The Great Race

Photo completely unrelated, I just like it. 

About a month ago I was toying with the idea of buying myself one of those fancy GoPro video cameras. They're not cheap and the idea eventually lost its appeal when I realised that shooting movies from the front of the bike probably wasn't going to yield anything too compelling.

This morning however, I really regretted my choice. I was cruising down Hobart's bike path when I came across a middle-aged bloke on a mountain bike, knobby-tyres, backpack, obviously riding to work like me. I was on the Thorn Tourer - at a steady pace but not really in a hurry -  and slowly reeled him in. I drew level, passed and continued on my way.

A couple of kilometres on, I heard the unmistakable sound of knobbies being wound up to warp speed. It was clear my mate had found a sudden turn of speed. He flew by, out of the saddle and cranking on the gentle uphill which precedes the long descent from New Town to the Tasman bridge.

Now I was faced with a dilemma. With skinny high pressure tyres and a distinct weight advantage, it was inevitable I was going to catch this bloke on the downhill run. Passing him wasn't really an option because he was only going to come back harder and I really didn't feel like racing him. I'm only trying to get to work and I don't want to get there all sweaty and tired.

I gradually reel him in again, closing the gap to about three bike lengths as we approached the barriers at Bay Road. My mate grabs a massive handful of disk brake and suddenly washes off a all his hard-won speed and flops through the barrier like a giant MTB-riding fish. I audibly click through a few gears so he knows I'm breathing down his neck.

Out of the barriers he rises from the saddle again, like a young Eddie Merckx, but without the speed, classy bike, fitness, or handling skills. We're up to speed again, but his shoulders are heaving with the strain of pushing the big gear against the gentle headwind. Surely, he thinks, he must have dropped the fat bloke on the red tourer. But how would you know?

And then he pulls the ultimate rookie move, something I've never even seen before. He starts looking back. Short glances at first, the longer wild-eyed looks. There's nothing furtive about it. He's actually turning his head and checking to see if I'm still there, whether I'm winding up to take him out. It's like the middle of a medal round in an Olympic sprint, except he's dropping speed and he's looking over his shoulder waiting for The Move. But it's never going to come. Part of me wants to drop down a few gears and put in a comical burst, but to do so would be to break the unwritten but immutable rules of the commuter race and I doubt I could keep a straight face. Instead I must sit a few lengths back, condemning my new mate to holding his pace, lest he submit to the ultimate humiliation of being passed again.

The end, when it came, was the usual anti-climax. Around the Cenotaph, he turned right toward the Aquatic Centre. Whether he was planning to turn right, or whether it just offered some welcome relief, I'll never know. Such is the nature of the Great Race. Some video would have been golden.

(I know I've written about The Great Race before, particularly the use of the Passive-Agressive Shadow Technique. But this guy was so good I just had to share.)

2591km so far this year.

Bury my bike at Wounded Knee

My bike is trying to kill me. Twice in two weeks I've been thrown over the handlebars. The first excursion was puzzling, the second simply painful.

It started with a relatively low-speed crash as I came off the bike track in Hobart after a morning spin. One moment I was bobbing along out of the saddle, the next I was on my arse. At the time I put it down to a mudguard stay popping out at an inopportune moment and lodging in the front wheel, although there was no marks on either to indicate they'd jammed together. Nonetheless, I fixed the stay and carried on assuming all was well.

Then yesterday on my way home from my regular Sunday ride, it happened again. I rose from the saddle in a low gear on a slight rise and bang, down I went, taking the impact on my right knee again. This time the damage was a lot more - a big open wound on my knee with lots of dirt and gravel. I picked up the bike and noticed the chain had snapped, although I suspect this isn't what caused the accident. Puzzled and not a little sore I walked the bike the three kilometres back to the car, coasting down the hills where I could.

Once I cleaned up my knee I had a closer look at the bike. Not a mark on it. I thought it might be a mudguard problem: a sudden flexing of the wheel under load stopping the back wheel. But that didn't seem likely. I consulted my brains trust on Facebook who came up with a bunch of possibilities, the most likely of which seems to be chainsuck, a jamming of the chain which happens when the chain fails to disengage from the back of the chainrings properly. It's more common with worn chainrings apparently. Two things confirm this diagnosis; a slight hooking of the chainrings indicating they're a bit worn - hence likely to catch - and a few telltale chips in the paint on the chainstay.

I'll be replacing the worn chainring and the chain, and likely the cassette as well. The two incidents have spooked me a bit, but I guess it will make me a bit more focussed on regular maintenance, something I might have become a bit slack with of late.

A million types of wrong

Spotted in Hobart the other day, the bike that is one million types of wrong. The odds are high that a bike shop was involved in this atrocity at some point. They should hang their heads in shame.

2153km so far this year.

Letter to the editor

Loved this in the Sydney Morning Herald today:

Build a bridge, bike-baiters.

As a working city bicycle courier, I am occasionally criticised for such misdemeanours as flowing through traffic and taking a full lane in unsafe sections. Those who choose to preach from their big-wheeled, chrome-plated, plastic chariots should note one thing: if you don't wind down the window of your air-conditioned, carbon-farting bubble, the chances are I won't be able to hear you. If I do happen to hear you, the chances are greater that I have heard it all before. Go and see Morris Iemma's men on Macquarie Street - they know people who will build you a bridge to get over it.

Steve Partridge
Marrickville

5,180km so far this year.

Not all sweetness and lights.

With a big ride coming up I gave some thought to some new lights. Though I like my generator hub, something small and light and frictionless. A friend of mine VictimOfNoel (not his real name) has a set of the neat LED units from ayup which I quite liked. They come with a six hour battery and mounts etc which I thought would have been ideal for Audax rides. So I ordered some. Or at least tried to. Dearie gracious me.

First I had to endure their truly appalling website with it's shitty flash animation and bizzare design, which is not much fun over a dialup connection, trust me. Once I managed to find what I wanted it was impossible to find the exact price, because GST and shipping were added later in the process. Once I had ordered, I noticed the default shipping address in paypal was wrong, so I e-mailled them to ask if they could correct my error.

After a week of waiting for either a response to my e-mail or for my lights, I e-mailled ayup again this morning asking them to either confirm shipment of my lights, or to refund my money. Within 30 seconds my money was refunded. Shit! Even Tel$tra tries harder than that to hang onto customers. My refund was accompanied by a note referring me to a mass mailling they sent out during the week pointing out they were out of stock of some of the merchandise they were still selling on their website. No attempt to provide me with something different, no offer to ship something same day. Nothing.

I hate bad service. Even through their product is a decent one, they deserve to fail. I'll never deal with this company again and I recommend you don't either. During the week, I noticed this on a blog. Ayup manages to observe about four of these simple rules of how to shed customers:

1. Refuse to help when the customer is not happy with the product or service.

2. Ignore customers when they are standing there and it's obvious they need some attention. Better still, make sure you keep talking to your friend on the next register.

3. Push customers into buying stuff they don't need.

4. Lie.

5. Be rude and talk down to them. Do your best to make them feel like idiots.

6. Make sure you never have important items on your shelves.

7. Have only one or two people serving at peak times.

8. Display one price on the item, then charge a higher one.

9. Make sure your staff doesn't know how to do a simple transaction, like a lay-by.

10. Don't return phone calls or emails.

3,899km so far this year.

The cyclist's birthday

It's my birthday this week and I've managed to pretty much clear out my wish list for bike-related gear.

A month or so I bought a few back issues of the wonderful Bicycle Quarterly magazine which I really enjoyed, so I dropped a few pointed hints that their book: The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles would be appreciated. Mrs Surly Dave has ordered a copy and I'm camped by the mailbox until it arrives.

I had a little unexpected cash windfall this week, so to make the waiting more tolerable I bought myself a few presents including a new floor pump, a long-coveted Nitto M12 mini front rack and some mudguards for winter, which is supposedly upon us soon despite the lovely warm weather we've been having.

Along the way, I've been mulling over some things I saw during the recent Melbourne Autumn Daytour. It was a lovely day and because I'm now a lot fitter and riding a better bike, I tend to ride much further up in the field rather than down the back with the strugglers and the stragglers. It was obvious that a lot of roadies were treating the ride as either a) a race, which it is not or b) a high speed group training ride. As they came past me I caught onto the back of the odd bunch to enjoy a high-speed tow along in their draft for a while before dropping off to continue at my own pace.

I tried striking up a conversation with several riders in the bunches, but managed to get only grunts in return. It might have been because I was riding a touring bike with cantilever brakes and a rear rack. I wasn't too surprised they weren't too friendly because I've long observed that the more expensive the bike the less likely you are to get a wave, a smile or a nod. I've been working up to this rant for a while:

• The fact you've spend untold thousands on a bike and covered yourself in the logos of a professional team doesn't make you a better cyclist, although sometimes it does go a long way towards making you look like a wanker.
• There's nothing clever or special or tough about riding up and down Beach Road in a big bunch. It's flat and you're getting pulled along by others. You're not impressing anyone. Get over yourself.
• Save your racing for races. I suspect many of you are just wannabes. Ride for fun, not to satisfy some sort of competitive urge. You might even crack a smile occasionally.
• You are very visible to the motoring public, so obey the road rules. You're giving the rest of us a bad name.
  
• Be pleasant to other cyclists, even if they may not look as fast (or ridiculous) as you. It costs nothing and is good public relations. And you need friends like never before.

Raging down the road.

I'm an angry man this morning. I gave up on the whole road rage thing back in my motorcycling days, after I opened someone's door at traffic lights and gave them an earful for cutting me off. The whole undignified episode took place in front of an unmarked police car. I swear officer, it looked a lot worse than it was. Deep down I know that violence isn't the answer, even though sometimes I forget what the question is.

So today's revving fool behind me at the traffic lights didn't particularly attract my attention as I passed him in the bike lane. 'He's either turning left, or he'll just have to wait,' I thought. Today's lesson folks: if you're going to zoom past me within the range of my outstretched arm, you're far too close. So don't act surprised if your front passenger window gets a tap almost but not quite hard enough to shatter it. And hurt my wrist. Damn those side windows are tough.

There was an opportunity for me to take it further, and keen I was. But sometimes when the red mist descends it's best not to listen to the voices inside your head yelling "kill, kill, kill!". And so we return to the politness and the pacifism. For now. But motorists take heed: if you try to run me over because you're in a hurry, I'll beat you to a pulp if I catch up with you. It seems a fair swap.

Apart from that, I had a lovely ride to work. Serenity now, serenity now, serenity now...

Thanks for bindifry for the pic.