama proved she’s a tough bitch and Papa made sure we knew who was Daddy. But everyone made it through with minimal cursing. One week after the torrential downpour the East Bay hills were perking up green after a grim brown spring and summer—a sign of hope?

To add extra fun climbing points we went up Wildcat and took Old El Toyonal to the cabin. Once at Orinda Manors we were greeted by hostess-with-the-mostest Roger as well as President David and First Man Chris. Most preferred to order Mex food rather than schlep up some grotty bento concoction. David Gaus and Roger then went down to retrieve the goodies. In the meantime we were all ensconced on the back deck with sunshine gabbing away. After the repast Roger brought out homemade lemon bars made with lemons he had grown. Somehow despite gordito burritos folks made room for them.

Thanks to Chris and David Goldsmith for bringing over the club drinks and to David Gaus and Roger Hoyer for getting the grub, and for David Gaus for leading the ride.

Ride Recap: Danville for Lunch, Oct. 17 [Updated]

These must be desperate times: seven Spokers from San Francisco broke down and came over to Contra Costa to do a bike ride! I guess the allure of Marin and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge had worn off, and wouldn’t it be a laugh to slum over in the ‘burbs? I was surprised not just by the number but also because there was the threat of rain, and god forbid riding in the rain!

This was a simple ride, one of my ‘go-to’ rides when I just don’t want to think and prefer to log some easy miles: ride out to Moraga and then down the Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail, which is a rails-to-trails conversion, and then down the Iron Horse Trail, another rails-to-trails, to Danville. Will, Scott, Mark, new members Bud and Alan, as well as President David and Treasurer Roger joined me this time. Although it threatened to rain no one bailed and four even came by BART despite the cruel half-hour wait between trains these days. A few of the guys came in shorts and a jersey—that would have been perfect a week ago—but fall had fallen and without warmers or a jacket it was a brisk start to their day.

It was the usual Tony ride: Tony starts too fast, the group is chatty, Will bombs the downhill, oohs and aahs down the beautiful MUPs. This time no one got lost maybe because the route was simple and maybe because it was old hat for some. We pulled into Danville at the “Caboose” for an unnatural break. A train caboose being repurposed for restrooms struck some as a real novelty whereas for me, old and jaded, it was just part of the scenery I’ve come to ignore, which these days is just about all the scenery since I’m mostly lost in thought when I ride with just a touch of awareness for the mayhem and madness on the streets.

Bladders delightfully appeased we rolled a couple of blocks down to the new Sultan’s Kebab in town and took a gander: awright! no one was using the outside tables! Sultan’s Kebab started in Pleasanton and recently opened outposts in Walnut Creek and Danville. It’s not going to earn any Michelin stars but it’s good Middle Eastern food. And they have vegan and vegetarian choices should you eschew slaughtered animals. We took over two tables and gabbed and gnawed to our hearts’ content. Most got some form of kebab wrap and the verdict was “Yummy!” Being one who enjoys the same old rut I got the usual veg plate, which is an obscene amount of food just perfect for a scarf-and-barf.
Will got a Turkish coffee that had a resplendent aroma; if I hadn’t been stuffed to the gills I would have marched back in and ordered one (or two!) for myself.

Stomachs overly full means only one thing: pedal to the metal up Danville Boulevard! I had a slow roll in mind…until we got passed by three wannabes at Stone Valley Road. So naturallly I had to gun it to catch their wheels. Next thing I know we’re going 23+ mph down the road dodging tree branches and piles of acorns. That was fun even if the rest of the group was a bit peeved. The rest of the way back was done at a modest pace. Alan and Will kept asking me, “Isn’t there a hill on the way back? Is this it?” Honestly the hills from Danville to Orinda are hardly worth mentioning. Except for the short 9% grade up to St. Stephens. Did I mention that I hadn’t been riding much and that I hadn’t done a ride over 30 miles in over two months? So right around the 34-mile point I totally caved and crawled up that hill. I thought I was safe until we turned into the BART parking lot at the end. That incline was just enough to set off leg cramps and I literally came to a stop. Fortunately I only had to hobble a hundred yards to the end. Fun ride, good company, delish food, wasted. Mission accomplished.

Flash flood update: I took a ride down the Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail a couple of days after the Bomb Cyclone hit us, which was the day after we went to Danville for lunch. What a difference ten and a half inches of rain makes! There is a vernal waterfall along the trail that only reappears after we get plenty of rainfall, and I had a feeling that it would bloom fulsome after our recent deluge. For the past two dry winters it’s been an anemic trickle during the infrequent rains. But not now! It adds an otherwordly feel to a very well used MUP, something you might see only in the depths of Big Basin State Park yet it’s in the middle of the ‘burbs.

I need at least 10.5 inches…to get my attention.

Gutter Bunny Part 2, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Roadway

Do you know the difference between a road and a roadway? Yeah, I didn’t think you did. I certainly didn’t pay attention to such esoteric nuances until I learned that I didn’t have to ride in the gutter all the time. I used to ride to the far right of the road almost all the time, squeaking by with just the thinnest shaving of pavement on my right. Partly I was being overly courteous (some of you may say fearful) to motorists and partly because I had a fundamental misunderstanding of traffic law. What does the law say? Let’s take a peek at the California Vehicle Code, specifically Division 11, Chapter 1, Article 4, §21202:
Any person operating a bicycle upon a roadway at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at that time shall ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway except under any of the following situations…
The part that we probably all understand is the ‘less than the normal speed of traffic’ ie. if you are going at the “normal speed” then you don’t have to ride on the right—you can ride wherever you want in the lane including the middle. Of course ‘normal speed’ depends on point of view. For a driver the normal speed is going to be whatever speed they want to go—who cares what the posted speed says! But generally if you can keep to the posted speed limit—25, 30, 40, whatever—you’re not committing an infraction by riding in the lane and any motorist who gives you grief over that is just being an impatient ass.
The rest of the verbiage seems crystal clear—ride as close to the right as is practicable, right? Well, maybe not. The part of the above paragraph that most people misunderstand—both motorists and cyclists as well as most police officers—is the word ‘roadway’. It turns out that in traffic law a road or highway and a roadway are not exactly the same thing even though we may use all those terms interchangeably in everyday life. A road or highway is pretty much what you think it means: it’s some kind of path open to the public and used for vehicular travel. So a trail is not a road (not used for vehicular travel) although a fire road (= “double track”) is albeit not paved, as long as it’s open for public use. A street is a road since it’s used for vehicular travel and it’s available for public use. However a roadway is slightly but critically different. The CVC Division 1, §530 defines it as follows:
A “roadway” is that portion of a highway improved, designed, or ordinarily used for vehicular travel.
In other words the roadway is only a part of a road, the part that is ordinarily used for travel. The roadway thus excludes the shoulder, parking lane, and sidewalk but not a bike lane. The roadway is just the lane(s) of travel, period. If you see a white solid line on the right side of the road, this indicates the right edge of the roadway. (However there isn’t always a white line on the right.) As cyclists we are to ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb OR the edge of the roadway, ie. you need to do one or the other but not necessarily both. You do not need to ride as close as is practicable to the curb as long as you are on the right edge of the roadway. Since the roadway excludes the parking lane and shoulder, you only need to ride on the right side of the rightmost lane. If there is a white line marking the right edge of the roadway, then you ride to the left of the white line, not the right of it. Doing the latter places you in the shoulder of the road, which is not part of the roadway.
Not riding in the parking lane seems common sense to me. Although riding in the parking lane may keep you further away from moving cars, when you have to merge into the normal lane of travel because of a parked car, you are increasing the chance of being hit from behind since following cars are not expecting you to move into “their” lane and thus haven’t moved to the left to give you the minimum three feet of passing room. Yet a Palo Alto police officer, irked that I was “blocking” cars, threatened me with a ticket when I refused to ride in the parking lane of El Camino Real (which has multiple lanes, by the way) when I insisted on staying in the right lane. I moved into the parking lane until he disappeared up the road and then resumed riding in the right lane of the roadway. Of course, I’m not rigid about this. If the parking lane is empty for a long way, I have no qualms about using it for my safety; I just plan to merge into the roadway early enough so that cars have plenty of time to see me. (I also signal my intentions.)
The real problem for cyclists isn’t the law per se but drivers’ ignorance of the law. When we ride on the right side of the roadway, drivers become irked that we’re not riding as far to the right of the road. It’s no surprise that such nuances are lost on the general public. Although this technical difference is alluded to in the DMV Drivers Handbook (p. 77) it is not explained. What is covered in the Handbook is an explanation of the exceptions that allow cyclists not to ride all the way to the right of the roadway such as the presence of obstacles, right-turn only lanes, and when the lane is too narrow for a bicycle and car to travel side-by-side. The difference between the roadway and the road should be laid out in plain English so that drivers (and cyclists and cops) are educated about the legally allowable position for cyclists on roads.
Of course this wouldn’t end punishment passes, verbal abuse, leaning on the horn, or getting sideswiped. But it might reduce the amount of road rage focused directly on us. Despite the best education—and no, the DMV Handbook hardly constitutes sufficient “education”—there will always be a subset of drivers whose attitude can accurately be characterized as auto supremicist: cyclists don’t deserve to be on the road regardless of how the laws are written and if they use the roads, they do so at their own risk since they should have no rights. Oh, and they should always get out of the way of motorists if they want to stay alive. As an example we have a neighbor who confronted us once when we were riding up the steep, narrow road to our house: “Bicyclists shouldn’t be allowed on these roads because they’re too narrow!” (= “You’re blocking our cars!”). At first I was stunned by his attitude—hadn’t he read the law or taken a DMV exam to get his license? Didn’t he know how to pass a cyclist in a car? Should we have expected anything less from such ilk than convenient rationalization of violence or bullying towards cyclists—“he deserved it”, “he was so entitled he thought he could take half the road”?

The task before us—besides survival—is huge: to change the culture around transportation. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the effort to end auto supremicism is certainly going to take longer. But the first step is to stop “moving to the back of the bus”—you have a right to ride on the roadway (pun intended), so exercise your right.

Hot Hot Hot

Sometimes a lighthouse is just a lighthouse.

Today’s ride down the San Mateo coast to Gazos Creek was exceptionally timely. Temperature in San Francisco, which has had until now a typically dreary summer fogfest, got downright equatorial when it hit a “high” of 84 for this year. Gosh ‘Friscans, that’s practically like Hell! Elsewhere like the East Bay it was in the triple digits and fabulously smokey. Combined with the worst air quality we’ve seen since last summer’s burnin’, churnin’ fire festival it meant the only sensible place to ride was on the Pacific. Everywhere else you were seeing and breathing red.

Seven Spokers were breathing easy along Highway One for the day but they weren’t alone: it looks like everyone else had the same idea including the Oakland Yellowjackets and Grizzly Peak Cyclists, both of which had club rides there. Joining Jeff were Spokers Mark, Scott, Maurizio and Stephen as well as newcomers Eric and Nathaniel. They ran into Stephanie, who was riding with the Grizzlies (ahem, her other club). Rumor has it that she and Jeff are now conspiring to lead a jaunt in Marin next weekend. Stay tuned!

Ride Recap: No Pool Party Ride

Ironically not having the pool party this year turned out to be a good decision. Last year the Pandemic drove a dagger into the annual pool party. But even if Covid had never appeared, the intense smoke from the bewildering number of August wildfires would have cut the legs out from under the beloved event. Forgot about last August fires? Well, there was the CZU (Santa Cruz & San Mateo), SCU (East & South Bay), LNU (Sonoma & Yolo), August Complex (Mendocino), and the Glass Fire (Napa) to name just a few! How soon we forget. This year Roger and I were measuring the risk of having the pool party with the Delta variant spreading madly and had tentatively, halfheartedly decided to hold it the weekend of August 21-22. Then a surgery date opened up just after that weekend killing the idea for good. Rather than hurriedly putting together the event amidst prepping for surgery and recuperation, we decided it was best put it on hiatus for another year. There’s just something about life sending you a clear message.

Instead of the pool party we decided to hold just the ride since that is much easier to pull off when harried and busy. Instead of having the usual hot, hot August day that would have made the pool an alluring oasis, we got a cool day accompanied by a persistant haze from this year’s fires whose smoke we had heretofore avoided. The PM2.5 reading, which suddenly skyrocketed days before, was supposed to drop down by morning. Instead in the morning we were greeted with a reading of about 140, which is almost “Unhealthy”, but was now projected to drop as the day went on. Well, no good deed goes unpunished as they say.

I was expecting cancellations due to the air pollution but everybody showed up including Will, Scott, Stephen, and Roger from SF and Vanessa from Oakland. Only Will showed up in short sleeves while the rest of us were clad in jackets and even knickers—not the usual clothing for this time of year. But all the San Franciscans bemoaned the lack of heat and sunshine expecting a reprieve from the gruesomely gray Mark Twain summer on their side of the Bay. The route was one of the older pool party routes—out to Pinehurst but then heading to Redwood rather than taking on the 14% top of Pinehurst. After climbing up Redwood, which has a more sensible gradient, we turned onto Skyline and climbed up to where it intersected the top of Pinehurst. From there is was pretty much the standard pool party route except for dropping all the way down to San Pablo Dam Road instead of taking the ‘secret’ way down Old El Toyonal due to construction.

Stephen asked me if there had been any recent bikejackings on Skyline. In April there had been several along Skyline and Wildcat where armed robbers would hem in one or two cyclists with a car and take their bike, phone, and valuables. I told him that nothing more has appeared in the local rags about subsequent armed robberies and perhaps the increased police presence had made it too hot to continue stealing bikes. In any case it had put a damper on our forays into the Berkeley hills except when in a group.

This ride could have been called the Tour of the Berkeley Hills Tearooms because it seemed that we stopped at almost all of the restrooms along the way. Was it aging bladders? diuretics? running out of Depends? Looking for lost “friends”? I have no idea. No sooner had the Orinda BART facilities been inspected and deemed pee-worthy when shortly down the road we stopped at the Valle Vista restroom. Then the Sibley restroom. Then the Brazilian Room. Fortunately no one was in a rush so a rather casual attitude towards stops ruled the day.

Vanessa showed up on her Surly, the only non-road “racing” bike, just as she did in Monterey. It’s a great touring bike but a real boat anchor compared to the bikes the rest of us were sporting–carbon fiber gems, titanium jewels. Yet she pedaled that thing with aplomb, able to keep up, proving that having a $14,000 bike may be cool but ultimately is superfluous.

As we climbed up Skyline the fog got crazy thick. At first I thought it was smoke from the fires. But it “clearly” was pea-soup thick fog from the coast, causing eucalyptus trees to shed copious condensation down on the road. Road spray in August! I was sure glad I had on my longsleeve jersey and vest as well as glove liners. You also couldn’t see more than 75 feet beyond your face—you could hear the cars coming but couldn’t see them until they were right upon you. This made the descent down Grizzly a tad interesting. You couldn’t see shit, there were numerous wet spots, two decreasing radius turns, and with traffic—fun times! I was glad to have day lights on the bike.

Turning onto Wildcat we were finally going to be heading back to Contra Costa, which we hoped meant some actual warmth and sunshine, and right around the Brazilian Room the sun came out brilliantly and the haze vanished. We had a fast descent to Orinda. Will and Vanessa headed off to BART while the rest of us went to Geppetto’s for an outdoor lunch and convivial conversation. And by now the PM2.5 had dropped to 40 just as the forecast had predicted. So no pool but a party on two wheels nonetheless if a bit chilly.

Ride Recap: August Jersey Ride

Despite the threat of smoke from the Dixie Fire yesterday’s Jersey Ride got off without a hitch. Eight Spokers enjoyed a beautiful sunny day in Marin. The ride was uneventful except for Laura getting a flat on Camino Alto. But she caught up with the group on Paradise–or rather, the group caught up with her after she took a shortcut! Nancy returned from her three-month stint with FEMA seeing to the needs of Central American children who had been stopped by the border police. Welcome back, Nancy! Interestingly both Maurizio and Chris decided to forego the moshpit on the Golden Gate Bridge and returned to SF by ferry instead. Is this the beginning of a Jersey Ride thing? We shall see. Now if only the Blue & Gold served cocktails and hors d’oeuvres on the way back, that would be a fitting end of a Jersey Ride!

By the way the Blue & Gold Fleet has filed a request with the state PUC to stop ferry service between SF and Tiburon. If it is accepted as is, there would be no direct ferry service between the two. (The Angel Island Ferry Service would continue between Tiburon and Angel Island.) Barring a new ferry service taking over the route, this would be the end of the line literally and figuratively. Service would continue between Sausalito and SF requiring a short ride from Tiburon to Sausalito and still allowing you to bypass the GGB crossing. However this route is much busier and highly impacted by the rental bikes returning to SF after crossing the bridge. The other option is to cycle to the Larkspur ferry terminal in order to return to SF.

Gutter Bunny (Part 1)

You know the routine: you’re on a road that’s narrow, probably doesn’t have much of a shoulder if any, and the SUVs and pickups just keep roaring up behind you—what do you do? Naturally you cower, ie. move as far to the right as you can and make like a mouse, hoping to avoid getting smashed and turned into road debris. There isn’t a cyclist alive in this country that at least doesn’t start out with Survival Strategy Alpha: move the fuck over and pray. Pretty soon that becomes an ingrained habit and you find yourself riding ‘in the gutter’ all the time just to be ‘safe’. But are you?

It’s hard to argue with success. You’re alive today because you hug the gutter like your life depended on it. There is another strategy called ’taking the lane’ where you proactively (or in the eyes of 95% of motorists, impudently) move towards the center of the lane and act like you belong there and have the same rights as any other road user. Sounds good in theory but in real life it’s a lot harder to execute.

I live on a very steep street (10% average grade for 0.8 miles). It also has extremely crappy pavement, no shoulder, and some sections with no center divide due to substandard road width. It also has a hairpin blind curve just when it gets steepity. Every time I return from a ride I face a conundrum: what shall I do at the first hairpin to stay alive? As I get older it’s a rare day that I can “sprint” through the curve before the next line of cars is released by the red light. And I’m not getting any faster. There was a time when I would select a line going uphill that avoided the most execrable of the pavement cracks, and that best line was closer to the center of the road, which by the way has a double yellow line ie. ‘don’t pass!’ That would work until a car came downhill, usually at a high rate of speed, and crossed the centerline to pass a cyclist or pedestrian on the other side and coopting the entire road. Back to the gutter! Fortunately time has removed this choice because the road is now so replete with treacherous alligator cracks that there is no advantage to riding close to the centerline.

The problem is that the road is barely standard width so passing cars that stay in my lane are usually going to violate the three-foot passing law even when I’m at the extreme right side. Consequently I’ve been needlessly brushed by cars who insisted upon passing me on this curve and that’s why I shifted back to taking the lane despite the horrible pavement. I thought that by taking the lane drivers would then not pass since it’s (a) a blind hairpin curve (duh!), and (b) has a double yellow line (double duh!). Here I discovered that lack of driver education compounded by either immense stupidity and/or entitlement—a bad combination, in my opinion—leads to the following behavior: drivers pass me anyway by barging full on into the opposing lane even though they can’t see shit ahead of them. Most of the time there is no oncoming vehicle so no harm, no foul. But I’ve lost count of the number of times that a head-on collision has been narrowly averted by a downhill driver slamming on the brakes so that Stupid Guy/Gal can lunge back into the right hand lane, usually cutting me off. I’ve been lucky so far not to get sideswiped.

At this point I’m as exasperated as a rat in a cage with an electrified floor. Taking the lane as a traffic strategy assumes that drivers understand and follow traffic laws. One can no longer assume what constitutes ‘common sense’ when it comes to driving on local roads. Taking the lane also assumes implicitly that drivers are rational and don’t gamble heedlessly. But some drivers are like two-year olds who don’t understand consequences. Ironically it may be that those drivers understand the consequences all too well when it comes to cyclists, which is that there are almost none if you hit one. So hug the gutter, take the lane—what’s the diff when it comes to survival?

Both strategies work…until they don’t.

The problem with taking the lane—besides finding the requisite resolve—is that it may work 90% of the time but the 10% when it doesn’t work is when it can become extremely hazardous. What is that 10%? When drivers are not attentive, rational, or sober. When drivers are sociopathic (there are more out there than you think—were you ever bullied growing up? Those folks now drive cars.) Even when it does ‘work’, you still may have to endure punishment passes, rolling coal, being yelled at, stuff being thrown at you (I was hit with a thrown egg once).

So, although you have the right to take the lane when it isn’t wide enough for a car to pass safely, should you when drivers behave so callously?

Addendum. Here’s an example of the should-I-or-should-I-not-take-the-lane:

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2021/08/18/punishment-pass-on-great-highway/

Despite the photographic evidence the SF police will not investigate.

Ride Recap: A Quick One

Maurizio asked me why I had titled this ride “A Quick One”. Was it because we were going to be riding quickly? Because it was going to be over quick, ie. a short ride?, although that would be a stretch since it is 42 miles long. Was it because I liked ‘quickies”? Actually it was because I usually post a ride with plenty of advance notice—at least two weeks and more like a month—but this time I posted it less than a week before it was scheduled to take place. Part of it was impatience: no one else had posted a ride and I wanted to do a ride this weekend. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that. In the end it indeed turned out to be a fairly quick ride—we averaged over 14 mph for the route, which was peppered with a number of short but steepish sections.

I thought it was going to be another Roger-and-Tony Different Spokes ride, ie. just the two of us, because the listing went up so late. But I should know you Spokers better—you all wait to see if something better hits the social calendar and if not, then you relent and sign up for a club ride! I know, it’s important to keep your dance card filled, all you belles and beaux of the ball. Suddenly there were seven people signed up. Besides Maurizio Will, Carl, Roger Sayre, and Elia also showed up. Sorry you guys, but I was really looking forward to seeing Elia—not that you’re all, um, “unattractive”—because you’re not, but because Elia goes way back to the ‘80s with the club. So she’s also an Old Fart like I am—she had just let her membership lapse for a much, much longer period of time! Elia was a fast Spoker then and a red hot racer, ie. she’s got real cred not the poseur cred you see at every stoplight in Marin. Back then she was always training, so we’d run into her while she was training and the rest of us were, um, just doing a club ride.

This ride is just a mash up of two ever-popular Midpeninsula rides, the Portola loop and Cañada Road, with a foray into the hills of Los Altos for some added spice. We were mainly doing the “standard” routes but I had a few diversions to make it more interesting and to prevent narcolepsy. Unfortunately for me more than half the group didn’t have a Garmin for navigation. In fact, they didn’t even have cyclometers. Wow, and I thought I was old school. Even in the very early days of the club all the Kool Kids had the hottest stuff, which was—yeah, yeah, the new Look pedals but I’m talking about the Cateye Solar Cyclometer! It was a basic cyclometer as tall as a Costco muffin with a solar panel to recharge its battery. So we always knew how slow we were riding and how many tenths of mile it was to the top of Pig Farm or Mt. Tam. But hey, no cyclometers, no problem: it just means people get lost or people obediantly follow the ride leader. Well, we had a little of both.

After a pit stop at the Pulgas Water Temple to flush away our troubles we rolled south on Cañada and half the group took off. Sure enough, missed that first turn at Olive. Much yelling and gesticulating ensued. That got me anxious and thinking I should lead from the front to make sure nobody had an unexpected adventure. That mostly worked but I had hoped to enjoy the back seat on this ride rather than piling into the wind and all that.

I was chatting with Elia and telling her that she could follow Roger Sayre since he had a Garmin and wouldn’t get lost. So off they went and promptly missed a right turn in Los Altos. More screaming and gesticulating. At that point I think the group got timid and there wasn’t a whole lot of jetting off into the distance anymore.

The perky little hills we did in Los Altos actually didn’t seem that steep this time. I distinctly remember Roger and I gasping (well, actually it was just me gasping) when we rode here last July after San Mateo County opened up. Maybe I’m in better shape this year? Back on the flats we took a break at Peet’s in Los Altos. Somebody made a comment—I think it was Will—at how uncrowded it was compared to SF. “You don’t have to ask the cashier for the key to get into the bathroom!” Yes, life in the suburbs is different. I also don’t recall seeing any tent cities or homeless encampments anywhere. Yep, Los Altos is a regular “Elysium”.

By the time we got to Sand Hill Road on the return the group was in a much chattier mode and everybody took their time getting up that last slog. Then it was just a parade up Cañada to the cars.

Final note: if you want to see what racing does to you, watch Elia. She rides a perfectly straight line, her pedaling is smooth—like buttah!—and her cadence is metronomically precise. I was also in awe that she still packs a corn cob cluster. But hey, that’s what all the Kool Kids do.