Like Gilligan ...

We set off on a half-hour bike ride today, and didn't come home until much later. At least we came home, unlike the Minnow. I didn't do a couple days of blogging because I've been tied up with chores, and with sailing. It's summer and we have generous friends, with boats.

Anyway, we set out on our singles for a brief cruise around the neighborhood, but ended up at Liberty Station, where we took pictures of each other.

Why does my bike look so small under me? It must be the angle and the baggy shorts.

In the park we saw workmen constructing a tree. That's right - a fake cellular phone antenna tree. It doesn't look very real yet. Will it ever? Will it provide homes for birds? Produce oxygen? Contribute its bit to offset global warming? I think not.

But it might not be as ugly as an unadorned antenna array.

In any case, the city fathers hope we are looking to the water, and not to the fake trees in our midst.

And we did, until convertibles began to catch our eye(s). Here is a pristine old Dodge Dart, top down.

MUSTANG CONVERTIBLES

We saw approximately ten M Cs today, but only took a picture of this pair. My wife is suffering from "too many Mustangs" fatigue.

Gearing in Inches On Video

In previous posts I have alluded to bicycle "gearing inches" and now I can give you a couple examples of the process of calculating (or describing) gear ratios.

First we take a tape measure and determine the outer circumference of the tire. You can do this with math but it's more accurate to measure. I'm not going to bother about the millimeters (you can if you wish). Tape on the tire to show where we are measuring. Let's assume the middle of the tape is on zero.

We then roll the bike forward along the tape measure until our marker shows 82 5/8" (210 cm). That's the circumference of the bike wheel, or the distance it travels for each revolution of the wheel. 

This distance is INDEPENDENT of the gearing on the bike. One wheel's revolution ON MY BIKE is always the same distance traveled unless I have a flat tire. Your bike will vary somewhat, as your wheels and tires are different from mine.

Now we can think about gearing. To measure the range of gearing on my Paramount, we put the bike in the lowest gear. Large 26-tooth cog in the rear and smallest 42-tooth chainring in the front.

We stand the bike up and move it along the tape measure until the crank has turned one complete revolution. To measure precisely you should also have a plumb line showing the exact point at which to measure both the crank and the wheel. So forgive me if we are off a smidge.



You can line the crank arm up with the seat post or try to make it vertical. Then check the distance traveled on the tape measure. Most of the time, the wheel position will NOT be where the duct tape mark is located. Here we've gone about 136 inches or 345 cm.

Repeating the procedure now, we move the chain to the smallest 13-tooth cog in the rear and the largest 52-tooth chainring in the front.

We roll the bike along the tape measure again, turning the crank one time.



The distance traveled in one crank revolution is equal to the length of my 24 foot (288") tape measure PLUS 43 inches, for approximately 331 inches or 841 cm.

Notice the tape on the tire? The wheel revolved about 4 times. The large chainring has 52 teeth, and the smallest cog has 13 teeth (1/4th the number). So one revolution of the pedals means 4 revolutions of the little cog AND the big wheel to which it's firmly attached. The distance traveled may vary from bike to bike with tire variations, but with 4:1 gearing, the revolutions per turn stay the same.

Now what have we learned?

In English standard units

low gear 42:26 = 1.6 multiply by a nominal 27" (actual 26.3" for my bike) to get a "42 inch low gear"
high gear 52:13 = 4.0 multiply by 26.3 to get a "105 inch top gear"

These numbers don't give us the distance traveled, they only give us a relative comparison of the gear ratios. To get distance traveled, we have to multiply by pi or 3.14.

42 x 3.14 = 135 inches traveled in low gear
108 x 3.14 = 330 inches traveled in high gear

In metric units 

Low gear = 3.31 meters per revolution also called meters of development
Top gear = 8.41 meters per revolution

Yes, this is all academic and a nuisance. But it's convention in the bicycle world. It doesn't help you to get up a hill but it does allow you to spec a bike the way you want it.

Top Gear Tuesday

A couple days sped by while we were out of town, so I wasn't riding.  On the way home from relatives,  we were tempted into watching for whales again, and spotted one whale along with a gazillion dolphin!

And we came home and spent the whole day installing old food in a new refrigerator. Finally we got around to watching Top Gear on television during supper.

As a consequence, I thought I'd do a Top Gear Cycling show blog for you all.

One doesn't see top gear on a bike very often. Unlike a car, where you get into top gear anytime you are outside the city, or on the freeway, many bikes are greatly over-geared and seldom see the ideal conditions required for a 100+ inch top gear. Go here for more on gears and inches.

I decided to start with a cross-chain gear. This is the largest cog in the back and the largest chainring in the front. Try that with your 11-speed cluster, hah! (it's hard on all the equipment, so don't really try it).

In addition to not getting into top gear often, it's not very safe to take photos of your legs pedaling as you are probably going too fast. Thus, don't try this at home.

NOTE: These photos were taken by a semi-professional on a closed circuit public road.

Now you can see I'm coming around a corner to the downhill straight, with my chain on the small cog in the back and the large chainring in the front - thus, top gear.

For verification, here's another shot. You can tell I am not coasting, because my legs are revolving at speed. In this photo, at 85 rpm in a 99 inch gear (48 x13) I am doing 25 miles per hour. How do I know? You can do it with math or you can cheat and use a calculation program as found here.

On my tandem with 27" wheels, top gear is more like 95 rpm in a 120 inch gear (54 x13) for 34 mph. Frankly it's rare that the two of us ever push this for more than a quarter mile, although one day on the prairie outside Calgary we spun in top gear for more than an hour. Behind a grain silo on a trailer.

I spotted this police-ified Chevy on my way home after my speed run. If you remember, it also featured in an earlier blog, about 6 weeks ago, called Bars and Brakes. (No, I had don't have total recall - only partial - so I had to look it up too, using Google and searching on Cazalea and ominous ... the only words I remembered using to describe it).

Whine with me "I'm Tired"

I'm writing the blog now and even my forearms hurt.

This morning we went out for an easy ride that turned into an ordeal, and it's all my fault. I'm the captain of the tandem and ought to have some sense. But when people pass us on the bike path, I can't help but try to keep up. Or catch up.

Yes, it's flat. And yes, it's into the wind. And yes they were much younger. And yes, now I'm regretting it.

The ride started out ok. We saw a car lot full of Mustang Convertibles ... four in a row up by this fence.

Then we passed through Old Town, apparently the birthplace of California (depending on your origins, of course; the Kumeyaay people might disagree).

A few miles later, riding past the Hotel Circle, we spotted another M C, which although it was quite tattered, still qualified to have its picture taken. Notice the pine tree air freshener hanging from the mirror - a nice touch.

Eventually we turned around and headed out toward the ocean. On our left I saw something I'd never seen before. A white hearse, with "Just Married" written on the back window, with a flat tire, at the side of the freeway. I hope they didn't have to spend their wedding night in the back of the hearse while it was up at an angle on the jack ... 

Once we got home I had work to do.

We'd been having an irritating clicking sound from the back of the tandem, and I put it on the stand to try to locate the source. I found that the rear crankarms were not completely tight. On another mission, I pulled the rear wheel to get a grip on a shifting problem we're having. Turns out there's about a 1/4" difference in the position of the end of the axle on the 650B wheels versus the 27" wheels. So I can only use an old-school 5-speed cluster on the 650B wheels rather than the 6-speed on the 27s.

Whose fault is that? It's mine. I specified the equipment and built the wheels - perhaps we had the different hubs in stock - I must have decided to use them even though there was a difference. It's lost in the haze of 35 years since I built the bike. But having both sides closer to equal makes a more-equilateral triangle between the hub and rim, so maybe that was my reasoning.

Anyway, I took wheels in and out, pulled clusters off all my hubs (vise, twist, groan, crack! unscrew), and reset the brake pads and readjusted the rear Huret DuoPar derailleur. Then we test-rode it and I did a few more adjustments.

Some new neighbors walking down the street stopped and we talked bikes. They have a triple! And their oldest son rides the back, and the younger two children ride in a trailer pulled behind.

No wonder I'm tired. The very thought of it exhausts me.

Brighten Up a Gray Day

School's out for summer. So we rode the tandem today, even though it's not the weekend. And not sunny and warm. In fact, our famous June Gloom is in full force. See my Marine Layer blog for details.

Perhaps because it is a Friday just before the weekend, we found four cars at the recharging station in Liberty Station's parking lot. That's three more than I've ever seen before. Too bad the Car2Go users couldn't fit in the space marked out for them! But there was still room for the Tesla to back in.

We're wearing our high-visibility orange shirts today - matching gear for the tandem. You can see the tiny reflective patch on the top, near my helmet strap. Maybe a slightly larger area of reflective material would be in order (on my wife's back) if we were riding in the dark. But in the daytime, we can be seen from a long way off ...

Here she's inspecting a very nice little garden on the dividing line between civilian land and the US military base at the end of Rosecrans. The flowers match her shirt.

MUSTANG CONVERTIBLES

On the way home we spotted our fourth Mustang Convertible of the day - the only one not moving - and captured it successfully on film (well, got some pixels).

Seal of Honor

It's a beautiful day - perfect for a short bike ride. But my short ride turned into quite a long one.

The sewer repair crew created a geyser this afternoon, sending a river of water down the street. As I came up on my bike, they were there scratching their heads and calling more trucks.

I decided to ride down along the east side of the airport. I saw a nice white Dodge Dart convertible (shown below).

Even though you can get pretty close to the airport perimeter on a bicycle, I have the feeling that "they" are watching me carefully. Here is a weather station data acquisition antenna ...

 ... and some seriously wired, barbed wire fencing.

I rode up Harbor Drive a few miles to Spanish Landing, dropped my bike (gently) on the sand, took off my old cycling shoes, and strode through the deep sand.

I went into the water for a little splash. I can't explain why the water is not blue in this picture. I didn't do anything to make it yellow :-(

Then I saw the SEAL tourist truck driving along the bay. I knew it was about to head into the water and do its wade-on-the-water tour out to the bait barge. I knew if I extended my ride another 5 miles, I could get up to the Shelter Island boat ramp and take a video of it exiting the water.


The SEAL stopped to do a check to make sure no aquatic debris was on the bottom of the hull, then started off down to the Embarcadero to drop this group and pick up some more passengers.

I chased it for a few blocks until they hit a red light, and that's when I saw its name is Seal of Honor.

PS - two Mustang Convertibles spotted, but no photos.

Eye Contact or Civil Inattention?

Wikipedia tells us

Eye contact is a form of nonverbal communication ... thought to have a large influence on social behavior ... a meaningful and important sign of confidence and social communication. The customs and significance of eye contact vary widely between cultures, with religious and social differences often altering its meaning.

Civil inattention is part of the surface character of public order ... individuals treat others with civil inattention in order to endure anonymised life in cities. Rather than either ignoring or staring, civil inattention involves distant, unobtrusive scanning of others, allowing for neutral interaction. Through brief eye contact with an approaching stranger, we acknowledge their presence and foreclose the possibility of more personal contact ... a means of making privacy possible within a crowd ... a way of shielding oneself from personal contact in public ... a feature of the abstract, impersonal relationships demanded by open society.

When riding a bicycle, eye contact is (to me) an essential tool in ensuring I come home alive and intact. That's my primary goal when riding, as I said before in this blog. If I catch a driver's or pedestrian's eye, I'm pretty sure they've seen me, and they won't run over me or step into my path.

I'm disappointed that it seems to have disappeared from today's drivers, riders and pedestrians. No cheery hello, no nod of the head, wave of the hand, or even a grunt. Nothing. Civil Inattention is all I get.

Other than the general lack of eye contact from on-going riders and inattentive walkers, I had a nice ride on a beautiful day around the edge of the "Big Bay," as our city likes to call San Diego Harbor; as opposed to the "little" Mission Bay.

I ended up down on the pier next to the Midway Carrier Museum, where I carefully laid my bike on the concrete and dangled my legs over the side.

Last night I found a seat bag from the olden days. It straps to the back of a seat and holds a spare sew-up tire. Now I can go farther from home without the fear of a long walk back.

I found the SEAL vehicle parked alongside the Star of India. I've never ridden on the SEAL, but I would like to sometime. It trundles around clumsily on land (it's way too high) but provides a nice viewing platform for seeing the bay from Harbor Drive. Then it drives right down a ramp into the water and goes out to the bait barge so tourists can see the sea lions.

Here it is in the water, near Shelter Island. I took this photo from the Hornblower Adventure, on our way out of the harbor going whale watching.

MUSTANG CONVERTIBLES

I spotted at least nine today. Here are two nice ones.

Both say Mustang under the doors, just in case you didn't know what car you're looking at.