Frame Update

Micro-post here: as promised, Dynamic shipped my frame yesterday. This morning I got the shipping notification from UPS. It should arrive next Wednesday. I hope to start posting disassembly photos this weekend.

Video: US Airways Flight 1549 Lands in the Hudson

The story of the landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River has been really powerful for me. The pilot of that flight, Chesley Sullenberger,  is my kind of hero. I'm thankful that neither a single death nor any major injuries occurred as a result of the landing, and the passengers tell a consistent tale of a calm, collected, women-and-children-first evacuation. That happened as a direct result of his cool head, his quick thinking, and a little bit of divine intervention. It could so easily have been otherwise.

At the time of the rescue, there were helicopters with video cameras all over the scene, and the rescue was pretty well documented. So why am I blogging about it now? Well, I knew it would only be a matter of time before a video of the landing surfaced, and I wanted to have something constructive to offer to my readers instead of another rehash of the events.

Here it is, courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard, unedited, and no sound track. The splashdown occurs at 2:02, and if you stick around for a couple of minutes, you can see people emerge, fall off the wing, get pulled back up onto the wing by other passengers, and eventually get picked up by the ferries.

Commuter Tires

Yesterday, I dusted off my wife's Raleigh hybrid bike to ride it in to work since my regular commuter has a broken frame. I enjoyed the change of feel and posture on the ride in and was starting to think this might not be so bad after all. Then on the ride home that all changed. After picking up Ian at his Tae Kwon Do class and attaching the tagalong trailer, we started our 3-mile ride home. Not far into the ride, we got a flat.

Of course, I had not switched my seat bag and tool kit over to the Raleigh, so we were stuck (literally) out in the cold. Fortunately, our route lies close to the bus route, so we walked a block over to the bus stop. Fortunately, the bus is on a 20-min frequency, and was supposed to have been made more frequent by the addition of several evening buses. Unfortunately, that is just a wild dream, and we waited for more than 45 minutes with no bus until my dear sweet wife finally came and picked us up. At least we got to have some father-son heart to heart time.

Three things went wrong. (1) I switched to a bike that did not have Kevlar tires. My regular bike has Kevlar tires, and in a year and a half of riding with them, I have gotten exactly one flat. On the first day with these other cheap tires, I'm dead on the roadside. (2) I did not pack the tool kit, which would have allowed me to make a roadside repair. I've gotten out of the mindset of needing it because I almost never do. (3) I had faith in the public transportation system. In principle, I'm a big believer in public transit, but Austin's Capital Metro has just not got it together with the P.M. buses. Nearly every time I've tried to take one in the afternoon or evening, I end up with a long (40-45 minute) wait.

Moral of the story. Be prepared!

The downside of aluminum frames

It's time for an update on my Crosstown 7 (see all the articles here). This is a shaft-driven bike from Dynamic Bicycles, most similar to the currently available Crossroad 8. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the bottom bracket was starting to move side to side more than usual, and I thought that was probably not a good sign and that it would suffer a fatigue failure. Well, today, as I was riding home, I noticed the frame get loose and start to creak. When I stopped to look it over, I noticed a nice big ugly crack where the seat tube meets the bottom bracket. That's not supposed to happen. Unfortunately it's an inevitable consequence of aluminum butt-welded frames, and I think that the design of the bottom bracket on this shaft driven bike may have amplified the stress or strain in that area. Since purchasing the bike in August 2007, I have put 5900 km (3670 miles) on the bike. It's the 22" frame, and I'm a heavy guy (~215 lbs) and carry a heavy (~15 lb) back pack on the book rack, and I tend to have more of a stoking rather than a spinning pedal style, so it's safe to say that I'm a heavy user, but not unusually so.

When I got home today, the first thing I did was to locate my warranty and confirm that there is a lifetime guarantee on the frame. I called up Dynamic and told them what happened, and I was very pleased to hear and immediate "Man, I'm so sorry that happened to you. We'll get a new frame shipped out to you right away." We went over the details of what I need, including agreeing to how much I would need to put together, and was I able to do the things, and did I have the right tools, etc. The attitude I got was 'what can we do to make this right for you as quickly as possible?' and I have to say that I appreciated that. I've had some very poor customer service experiences before, but not with Dynamic. Others have complained about them, but it's just not been my experience, I've always found them to be friendly and helpful.

I'll post again when the new frame arrives, and maybe I'll document the repairs that are necessary.

In the mean time, keep on biking, and click on over to support my friend Margo in her New Year's resolution to start biking to work again. Leave supportive comments, and ask her to blog about the very funny story of when we rode home together one time...

How is a Man Like a Peach Tree?

I recently read about peach trees that they need a certain amount of cooling in order to be productive. That is, if they don't spend a minimum number of days below a certain temperature, then their fruiting is limited. I wonder whether there could be a hormonal or other chemical basis for a similar response in humans...

This morning, for example, I awoke to a dreary drizzly day, with temps in the 40's F. I experienced a brief struggle between the desire to ride in on my bike and to ride to the bus stop and enjoy reading a book on a nice warm dry ride. I was starting to express this to my wife and had got as far as saying that I was thinking of riding to the bus stop when she interrupted (innocently, I'm sure) to say what a great idea that was. I had, after all, mentioned more than one how drizzly and cold it was outside.

Then the oddest thing happened, at the top of my street, where I turn left for the bus stop and right to ride all the way in, the whole struggle came back to life and the desire to ride through the invigorating weather bubbled up inside, and before I knew any better, I was accelerating down Daugherty, to the right. I arrived at school slightly damp, but quite recharged. It's as if I need to be cold in the winter. If I don't get chilled down enough days, then the endless heat of summer becomes oppressive and unbearable.

Does that make any sense? Am I completely crazy? Is there possibly any physiological basis for this?

And just in case anyone's paying attention, I've put about 5700km on the Dynamic Crosstown 7 now. It's still doing well with no major problems. The shifter has lost a little precision, and I have a little trouble downshifting into 1st. I don't know whether the indexes in the shifter are wearing out a little or maybe the shifter cable is dirty. I just can't get it quite right with the adjuster barrel. At some point it will become irritating enough for me to take it all apart and clean it out, but for now it's not that big a deal.

Also, I think it's always done this, but the other day I noticed that the bottom bracket does deflect quite a bit to the left on a right-side down stroke. Not so with the left-side. Hmmm. No problems yet, but I wonder whether this will turn into a fatigue failure at some point.

Change.org

Obama has set up a website (www.change.org) for people to write in to propose ideas in the new administration. I've posted a link on the left for you all to click on to promote cycling infrastructure as part of his new economic stimulus package. Give it a whirl. You actually vote by clicking on the vote count button on the page that this links to.

Cold cold cold

Yesterday was balmy and humid, in the mid 70's for most of the day. Then in the Texas tradition of unpredictability, the weather turned. In a matter of hours, the temperature dropped 40°, and it began to snow big fat wet snowflakes. That, in Austin, is a newsworthy event.

The snow, of course, did not stick to anything other than a few car tops and house roofs, and it was all gone not long after the sun came up, but we take what we can get.

It's amazing, though, how quickly I forget what it's like to be cold on the bike. I rode in today, like every day, and became reacquainted with that unique and uncomfortable feeling of being cold and hot at the same time. My clothing consists of an undershirt, a long sleeved cotton henly-style shirt, a felted wool pullover (by Swandri), and a wind-breaker shell that I can zip up and down to control wind exposure. In addition, I wear thick wool socks in my biking shoes, full fingered gloves, and a custom-knit wool cap with ear flaps that goes under my bike helmet. This getup is the result of many winters' worth of refinement; in particular, it was the Boston winters that truly forged my winter biking style. While I don't stop to admire myself in the mirror, but I've been told I'm quite a sight to see...

It takes a little while to get used to it again, though, and this morning was no exception. With a stiff headwind blowing 35° air at my nose, I quickly became reacquainted with the cold-nose, cold-finger, warm core phenomenon. It usually takes about 5-7 minutes of painful effort to get my body heat up until I'm comfortable, and during the warmup there's the terrible tradeoff between riding fast to warm up and getting chilled by the wind at higher speeds. The best way to warm up, really is a hill, where effort is high and speeds are low...

...which brings me to a funny thing. I've long noticed that biking vigorously moves the blood to concentration becomes more challenging. My wife can attest to this since I can't remember anything she tells me when I get home until I've had a moment or two to wind down. So, I've noticed on cool days that it seems like there is a specific place (Rosedale Elementary, if you happen to live in Austin and know where that is) where the air gets warmer on my ride in to campus. I have always attributed this to the heat island effect and to the quirks of local geography. Today, as I was pondering body heat and the best way to warm up, I finally realized that this is not the case at all, and that the air probably does not get warmer at all. The truth is that Rosedale Elementary is at the top of a killer hill, and that I'm warmer at the top, not the air around me... With all the blood in my legs, this has been hard to realize, but I'm sure that's it. It was certainly the case today, when the ride became tolerable at the top of that hill, and I even started to sweat a little in spite of my frozen nose and pinkies.

I'm happy for the cold weather, and I will soak it in and store it up for the summer months that are coming all too soon.